On the line was my boss at the time, Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a tiny DC nonprofit focused on preventing nuclear and radiological terrorism. “Turn on the TV,” he said. Video of United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center—the second tower to be attacked—filled the screen.  

The first crash could merely have been a terrible accident. But the second left little doubt. It was an act of terrorism that sent a chilling message: Anyone or anything could be a target. Without hesitation, Leventhal declared “It’s bin Laden.” Leventhal had long feared that nuclear power plants were vulnerable to terrorist sabotage that could cause a Chernobyl-like catastrophe on American soil, and he was an early (and lonely) advocate for strengthening NRC’s security requirements at a time when the nuclear industry and most security analysts dismissed the threat.  

Before 9/11, the biggest concerns for nuclear plant security were vehicle bombs, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the al Qaeda 1998 East African embassy attacks, or a paramilitary land assault by heavily armed groups. The 9/11 attacks, however, immediately made apparent a previously unforeseen threat scenario: hijacked jet aircraft turned into missiles—a terrifying possibility for which there are no practical protective measures.   

Leventhal—never one to hold back in a time of crisis—picked up the phone and cold-called Richard Meserve, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Remarkably, Chairman Meserve took his call. Leventhal urged him to impose emergency measures to bolster protection of the nation’s nuclear plants. Soon afterward, Leventhal and Dan Hirsch, the president of the California-based Committee to Bridge the Gap, wrote to Chairman Meserve to ask the Pentagon to deploy anti-aircraft weapons at nuclear plants, to improve vetting of nuclear workers, and to request that National Guard troops be dispatched to supplement inadequately staffed security forces. He responded with a non-answer, assuring that the NRC immediately “took a number of responsive actions” after the attacks, and was “evaluating current requirements and statutory authority related to acts or threats of terrorism, including but not limited to those that you presented in your letter.” 

And so began the long journey of the NRC coming to terms with the reality that the requirements it had in place for protecting US nuclear power plants from terrorists had not kept pace with the magnitude of the actual threat, leaving the fleet dangerously exposed. As we now know from the 9/11 Commission Report, al Qaeda operatives had considered targeting a nuclear plant near New York on 9/11 (presumably Indian Point), but fortunately, they decided against it in part because they thought that the airspace around it would be protected. Subsequent events quickly revealed that assumption was incorrect. 

In 9/11’s aftermath, the NRC ultimately did ratchet up its standards for protection of nuclear plants—for example, by increasing the assumed size of the attacking force that plant security would have to defend against—and for a few years, nuclear plants became somewhat better prepared to withstand terrorist ground assaults. (The agency never did require defenses against air attacks by jets or drones). But the nuclear industry, objecting to the cost of meeting stronger requirements, fought the NRC all the way. And over the last decade, the NRC has made a steady stream of changes, in response to industry pressure, that undid some of the post-9/11 improvements. 

After I joined UCS in 2003, my former colleague Dave Lochbaum and I continued to engage the NRC on this critical issue, pushing back against industry proposals to weaken reactor security. In 2016, the year of the fifteenth 9/11 anniversary, I chronicled our concerns about the changes that had been proposed up to that time. Today, unfortunately, the NRC’s undoing of its strengthened security framework is all but total, as the no-longer-independent agency caves in to Trump administration directives and slashes its security oversight to a level not seen since September 10, 2001.  

The checkered history of force-on-force evaluations 

When al Qaeda struck on 9/11, the only NRC program that directly tested the capabilities of nuclear power plant security forces to protect against terrorist attacks, the Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation (OSRE), had been in disarray for over three years. OSRE utilized live “force-on-force” exercises with mock adversary teams staging violent assaults at reactors—essentially a sophisticated version of laser tag. The goal of the protective force was to stop the adversary team from simulating the destruction of enough safety equipment to disrupt cooling of the reactor cores, which in a real attack would cause overheating and significant damage to the highly radioactive fuel. By 1998, 57 of the 68 nuclear plants then operating had been tested, and 27 had been unable to prevent the mock attackers from achieving their objective of causing a meltdown—a failure rate of 47 percent—even though the plant owners had beefed up their security measures in advance of the tests. The industry was embarrassed by the results and, instead of working to fix its security problems, it pushed the NRC to shut the program down—which it finally did in the summer of 1998.  

Captain David Orrik, a former Navy Seal and the OSRE team lead, objected to the program’s cancellation and filed an internal “Differing Professional View” in August 1998, which was endorsed by a number of other NRC staff. However, NRC senior managers refused to reverse the decision. The dissenters, alarmed by the state of security at the nation’s nuclear plants at a time when terrorist threats were increasing, leaked their concerns to the press. Once the conflict came into public view, the NRC was forced to reinstate the program, but also initiated a review of its implementation, and decided to promulgate new regulations for the future performance evaluation program.  

The nuclear reactor owners and their lobbying group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), offered their own vision: a self-assessment in which nuclear plants would conduct their own force-on-force exercises, and the NRC would be relegated to a mere observer. This differed in important ways from OSRE, in which the NRC provided the mock adversary force, chose the attack scenarios (based on intelligence information), and was assisted by US Special Forces contractors with vast experience in paramilitary tactics. This approach maintained the independence of the evaluating agency from the plants being evaluated and avoided conflicts of interest. But the industry proposal offered too many opportunities to tilt the playing field so that the “good guys” would win, and Captain Orrik, in a second dissenting opinion, derided it as a “meaningless NRC rubber-stamping of whatever the industry decided it could afford.” (I got to know Captain Orrik at the time and greatly respected his expertise.) 

Dismissing Captain Orrik’s concerns, the NRC was on track to adopt the industry’s proposal— until 9/11 changed the playing field by making efforts to weaken security politically unpopular. Through the advocacy of then-Representative (and now-Senator) Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Congress enshrined NRC-run triennial force-on-force inspections in the law by enacting a provision in the 2005 Energy Policy Act that amended the Atomic Energy Act. Since then, there have been seven complete force-on-force inspection cycles (with some disruptions during COVID). The security performance of nuclear plants has improved significantly since the OSRE era, although about five to ten percent of plants still fail the test each year, showing the importance of maintaining vigilance through a robust testing and inspection regime.  

Throughout this entire period, the NEI never stopped pushing the NRC to weaken its force-on-force inspections—or even terminate them again, despite the 2005 Energy Policy Act provision. Although the NRC has arguably pursued a “death by a thousand cuts” approach to its force-on-force program, as recently as 2018 the commissioners instructed the staff not to get rid of it altogether. 

What’s Past is Prologue 

The NEI finally got the upper hand after the Trump administration’s takeover of the NRC in 2025. In April of 2026, the NRC commissioners reversed course and issued a decision to grant the NEI’s legally dubious request to replace NRC-run force-on-force inspections with observation of licensee-conducted exercises by 2028—even though the NRC staff did not even provide such an option to the Commission. 

The NRC has also made other major cuts to its security oversight, including slashing resources for routine physical and cyber security inspections by over fifty percent in some cases; transferring some inspection duties to already overwhelmed resident inspectors who do not have specialized security training; allowing new reactor owners to take credit for local law enforcement response in lieu of providing their own security forces; and even eliminating the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, established after 9/11 to elevate the agency’s security oversight mission.  

The agency also recently released a proposed rule that further weakens security requirements across the board, including redefining its standards so that even if a nuclear plant security force were helpless to prevent terrorists from deliberately causing a meltdown as severe as the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, the agency would not consider it radiological sabotage because the projected radiation doses to the public would be within “acceptable” limits.  Nothing to see here! 

The cumulative effect of all these changes is hard to predict. But there is little doubt that the NRC is dangerously undermining nuclear plant security at a time when the convergence of rapidly emerging technologies—from drones with advanced military capabilities to artificial intelligence-boosted cyber attacks—are amplifying the threat landscape in even more profound ways than did the jet attacks of 9/11. 

In a 2014 interview, co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton warned about the dangers of complacency setting in as the horrific events of that day become a distant memory. The NRC should heed this warning. The nuclear industry, supported by the Trump administration, has ambitious plans to build scores of small modular reactors around the country, in more diverse locations and closer to populated areas. A “nuclear 9/11” would imperil the health and safety of millions of Americans and derail the industry’s hoped-for nuclear revival for generations to come.   

We should be unimpressed. Acting on this promise is overdue. Opportunities have risen, and they have deferred or demurred. The time has come to call their bluffs.    

For starters, these claims to care are just that: words, not promises. No single politician or regulatory agency, neither federal nor state, has the authority to keep all the costs from data centers out of consumers’ electric bills. However, the utilities and the data centers could address this head-on through their actions and protect consumers.  I assure you plenty of opportunities have sailed past without that happening. (It’s been nearly a year since I wrote about this “consensus” of concern, and little has been changed.) But now a case out of Maryland could finally shake the table.  

Pledges on pollution 

Before we get into the dark and murky world of how utility costs work their way into consumer rates and bills, it’s important to consider Big Tech’s push for  dirty energy choices and the obstacles deliberately enacted by data center companies to block informed decision-making. These controversies are capturing public attention, though the near-zero transparency from data centers themselves feels ironic given their branding as “information technologies.”  

Before these promises of consumer protection, companies set carbon goals. Amazon was a founder of the Climate Pledge, but now the headlines are “The Single Largest Pollution Source In The USA Going To Be An Amazon AI Data Center.”  “Net zero” now seems to describe the amount of information, not the carbon, emitted by data centers’ energy plans. 

In 2023, voluntary clean energy pledges were led by Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft. But now we see Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer explaining that “In 2020, Microsoft leaders referred to our [net-zero carbon] sustainability goals as a moonshot, and nearly five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away.” 

Running from climate responsibility makes no sense, given the enormous costs from continued burning of fossil fuels, projections from UCS on long-term cost savings from clean energy, strategies for adding renewables to power data centers, and the actual way Texas has handled rising demand from data centers with wind, solar plus storage.  

Our fights in the state regulatory reviews focus on:  

• Requiring data centers to disclose clean energy plans. 
• Prioritizing data centers with the most robust clean energy plans. 
• Keeping data centers accountable for their commitments. 

Pledges on costs 

While the data center companies and utilities seem to abandon climate goals, they have rolled out a variety of promises under the cover of a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.” UCS experts dig through regulatory filings, transmission plans, and the arguments written by utilities, data center companies, and power plant owners every day. What are we finding? There are undisclosed deals for data centers and there are half-measures for consumers. We need the regulatory agencies that referee the arguments about who actually pays to call these bluffs. 

We have found, over and over, utilities and data companies arguing that the state regulators should not adjust who pays the costs brought by data center connections and increased need for power plants. For example, Microsoft argued in Illinois they should not be required to sign binding commitments to pay for the costs they cause.  This was after utility ComEd expressed concern about the huge demands from data centers.  

So, ComEd proposed requiring a security deposit from new data centers to ensure they get paid. Since the utility is always going to be paid, this helps recoup the costs caused by data centers that would be passed other ratepayers if the data center business fails. However, this didn’t change the practice of spreading to all customers the costs caused by the new data centers. Thus this is a half-measure, only addressing the risk that new these customers like Microsoft actually pay their bills.  

This safety-net for the utility is a repeating practice, with no actual cost-saving impact for ratepayers. ComEd’s parent company, Exelon, made related requests at the federal level. And yet, in those filings, nothing has changed to the existing practice of putting the transmission costs caused by new data centers into everyone else’s rates. In fact, Exelon says in its agreement with Amazon and other data centers that it will keep pursuing this spreading of costs.  

My work digging through just the grid upgrades to connect data centers in eight states found $4.6 billion in 2024 and $3.1 billion in 2025 committed by utilities, in full knowledge these costs will be paid by all their customers. More transmission costs caused by the same data centers, described below, are being challenged by the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the state consumer advocate. 

State regulatory efforts may exacerbate these harms 

The “move fast, break things” culture of Silicon Valley isn’t the approach utilities—or their regulators—take.   The unwillingness of regulators to push back and do more than the utilities’ proposals is extending the problem of costs falling on consumers rather than ending it.  

Perhaps the most egregious utility response is Entergy building 10 new, full-size gas-burning power plants for the data center Meta is building in Louisiana. Entergy relies on overly optimistic assumptions to justify claims that the costs put on consumers will be eventually offset by benefits. When UCS and allies sought relevant information regarding the data center’s energy demand and permanent job creation in Entergy’s proposal, Entergy and Meta refused to answer and fought a subpoena.   

UCS has also tried to get the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to wrangle data center recklessness better. The rules there don’t require real planning to lower costs to supply data centers. The Wisconsin utility We Energies announced delays in the retirement of the Oak Creek coal plant units multiple times.  

The Trump administration is undermining cost-saving measures 

The Trump Administration has been seeking a lot of attention for its data center policies and promises. When it comes to keeping costs lower, some of these are only rhetorical, and some are harmful.  

Three times (so far) this year, the White House has organized large, public events about consumer protections from data center costs. First, there was a statement of principles from the National Energy Dominance Council and 13 state governors in January 2026; the second, an original presidential proclamation of a Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March 2026; and then in July 2026 a new release of “Rate Payer Protection Pledge” with more signatures by company leaders.  

And yet, over the same period, the administration has made it harder to meet these goals by blocking renewable energy projects, reversing offshore wind leases, and cancelling clean energy grants—all of which would contribute more energy supply and help keep costs to consumers stable.  

How this falls on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 

There is no mistaking that the federal government’s tools for utility consumer protection are found at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In a dramatic rollout of supports for data centers, FERC explained: “To fulfill its responsibility, the Commission must act to address the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers for the service to…[data centers].”  

Note that FERC has not taken any of the opportunities previously available to them to stop utilities from raising customers’ rates to pay the costs caused by data centers. FERC agreed to utilities’ requests that there be protections for the utilities, like the one described above for ComEd that requires a data center pays the bills that the utility sends them. That is, for all their bluster about transparency and cost shifting, billions of costs will still go into the rates, and ratepayers will still have rate increases. 

So, after letting the opportunity pass, FERC is changing their tune. They have taken up the battle flag, calling for this exact reform in a series of “Show Cause” orders directed at utilities in the regional power grids from the Great Plains to the Northeast, plus California. However, without explanation, FERC omitted any mention or attention to protecting consumers in the Southeast and most of the West. Also, I see no guidance in the “Show Cause Orders” for what levels of protections FERC expects utilities to enact, and no discussions about upending the old practices.   

In fact, every indication so far from the federal government is that consumer protection is not happening. Fortunately, we have an opportunity to call the bluff. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel filed a complaint at FERC, calling for them to separate the costs from Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania data centers that have been falling on Maryland’s and other states’ consumers. 

The case Maryland brings 

The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is the consumer protection agency in Maryland and is active in utility rate-setting cases. This case stems from the costs caused by utilities in neighboring states that committed to data centers in 2022, 2024, and 2025. These utilities’ actions caused commitments totaling “more than $22 billion in transmission capital expenditures for baseline projects, overwhelmingly driven by projected data center load growth.”  Their filing also cites UCS reporting on additional  transmission costs from data centers from 2024 and 2025 that added $7.7 billion more onto customer bills from another utility process. 

This is a pivotal opportunity to assign the costs back to the sources that caused them: data centers. The existing rules would spread the costs across the region make sense where the growth in demand is more evenly spread. That is the assumption that has supported the existing rules, and that assumption needs to be examined.  

This is the same as what FERC said June 18 in the “Show Cause Orders:” “In particular, we are concerned about: (1) transparency regarding the assignment of Network Upgrades, and their associated costs; and 2) [data center] customers are ultimately responsible for costs incurred to provide transmission service, including the cost of Network Upgrades.”  

This is such a rare case and a real chance for change: the murky, hard to find details are actually known, and the needed reforms align perfectly with  the goals the government has announced. 

This should be such an easy decision for the regulatory body to put the costs on the parties that cause them. If FERC took this step, then the state regulators could put these costs on the data centers—and then data centers would actually have to pay for what they need. In fact, state regulators don’t need to wait- each rate case is a fresh opportunity to sort and assign costs previously lumped together. Even quicker, the utilities and data companies could adhere to their pledges, and stop the cost-shifting before it starts. 

The standards it cannot set, the deadlines it cannot hold, the public it cannot consult, the experts it cannot employ, the grants it cannot fund, the enforcement it cannot conduct: for EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, it has been a relentless pursuit of cannot. Or rather, cannot for the people, in service of can for a select polluting few.  

Nowhere is this clearer than in all the ways EPA is suddenly arguing that it cannot protect the public from a surge in pollution due to the rapid build-out of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data centers and the increasing amounts of coal, gas, and diesel resources now being relied on to power them. So much so, in fact, that Administrator Zeldin has made slashing safeguards for AI-enabling infrastructure one of the five core pillars of his agency’s entire agenda for President Trump’s second term. 

This ethos of “cannot” is a staggering perversion of EPA’s mission. It is also incredibly consequential. 

Exactly as EPA is attempting to remove itself from the business of protecting the public, the public is being confronted by a massive onslaught of new fossil fuel-fired power plants, alongside an increasing reliance on existing gas and coal plants.  

The consequences for people’s health and the environment are severe: these are heavily polluting sources, yet the administration is frantically working to free them from basic pollution control requirements and shield them from public view. And because of the long lifetime of this infrastructure, if the Trump EPA gets its way, the result will be vastly more pollution today and for decades to come.  

Power sector scene-setting 

Right now, all across the country, tech companies are on the hunt for power. They are seeking enormous amounts of electricity to run energy-intensive new data centers, each equivalent in electricity use to the needs of entire cities. As these data centers rapidly hoover up any remaining surpluses of electricity supply, attention has turned to building out new sources of generation.  

