Resources

What’s actually driving up electricity bills and policy solutions to consider 

Energy affordability has moved to the center of the policy conversation for a simple reason: people are seeing their bills go up. National retail electricity rates rose more than 5% in the past year alone, after tracking roughly with inflation from 2019 to 2024. That jump has sparked a public debate filled with competing, and often oversimplified, explanations. But the real story is more structural, and in many ways, it started long before today’s headlines. This blog walks through some of the key drivers of rising U.S. electricity costs and policy solutions. 

The role of clean firm generation in an affordable, reliable, and decarbonized grid  

As energy affordability and data center electricity demand dominate headlines, the challenge of building an affordable, reliable, and abundant clean energy future has never been more important.  Decarbonizing the power system at minimum cost will depend not only on scaling renewables, storage, and demand-side solutions, but also on deploying clean electricity technologies with complementary capabilities. One category of clean energy technologies with significant untapped potential, and the focus of this brief, is “clean firm generation” — dispatchable, low-emission electricity generation sources that do not rely on the weather for fuel. 

Managing large loads: How policymakers can get ahead of the data center boom 

A wave of large new electricity demand has reshaped the energy debate across the country, and this time it is being led by large loads, like data centers.  These projects can bring benefits to host communities: tax revenue, construction jobs, and long-term development. They also bring economic and environmental risks that utilities, regulators, and lawmakers should not treat as routine. Put simply, data centers and other very large electricity users can change the economics of the grid for everyone. This blog explores how policymakers can get ahead of these changes.