Renewable resources, especially wind and solar generation alongside energy storage, are overwhelmingly the fastest and cheapest resources to deploy. Or at least, they should be.  

However, the Trump administration is actively, often illegally, holding back their deployment and antagonistically increasing their costs, while at the same time heavily pressuring companies to embrace the use of fossil fuels. As a result, while there are still large amounts of renewables and storage being added to the system, there is nowhere near as much as there could or should be—and there is a lot more new gas, both on the grid and, increasingly, off. Moreover, demand for gas plants is now so high, and regulatory accountability around resulting pollution is now so low, that it’s not “just” typical gas plants being built, either: it’s also far less efficient, far heavier polluting jet engines, reciprocating internal combustion engines, and what-should-be-back-up generators running full-out, full-time.  

And here’s what makes this bad situation even worse: the slashing of pollution standards is an entirely worthless dealing away of the public interest.  

Beyond the wrongness in principle, there’s also the wrongness in underlying fact. The thing that energy-seeking Big Tech is constrained by is rapid access to power, not cost of power. Their willingness to pay is incredibly high. If fossil-based power plants were rightly held accountable for their pollution harms, the tech companies would pay for plants employing pollution controls. They’d also, of course, be likelier to avoid more gas to start. And for the Trump administration, that’s the catch. 

It’s not about AI. It’s not about Big Tech. It’s about fossil fuels. More specifically, it’s about making fossil fuels win and renewable resources lose, as much for the benefit of special-interest polluters as for the chance to advance a grievance-born, anti-renewables agenda.  

How the Trump EPA is making it easier for data center-related power plants to pollute 

Here are just a few of the ways that EPA is wielding “cannot” to withdraw from the business of holding tech companies to account for the surging pollution generated by their energy-intensive, increasingly fossil-powered data centers. Staggeringly, these lists are not exhaustive. 

Rolling back regulations. Key regulatory rollbacks include:  

• Attempting to strip EPA’s basic ability to regulate power plant carbon dioxide emissions, not just repeal the standards set to limit those emissions (though the agency also proposed to cut those, too). 
• Dramatically weakening standards limiting emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from new gas turbines. 
• Fully striking down rules that strengthened the regulation of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal plants. 
• Proposing to significantly weaken regulations covering toxic wastewater discharged from coal plants and required handling of coal ash. 

Introducing new loopholes, delays, and exemptions. Where EPA has not been able to fully strike or weaken regulations—or to do so on as fast a timeline as it would like—it has adopted other approaches to achieve a similar effect, including: 

• Incorporating new loopholes to enable entire tranches of polluters to slip through; in the recent NOx rule, this included certain exemptions such as for temporary turbines and low-use turbines, as well as hard-coding a conditional exemption for an entire class of turbines if the agency lands a triple-bank-shot of a polluter handout.  
• Delaying implementation timelines until the agency can more fully dismantle the underlying regulations, such as for methane standards covering oil and gas operations (meaning the upstream supply of gas for power plants) as well as coal-related regulations.  
• Setting up a plug-and-play process for coal-fired power plants and other toxic polluters to receive a two-year exemption from complying with certain Clean Air Act requirements.  
• Easing restrictions around how and when emergency backup generators can be operated outside of emergency events.  
• Explicitly and proactively declaring that power plants operating in off-grid configurations fall outside of Acid Rain Program coverage.  
• Adopting a position of non-enforcement for regulations that it does not “prioritize,” in alignment with the broader Trump administration’s guidance to this effect. 

Cutting out the public. At the same time as EPA is rolling back regulations and polluter coverage, it is also attempting to make it harder for the public to be in the know and able to participate. This includes by: 

• Proposing to shield polluters from public awareness by removing a federal public notice-and-comment requirement for “minor” New Source Review-related pollution permits—which is frequently how data center-related fossil generation projects are classified, despite there being nothing minor about their overall pollution footprints.  
• Proposing to make it easier for large sources of pollution, including data center-related projects, to be built before the public has a say, by allowing significant facility construction to occur before actually obtaining a permit.  
• Repeatedly working to hide data around the magnitude, and impacts, of health- and climate-harming pollution, including by proposing to repeal requirements for polluters to measure and report carbon emissions; stopping the use of the social cost of carbon, which translates carbon emissions into economic impacts; and stopping the quantification of public health impacts from changing levels of key pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and ozone. 

This is a staggering array of actions—and it’s only a subset of what EPA is doing to further clear the path for polluting data center infrastructure, alongside so many other polluting industries. Furthermore, EPA’s work is only a subset of the broader administration’s pro-polluter, anti-accountability agenda.  

The consequences of these rollbacks will reverberate for decades 

In the absolute best of cases, the data center buildout would be shaped by an unequivocal prioritization of the public interest, intentional and long-range planning, rigorous standards, meaningful transparency, and a wholesale commitment to accountability—and even then, it would pose a massive challenge to navigate responsibly and effectively.  

Suffice it to say: now is not the best of cases. Indeed, across every one of these issues, the Trump administration is instead careening toward the very worst of cases.  

As a result, communities across the country are being asked to bear entirely avoidable harms and costs, in the here and now and for decades to come. This unchecked, fossil-heavy data center bender is on track to leave the country with a staggering hangover, full stop.  

What shameful, profligate waste.  

Yet there’s another implication, too. Even in the best-case scenario, not one of those interventions would begin to contend with addressing the societal risks and harms, nor capturing the potential opportunities, arising from the deployment of AI as enabled by these data centers. Addressing that gap should be one of the nation’s, and the world’s, foremost issues of the day. But because of the actions of the Trump administration, attention and expertise are being diverted to contend with this entirely preventable, entirely self-inflicted catastrophe instead. 

The necessary recourse, the only recourse, is for people to keep pushing back. To push back against disastrously consequential and inequitable regulatory proposals, to push back against lawmakers enabling this pro-polluter agenda, to push back against reckless and unaccountable projects.  

To push back against an EPA that repeatedly asserts it cannot for the American people, and instead demand an EPA that can.  

This scheme keeps huge chunks of clean energy offline, with real consequences. Here’s where things stand, by the numbers: 

• 5 = number of offshore wind developers involved in the “settlements” 
• 12 = number of leases involved 
• $3.9 billion = amount of US taxpayer money being used for the buyouts 
• 21,000 = megawatts (MW) of potential offshore wind capacity lost without the lease areas 
• 6–8 million = approximate number of households the lost offshore wind capacity could have served, at a minimum 

Add to those figures the number of jobs that aren’t being created as a result of the buyouts, and the economic development that evaporates: a single 1000 MW project could generate more than 3,000 jobs and some $9 billion in US economic output. Also lost in these transactions is the potential for offshore wind to help homes and businesses manage or even cut their energy costs with stably priced power for the long term, while displacing dirty fossil fuel generation and improving the resilience of regional power grids in the face of extreme weather. 

Broken leases, broken laws? 

There’s another important figure that should be on the list in considering this woefully misguided push to take offshore wind off the table: the number of laws that the administration has broken in these deals.  

That last number is still to be determined, but some of those potential laws are the basis of suits against the administration that have been, or are about to be, filed by states that are counting on offshore wind to meet their energy and climate needs. One such case is New York et al., filed in June by New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James and the attorneys general of six other Northeast states in response to the first of these buyouts. That “deal” involved two leases held by TotalEnergies, one off New York and the other off North Carolina. In July, based on two subsequent buyouts, eight states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, led by Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell, filed “Notices of Intent to Sue”. California AG Rob Bonta similarly announced the state’s intent to sue over two of the deals involving leases off its shores. 

The illegality of the buyouts is also the subject of various oversight pushes by members of Congress. Those include communications from the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and multiple communications from the Ranking Members of the Natural Resources and Judiciary Committees of the House of Representatives, Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD), respectively. Other members of Congress followed on with additional questions about some of the deals. 

Here is a taste of some of these laws—and how they may have been broken.  

Administrative Procedure Act – “Arbitrary and capricious” actions don’t fly 

Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in the mid-20^th century “to improve the administration of justice by prescribing fair administrative procedure.” These buyout deals have failed that test in many ways, according to the AGs and members of Congress. 

In their complaint in New York et al., for example, the attorneys general contend that the TotalEnergies New York lease cancellation “is arbitrary and capricious, is not in accordance with law, and occurred without observance of procedure as required by law.” 

If that “arbitrary and capricious” phrase seems familiar, it’s because it is one that has shown up often in court decisions that have struck down other illegal Trump administration actions. Those include the cases involving the “stop work” orders that the administration issued in December 2025 against the five offshore wind projects under construction at the time. The judges for each of the five cases allowed the projects to get back to work after ruling that the administration had shown no good cause for the stoppages. 

In the New York et al. case, plaintiffs similarly argue that “Defendants failed to (1) provide a reasoned explanation for cancelling the Lease; (2) explain their change in position or account for New York’s reliance interests; (3) address alternative means of achieving their objectives; or (4) provide a genuine justification for their actions.” The filing explains in detail each piece of the administration’s actions that appear arbitrary and capricious, and each piece of the other alleged violations of the APA. 

The letter from Reps. Huffman and Raskin, too, points to the APA, noting that the timing of some of the lease buyout processes suggest that the Department of the Interior (DOI) may have illegally relied on a rationale that they didn’t actually have at the time they made their decision: “DOI’s excuse of national security to cancel offshore wind leases may have been fabricated to justify the deal after it was already sealed,” whereas under the APA, “an agency cannot rely on a justification it did not actually have when it made its decision.” 

National Environmental Policy Act – Impacts and alternatives have to be considered  

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires that “all federal agencies … prepare detailed statements assessing the environmental impact of and alternatives to major federal actions significantly affecting the environment.” The statements can be either environmental assessments (EAs) or, for larger projects, environmental impact statements (EISs). These reviews have to provide the opportunity for public comment and consider alternatives.  

Aas the New York et al. plaintiffs point out, the DOI did not prepare an EA or EIS, did not include opportunities for the public to comment, nor did they give consideration of alternatives to proposed actions. Given that the deal in question involves getting rid of a large quantity of offshore wind energy, with all of the implications for the environment that would entail, plaintiffs suggest it is clearly “a major federal action requiring Interior Defendants to consider the impacts of and alternatives to their action.”  

Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act – Laws don’t stop at the water’s edge  

The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which governs how the federal government manages the seabed off our coasts, features prominently in each of these legal and oversight efforts. The plaintiffs in Massachusetts et al., for example, point out that to cancel a lease under OCSLA, the DOI would be required “to hold a hearing and specifically find that continuing the lease would likely cause serious harm to life, property, national security, or the environment, and further determine that the benefits of cancellation outweigh the benefits of allowing the lease to continue.”  

That didn’t happen. 

As the Mass. et al., New York et al., and California AGs each point out, the law also requires coordination with the governor of any state on any action that “has a direct and significant effect on the outer Continental Shelf or its development.”  

That likewise didn’t happen.  

California underscored the importance of OCSLA for ensuring that the state “gets a say in the offshore wind leasing program and prevent corrupt backroom deals.” 

Judgment Fund Act – The settlement fund isn’t a slush fund 

One of the biggest apparent legal deficiencies of the buyout deals is the source of the funds. The Judgment Fund Act provides resources for settlements coming out of lawsuits or likely lawsuits against the United States. 

The New York et al. plaintiffs note that the settlement fund is for use for compromise settlements between “adverse parties”—and that in this case, there hadn’t been any lawsuit against the administration by the offshore wind leaseholder. As Sen. Whitehouse notes, there was “no evidence that Total had filed any claim in any forum against DOI or any other agency of the US government,” and no evidence of any imminent litigation.  

Sen. Whitehouse and others also point out that the judgment fund is usable only in situations where there aren’t options—which appears not to be the case here, given that OCSLA includes provisions for canceling leases and potentially providing compensation. Reps. Huffman and Raskin state that the Total deal “violates federal law because it does not adhere to the congressionally determined formula for calculating compensation for cancelled leases,” and that “OCSLA is the governing statute in this case.” 

Another challenge to the legality of the deals based on the Judgment Fund is the apparent lack of serious Department of Justice (DOJ) involvement, which would be a prerequisite for tapping the Judgment Fund. Per Reps. Huffman and Raskin, the “only public role” in the Total case for DOJ was a quote from then-US Attorney General Pam Bondi in the press release announcing the deal. 

Antideficiency Act – Agencies can’t spend money that’s not theirs  

The money piece of the buyouts also brings in another important law. The Antideficiency Act “prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.”—ssentially, agencies can’t spend more than they’ve been given. Sen. Whitehouse points out that “no relevant bureau or office within DOI has sufficient funds to pay Total the nearly $1 billion it has been promised.” 

The New York et al. plaintiffs similarly claim that the NY lease buyout is “in excess of statutory authority” because there’s no law that would authorize them to enter into such a “sham settlement agreement to unlawfully cancel an offshore wind lease and redirect the money paid for the lease to a separate, unauthorized use favored by the President”—in these cases, investment in fossil fuel projects. 

On the broader issue of the “settlement” in the absence of a judicial proceeding, and the source and use of the funds, the letter from Reps. Huffman and Raskin further spell out all kinds of ways this approach, if legal, could be used—including supplanting oil leases with renewable energy investments, for example. “The only requirements would be a hypothetical thread, a side agreement, and a check drawn from a permanent, uncapped federal account that Congress never authorized for this purpose.”  

Under those circumstances, they say, the Judgment Fund could become “the ultimate political slush fund.” The Antideficiency Act “exists to prevent exactly this kind of executive waste, fraud, and abuse.” 

And more 

If this recitation of legal impediments makes the likely illegality of the Trump administration’s actions seem readily apparent, that notion may not be lost on the administration either. These agreements include explicit clauses that claim courts can’t review these agreements in most cases.  

Reps. Huffman and Raskin say in their letter to Total’s CEO that including that language is “not only legally ineffective but almost certainly unconstitutional,” and that its inclusion “suggests that DOI and you both knew this deal was indefensible” and “is itself evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing.”  

What’s next 

Despite the apparent illegality of each of the deals, the most recent “settlement” may not be the last of them, given how enamored the administration seems to be with this approach. That makes legal and oversight efforts like these all the more important.  

On the judicial front, New York et al. is likely to be followed by lawsuits from the group led by Massachusetts and from California based on the Intent to Sue notices, once each has passed the 60-day waiting period required by OCSLA. Other suits may follow. Congressional investigations in parallel with those efforts can help draw more attention to everything lost if the Trump transactions stick. Recently introduced legislation could also get those offshore wind leases back into circulation. 

All of the filings and documents point to one thing: a strong suspicion, based in law, that this scheme is yet another example of the Trump administration using a wrecking ball without regard to process or to legality. Or to the workers, households, businesses, and communities hurt by these reckless decisions. And, again: all with US taxpayer money.

President Trump’s strong authoritarian tendencies have hit the US energy sector, as they have other areas of the economy. For offshore wind, establishing which or how many of these various laws his administration is actually breaking in these buyout deals is key to stopping this brazen attempt to cut the legs out from under a key source of clean renewable energy. 

Offshore wind is too powerful a source—of jobs, energy savings and resilience, community development, and clean renewable energy—for it not to be allowed to live up to its potential.  

Thanks to UCS Schneider Clean Energy Fellow Riya Bhatia for the research help for this post.

There is also a general lack of transparency by the industry as a whole; Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other tech companies often work through subsidiaries to build data centers, “masking their presence and revealing little about the resources that the facilities consume.” There is no central database providing information for the numbers of data centers currently in operation, under construction, or in the planning stages. And there is no accountability for data center developers and utilities who may see the current landscape as an opportunity for profit.  

For our own data center analysis, UCS used electricity demand projections developed by Evolved Energy Research (which itself draws from a database of existing data centers from Baxtel), and we supplemented this data with news reports about announced projects and utility filings from both public sources and private databases. Private (read, costly) databases such as S&P Global and BloombergNEF have information about individual projects, but these databases are not complete.

We additionally made assumptions about which proposals might be built using data from an Independent System Operator (ISO) and from data purchased from S&P Global. This was not a straightforward process and was in the end both time consuming and costly. Ultimately the electricity demand projections were in the range of other bottom-up projections from national labs and industry studies. And after all of this effort, our projections quickly became outdated as the data center market is rapidly evolving, underscoring the need for both dedicated and transparent reporting by data center developers.  

Without access to precise information on where data centers may be built and how they are operated, utility planners, grid operators, federal, regional, state and local agencies and researchers end up using their best guess at approximations and projections of how much electricity is required at specific places and times, which could lead to inaccurate conclusions, and risks saddling ratepayers and utilities with unneeded costly fossil fuel plants – not what you want when you are making investment decisions that could last for 30 years or more.  

Inaccurate data about electricity demand leads to poor planning of infrastructure expansion. Over-building leads to higher short-term costs and heat-trapping emissions, while under-building leads to reliability issues. Long-term, both lead to even more costs when the problems must inevitably be fixed. 

Developers are rushing to build data centers and are asking utilities to keep up with their proposed increased power requirements. This is a particular problem in many parts of the country;  in states that UCS studied like Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and California, state planning for utilities can have additional challenges (such as having no state Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process, interstate electricity trading that could lead to even more fossil electricity generation, or states that fast tracked electricity infrastructure for data centers with minimal planning).

The lack of transparency and accountability around data centers in these states and others compounds potential problems with poor planning: utilities can over-build infrastructure, delay coal plant retirements, and can unnecessarily invest in fossil gas capacity. This is costly to consumers, increases pollution, and negatively impacts the health of communities. Communities are often either not provided with information on data center energy use, water consumption, and pollution produced or are straight up given misinformation about data center impacts. Some data centers are proposed in communities that already experience high levels of pollution from energy generation, potentially exacerbating already existing problems. But the possibility of billion dollar investments by data center operators in communities and the lack of planning can cause local decisionmakers to overlook very real risks.  

These policies across many states and at the federal level risk setting us up for a future dependent on fossil fuels. Often, states see data centers as a way to promote local economic growth, spur job creation and increase local tax revenues. State and local governments have been offering data center developers tax discounts and other incentives. These tax breaks have led to massive data center growth in states with larger incentives.

But some states are now beginning to pause (or having the appearance of pausing) and rethink data center-related policies. Texas is seeing a huge loss in state revenue: the Texas governor announced a pause on new data centers for the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) and ERCOT to conduct an audit of projects to be approved, but has allowed the giant Meta $10 billion 1 GW, enough to power 750,000 average US households, data center project to move forward. Minnesota rolled back its data center tax incentives, removing the data center electricity exemption from the state sales tax. Wisconsin removed some data center financing incentives from two municipalities. And New York is the first state to impose a temporary moratorium (through July 2027) on building new data centers of 50 MW or larger until the state has had a chance to evaluate the potential impacts.   

It’s encouraging that these states are slowing down data center development to listen to the concerns of communities, but we also need to do more to ensure a clean, affordable, and healthy electricity system for the electricity load that is imminent. Our recent analysis has shown that the US can meet increased demand from data centers primarily with clean energy while simultaneously phasing down fossil fuels. But we need strong policies to support and accelerate a clean energy transition. And we also need best practices and policy and regulatory changes at the federal, state and regional levels to ensure accountability and smart planning around data centers.  

Increase data center transparency and accountability 

State and federal policymakers need to require that data center developers and utilities be transparent in their contract negotiations and eliminate non-disclosure agreements. There should be public proceedings (with enough notice for communities to make informed decisions) for power purchase agreements and grid interconnections between data centers and utilities. Data centers need to publicly report and be held accountable for their electricity needs, water use, land use, onsite and induced emissions, and other data. Data centers need to be held accountable for any hazardous reliability, environmental, or public health impacts. 

There are some moves at the national level to try to improve data center reporting. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is moving to require that data centers become registered entities and is currently drafting reliability standards for data centers.  

The NERC draft standards are to establish modeling data requirements, verification, and reporting procedures by data center owners, to ensure that grid operators and utility planners have the site data and information they need from data center owners to “plan, monitor, and assess the reliable operation” of the power system, and to have “adequate data available” from data center owners to ensure reliability and resource adequacy. These NERC standards are a good first step, but the information the data center owners are providing to meet these standards are confidential to NERC and are only focused on grid reliability. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is also working to collect energy usage data from data centers. At the state and local level, there are efforts to prohibit lawmakers from signing NDAs and some state public utility commissions/public service commissions are working to not allow (as happened in Michigan) utilities to connect data centers through ex parte processes. These efforts should be widely adopted and become standard practice for all data center proposals. 

Require utilities to conduct transparent long-term planning to include data centers 

States need to require utilities to create long-term integrated resource plans (IRPs) that include transparent reporting of electricity demand from data centers, including any projected demand increases (this should cover any projected increases in load including data centers, population changes, changes due to electrification, etc.). Currently only 27 states are considering legislation to regulate data centers. It is important to conduct detailed modeling and analysis to make investment decisions for electricity generation to meet both electricity demand and any state climate and clean energy policies.

These plans, and the assumptions that went into the analysis for the IRPs, need to be made public. State regulators need to demonstrate to their communities that investments made in electricity generation are well planned, to minimize the risk of over- or underbuilding the electricity system. Data center developers need to be held accountable for the additional costs to the electricity system due to their increased load. There should be requirements around new data center loads to eliminate speculation so that rate payers are not stuck with the costs of over-building.  

There is a lot of uncertainty if the increase in electricity demand due to data centers is going to continue, or if the AI bubble is going to “pop”. Investments in data centers and AI infrastructure has greatly exceeded data center revenue, which is worrying investors. When the AI bubble bursts we will be stuck with way more electricity generating capacity and other data center infrastructure than we need: investments that are “stranded” and beg the question of who pays the bill. As these IRPs are being developed, utilities should be cautious and need to place more emphasis on near-term projects that have already made significant financial commitments.  

The data center boom is currently outpacing our electricity system’s ability to respond, already driving up electricity rates. Our federal, state and local governments need time to evaluate our complex electricity system, with its aging and polluting infrastructure and increasing electricity demand. We need accurate data enforced through standardized reporting requirements to make informed investment decisions for the size and type of new electricity generating capacity to build, where and when to meet this new demand, to keep electricity costs affordable and to limit the impacts of climate change.

This degree of data transparency must also be extended to water use and other environmental impact reporting. We need good data to develop policies to encourage investments in renewable energy and keep electricity costs affordable. Accurate data is essential for developing smart plans and making informed decisions to provide all consumers with clean affordable power. The first step to ensuring clean and affordable energy for consumers is an informed group of decision-makers that keep AI and utilities accountable for their impacts and investments to our grid.   

After catastrophic floods about one century ago, the river started to be lined with concrete for most of its 51 miles. The river became a single-purpose concrete channel to flush stormwater from the mountains to the sea as fast as possible.

But in three stretches, the river couldn’t be lined with concrete. And in those stretches, something happened that no one had planned. Cottonwoods and willows came back. Herons, egrets, and the Santa Ana sucker (an endangered fish species) came back. And people came back too to enjoy the river that had become their neighborhood park, to ride their bikes or to use their kayaks.

Same river, two realities. Gray concrete infrastructure does one job at a very steep price. The soft-bottom stretches do multiple things at once: flood protection, habitat, public health, recreation, urban cooling, water quality… And the river runs through neighborhoods where nearly a million Angelenos live within a single mile. Luckily for our L.A. friends, the L.A. River is undergoing a restoration that will bring back many of the multiple benefits of the river such as habitat, cleaner air, and green areas in the city while improving water quality, reducing erosion, and of course, maintaining (or even improving) the much-needed flood risk control.

This restoration project in the L.A. River is an example of a nature-based solution. Nature-based solutions are approaches to adapt to challenging environmental conditions in ways that work with nature, not against it. Traditional infrastructure is often more expensive and provides fewer benefits with more negative impacts. Nature-based solutions are often cheaper and always more natural than concrete infrastructure to tackle the same problems but with many more benefits and positive side effects.

This is the first post in a series about what using nature-based solutions looks like in California. You can read our guide Working with Nature to Protect California’s Agricultural Regions: How Nature-Based Solutions Can Build Resilience, and you can also see our related first Instagram video below.

A whiplash climate

Many public health and environmental problems we experience in California and in other parts of the world come from a legacy of unsustainable land management exacerbated by climate change. Extreme events that swing from one end to the other like a whiplash are now the new normal.

Gray infrastructure was originally designed to control nature instead of working sustainably with the environment, as most Indigenous communities do. Climate change is making destruction more frequent and more expensive, and gray infrastructure cannot adapt to the new conditions in many cases. And our traditional response has been to react rather than prevent. California spends billions on fires, floods, and droughts after they happen, which is far more expensive than preventing them in the first place. Every dollar we do not invest in resilience today, we end up paying many times over in the near future.

And those costs are not paid equally. All Californians pay them through taxpayers’ money in disaster relief and emergency response. But frontline communities with limited infrastructure pay also with their health, their wellbeing, and the quality of their daily lives.

We need to prepare California for what is coming, but the answer is not just more gray infrastructure. Concrete dams, levees, and storm drains are expensive, brittle, and built to fight nature instead of working with it.

Nature-based solutions are a better (and cheaper) way.

Nature-based solutions and cropland repurposing in agricultural regions

Here where I live in Merced, in the middle of California’s San Joaquin Valley, agriculture is one of the main economic engines and represents the identity of a lot of people. But agriculture in California hasn’t been sustainable for more than a century, especially because of an inadequate water management and inadequate agricultural practices (like dry tillage of idle land, excessive pesticide use, monoculture, or irrigation of marginal lands), problems aggravated by climate change. Part of my work is to understand this system and find solutions that don’t create new problems. And since I love agriculture and the environment, and I have many friends who live in farmworker communities, I have been thinking of nature-based solutions for agricultural regions since years ago.

My work orbits around cropland repurposing to achieve a just land transition. Current water law in California requires local agencies to sustainably manage groundwater and avoid what the law defines as “undesirable results,” such as dry wells, soil sinking, and seawater intrusion. This legal framework has the potential to become a transformative power to change a system that wasn’t working. And to achieve water sustainability, California may need to repurpose about one million acres of irrigated agriculture to decrease our water footprint.

While this is a huge task, it is also a huge opportunity to correct a legacy of problems that started more than a century ago while adapting to climate change, adopting sustainable agricultural practices, and managing public resources sustainably. Nature-based solutions can tackle water sustainability in multiple ways, including aquifer recharge, floodplain restoration, and sustainable agricultural practices. And they can also take care of public health issues, such as flood prevention, erosion, dust prevention, pollution reduction, lack of green areas, and extreme heat. Nature-based solutions can also create local employment during the construction, for maintenance, or even tourism and other new, out-of-the-box ideas. However, Nature-based solutions are not a solution for everything, and we will need to create pathways to foster local, non-extractive economies to bring complete sustainability to agricultural regions. We call this a Just Land Transition, and along with on-the-ground grassroots partners like Allensworth Progressive Association, with nonprofits like Community Water Center and Environmental Defense Fund, and with agencies like the California Department of Conservation, we are supporting science-based policy and science-driven actions to bring sustainability to agricultural regions in California.

In this blog series, we will show the potential of nature-based solutions to become the best to-go tools to address cropland repurposing and to tackle climate justice in agricultural areas.

If you want to know more, you can read our guide: Working with Nature to Protect California’s Agricultural Regions: How Nature-Based Solutions Can Build Resilience. And if you want to know more about best practices in land repurposing for a just land transition beyond nature-based solutions, you can check UCS’s webpage Guiding California’s Land Transitions Toward Justice and Equity.

California has the tools, intellectual knowledge, and the funding to make this better choice happen. Proposition 4, the Climate Bond, has provided billions of dollars to use in climate resilience and land repurposing, and nature-based solutions can be one of the best ways to invest our taxpayer’s money to create sustainability and transform the system to work for everyone.

Some quick context

In April 2026, Louisiana’s largest utility company, Entergy Louisiana, filed an application with state regulators to build seven additional gas-fired power plants to serve an expansion of the AI data center being built by Meta in Richland Parish, Louisiana. These new plants, along with new transmission and other proposed infrastructure, would be in addition to three gas plants approved by regulators last year for Meta’s data center. Entergy and Meta are claiming that a single data center needs a total of 10 new gas plants, each of them rated at 754 megawatts (MW) of power. For perspective, 7,540 MW is enough to power the entire city of New Orleans’ annual peak demand — six times over.

Now, the regulatory proceeding at the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) is well underway, where stakeholders are weighing in on Entergy’s proposal to build the seven additional plants and other associated infrastructure. Because Entergy must make its case to the LPSC that this new proposal is in “the public interest” in order to get approval, the company is claiming that the data center will actually benefit its existing customers instead of triggering rate hikes, which has already happened in other parts of the country and is set to take place in Louisiana as well.

This claim of ratepayer “benefit” does not stand up to scrutiny when you actually dig into the details of the proposal. It shouldn’t come as a total shock that Meta is opposing efforts for improved transparency into the data center project.

Meta is fighting transparency, but Louisianans can make their voices heard

On August 4^th, 2026, an administrative law judge at the LPSC rejected Meta’s motion to cancel a subpoena that was requested by Earthjustice on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE), a Louisiana-based consumer advocacy group. The subpoena ordered Meta to substantiate:

1. Meta’s level of investment and permanent job creation; and
2. The amount of electricity the data center will demand.

Because Meta isn’t a party to this proceeding, UCS, AAE, and other stakeholders in the proceeding haven’t been able to ask the tech company these types of questions in any formal, legal manner. Stakeholders can ask Entergy these questions formally, because that’s the company that filed the application for all the power infrastructure. But when asked to back up the claim that the data center will create new permanent jobs and will require seven additional gas plants, the utility company points only to Meta’s claims, without any other data.

So, the judge ruled last week that Meta must back up these claims in a formal and rigorous manner, but has also granted the tech company’s request to have the full Commission review the issue.

The bottom line: Louisiana’s five elected Commissioners are set to take a vote to ultimately decide whether Meta has to answer these key questions at the Commission’s Wednesday, August 12^th public meeting, starting at 9 AM at 602 North 5th Street, Baton Rouge, LA in the 1^st Floor Natchez Room.

If you live in Louisiana outside of New Orleans (where the city council regulates utility rates), you can make your voice heard either by contacting your Commissioner or showing up physically to the meeting in Baton Rouge. If you show up, you’ll have an opportunity to make a public comment to the Commissioners, and this blog may give you some ideas if you’re unsure where to start with your remarks But even if you don’t want to speak, your presence in the room makes clear to the Commissioners that people are paying attention to the decisions they’re making.

Now, let’s get into more of the substance of this proposal and why it’s such a risky proposition for Louisiana ratepayers.

Ratepayers still on the hook

Starting with the basics: Meta has not agreed to cover all of the costs of powering this data center project. That means Louisianians could get stuck footing the bill for their ten new polluting, expensive gas plants, including the seven at issue in this proceeding.

This is partially because Meta and Entergy structured their deal with flexibility to allow Meta to walk away from the data center before all the infrastructure is paid for, leaving ratepayers to pay for remaining costs. But even if Meta is truly in it for the long haul, ratepayers are still set to subsidize the operating costs at the new plants.

Expert testimony filed by Current Energy Group (CEG) on behalf of UCS and AAE shows that Entergy’s claimed “benefits” are premised on an unreasonably optimistic set of assumptions and quickly turn into higher ratepayer costs—potentially billions of dollars—once key uncertainties, such as data center demand and fuel costs, are examined. Further, Entergy’s analysis of power grid reliability was wholly inadequate for a project of this scale, failing to consider solutions that could have reduced both costs and emissions.

To be specific about the scale, Meta wants the data center’s peak computing electricity demand to grow to about 5,000 MW, roughly the average  load of New York City. Yet, just like last year’s case, the tech company is refusing to come to the table and answer any questions that would shed some much-needed light on this proposal.  Let’s recap what’s actually being proposed.

Large construction costs go untested

Investor-owned utilities like Entergy profit off construction projects, generally referred to as “capital costs.” The more they build, the more they profit. Entergy is currently seeking to build more than $15 billion in new capital infrastructure, summarized by the table below:

Entergy is proposing four gas plants in Richland Parish, and three gas plants in Point Coupee Parish, totaling 5,278 MW. The company is also proposing some additional battery storage capacity, plus transmission infrastructure.

If the construction projects were approved as proposed, Entergy’s shareholders would stand to make an estimated $8 billion in additional profits over a 20-year period.

Also, because Entergy is proposing this project be rushed through the regulatory process under the LPSC’s new “Lightning Amendment”, the utility company won’t be required to prove that its proposal is the least-cost option for meeting Meta’s needs – a process typically required before new infrastructure projects are approved by the LPSC. With that process being pushed aside, the project costs could very well likely be inflated.

20-year contract, but…

Under the proposal, Meta would get electricity service from Entergy through a 20-year contract that includes “minimum charges” the tech company must pay in order to offset the costs to other ratepayers. Included in these minimum charges is the annual capital cost, the rate of return to Entergy’s shareholders and debtholders, fixed operating and maintenance costs, as well as taxes and insurance. However, while Meta will be paying its own share of Entergy’s “fuel adjustment clause” (FAC) charge, that charge isn’t included in Meta’s minimum charge; these are operating costs that will be spread to all customers. More on that a little further down.

It’s important to keep in mind that even if Meta sticks around for the entirety of its 20-year contract, ratepayers aren’t in the clear on the capital costs. Three out of the seven gas plants being proposed, which would be in Point Coupee parish, would not be fully depreciated (in other words, paid off) until 32 years after being in service, so ratepayers would be on the hook for more than a decade’s worth of capital costs if Meta doesn’t renew its contract. The other four proposed plants, which would be in Richland Parish near the data center, would depreciate over just 20 years, but will still only be about 90% paid down by the end of the contract term, due to the contract coming into effect in 2028 before all the plants are finished being constructed.

Entergy estimates that the gas plants, and the much smaller battery storage projects, will be about 75% depreciated by the end of the 20-year contract term. The utility company’s method of allocating these costs over time isn’t clear from its public filings, which include many redactions, but 25% of those total costs is $3.4 billion. The receipt ratepayers are left holding after the contract expires could be in that ballpark, and that wouldn’t include other costs, such as the operating costs I’ve alluded to, as well as the ~9.7% profit margin Entergy’s shareholders are authorized to make on their construction projects.

But Meta could terminate this contract much earlier than 20 years. If Meta decides to do this, there is a loophole that allows Entergy to seek so-called “retained generator” status, which would allow the utility to charge ratepayers for any remaining costs. This caveat is particularly concerning because Entergy has a financial incentive to retain the plants in order to continue earning its 9.7% profit margin on those billions of dollars in capital infrastructure. Plus, with overall future demand for AI services remaining uncertain, Meta backing out is a possibility that regulators must rigorously take into account.

CEG’s testimony finds that ratepayers seem to bear 100% of the financial risk of these Meta-triggered plants if Entergy retains them. Ratepayers didn’t prompt these huge expenses, so at a bare minimum, Entergy’s shareholders should have to share this risk, and the LPSC should make that expectation clear at the outset (especially given the $8 billion  in profits shareholders are estimated to make). This would incentivize the utility to instead pursue any unrecovered funds from Meta, which is the company causing the additional costs. If Entergy is making a huge bet that all these costs will be worth it, the company should be betting with its own money, not ratepayer money.

“Benefits” quickly turn into costs

Even assuming Meta stays at the data center for 20 years, Entergy’s claims that this proposal will benefit other ratepayers doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The utility calculates $28.5 billion in total costs over the next 20 years, compared with $30.4 billion in total revenue. That’s how the company derives a “benefit” of about $1.9 billion (roughly 6.5% – shown in the table below), in the event that Meta renews its contract. If Meta walks away after 20 years, that decreases to $991 million, or about 3.5%. This means that just a 3.5% increase in costs or decrease in revenues could wipe out any benefit and result in a ratepayer subsidy for Meta. To compare this to a recent example, the projected capital costs of Entergy’s already-approved project to power the first phase of Meta’s data center increased in May from $3.9 billion to $4.4 billion, or about 11.7%.

There are several key uncertainties with this massive new proposal that could result in higher costs or lower revenues, but Entergy didn’t adjust any of those variables to see how they’d change the results compared to their overly optimistic assumptions. One of those uncertainties is: how much energy will Meta’s data center actually demand? We are trying to get an answer to this question via the subpoena mentioned above, but Entergy just used the Meta-provided number and didn’t test any other possibilities.

The expected “load factor” of the data center—which is the average percentage of time it will run at its own peak load—is kept confidential. But the CEG testimony notes that the assumed load factor is “very high for any load, leaving no room for upside in the analysis but resulting in significant downside exposure if actual operations fall short of that level.”

We are not the first to point out utilities using very high data center load factors in their projections. With all the uncertainty around the future AI landscape, and with Meta clearly still hedging its bets on what to actually use its data centers for, Entergy should be testing for lower levels of demand to see how it affects its cost-benefit analysis. In fact, Entergy does seem to be expecting possibly lower demand as outside of that analysis; the companies’ contract allows Meta to reduce its average contracted demand in order to avoid a “windfall” benefit to other ratepayers at Meta’s expense.

However, windfalls appear to be going the other direction under this current proposal. The testimony points out that another key variable that Entergy failed to thoroughly examine is fuel and other operating costs at the plants. The utility’s fuel adjustment clause (FAC) charge includes not just fuel costs for the gas plants, but also major maintenance costs—about $10.3 million per year at each of the seven plants—as well as gas transportation costs. The utility company would spread the FAC costs to all customers right away, and most of the estimates for these costs are redacted from public view.

The proposed gas plants would have “firm”, or uninterruptible, gas transportation service via pipeline, which means Entergy would pay a gas pipeline operator to reserve capacity on the line. That is a fixed cost Entergy will recover through the FAC, but again, Meta could use less electricity than expected and then the tech company’s revenue contributions to the FAC therefore wouldn’t be commensurate with the costs. Ratepayers could therefore subsidize Meta’s fuel costs.

Entergy also acknowledged that three of the plants in Point Coupee parish will likely need new pipeline infrastructure. Those additional costs will be caused by this Meta-driven project, but Entergy will spread the costs to all of its customers through the FAC. This is yet another subsidy of Meta’s fuel needs by ratepayers.

Power-grid reliability solutions go unexplored

The second piece of testimony, submitted by engineering consultancy HickoryLedge on behalf of AAE and UCS, highlights a number of grid solutions that Entergy ignored or only studied at a very surface level. These solutions could have the potential to reduce the number of gas plants and project costs, and improve the reliability of the grid. But the company instead is primarily seeking to throw more fossil fuels at the problem.

For example, for the proposed transmission aspects of this project, Entergy is seeking to use transmission line designs that are 20 years old. Newer, more advanced lines would be able to carry up to about 30% more power and could potentially allow better access to renewables at a minimal impact on capital cost.

Another solution is data center load flexibility: essentially, reducing demand during peak hours a handful of hours per year so that the overall infrastructure buildout can be reduced. This strategy has potential to reduce overall costs, mitigate the risk that these assets become stranded (essentially worthless), and improve grid reliability. But Entergy wrote off data center load flexibility because Meta said it wasn’t interested in it. The companies seem to have given up quickly for such a massive project.

LPSC must prioritize ratepayers in this risky proposal

The LPSC has a long way to go to adequately protect ratepayers. With such a massive contemplated scale, the risks are enormous, and many of them are being kept out of public view.

The Commission should require Entergy to further study the above-mentioned grid-reliability issues, among others detailed in the testimony, and come up with a plan for monitoring the data center’s grid impact if it were to come online. The seven gas plants should also not be considered all at the same time; a more staggered review schedule is more appropriate for a more-than $15 billion project that has so much ratepayer money at stake. This would also allow more time for the Commission’s normal request for proposal process, which would allow third-party power providers to offer potentially cleaner, cheaper options to meet demand. There are more detailed recommendations outlined in the testimony that readers should check out if they’re interested—and highlight to the LPSC as well.

I’ll reiterate that if you’re in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, you can contact your Commissioner and urge them to protect ratepayers instead of the shareholders of Entergy and Meta. You can even show up to the Commission vote this Wednesday, August 12^th, which starts at 9 AM at 602 North 5th Street, Baton Rouge, LA in the 1^st Floor Natchez Room.

Showing up lets the elected Commissioners know that folks are paying attention to their decisions, and you can even give a public comment urging basic transparency from Meta. It’s far past due for the LPSC to hold these billion- and trillion-dollar companies accountable.

Editor’s Note: Since the time of publication, state regulators nixed a subpoena that would’ve required Meta to be more transparent about its plans for this data center. The move was made in spite of multiple decisions from a judge who ruled that more information from Meta was necessary, as well as the wishes of community members who showed up to voice a wide array of concerns.

Two weeks ago, over three gigawatts (GW) of data centers disconnected themselves from the grid in response to a minor transmission fault in Virginia and switched to their own polluting backup power. This sudden drop in load—equivalent to millions of homes—caused fluctuations in the grid’s voltage and frequency that could be detected as far away as Illinois and took nearly 10 minutes to resolve. While grid fluctuations are common, most are resolved automatically in seconds. Such massive, extended fluctuations create a risk of cascading disturbances which can eventually lead to blackouts—and since data centers are connected to the transmission system, the impact can be felt states away.

If this feels like déjà vu, you might be remembering a very similar incident which occurred in July 2024, when 1.5 GW of data centers disconnected from the grid in response to a transmission fault. (And that’s not to mention the 26 documented loss of load events in Texas over the last two years.) In between these two events, regulators have been busily drafting standards and making recommendations—but because this keeps happening, it’s clear that not enough is being done. To address the growing risk, immediate action is needed from state regulators and utilities to transparently apply robust requirements, and make plans to implement upcoming standards.

The rapid growth of data centers causes reliability risks

The technical name for the two events in Virginia is “customer initiated load reduction,” or CILR. In both cases, major damage to the grid was avoided, although utilities did field complaints about flickering lights and strange noises coming from refrigerators and air conditioners, caused by the grid’s voltage and frequency going outside of normal ranges.

Shortly after the 2024 event, the president of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) described it as a “five-alarm fire when it comes to reliability.” NERC is responsible for developing and enforcing grid reliability standards. NERC’s authority, and approval of its standards, comes from FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which governs the bulk power system—the large wires which move power between states and which most hyperscale data centers are seeking to connect to.

Despite NERC’s best efforts, data centers continue causing problems on the grid. I’m going to provide an overview of what FERC and NERC have been doing, but the truth is that their efforts alone are not enough— state regulators will need to step up to the plate, too.

What have NERC and FERC been up to?

Here’s a brief timeline of key actions by NERC and FERC, bookended by these two events:

• January 2025: NERC published an incident review covering the 1.5 GW CILR event in 2024, recommending actions that transmission planners and operators “should start taking to avoid significant issues in the future.”
• September 2025: NERC issued a level two alert with specific recommendations to address reliability risks caused by data centers. NERC’s later summary of responses to the alert found that very few utilities are following the recommendations or developing plans to implement them.
• October 2025: The Secretary of Energy issued an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking”, directing FERC to develop rules to “ensure the timely and orderly interconnection of large loads to the transmission system.”
• May 2026: NERC published reliability guidelines, a precursor to enforceable standards, and issued a level three alert (NERC’s highest), including seven “essential actions” which utilities must take “to address the risks posed by existing and new computational loads interacting with the bulk power system.”
• June 2026: In response to the October directive, FERC issued “show cause” orders to each of the regional grid operators, finding that none of them were doing enough to address the reliability concerns of data centers.

Finally, in July FERC ordered NERC to issue reliability requirements by the end of the year (a timeline NERC had proposed earlier). This answered one of the key questions that had been swirling around all of NERC’s activity: whether the organization actually had the authority to require data centers to register (and thus be subject to reliability standards). NERC’s CEO had raised this concern earlier in a letter to members, noting that “registering load-side assets is unprecedented.”

Data centers are coming online even as standards evolve

While this may seem like a lot of movement, key gaps remain. NERC noted as much in a March 2026 whitepaper, finding that the lack of coordination between regulators, utilities, and data centers “can result in inefficiencies, misalignment, and increased risk to system reliability.”

A critical challenge is that data centers are already online, with even more being built now, while enforceable standards won’t be published for several more months. A recent report from Berkeley Lab estimates that from 2024, when NERC documented the first data center CILR, to 2027—the earliest that data center reliability standards will be enforceable—total load from data centers is expected to nearly double.

This growth wouldn’t be quite so challenging for grid reliability if utilities were taking it more seriously by implementing sufficient requirements on their own in the meantime, or if regulators were planning to make any future standards retroactive. However, neither of these are happening.

This is especially egregious given that a constant excuse from utilities about why they aren’t moving faster to connect clean energy is a lack of confidence in existing standards for things like rooftop solar. But now, utilities are rushing to interconnect data centers without any applicable standards.

The Midwest grid operator takes a step backward on enforcing reliability standards

MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, is one of the grid operators under FERC jurisdiction which is responsible for building NERC standards into its interconnection policies and practices. In a June presentation, MISO shared a plan to phase in any NERC requirements by late 2027, with standards retroactive to data centers built after October 2026, or existing data centers which expand by over 25 MW.

But just a month later, MISO changed course, saying that existing data centers will be “managed,” with the full standards only applying to new data centers. In sharing the update, MISO mentioned feedback from un-named stakeholders. On a call announcing this change, MISO estimated that there are up to 30 GW of data centers in its territory that would thus be exempt from these standards. While the individual utilities that serve them may have their own standards, there is no transparency into these standards to understand whether they are sufficient or how they will be enforced.

Just 1.5 GW of data center load in Virginia triggered an event that NERC referred to as a “five alarm fire.” The risk in MISO’s territory is potentially 20 times greater.

State regulators must fill this gap

While FERC and NERC are active at the federal level, progress is slow. At the regional level, FERC’s show cause orders spared no one, finding that none of the six grid operators are doing enough,  allowing for a massive lapse in regulation. This makes it imperative that state regulators—public service commissions and public utility commissions—step in.

Across our state-level advocacy, UCS has been pushing for such efforts.

When Michigan utility I&M submitted a large load tariff for approval, I recommended that the state create a working group to address the data center reliability risks even as NERC and regional requirements are pending. The administrative law judge supported this recommendation; a decision by the commission may come later this month.

I built on this testimony when Michigan utility DTE filed for approval to interconnect a 1 GW Google data center. Our brief argued that because standards are still under development, greater scrutiny of DTE’s confidential requirements is needed.

This week, I filed additional testimony in Michigan calling on the Commission to ensure that any NERC and MISO standards are applied retroactively.

In a Louisiana docket to develop large load guidelines, UCS submitted extensive comments documenting the reliability risks from data centers and recommending formation of a workgroup similar to what we recommended in Michigan.

UCS also submitted excerpts from these comments in a Maine docket to investigate the impacts of data centers.

Next steps

This is a crowded landscape, and I haven’t even touched on the work of industry-expert groups, developments from other regional grid operators, or what’s happening in Europe. However, the rapid pace of development in this area underscores the point: regulators must require more transparency from data centers and utilities, and as standards are developed, lay plans to apply them retroactively.

The 3 GW loss of load incident that I opened with demonstrates exactly why: data centers are impacting the grid’s reliability even as experts scramble to develop standards and requirements. We can’t simply wait until those standards are ready. Doing so allows the stress from data centers to build up on the grid, inevitably leading to wide-scale grid damage and blackouts.

Together, these events served as a reminder that during Danger Season—the period between May and October when North America is hit hardest by extreme weather, like heat, drought, wildfire, and hurricanes—electricity is about much more than keeping the lights on. Electricity is powering our air conditioners, fans, refrigerators for medication, and other essential services, all of which keep people safe during extreme heat. For older adults, young children, people with chronic illnesses, and many medically vulnerable individuals, access to cooling can mean the difference between remaining safe at home and experiencing serious heat-related illness.  

These events also illustrate a broader challenge. As the climate warms, households are increasingly relying on cooling to stay safe while electricity costs continue to rise. In other words, the need for cooling and the cost of cooling are increasing together.   

For many families, particularly those already facing high energy burdens, this creates a growing affordability challenge. Paying for electricity is no longer simply a question of comfort: it is increasingly a prerequisite for health and safety.  

Because no single dataset captures every dimension of affordability, the five figures below draw on multiple national datasets covering different time periods. Together, they illustrate long-term temperature trends, recent changes in household electricity costs, and the latest available evidence on energy burden and energy insecurity. They show how electricity spending during Danger Season has changed over time, how seasonal cooling needs have increased, how energy burdens remain concentrated among lower-income households, and how affordability is already affecting people’s ability to keep their homes at safe temperatures. 

Taken together, these figures suggest that affordability is becoming an increasingly important dimension of climate resilience. As extreme heat becomes more common, the challenge is not only whether households have access to cooling—but critically, whether they can afford to use it.  

The cost of cooling a home is increasing 

As summers become hotter across much of the country, electricity has become one of the most important tools for protecting health during periods of extreme heat. But staying cool comes at a cost. Since 2020, the average household’s electricity spending during Danger Season will have increased by more than 30 percent, projections suggest. This increase reflects more than inflation alone. According to research from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate (CEPC), higher household cooling costs are being driven by a combination of rising electricity demand, increasing retail electricity prices, continued investments in grid infrastructure, fuel costs, and broader changes in energy markets. What may once have appeared to be a temporary increase is increasingly becoming the new normal.  

The need for cooling is growing 

Rising electricity bills are only one part of the story. Households also need more cooling than they once did. One helpful data set for understanding this long-term change is the Cooling Degree Days (CDD) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA)—a standard measure used by climatologists and utilities to estimate how much cooling buildings require. Unlike measures that simply count extreme heat days, CDD captures the cumulative need for cooling over an entire season. Because climate trends are generally evaluated over periods of 30 years or more, this 50-year record provides a robust picture of long-term change. And despite the year-to-year variability, the overall trend is clear: people in the United States generally need more cooling today than they did five decades ago.  

Rising cooling demand does not necessarily translate into hardship for every household. But for families already facing high energy burdens, the need for more air conditioning can mean substantially higher summer electricity bills.  

Lower-income households were already struggling with costs

Higher electricity bills and greater cooling needs do not affect every household equally. Lower-income households were already spending a disproportionate share of their income on energy before this summer. That’s where an examination of energy burdens becomes important. Energy burden refers to the share of a household’s income spent on energy bills, and it is highest among lower-income households. In this analysis, lower-income households are defined as those earning 80% or less of their Area Median Income (AMI). AMI is the median income for a given metropolitan area or county. Because incomes and costs of living vary across the country, AMI provides a locally adjusted benchmark for comparing household incomes. 

The graph above, with data from the most recent annual estimates available from the US Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool, shows that energy burden is dramatically higher among lower-income households. Families with lower incomes have less flexibility to absorb rising utility bills because energy already consumes a much larger share of their budgets. For these households, even modest increases in cooling costs can force difficult tradeoffs between paying utility bills and meeting other essential needs.  

Affordability is forcing difficult, unsafe choices

Energy burden isn’t just reflected in household budgets—it shapes everyday decisions. Responses collected by the Census Bureau in late summer 2024 about experiences during the previous 12 months show that lower-income households are substantially more likely to reduce spending on essentials, such as food or medicine, in order to pay their energy bills. They are also much more likely to report keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. Households earning less than $25,000 annually, more than one-quarter reported keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. As household income increases, both of these hardships become steadily less common, suggesting that affordability increasingly shapes who can safely cool their homes during periods of extreme heat. 

Affordability is driving increasing rates of energy insecurity 

These affordability challenges are becoming more widespread. Energy insecurity refers to the inability to adequately meet a household’s basic energy needs. It can include difficulty paying utility bills, keeping a home at safe indoor temperatures, or maintaining reliable electricity service.  

New data suggest that these challenges are affecting a growing share of households. Comparing the 2020 and 2024 Residential Energy Consumption Surveys from the US Energy Information Administration shows increases  across every major indicator measured, includingutility disconnection notices, reductions in spending on food or medicine, and an inability to adequately heat of cool the home. . Together, these findings suggest that energy affordability is becoming an increasingly important public health and climate resilience challenge. 

Addressing the climate and energy affordability challenge 

Fortunately, there are solutions. Reducing heat-trapping emissions remains essential to limiting how severe, and how costly, future summers become. Investments in weatherization and energy efficiency can reduce household energy needs before temperatures rise. Utility bill assistance and stronger protections against utility disconnections can help families stay safe during periods of extreme heat. Community solar, resilience hubs, and distributed energy resources can also help communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from increasingly dangerous summers.  

Just as important, policymakers and regulators can and should evaluate energy decisions through an affordability lens. As electricity demand grows and investments are made to modernize and strengthen the electric grid, ensuring that electricity remains affordable, particularly for households already facing high energy burdens, will be critical. Affordability is becoming an increasingly important component of climate resilience, alongside investments in grid reliability, energy efficiency, weatherization, and consumer protections.  

The figures in this analysis point us toward important questions. Which lower-income communities face the greatest combined risks from rising cooling needs, high electricity costs, and limited household resources? Where are households already struggling to stay safe during periods of extreme heat? And which policies can ensure affordability keeps pace with a warming climate? As the climate changes, our understanding—and our solutions—must continue evolving too. 

Because when temperatures become dangerous, access to cooling is no longer simply a matter of whether air conditioning exists. It is increasingly a matter of whether people can afford to use it. 

As climate change is projected to increase severe thunderstorm activity across much of the Midwest, the power sector should heed this year’s pummeling as a wake-up call and reflect on whether it’s ready to withstand more of the same. This year offers an opportunity to imagine more concretely into a climate changed-world, to consider where system vulnerabilities lie, and where investments are needed to ensure our grid is resilient and able to reliably and equitably provide electricity for homes and businesses across the region. 

2026 weather extremes blow past 30-year averages

Taking stock of this year’s weather extremes in the Midwest is personal for me. And not to bury the lede: my family is fine, but we just barely avoided landing in the crosshairs of some of the most dangerous storms that have hit my home state of Wisconsin.

In mid-June, my husband and daughter were hunkered down in a barn in Belleville, Wisconsin, waiting out a severe thunderstorm that produced a tornado down the road. The storm destroyed two homes and severely damaged several more in Belleville. 

On another occasion, my daughter spent her last hour of the school year sheltered in place in her school’s basement as a severe thunderstorm roared through the area, producing 80+ MPH wind gusts. It was such a strong storm that it was eventually classified as a derecho— a particularly extreme class of severe thunderstorms. 

Looking out from the personal to the broader pattern, this has been an astounding year for Wisconsin. This April was the most tornadic on record in 76 years, with 27 tornados touching down across the state versus the more typical single April tornado. May was a relatively calm month, but there were 58 percent more severe storms in June than average. 

Wisconsin is certainly not alone. Most states in the Midwest had above average tornado counts in April. However, Illinois has been the hardest hit, experiencing the most tornados of any state in the US this year. Illinois has already seen 212 tornadoes form—more than three times its annual average of the last thirty years. To date, the National Weather Service has issued a whopping 812 severe thunderstorm warnings in Illinois.

Consequences for our power system

The deadly and damaging severe storms that have hit the Midwest this year have been incredibly consequential for power outages, and things are not slowing down yet. On Independence Day weekend, deadly, climate change-driven extreme heat and severe thunderstorms drove prolonged power outages for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the Midwest, leaving many in dangerous, hot conditions. 

Nearly two million homes and businesses lost power as a result of a series of severe thunderstorms that hit the Midwest and Ohio Valley in mid-June, according to an analysis by PowerOutage.us. Thousands of homes and businesses lost their power for multiple days on end as a result of the storms, including in my hometown of Madison, where the storms downed power lines and broke power poles. Check out this incredible simulation of the power outages caused by some of the severe thunderstorms rolling through on June 10. 

Unfortunately, this year is unlikely to be an anomaly with respect to severe storms causing power outages in the Midwest. Important aspects of severe thunderstorm activity are already strengthening as a result of human-caused climate change. 

In addition, warmer temperatures—and with them, thunderstorms—are expected to occur earlier in the Midwest as they did this spring, lengthening the timeframe within which severe thunderstorms can form. And climate change is forecast to increase the likelihood of extreme heat that can co-occur with severe storms and strain the power system as happened on Independence Day weekend, leaving communities in harm’s way.

It is therefore critical that power sector actors heed the warning that this year is giving them. As my colleagues and I recommend in our report Power After the Storm, detailed climate risk assessments must be carried out to understand what the grid is going to be up against and how risks should be mitigated and addressed. 

We also urge the power sector to transition to electricity grids powered by clean energy so that we can prevent the worst impacts of climate change from manifesting. Finally, we encourage engagement with communities in order that investments and decisions reflect the needs of all customers that our electricity grids are meant to serve. 

By taking lived experiences from this year into account together with advances in climate science, we can make our electricity grid more resilient and ready to handle the more extreme weather that is headed our way.

The author would like to thank the Wisconsin State Climatology Office for their assistance with some of the statistics used in this blog.

People and businesses nationwide are reckoning with rapidly rising electricity costs. Last year, 80 million people struggled to afford their utility bills. At the same time, electricity demand is newly surging from the AI-driven buildout of massive data centers, threatening even higher electricity costs to come.

The need for change is clear, and so is the solution: boosting investments to deliver an affordable, reliable and clean electricity system.

By repeatedly using taxpayer dollars to bail out the coal industry, the Trump administration is instead pursuing a reckless and costly gambit that fails on all three counts. This is not the path to a better future; this is a short-sighted attempt to yoke the nation to faltering relics of the past. For this failure in vision, we all will pay the price, in higher costs, less reliable power, and a worse climate and health.

In this newest action, the administration announced plans to sink another round of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to prop up over a dozen expensive and unreliable coal plants; support the speculative development of several more; and facilitate the construction of a highly contested coal export terminal.

This comes on the heels of already attempting to force the nation’s military to run on coal-fired electricity generation, spending hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars on prior subsidies for coal plant repairs,  requiring ratepayers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars and counting to keep online a handful of would-be-retired coal plants, and slashing safeguards around harmful coal plant pollution, including mercury, toxic wastewater, coal ash and carbon dioxide.

Given how much the Trump administration is asking “we the people” to pay to bail out the coal industry, it’s worth interrogating what we the people are really getting in return.

We are not getting a more affordable electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are expensive, so much so that they are routinely more costly to continue running compared to building new renewables, the overwhelmingly most cost-effective resource available. If we want a more affordable electricity system, we should be doubling down on supporting the buildout of renewable resources. By forcing the perpetuation of coal-fired power plants instead, the Trump administration is driving electricity costs up, not down.

We are not getting a more reliable electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are now the least reliable resource in our electricity system. Despite the towering cost, the administration’s subsidization of plant repairs will amount to little more than bubble gum and string. The nation’s coal fleet is old, outdated, and increasingly unsuited for a modern grid—meaning hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars sunk into propping up power plants that are doomed to obsolescence.

We are not getting a cleaner electricity system. Coal-fired power plants are heavily polluting, full stop. Repeatedly invoking “beautiful, clean coal” won’t make it so: from harmful air pollution, to toxic wastewater discharged into local waterways, to hazardous coal ash, the consequences of coal use on public health, worker health and the environment are severe. Worse, the administration is slashing even the most basic of existing polluter accountability safeguards, meaning long-fought-for gains are rapidly being erased.

So neither affordable, nor reliable, nor clean—and in reality, the full picture is even more damaging. That’s because the Trump administration is attempting to hardwire coal into the nation’s electricity system; it’s also doing everything it can to block the construction of solar and wind projects nationwide.

These resources are overwhelmingly the fastest and cheapest resources to bring online. When coupled with investments in energy efficiency, energy storage and a strategic expansion of the electricity grid, the pieces are in place to chart a real and true forward course to an affordable, reliable and cleaner electricity system.

Meanwhile, in the one way coal workers and coal communities most need support—through policies that actually reckon with the individual- and community-level implications of a rapidly evolving energy future—the Trump administration is leaving them out in the cold, abandoning worker health protections, abandoning forward-looking investments, abandoning commitments to reality in favor of cynical, empty promises of a future that will never come.

In this moment, people need leaders to provide real solutions to real challenges. This reckless, costly coal bailout, which will enrich a handful of coal executives at the expense of everyone else, unequivocally isn’t it.

Esto es particularmente importante ya que los costos de la energía se han convertido en un tema de discusión cotidiano para las familias, las empresas y los responsables de las políticas energéticas de Massachusetts. El alto costo de la energía durante uno de los inviernos más fríos en años recientes obligaron a muchas familias a mantener sus hogares a temperaturas inseguras. Una brutal tormenta de nieve dejó a oscuras a cientos de miles de hogares de Massachusetts durante varios días. Y ahora los precios del gas y el petróleo se están disparando debido a la guerra de Estados Unidos e Israel contra Irán. Todos estos acontecimientos reflejan el mismo problema: nuestro sistema energético requiere atención inmediata para que las decisiones que se tomen tengan un impacto real en la asequibilidad, la resiliencia y la confiabilidad de nuestra red eléctrica, ahora y en el futuro.

No es de extrañar que el proyecto de ley sobre la asequibilidad energética que se presentó en la Cámara de Representantes de Massachusetts y la reciente orden ejecutiva de la gobernadora Maura Healey sobre el suministro de energía se incluyera la energía solar como una solución clave para ayudar al estado a cubrir sus crecientes necesidades energéticas y  lograr que el costo de la electricidad sea más asequible. A medida que estas conversaciones avanzan, es fundamental recordar no solo el valor para el sistemas eléctrico que aportan los recursos energéticos distribuidos como los paneles solares en los techos y el almacenamiento en baterías, sino también la importancia de asegurar que los beneficios lleguen a todos los habitantes del estado, especialmente a las comunidades más vulnerables donde estas inversiones tienen un mayor impacto tanto en la asequibilidad como en la resiliencia energética.

Un nuevo informe de Applied Economics Clinic (AEC), comisionado por la Unión de Científicos Conscientes (UCS, por sus siglas en inglés), Clean Energy Group y Vote Solar, ofrece información clave para orientar los esfuerzos estatales para aprovechar el gran potencial solar y de almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental, donde viven personas racial y étnicamente diversas, de bajos ingresos y con dominio limitado del inglés. El informe Electrificación equitativa II estima el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida (también conocida como solar distribuida (también conocida como detrás del medidor, o BTM, por sus siglas en inglés) y de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental. También analiza las características de las viviendas para diseñar mejor los programas a fin de facilitar la instalación de estos sistemas por parte de los usuarios finales y mapea la conexión con datos sobre el calor extremo y las cargas energéticas. El informe también ofrece información sobre las barreras y sus soluciones para desbloquear la implementación de estos sistemas en las comunidades de justicia ambiental. Este informe complementa otro reciente informe de AEC, el cual analiza de manera más amplia los retos y las oportunidades de la energía solar distribuida y los sistemas de almacenamiento energético en Massachusetts (estos términos se simplifican como “energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético” en este blog). Este informe se elaboró en colaboración con un comité asesor que contó con perspectivas de diferentes sectores, incluyendo organizaciones indígenas y de justicia ambiental, vivienda asequible y compañías de energía limpia, con el fin de reflejar las experiencias y prioridades de los vecindarios de justicia ambiental.

Los siguientes son algunos hallazgos clave sobre el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético, así como los principales obstáculos y recomendaciones para aprovechar estos valiosos recursos exitosamente.

Potencial de energía solar y almacenamiento en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental

Los vecindarios de justicia ambiental en Massachusetts tienen un enorme potencial para implementar sistemas de energía solar distribuida. AEC calcula que el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental de Massachusetts es de 31 gigavatios (GW) de energía solar, lo suficiente para abastecer de energía a los casi 3 millones de hogares que hay en el estado. Se estima que el potencial de los sistemas de almacenamiento energético asociados con energía solar distribuida es de 13 GW.

La activación de este recurso es clave para cumplir con los objetivos estatales de descarbonización y asequibilidad. Se prevé que la demanda pico de electricidad en Massachusetts alcanzará los 24 GW para el 2050, lo que equivale al doble de los 12 GW de demanda pico registrados en el 2020. Esto significa que el potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental es mayor que el aumento previsto de la demanda pico. Este potencial contrasta con las instalaciones a la fecha en comunidades de justicia ambiental. A pesar del éxito general que ha tenido el programa SMART al facilitar el crecimiento de la energía solar y de los sistemas de almacenamiento en Massachusetts, los datos demuestran que solo el 1 % de la capacidad solar asignada por el programa se ubica en propiedades de bajos ingresos.

Massachusetts depende en gran medida del gas fósil (también conocido como gas natural), el cual provee provee más del 65% de la generación neta de electricidad del estado. Es crucial cubrir el aumento en la demanda pico con generación limpia, dado que más del 80% de las centrales eléctricas contaminantes, con los riesgos de salud que implican, se ubican en vecindarios de justicia ambiental o a menos de una milla de ellos. 

Además, los usuarios de sistemas de energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento energético no son los únicos que se benefician al  ahorrar directamente en sus facturas de electricidad, sino que estos sistemas benefician a todos los usuarios de la red eléctrica, ya que estos recursos contribuyen a reducir la demanda pico.  Esta reducción hace que disminuya la necesidad de realizar inversiones costosas en sistemas de transmisión y distribución, logrando que se reduzcan los precios de la electricidad al por mayor.De hecho, durante un evento en el que se observaron temperaturas pico de 100°F en junio del 2025, un estudio del Acadia Center reveló que el uso de sistemas de energía solar distribuida ahorró a los consumidores de Nueva Inglaterra al menos $8,2 millones de dólares en uno de los días más costosos del año para la red eléctrica. Esos ahorros son especialmente impresionantes si se considera lo reducida que ha sido la implementación de los sistemas de energía solar distribuida en todo Massachusetts, por lo que resulta aún más atractivo aprovechar todo su potencial. 

El acceso a la energía solar distribuida puede disminuir el costo de las facturas de electricidad y reducir las cargas energéticas de los hogares.

La carga promedio de los costos de energía (es decir, el porcentaje de los ingresos del hogar que se destina al pago de la energía) en Massachusetts es de aproximadamente el 3%. Esta cifra puede ser de hasta el 10% en el caso de las poblaciones de bajos ingresos y llega hasta el 31% en ciertos vecindarios. Al analizar los vecindarios de justicia ambiental que enfrentan una carga de los costos de energía mayor al promedio estatal, los autores del estudio determinaron que existe un potencial técnico de 11,4 GW de energía solar combinada con 4,9 GW de almacenamiento en estas zonas. Por otra parte, un estudio realizado por el Laboratorio Nacional Lawrence Berkeley en el 2024 reveló que la energía solar en los techos redujo la carga promedio de los costos de energía en el 2021 del 7,7% al 6,2% para los usuarios de bajos ingresos, lo que demuestra el valor que la energía solar distribuida puede aportar para reducir los costos de energía para quienes más lo necesitan.

Los sistemas de energía solar distribuida con almacenamiento pueden mejorar la seguridad energética y apoyar la resiliencia de las comunidades. Las comunidades de justicia ambiental suelen vivir en zonas de alta densidad urbana y en vecindarios que carecen de espacios verdes, lo que las expone al efecto de la isla de calor urbana. También es más probable que estas comunidades vivan en lugares con sistemas de calefacción y aire acondicionado ineficientes, lo que supone un mayor gasto de energía para estos hogares. En este estudio, AEC concluyó que más del 90% del potencial total de energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental se encuentra dentro de las zonas más calurosas, lo que destaca el valor que puede aportar la instalación de sistemas de energía solar en estas áreas.

Un estudio realizado en el 2025 por el Laboratorio Berkeley determinó que los hogares de ingresos bajos a moderados que cubren entre el 80% y el 100% de sus necesidades de electricidad mediante sistemas solares instalados en los techos logran reducciones significativas en sus facturas de energía. Esto permite que los residentes mantengan sus viviendas a temperaturas cómodas, especialmente cuando se enfrentan a olas de calor extremo. El acceso a la energía solar distribuida y al almacenamiento energético también puede proporcionar energía de respaldo en caso de un fallo de la red eléctrica, incluso para centros de resiliencia en centros comunitarios y refugios, permitiendo el funcionamiento de los sistemas de aire acondicionado y otros servicios esenciales durante los cortes de energía. 

Barreras que impiden aprovechar este potencial solar

Aunque el estado ofrece un conjunto de programas de energía, clima y vivienda, el potencial de la energía solar distribuida y de almacenamiento energético en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental no ha sido aprovechado en su mayoría.

El estudio reveló que las principales barreras para la implementación de estos sistemas incluyen dificultades financieras, problemas técnicos, obstáculos laborales, condiciones del mercado y falta de coordinación de los programas. La falta de incentivos para los inquilinos y propietarios de condominios requiere especial atención, ya que solamente un tercio del potencial técnico de la energía solar distribuida en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental se encuentra en viviendas unifamiliares.

El estado cuenta con objetivos energéticos claros y requisitos de abastecimiento de tecnologías específicas como la energía eólica marina, pero no existen requisiciones específicas para los recursos de energía distribuida, incluyendo los sistemas de energía solar y almacenamiento energético. Del mismo modo, la mayoría de los programas de energía limpia carecen de incentivos y metas de participación equitativa, lo que dificulta que los beneficios lleguen a quienes más los necesitan.

Soluciones para aprovechar este potencial solar

El estado tiene el mandato de garantizar la distribución equitativa de los beneficios energéticos y ambientales. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha la mayoría de las políticas y los programas estatales en materia de energía solar y almacenamiento no cuentan con disposiciones de equidad explícitas y aplicables.

Este análisis identifica un conjunto de recomendaciones para enfrentar estos desafíos, incluyendo la incorporación de opciones de financiamiento, incentivos, objetivos y fondos presupuestarios enfocados en la equidad, con el fin de resolver satisfactoriamente la falta de inversión en los vecindarios de justicia ambiental y garantizar que estas comunidades tengan acceso directo a los beneficios que la energía solar y los sistemas de almacenamiento in situ pueden ofrecer. A fin de que las comunidades de justicia ambiental comprendan mejor el valor que ofrece la energía solar y los sistemas de almacenamiento, es necesario prestar una mayor atención a la comunicación y difusión de la información, adaptándolas al contexto local. También es crucial que los promotores de energía limpia den importancia a la transparencia para generar confianza y proteger a las comunidades de justicia ambiental. Además, al garantizar oportunidades de empleo para los aprendices, se puede ayudar a fortalecer la economía de energía limpia del estado.

El estudio completo detalla las deficiencias existentes en los programas y ofrece recomendaciones para impulsar de manera eficaz una transición equitativa hacia la energía limpia.

Necesitamos acción por parte de los legisladores de Massachusetts

La energía solar distribuida y los sistemas de almacenamiento energético son tecnologías probadas que tienen mucho que ofrecer al estado y, en particular, a sus poblaciones más vulnerables. Es muy importante impulsar estos recursos en las comunidades de justicia ambiental para abordar la crisis de la asequibilidad energética, mejorar la salud pública y hacer que las comunidades sean más resilientes ante el clima extremo.

Las recomendaciones que se incluyen en el nuevo informe Electrificación con equidad II son soluciones con sentido común basadas en los programas existentes y se fundamentan en la experiencia probada en Massachusetts y en otros lugares.

La más reciente versión del proyecto de ley sobre la asequibilidad energética, energía limpia y competitividad económica (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 5175), contiene disposiciones que respaldan el uso de sistemas de energía solar distribuida y almacenamiento energético, incluyendo la energía solar portátil y la concesión de permisos solares. Mientras los legisladores de Massachusetts consideran opciones para fortalecer este proyecto de ley, nuestras recomendaciones se enfocan en ofrecer incentivos que garanticen la participación equitativa y en el alistamiento del sistema eléctrico para facilitar la instalación de recursos energéticos distribuidos.

Esto implica establecer objetivos de participación equitativa e incluir metas de implementación para los recursos energéticos distribuidos. El proyecto de Ley de Equidad de la Energía Limpia (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 3540, Proyecto de Ley del Senado 2303) establece un marco para la distribución justa de los beneficios de la energía limpia. Por otro lado, el proyecto de Ley de Maximización y Optimización de Activos a Pequeña Escala en las Comunidades (Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara de Representantes 3521, Proyecto de Ley del Senado 2270) establece metas para la implementación de recursos energéticos distribuidos en el estado, incluyendo la energía solar y el almacenamiento energético.

Además, necesitamos que los legisladores apoyen a MassSave como un mecanismo eficaz para promover la preparación para la energía solar y el almacenamiento energético. Los recortes propuestos a MassSave en un momento en que este programa beneficia a un mayor número de hogares de ingresos bajos y moderados, contradicen cualquier esfuerzo por hacer que la energía sea más asequible y dificultan el uso de los recursos limitados con los que cuenta el programa para apoyar las mejoras eléctricas. Con más del 50 por ciento de la electricidad de nuestra región siendo generada a partir del gas, las familias ya están expuestas a la volatilidad de los precios de los combustibles fósiles. Cortes al presupuesto del programa MassSave solo las hará aún más vulnerables al incremento en costos resultante de aumentos en la demanda energética provocados por el calor extremo y los inviernos muy fríos.

Legisladores de Massachusetts: contamos con ustedes para garantizar que nuestros vecinos que viven en las comunidades de justicia ambiental del estado finalmente puedan disfrutar de los beneficios de una economía de energía limpia.

But clean energy’s favorable economics, its environmental and health advantages, the ability to build it quickly, and its awesome momentum keep pushing it to greater heights—despite the forces looking to drag it down.

That progress is worth celebrating. As we mark Global Wind Day and the summer solstice in these unusual times, it seems good to take note of the wind at our backs, the sun overhead, and what they make possible.

What we’re up against

First, more on these times. The Trump administration began its assault on solar and wind right at the start, with Day-One executive orders in January 2025 that halted different types of renewable energy and looked to “unleash” American energy (by which Pres. Trump meant fossil). And it has continued through a range of administrative actions that have clearly discriminated against those two energy sources.

One recent tactic might be called the $1.8 Billion Scheme. No, not that $1.8 billion scheme. This one involves using US taxpayer money to take energy options off the table, by buying back offshore wind leases from companies that secured them in auctions in recent years, to keep those same companies from moving forward with offshore wind (a particular bête noire of the president’s). The total amounts in the three deals the administration has struck is that $1.8 billion figure (which also happens to be almost the exact amount of proposed cuts in healthcare funding just passed by the US House of Representatives).

The push to hamstring the leading sources of new electricity supply has been abetted by the actions of the administration’s allies in Congress, with the 2025 megabill that further undercut support for clean energy.

The administration has also worked to prop up fossil fuels, including dirty, uneconomic coal. One recent manifestation of that is Pres. Trump’s announcement that he was invoking the Defense Production Act and using other funds to provide up to $850 million to keep online more than a dozen coal plants around the country, and build a couple more. The EPA also just told another about-to-be-shuttered coal plant in Wyoming that it can stay open and is free to operate without new equipment to reduce its harmful air pollution. That support for a fuel that is on its way out is a cruelty to communities desperate for a real future, and by undermining more movement on solar and wind, the administration is pushing toward higher energy bills and worse health impacts in communities nationwide.

These examples are just a taste of the headwinds clean energy is facing.

And yet…

The progress wind and solar are making anyway

Despite Pres. Trump’s irrational animosity toward solar and wind, those sources have repeatedly answered the call for new and cleaner power. Installations of solar panels and wind turbines in the United States have been on a tear in recent years, and recent results show continued progress in increasing that generating capacity. Solar, wind, and energy storage have accounted for more than 90% of new electrical capacity in each of the last two years, for example, and accounted for 96% in the first three months of this year. Solar has been the largest source of new generating capacity for at least 28 straight months.

All that new capacity has been reflected in the ever-increasing amounts of clean electricity in the US supply. One good way to see the progress is to focus on wind and solar power’s contributions over the course of each year. You can do that right here:

Wind and solar generation as a percentage of US electricity supply, January 2001 to April 2026, with thanks to UCS Multimedia Producer Nick Davis-Ianacco (Sources: UCS analysis of EIA data, Ember)

The graph, based on UCS analysis of data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows monthly electricity generation from solar—everything from large-scale systems to ones on tops of homes and businesses—and wind, divided by the total generation for that month. The highest wind and solar percentages are typically in the spring and fall, as times when renewable energy generation is stronger and electricity demand is lower (shoulder seasons = less need for heating and cooling).

And here’s some of what the data show:

• Humble beginnings – The EIA data start in 2001, which was still early days for both wind and solar power. Their combined contribution broke the 1% mark on a monthly basis for the first time in 2007—almost entirely thanks to wind. (Solar by itself first passed that 1% mark in 2015.)
• Acceleration – And then things heated up. Wind+solar’s monthly output passed 5% in 2013, and 10% in 2017. In 2021, their combined forces for the first time reached 15%, and 16%, and 17%, and in 2022, the monthly tally blew past 20%.
• Leaps – And now the two technologies together have leapt past another notable threshold: according to preliminary EIA data for April 2026 via global energy think tank Ember, solar and wind together provided 26% of US electricity. That means that more than one of out of every four kilowatt-hours used by homes, businesses, institutions, farms, and communities across the country came from the wind or the sun.

Also remarkable is the fact that in 2025 the lowest monthly total for solar and wind was almost 16% (1/6 of US electricity). And solar generation for the first quarter of 2026 was more than 20% higher than in the same period last year.

The growth of wind and solar’s contributions, 2001-March 2026. Monthly variations reflect changes in both wind and solar generation and overall generation. Source: UCS analysis, EIA data

Keeping up the momentum

It’s clear that clean energy is by far the best option for electricity generation in so many ways, as not just the cleanest source but also often the lowest-cost option for new electricity supply, a key solution to energy affordability challenges, and the option that can get built the fastest. Sustaining clean energy’s momentum, though, will require pushing back on the forces that are looking to prop up fossil fuels and hold back clean energy.

A key source of energy (no pun intended) for renewable energy growth for years has been state action, and that continues to be the case, as governors and legislators look to clean energy for affordability, pollution reduction, and resilience, and look for ways to compensate for the Trump administration’s anti-clean energy actions. One interesting new approach to increasing access to clean energy is plug-in solar, which various states have endorsed with recent laws, starting with Utah in 2025. Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, involves households (including renters and people in multi-family buildings) buying solar panels that they can easily install and connect. The solar can cover a portion of their energy use and whittle away at their electricity bills. It’s a generation option that is as grassroots as can be, and one that appeals to people across the political spectrum.

For states and others, another force in favor of wind and solar has been the justice system, as the administration keeps getting challenged in the courts, and keeps losing. A few recent examples from the courthouse:

• Pres. Trump’s push to stop work on the five offshore wind projects under construction failed in each of the five attempts. And the first of those five projects is now fully built (and doing its thing, saving money for Massachusetts electricity customers and helping keep the lights on).
• In a lawsuit against the administration about many of the ways it has discriminated against wind and solar to block deployment, the plaintiffs (including, indirectly, UCS) have won a preliminary injunction against the administration’s actions.
• A coalition sued the administration over the IRS’s anti-solar and anti-wind changes to the tax code, and a federal judge has just ruled that the administration’s actions were indeed “arbitrary and capricious,” and would have had the effect of limiting clean energy development and raising energy costs for consumers.
• Seven Northeastern states have just sued to stop the $1.8 Billion Scheme, with lead plaintiff NY Attorney General Letitia James calling it “a sham deal” and “an illegal agreement” intended to push companies away from offshore wind and toward fossil fuels.

Continued action is needed in each of those areas, and many more, to make sure that the unwise, spurious, and illegal actions of the administration not be allowed to persist and undercut the US’s clean energy future.

Spiraling outward and upward

Meanwhile, wind and solar, and the people who can use them, aren’t taking the Trump administration’s “no” for an answer. While the most recent projections from the solar industries association and energy analyst firm Wood Mackenzie suggest new US solar installations will be down from last year’s, it could still be the third highest year on record.

And the latest data offer what might be the clearest recent illustration of the transition underway—toward clean energy and away from fossil fuels—despite it all: in May 2026, for the first time ever, the United States got more electricity from solar than it did from coal.

As the spirals of our latest graphic of progress, and so many other recent numbers, make clear, clean energy has a whole lot of momentum. The job now is to keep that momentum growing.

The world is virtually certain to overshoot 1.5°C of warming and climate impacts are rapidly worsening everywhere. Meanwhile, the world’s largest historical emitter, the United States, under the reckless authoritarian Trump administration, has launched an all-out assault on US and global climate policies. Geopolitical tensions are running high, with the illegal war against Iran, tariff fights, and multiple humanitarian crises unfolding alongside a crushing economic toll from the fossil energy crisis ensuing from the war.

The need for a safer, more just world is more desperately clear than ever. Despite the cruel impulses of many governments and the boundless greed of the fossil fuel industry, tendrils of climate progress continue to sprout, and renewable energy expansion is now unstoppable.

Here are six major themes on my mind as I head to the upcoming UN climate meeting in Bonn, Germany which will be held June 8-18:

1: The durability of global multilateral climate action

In January, President Trump exited the Paris Agreement for a second time, this time sinking to a new low by also ditching the bedrock UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But the rest of the world is staying the course and continuing to engage in the UN climate talks. Progress is not easy or as rapid as needed—as we saw at COP30 in Brazil last year—but no other country has followed the U.S. for now.

In some ways, the mundane back-and-forth of climate negotiations, the preparations for COP31—billed as the ‘COP of the Future’—are an antidote to harmful pyrotechnics of the Trump administration. But we can’t let the low bar of complacency and business-as-usual serve as “good enough,” given the deepening climate crisis. Durability is crucial but the international climate system must also deliver robust results. At Bonn and in the lead-up to COP31 in Türkiye later this year, political leaders need to show genuine commitment to working through disagreements and standing up to the malign influence of fossil fuel interests to secure necessarily ambitious outcomes.

2: The rapid and dangerous acceleration in climate impacts

Climate change is unfolding around the world in terrifying ways. The recent extended heatwave in India and Pakistan caused numerous deaths and exposed millions of people to dangerous conditions, and is just one recent example of the perilous world created by political inaction and continued burning of polluting fossil fuels. Europe also experienced record-breaking deadly extreme heat in May. Super typhoon Sinlaku—a rare early season Cat 5-equivalent storm—exerted a deadly and costly toll in the Micronesian region of the Pacific in April.  

We are living in an era of climate-fueled drought, floods, extreme heat, intensifying storms, threats to water supplies—and all of this is happening in the context of an ongoing global hunger crisis, threatening to make it far worse. With a potentially strong El Niño predicted later this year, we could see record-breaking temperatures in 2027, changes to rainfall patterns, and further stresses on global food supplies.

Here in the U.S., the UCS team is tracking Danger Season, that time of year when climate impacts peak for people across the country. So far, we’ve already seen intense early season heatwaves, an early start to an active wildfire season, record low snowpack, and drought.

3: The unstoppable ascendance of renewable energy

Despite the Trump administration’s attacks on renewable energy in the U.S., and its attempts to undercut progress by boosting fossil fuels, data show that globally clean energy continues to expand rapidly—and is even beginning to displace fossil fuels.

Recent reports from Ember, IRENA and the IEA show the spectacular global surge in solar power in particular—and that trend is also evident in the United States. Steep cost declines in solar and battery storage are quickly making these the new electricity resources of choice, outcompeting fossil fuels, to meet demand in many places. Encouragingly, according to the Global Clean Energy Monitor, 2025 data show that in China and India renewable energy met most of new demand and helped turn down coal generation. Solar power was also a huge contributor to meeting peak electricity demand during India’s recent heatwave.

And while the fossil energy crisis unleashed by the US-Israel war against Iran is causing some countries to make short-sighted—or, in some cases, being forced to make short-term, existential—moves toward fossil fuels, it is also reinforcing that the only smart strategy ultimately is to chart as rapid a course as possible away from the economic risks of fossil energy price volatility. Those risks are playing out in particularly crushing ways for lower income countries and those who have historically relied on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from currently disrupted supply chains, where people are struggling to pay for basic necessities, including food and energy. But the energy affordability challenges are global—and in the U.S. being actively worsened by additional Trump administration actions. High fertilizer prices, triggered by the war’s upheaval of the fossil energy-related supply chain, are also exacting a steep toll on farmers and contributing to higher food prices.

4: The resurgence in demands for a transition away from fossil fuels

A recent bright spot has been the resurgence in explicit demands for a global transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy—evident at the April Santa Marta conference, and high on the agenda at the upcoming UNFCCC meeting in Bonn. Fenceline communities who bear the burden of pollution from fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure, and climate advocates, have long called for a fast, fair, funded fossil fuel phaseout. After securing a win by getting language on a transition away from fossil fuels into the final agreement at COP 28, it had since seemed as if policymakers were once again falling into the thrall of the fossil fuel industry and resisting any real action.

That all changed at COP30 in Brazil last November, where this issue quickly rose to the top of the agenda. Although the overall final outcome was disappointing, civil society pressure did succeed in securing a just transition mechanism. And the frustrations that boiled over in Belém have led to a renewed focus on practical ways countries can turn down fossil fuels, turn up renewables and ensure the economic and public health benefits of that transition accrue to all communities including those that have been historically marginalized.

There are continued deliberations within the UNFCCC through a process initiated by COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago to create a Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in a Just, Orderly and Equitable Manner. At Bonn, we expect to hear more insights from a process to solicit input from all parties on this and potential options for an agreement at COP31. And countries at the Santa Marta conference have announced a second conference in Tuvalu (jointly hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland) next year.

A new report from IRENA also points out the infrastructure and technology shifts that will be needed for such a transition: Rapid electrification and renewable deployment will require major expansion of grids, storage and system flexibility, alongside stronger system integration and strategic planning for the phase-out of fossil fuel infrastructure.

5: The undermining, and defense, of climate science

The authoritarian anti-science Trump administration continues to double down on its attacks on federally funded climate science, scientific agencies, staffing, data and resources—including attacks on NOAA and NCAR.

UCS is fighting back hard against the Trump administration’s attacks on science, alongside many others in the scientific community.

The administration is also steadily defunding investments in scientific research at universities and other research institutions. A recent proposal from the administration would put political appointees in charge of making all decisions on federally funded scientific research, completely undermining scientific integrity. The Trump administration has also abandoned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is trying to prevent US federal scientists from collaborating with their international peers. Across the administration, spewing lies and propaganda about science is now the norm. Their climate science disinformation echoes talking points and tactics that the fossil fuel industry has long propagated.

These actions are chilling for US-based scientists and they’re having a real impact on the US climate science enterprise, long considered the crown jewel of the global ecosystem. Scientists around the world are alarmed at this rapid erosion of US climate science. Agencies like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and others are continuing to step up and meet the needs of the hour but it’s not easy—or even possible—to fill the gap completely.

This dire situation is also underscoring that a truly resilient global scientific enterprise that serves the needs of people all over the world requires collaborative, distributed, well-funded science without borders.

A recent WMO bulletin on the El Niño is just one illustrative example. The credits say: The WMO El Niño/La Niña Update is prepared through a collaborative effort between the WMO and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA, and is based on contributions from experts worldwide, inter alia, of the following institutions: Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno El Niño (CIIFEN), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) and Pacific ENSO Applications Climate (PEAC) Services of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States of America (USA), European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Météo-France, India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), International Monsoons Project Office (IMPO), Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Met Office of the United Kingdom, Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), WMO Global Producing Centres of Seasonal Prediction (GPCs-SP) including the Lead Centre for Seasonal Prediction Multi-Model Ensemble (LC-SPMME).

Isn’t that a beautiful exemplar of what global scientific collaboration should look like?

6: The urgent need for climate finance

To make the transition to a climate-resilient world powered by clean energy, we’ll need to redirect trillions of dollars away from fossil energy to clean energy. And as climate impacts accelerate, there’s an urgent need for climate adaptation funding, which has been sorely neglected for too long. Lower income nations—where billions of people are on the frontlines of acute loss and damage from climate impacts and millions still do not have access to modern forms of energy—cannot make the transition to clean energy and climate resilience without funding from richer nations most responsible for climate change. This is not charity, it is justice. And it is the only practical way to advance rapid progress globally.

Richer nations have long fallen short on their climate finance obligations. And now, unfortunately, the Trump administration’s gutting of USAID and other internationally focused programs and budgets has led to deep cuts in investments in global development and health across the board, including investments to advance climate resilience and clean energy. Other countries too, including the UK and some European nations, are reneging on their climate finance commitments. This couldn’t be happening at a worse time for lower income countries punished by high energy prices and worsening climate impacts.

Climate finance must be a key metric for how international climate action is evaluated. And for climate advocates in the Global North, it’s crucial to elevate this priority domestically and put pressure on their policymakers to deliver robust finance, alongside demands for reductions in heat-trapping emissions and a transition away from fossil fuels.

Clearing a path through turbulence

The Trump administration’s hostile upending of global norms is intersecting with long-term economic and political trends to create a turbulent geopolitical reality now—AND it is also accelerating the emergence of a multipolar world order, with new risks and opportunities.

Regardless of what happens under future U.S. administrations, the world has learned (repeatedly) that the United States can be an unreliable partner. That loss of credibility is sobering, especially since the U.S. is the largest historical contributor to heat-trapping emissions and the world’s richest nation. But it also leaves room for progress to emerge from new spaces, with new alliances and different imperatives to embrace climate action.

At the forthcoming climate negotiations in Bonn, countries must lay the groundwork for real progress at COP31—grounded in the latest climate science and climate justice—including on cutting emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, advancing climate resilience, and unlocking climate finance.

Today’s dark realities, while undeniable, cannot obscure real progress that is still happening against all odds. And they cannot make us lose sight of that better, brighter world that people and the planet need.

They were always trying to figure out how to save money. Not as a preference or a lifestyle, but as a necessity. Because at that time, saving even a small amount could mean the difference between stability and struggle.

That same kind of decision-making shapes daily life for many households. But today it’s unfolding under a different set of conditions—where rising costs, financial pressures, and extreme weather increasingly intersect.

As summers grow hotter and energy costs continue to rise, the question of what people can afford (often referred to as energy affordability) is becoming increasingly connected to how they experience heat—and, in some cases, whether they can stay safe through it.

These aren’t just questions about comfort. They’re questions about navigating extreme weather, which can have serious implications not just for comfort but for cost, health, and well-being.

And now Danger Season is upon us. Danger Season—the period between May and October when North America is hit hardest by extreme weather, like heat, drought, wildfire, and hurricanes—brings severe implications for households across the country. There are a few things worth keeping in mind about the connections between extreme heat, energy affordability, and the ability to stay cool safely.

1. As temperatures rise, so does energy use—and so do energy bills.

During the summer months, air conditioning can account for a significant share of household electricity use, especially during periods of extreme heat. For many households, staying cool means using more electricity at the exact moment energy demand and costs are rising.

And while most households in the United States have some form of air conditioning, access doesn’t always mean affordability. The ability to cool a home safely and consistently is shaped by cost. For many, the decisions start to look familiar: Do I turn on the air conditioning, or try to get by with a fan? Do I keep it running through the night, or turn it off to save money?

2. Energy affordability shapes how people experience heat

For many households, the challenge doesn’t begin with extreme temperatures. It begins with the bill.

Electricity costs are already rising across much of the country—and for many households, they’ve been rising quickly. These rising costs aren’t random, they’re shaped by growing electricity demand, aging infrastructure, fossil fuel price spikes, and the increasing strain of extreme weather on the grid. For households already managing tight budgets, that changes how people experience the summer months. In some parts of the country, high summer cooling costs also arrive directly after months of expensive winter heating bills, leaving many households entering the summer without much financial recovery

For a growing share of households, cooling isn’t something they turn on without thinking, it’s something they must seriously weigh against other essentials. People start making decisions early: running the AC less, delaying turning it on, closing off some spaces to avoid having to cool them, bracing for what the bill might bring. By the time the first heatwave arrives, many households are already carrying the stress of what it will cost to stay safe.

3. Cooling access shapes heat risk

We often talk about air conditioning like it’s optional. But during periods of extreme heat, it becomes a safeguard. Extreme heat is one of the deadliest weather-related risks in the United States. Access to reliable, affordable cooling is one of the most effective ways to reduce that risk.

But that protection only works if people feel able to use it. When cost becomes a barrier, safety does too.

Housing conditions can also intensify these risks. Older or poorly insulated homes often trap heat more easily and require more energy to cool, increasing both indoor temperatures and electricity use during heatwaves. In practice, that means some households are entering extreme heat events with far fewer protections than others.

4. High energy burden can magnify risk

For households where energy bills already take up a significant share of income, staying cool isn’t just expensive—it can become destabilizing. The financial strain of cooling during extreme heat often compounds existing vulnerabilities, especially for households already navigating housing insecurity, chronic illness, disability, aging infrastructure, or other economic pressures.

These aren’t one-time decisions. They happen day after day during a heatwave: running the AC less, delaying its use, or trying to cool only part of a home. Over time, those tradeoffs can lead to hotter indoor temperatures, disrupted sleep, worsened health conditions, and increased exposure to dangerous heat.

And because energy burden is not experienced equally across households, the same heatwave can carry very different consequences depending on income, housing conditions, health status, and access to resource.

5. Disconnection carries cascading impacts

For some households, those tradeoffs eventually lead to something more severe: utility disconnection. When electricity is shut off, cooling doesn’t just become unaffordable—it becomes inaccessible. And the impacts extend quickly beyond heat:

• Homes become unsafe during extreme temperatures
• Food and medications spoil
• Medical devices stop working
• Families may be forced to leave their homes

Disconnection is not just a financial event: it’s a sign that the system meant to provide essential service is failing to protect the people who rely on it. During extreme heat, it can turn dangerous conditions into life-threatening ones.

Policies meant to protect households from shutoffs during extreme weather vary significantly by state, utility, and season. In many parts of the country, protections during extreme heat are weaker than those against winter shutoffs, even as summers become increasingly dangerous. And while programs like Low Income Energy Assistance Program can provide critical support, cooling assistance and summer coverage remain limited or inconsistent for many households. Recent federal data from the US Energy Information Administration found that residential electricity service was disconnected 13.4 million times in 2024 because of unpaid bills, highlighting the scale of energy insecurity many households continue to face.

6. These risks aren’t shared equally

The weight of these conditions isn’t evenly distributed. Some households are entering summer with higher energy burdens. Some are living in homes that trap heat more easily. Some are navigating health conditions that make heat more dangerous. And some are doing all of this at once.

The result is that the same heatwave can carry very different consequences depending on where you live, how your home is built, and what resources you have access to.

7. These outcomes are not inevitable

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The systems shaping these experiences—electricity costs, housing quality, grid investments, shutoff policies, and energy assistance programs—were built over time. And they can be reshaped.

We can design programs that reduce energy burden. We can invest in cooling access and resilience. We can prevent disconnections during extreme weather and strengthen protections for households most at risk. We can plan for extreme heat as something we know is coming—not something we react to after the fact. And we can work to reduce the climate pollution driving more dangerous heat extremes overtime.

Because the reality is people shouldn’t have to navigate life-or-struggle decisions just to stay cool in their own homes.

My parents’ stories are part of a longer thread—one that continues today in different forms, in different places, across the country (and around the world). The details may look different. But the underlying question remains the same: What does it take to get through the day—and what does it cost?

As summer approaches, that question becomes harder for too many households to answer. And that’s something we still have the power and responsibility to change. Behind every rising bill is a set of decisions about how our energy system is built and run—and who it’s built to serve.

Since the emergence of the environmental justice movement in the 1980s, environmental advocates, scholars, leaders, and communities on the front lines of pollution have understood the role of science as a tool for exposing and validating environmental harm.

The environmental justice executive order signed by President Bill Clinton more than 30 years ago marked a crucial step in recognizing those inequities. President Donald Trump’s executive orders rolling it—and many other protections—back reflect a broader pattern of undermining and weakening environmental safeguards against toxic pollution exposure and limiting communities’ ability to prepare for and recover from climate change-fueled disasters that are not of their own making. That’s why scientists at nongovernmental organizations, universities, and other levels of government must step in to work with the most-harmed communities and help fill the void left by federal government.

The consequences of the Trump administration’s actions are clear. Distressingly, policies meant to protect the public’s health are eroding, and environmental justice communities continue to bear disproportionate burdens.   

Every community deserves the right to a safe and healthy living environment—the right to safe drinking water, clean air, and land free of toxic contamination. These principles have long underpinned the EPA’s mission.

The public should be able to count on the federal government to standardize and coordinate environmental and energy policies that govern economic and land use decision making. Regulations often serve to level the playing field for industry, cut out confusion across jurisdictional borders, and provide a backstop when state or local decisions fail to protect public health and the environment.

Increasingly, that role is being reversed. Under President Trump, the current administration, across all offices and departments, has prioritized fossil fuel interests and corporate polluters over community protections and scientific integrity—to the point of using taxpayer dollars to pay off developers to cancel US clean energy projects against our own interests.

The role of the scientific community

In an administration that has overwhelmingly favored fossil fuel expansion while attacking policies, programs, and research that serve the public interest, scientists have a critical duty to support communities with their unique set of tools, expertise, and resources.

That is an ongoing goal for UCS that we were able to put into practice at the December 2025 American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana—to encourage the scientific community to see themselves as spokespeople for scientific integrity, especially for the most vulnerable among us. As the largest conference of earth and space scientists globally with 20,000 attendees, it offered a forum for sharing innovative science. More importantly, it was an opportunity for researchers, policymakers, and advocates to explore solutions to pressing environmental and societal challenges and an important platform for elevating local experiences.

With the area known as Cancer Alley just 30 miles north, New Orleans is not only proximate to some of the nation’s most egregious and visible examples of environmental injustice, it is also the site of one of the most devastating climate change-fueled disasters in US history, Hurricane Katrina. Community leaders—who had been fighting for more resilient housing and emergency preparedness—found themselves in the same debates as before Hurricane Katrina. Coming together with community members and scientists at a time President Trump is politicizing disaster aid was an opportunity to connect more directly with the lived realities of environmental injustice and disproportionate environmental burdens. It was also an opportunity to listen to what deregulation means for local people.

For instance, with the leadership of two leading environmental justice organizations, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Harlem-based organization with national reach, and the Louisiana-based Healthy Gulf, we organized a Toxics Tour connecting AGU participants and environmental researchers to energy and industrial pollution, disaster recovery and restoration in Plaquemines Parish, LA, just an hour outside of New Orleans.

We also hosted a panel session featuring environmental justice leaders from Louisiana like Sharon Lavigne and Caitlion Hunter of Rise St. James from Cancer Alley, and a former Tulane University research scientist, Dr. Kim Terrell. The discussion was moderated by Jane Patton of the Center of International Environmental Law, whose work focuses on the human rights and environmental harms of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries, helping to connect local experiences to broader global accountability efforts. 

These community-based scientists, advocates, and researchers who expose environmental injustices have faced intimidation, funding cuts, and institutional barriers. One example they shared is a 2024 Louisiana law to stop community air quality monitor data from being used in compliance or enforcement decisions. The law goes so far as to impose up to $30,000 in penalties on groups that publicly discuss their use of the pollution monitors.  This kind of intimidation is happening in other states too, according to UCS senior analyst Darya Minovi, who also presented at AGU.

This administration’s antagonism towards environmental justice has created more academic censorship, which Dr. Terrell faced by Tulane University for reporting findings of environmental injustice in the petrochemical industry. She is now with the Environmental Integrity Project continuing her work. With Louisiana scientists under pressure, it is even more important for the broader scientist community to continue researching the harms the fossil fuel industry is causing there. 

One of the stops on the toxic tour at AGU was the Plaquemines liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal—part of the fossil gas infrastructure in Louisiana that handles 61% of US LNG exports. The site exemplifies long-known high-climate change impact risk areas where, because of corporate greed, fossil fuel facilities continue to be permitted and financed. The Plaquemines terminal was built in an area clearly susceptible to chronic flooding, coastal erosion, and health impacts to workers and residents for its profit potential for financiers and the insurers that underwrite them. Meanwhile, homeowners in Louisiana and elsewhere experience a growing protection gap as insurers leave coastal states citing increasing climate risk.

Communities face mounting climate threats

Beyond the insurance crisis and exposure to pollution, Louisiana’s coastal areas are ground zero for other deadly impacts of climate warming. Particularly exposed are people living in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Terrebonne, Lafourche, Cameron parishes. There, concentrations of low-income households are already facing land loss, subsidence, and rising seas. UCS’s 2024 analysis Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience, identified public and affordable housing among the most-threatened infrastructure in coastal states, including Louisiana. Without major resilience investments, affordable housing stock will become increasingly uninhabitable, the analysis found.

Extreme heat, the deadliest climate impact, compounds the dangers these communities face. That threat is intensified for people living in older, poorly insulated, or substandard affordable housing, according to a 2025 UCS study, Colliding Crises: The Dangers of Extreme Heat in Affordable Housing.

Louisiana is among the states with the largest number of affordable homes exposed to three or more weeks of extreme heat alerts in 2024, the report found.

Like Louisiana, other states and the country face a mounting need for housing systems that better adapt to and protect against climate impacts. Meanwhile, we face a federal government that is acting against our interests and taking steps that will accelerate the pace of climate change.

That’s why it is important for Congress to also take action—to ensure greater protections for environmentally overburdened communities. Sadly, environmental justice voices continue to “pull up a folding chair” to the table in legislative debates, as the first black woman elected to the US House of Representatives Shirley Chisholm famously said. 

Yet, frontline communities have long persisted—using science, data, and advocacy to fight for health, safety, and justice as the government puts fossil fuel companies’ interests above theirs.

What you can do

This moment calls for engagement across the scientific community and beyond. Scientists, advocates, and community members all have a role to play in defending science-based policy and supporting environmental justice. At the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), we are using all the tools at our disposal to challenge the rollbacks of federal protections through the courts, organize our supporters to speak up, provide opportunities for scientists to support communities, produce elucidating analyses, and stand with scientists and frontline communities during difficult challenges.

Defending science and advancing justice requires an “all hands-on deck” approach. You, too, can help by:

• Speaking out in support of science-based environmental protections by supporting sign-on letters, writing op-eds, or participating in expert testimony or contacting your legislators. UCS provides many opportunities.
• Supporting and working directly with organizations working in and alongside frontline communities.
• Engaging in public comment opportunities and policy processes.
• Advocating for restoring funding for climate science, environmental justice and resilient infrastructure investment.
• Joining our Science Network so we can keep you informed about future events at scientific conferences, like AGU.

Special Mention: Special appreciation to all who made our organizing efforts at AGU possible, including Samuel Kay and Bria Crawford as individual contributors, Kelly Crawford (UCS National Advisory Board member), and Manuel Salgado and Tali Natter of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

Some would like to keep the nuclear power plant open all the way to 2045. While there’s no proposal or legislation yet, people are again talking about the plant’s fate, including California lawmakers.

Originally scheduled to shut down last year, Diablo Canyon was given a lifeline in 2022 when California’s legislature extended that deadline to 2030 in response to rolling blackouts and ongoing grid reliability concerns. Since then, the plant has gotten all the approvals it needs to continue operating, including the recent go-ahead from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue operating through 2045. Now the main thing standing in the way of Diablo Canyon continuing to operate past 2030 is the California legislature.

I’ll walk through the pros, the cons, and the unknowns of keeping Diablo Canyon running through 2045. In the end, I think Diablo Canyon should shut down in 2030 as planned. But should California decide to allow the plant to run longer, I’ll also highlight a few pitfalls the state should avoid.

The clean energy transition would be easier

One particularly compelling argument in support of keeping Diablo Canyon open beyond 2030 is that it would help California achieve its clean energy and emissions reduction goals.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently conducted analysis to understand how keeping Diablo Canyon online through 2045 would affect California’s clean energy transition. The analysis found that, while the state will still need to build over 120 GW of new clean resources even with Diablo Canyon online, keeping the plant operating could reduce the amount of solar, storage, and wind the state needs to build by 8-12 GW. The need for new in-state transmission could also decline by as much as 2 GW, and the state could retire an additional 1.5 GW of gas power plant capacity.

Those numbers are significant. Especially since California has already been struggling to build wind and the historical pace of the state’s solar buildout falls far short of the pace required by the state’s most recent clean energy planning. No matter what, California will need to pick up the pace to meet its clean energy goals, and I think it’s fair to say that keeping Diablo Canyon online through 2045 would make those goals easier to achieve.

It would help with grid reliability

Thankfully, California’s grid reliability situation has improved dramatically since the beginning of the decade. After the California rolling blackouts in 2020, the state has added a tremendous amount of new capacity to the grid, particularly energy storage. As a result, the state’s grid operator hasn’t had a close call since 2022.

Back in 2022, when California’s legislature authorized Diablo Canyon to run until 2030, the grid reliability situation was still dire. That’s not the case today. From a grid reliability perspective, keeping Diablo Canyon running past 2030 is more of a “nice to have” than a “need to have.”

In the long term, keeping Diablo Canyon online could help ensure grid reliability through the clean energy transition. For example, as I mentioned earlier, the CPUC analysis found that keeping Diablo Canyon online would allow for the retirement of an additional 1.5 GW of gas power plant capacity. So while it’s not strictly necessary to keep Diablo Canyon around for grid reliability, the nuclear power plant could reduce reliance on fossil-fueled power plants, which will continue to be a part of the grid for years to come.

Safety is still a concern

There have been serious seismic safety concerns around the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant since the very beginning. The plant is near multiple earthquake fault lines, and to complicate matters further, one of those fault lines wasn’t discovered until 2008, decades after Diablo Canyon was designed and constructed. The Union of Concerned Scientists has written extensively about the seismic safety risks at Diablo Canyon, warning that the seismic safety systems at the plant are insufficient. The plant’s owner and operator, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has long argued the plant can safely withstand earthquakes, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has consistently sided with them.

Further adding to the safety concerns is that the NRC, which oversees the safety of commercial nuclear power plants, isn’t exactly an independent agency anymore. The current federal administration has completely reshaped the agency by firing commissioners, instituting a process for White House review of major new NRC rules, and empowering the Energy Department to secretly rewrite safety rules for new nuclear reactors.  The NRC has also slashed safety and security inspections and weakened enforcement at operating plants, which will have immediate safety impacts at Diablo Canyon. With the independence of the nation’s nuclear safety regulator in question, California should think twice before continuing to operate its last nuclear power plant.

Ecosystem damage would continue

Diablo Canyon uses a once-through-cooling (OTC) system to cool the power plant. In short, the power plant consumes up to 2.5 billion gallons per day of ocean water to cool the power plant, then that warm water gets discharged right back into the ocean. The problem is that California has been striving to phase out OTC systems at power plants because the warm water discharge is harmful to marine life. PG&E went through an extensive study process over a decade ago to study alternative cooling technologies for Diablo Canyon, but PG&E ultimately decided not to pursue any of the alternatives.

However, ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Continuing to operate Diablo Canyon for another 15 years past 2030 would surely cause significant further damage to local aquatic ecosystems.

Effects on ratepayers depend on the details

One of the biggest questions surrounding Diablo Canyon’s extension is: would it save Californians money to keep the plant open? The answer depends on the details. And more specifically, it depends on how much money California legislators offer PG&E to keep it running.

In 2022, when the California legislature voted to extend Diablo Canyon operations, the last-minute deal included a $1.4 billion loan which PG&E will likely never repay to the people of California, at least not in full. And the deal also included hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives for PG&E. For example:

• $100 million per year “fixed management fee” that goes straight to PG&E shareholders.
• $260 million per year “volumetric performance fee” that’s spent on grid expenses unrelated to Diablo Canyon, but it functions more like a slush fund that might actually be benefitting PG&E shareholders.
• $300 million “liquidated damages fund” reserved for paying for replacement power if Diablo Canyon has an unplanned outage, but it effectively means that ratepayers will pay for replacement power even if PG&E negligence leads to the outage.

If this sounds to you like a pretty sweet deal for PG&E and a kick in the pants for the people of California, you’re right. This is not normal. The legislature threw way more money at PG&E than what was required to keep Diablo Canyon open. As a result, Californians have been paying up to keep the plant open.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Diablo Canyon doesn’t need all those ridiculous incentives to turn a profit during extended operations. The CPUC analysis I mentioned earlier indicates that, in the long term, Diablo Canyon extended operations through 2045 could save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in energy system costs each year.

So, will Diablo Canyon save Californians money? It’s possible. It just depends.

Should Diablo Canyon operations be extended?

Putting it all together, I think the answer is no. Diablo Canyon operations should not be extended beyond 2030. It’s certainly a balance, but the persistent nuclear safety concerns, along with a weakened NRC, present too much risk. And while it’s true that keeping the plant operating through 2045 would help with the clean energy transition and grid reliability, there are emerging clean energy technologies (e.g., advanced geothermal) that could play a similar role on the grid, but without risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident.

However, different folks could reasonably come to a different conclusion. It all comes down to the values and risk tolerance of Californians. Some folks may be comfortable with the theoretical (and highly uncertain) low probability of a catastrophic nuclear incident and the sustained damage to local ecosystems in order to get the clean energy, grid reliability, and (potential!) ratepayer benefits of extended operations. I just think it’s not worth the risk when so many better solutions are readily available.

How to protect Californians from extended operations

If policymakers do seriously consider an extension, it needs to be very different this time. The 2022 deal was rammed through the legislature at the last minute. It left Californians holding the bag, and PG&E pocketed the cash. Here’s what should change:

1. An extension deal should go through the full legislative process. That means a bill should be introduced at the beginning of the legislative process. It should go through all relevant committee hearings and be fully vetted by legislators and the public. This is important because it will help prevent another PG&E cash grab and protect California ratepayers. (This also means the legislature really shouldn’t take up the issue this year, since the legislative process is already half-way done.)
2. An extension deal should not further subsidize PG&E. That means the ridiculous incentives from the past deal that have lined PG&E’s coffers should be a thing of the past. If Diablo Canyon continues operating, PG&E shouldn’t get a special deal.
3. An extension deal should benefit ratepayers. That means that Diablo Canyon should only continue operating if it helps facilitate California’s clean energy transition at least cost. Ratepayers shouldn’t pay extra to keep this risky plant operating.
4. The CPUC should make the final decision. There’s a normal regulatory process whereby the CPUC scrutinizes utility decisions to operate or retire their power plants. If the legislature allows Diablo Canyon to continue to operate, the plant should be treated like any other power plant and go through the full CPUC process to determine if it is truly in the interest of ratepayers to keep the plant open beyond 2030.

California should let Diablo Canyon shut down in 2030. But if legislators want to consider extended operations, they shouldn’t repeat past mistakes.

That organization, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation—known to its friends as NERC—is on a multi-year journey of exploration to understand this question. NERC took a top-level action May 4 issuing seven multi-part “Essential Actions” to collect information from their data center customers, revise definitions for studies, and create checklists for tests and operations. These arcane precautionary steps fill a dozen pages, but are just a first step toward addressing the big issues. The core problem with these facilities is, despite new data centers being larger than the majority of facilities or utilities that NERC registers, monitors, and audits, there are no rules or oversight for NERC to interact with data centers.

In this blog, I’ll explain where NERC’s Level 3 Alert fits in the web of actions being taken to address the ways that data centers stress the grid. In short, while this is an important step addressing one aspect of reliability issues, there are other serious concerns about how data centers impact energy costs, resource adequacy (another aspect of reliability), and the clean energy transition overall.

What is and what isn’t on NERC’s agenda?

NERC does its work within highly structured processes. NERC’s action on May 4 does not bring data centers into the “registered entity” regime. “This means that large loads are not required to adhere to Reliability Standards.” That’s a direct quote! Registering data centers could happen, depending on both NERC and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decisions to extend their oversight.

Because it can’t yet put data centers into its system, NERC is also not yet able to introduce new standards for dealing with their impacts, but that process has started. Also, because it is not part of NERC’s role, this action has nothing about costs imposed by data centers or who should pay. Costs are sorted at FERC and state utility commissions, with active debates about who benefits, who pays, and how in those arenas.

Further, little in this effort addresses datacenter impacts on electric generators, either the voracious demand consuming supply or the potential for damage done by data centers’ rapid second-by-second changes in demand. These topics are absent by design – resource (i.e. supply) adequacy is assessed periodically in separate reports and generation owners were not consulted in this present effort, or the level two alert and report that preceded it. In NERC’s July 2025 report on data center impacts, brief discussion can be found of generator failures from electronic equipment oscillations.

While the tasks are large and need to be focused, there are impacts from one decision to the next, and from NERC to FERC, and then to states. This works in every combination: state decisions about customers affect what FERC does; NERC reliability issues will lead to clarification of costs caused by customers, etc. This interconnected web of actions has led to a situation where utilities and state regulators have often been pointing fingers and waiting for others to take action, rather than engaging in these efforts and taking steps to address the reliability risks of data centers within their own realms while supporting NERC’s holistic process.

So how does NERC work?

In a few words: carefully and with deference to the utilities affected.

The electric power system depends on tens of thousands of people and machines working within set rules. Most NERC rules require electric utilities, generation owners, and transmission owners to have written procedures for all sorts of problems, and to follow those procedures. NERC often writes an authoritative report about a blackout or the characteristics of data centers as a first step. These are the careful parts.

NERC deliberations and decision-making are extensive. Let me say that for the utilities that have the time and expertise to participate over years, this process works well. However, the process is built on deference to each utility to address—or not—the issues raised by the careful deliberations and fact-finding reports. Past blackouts due to inadequate protection of gas-burning plants from cold weather, for example, were repeatedly described by NERC but did not lead to anything other than voluntary recommendations. Deference then and in the present are not so reassuring to consumers.

To this point, the action expected May 4 comes with this disclaimer:

This Level 3 NERC Alert is not the same as a Reliability Standard, and it does not create a mandatory obligation to take the Essential Actions. Your organization will not be subject to penalties for failure to implement the Essential Actions.

What is NERC looking to learn?

Translating and simplifying, the urgent actions that NERC calls for utilities to take are:

• Collect and use a list of specific details about what should be known about computational loads (NERC’s proposed name for data centers and similar loads).
• Review and study the types of grid challenges made worse by data center loads.
• Implement monitoring and protections to protect reliability from data centers.

How’s that sound?

This is an important start. Certainly, NERC and the engineers participating are concerned about the risks created by data centers on the grid. However, there is some irony that the electricity providers are struggling to get information from the Information Technology industry.

This situation is also complicated by two key issues. Utilities have an unprecedented opportunity to raise profits by accommodating data centers that will be amongst their largest customers. At the same time, rules for electric companies normally put the costs for this growth onto the bills of all customers. The utilities have multiple functions, and assigning costs happens differently in each. Data centers have been welcomed by utilities who are actively cost-shifting at the same time state and federal regulators are scrambling to find the policy reforms to sort the costs and assign them properly. These layers are shaped by past reforms that introduced competition, or protected utilities from competition.

Clearly NERC is taking action to improve understanding about some aspects of data centers’ impacts on the grid. That’s good. We also need rational, appropriate reforms that cover costs, including those costs raised by NERC highlighting serious reliability concerns. The data center industry proposes to “move fast and break things.” The electric utility sector can’t move as fast, and existing customers shouldn’t have to pay for what gets broken.

Proponents of AI technology insist that AI will unlock solutions to a broad array of difficult, longstanding problems. In the specific case of climate change, the argument goes something like this: AI has the potential to accelerate global decarbonization, so we should focus resources on expanding data center capacity and enhancing model capability to unlock the decarbonization benefits it will bring. Bill Gates’ memo before COP30 cites AI as one of the key technologies for driving climate solutions. However, with mounting pressure from the US Department of Defense, a growing investment bubble, and warnings from AI companies themselves to not blindly accept the outputs from large language models (LLMs, the engine behind AI chatbots), we must ask ourselves: Is it prudent to depend on AI technology to solve one of our biggest challenges when it is creating and exacerbating so many others? What’s more, can AI even serve to “solve” it?

It is true that we’re past limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and that the current policies are insufficient to reach global emission reduction targets. But the problems leading to the gap between goals and outcomes are overwhelmingly ones that AI cannot fix. As a result, while AI may aid the development of new solutions, this blog post goes over some of the reasons why AI alone will not solve climate change and, most critically, why even if it could, we cannot afford to wait for hypothetical AI solutions to take climate action.

1. We already have the technology to solve climate change!

The causes of and solutions to climate change have been well understood for decades. Excess carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) released into the atmosphere as a byproduct of our fossil fuel-based energy-hungry society traps heat, warming the planet.

The obvious solution to this problem is to replace our dependence on fossil-fuel energy with clean energy solutions. Fortunately, the falling costs of solar panels and wind turbines have made renewable energy one of the fastest growing energy sources in the world and, despite headwinds, clean energy projects still had a strong year in 2025.

Rather than a lack of technological solutions, climate progress has been primarily delayed by fossil fuel interests and a lack of political will, a dynamic which UCS documented extensively in our report Decades of Deceit.

Climate action also isn’t constrained by lack of information. There is no shortage of white papers or technical analyses. Policy change requires building coalitions, generating public support, and overcoming incumbency. Democracy requires harmonizing a cacophony of discordant voices through negotiation and patience.

On the other hand, relying on LLMs to design policies creates an authoritative illusion for decision-makers to hide behind while dismissing concerns from the public. They can summarize research and generate code, but these are primarily productivity tools, not breakthroughs.

Moreover, as AI systems grow more capable, questions about alignment between strict AI objectives and fuzzy human goals become increasingly important. Additionally, these systems are impenetrable black boxes. An AI system tasked with “solving” climate change would need to navigate delicate tradeoffs between cost, reliability, equity, and emissions: tradeoffs which reflect complex human values about justice and fairness–values that cannot be straightforwardly optimized.

History has shown that when governments commit to large-scale technical challenges, they can mobilize industry and overcome coordination barriers. Consider the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear reactor just three years after fission was officially discovered. Or the Apollo program, which put a man on the moon within a decade of beginning. Or even the international cooperation that is healing the ozone layer. The clean energy transition could be no different—if only the commitment were there.

2. Delay is costly–and climate change is happening now

People are facing the effects of climate change now. Warmer oceans are driving more powerful storms, hotter temperatures and drier conditions are making wildfires worse and longer-lasting, a warmer atmosphere may destabilize the polar vortex leading to massive winter storms, and “danger season” is getting longer and more severe. All these effects cost billions of dollars in damages and thousands of avoidable deaths each year.

For you, dear reader, that means fewer summer days you can enjoy outside because of poor air quality and deadly heat, higher insurance premiums (if you’re fortunate enough to own a home), and higher electricity bills to cool your home. Even if LLMs or some new AI system unlock fusion energy in the next ten years, pollution that happens today guarantees additional warming in the future.

Cumulative carbon emissions drive long-term warming which means we have a limited carbon budget to avoid 1.5-2˚ C of warming. The figure below shows historical emissions from the United States since 1990 and two (out of many) possible futures. The area under the black curve gives the total emissions between 1990 and 2024. The blue and magenta curves show us possible future emissions. In one case, an “act now” scenario, we take immediate action to rapidly reduce emissions until we reach zero in 2050. In the other case, we delay substantial action until some future date, after which point we reduce emissions dramatically, such as the hypothetical where AI unlocks “something” that will accelerate decarbonization. Both cases eventually reduce emissions to zero, but even in that hypothetical silver-bullet future, acting later still leads to more than 4 times greater CO2 emissions!

Of course, these are stylized scenarios, but the lesson is this: Taking immediate action on climate change and reducing emissions as quickly as possible gives us the best chance to minimize the damage caused by climate change. Acting later leads to more total emissions. Our goal must be to bend the curve downwards. This is why near‑term policies that lower the emissions curve, like clean energy standards, vehicle electrification, alternative fuels, lowering hurdles to deployment, and demand‑side efficiency, deliver outsized climate benefits relative to later innovations. Every year we delay increases the area under the emissions curve.

3. AI for Climate Science and LLMs are not the same thing

Artificial intelligence can aid climate change solutions in several important ways. This includes better understanding and predicting climate impacts—such as improved weather forecasting, enhancing extreme event detection and attribution, and downscaling climate models—as well as potentially supporting technological and process improvements on the solution side—such as facilitating molecular breakthroughs or accelerating complex engineering processes to expedite clean energy deployment. But while each of these types of contributions have real value, none address the fundamental problem at the heart of the issue: lack of political will, not lack of information or lack of solutions.

Moreover, new data center capacity is primarily driven by consumer-level LLM, not narrowly tailored applications focused on climate change. The AI-driven solutions I described above represent highly specialized applications and the total usage will only ever represent a small fraction of the computational energy demand from new hyperscale data centers, which are increasingly used for simple, everyday tasks—by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Proponents of AI development often use the argument that “AI will help solve climate change” to justify a massive, emissions-heavy infrastructure buildout to support near-term AI ambitions—new fossil fuel-fired power plants, new gas pipelines, delayed coal plant retirements, the overwhelming share of which has absolutely nothing to do with climate change-relevant AI. The sharp difference in application, and their comparative compute requirements, matters for policy: We should not conflate pursuit of targeted scientific computing with an unchecked build‑out of LLM capacity.

4. AI adds tremendous pressure to the electricity system

LLMs require tremendous amounts of computing power for the training process, and even more to serve users. Excitement about the possible uses of LLMs, largely speculative hype driven by AI companies, made AI data centers the fastest growing source of energy demand in the United States in 2024, and this growth is only expected to accelerate in the near-term. Projections from LBNL show that, in the high case, data center demand could reach 600 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2028–nearly 13% of total US electricity demand, and more than the entire state of Texas used in 2024.

AI data center operators will look for any way they can to meet this new demand for electricity. As one recent UCS analysis shows, data center demand under current policies threatens to be primarily met by more natural gas generation—and indeed, that’s the scenario repeatedly playing out right now in fights across the country. This means that the choices regulators make now about how data centers are powered (as well as whether to power every data center that gets proposed) will reverberate into the future. Powering data centers with natural gas or coal will lock in further warming and worsen air quality leading to billions in public health costs.

UCS modeling further showed that even with high proposed levels of data center deployment, smart clean energy policies can result in most of this demand can be met with clean energy like solar and wind. The figure below shows the difference in electricity generation between a middling data center growth scenario and a no-growth reference scenario for three different policy cases.

In addition to exacerbating climate change and air pollution, data centers also consume a lot of water for cooling and are frequently built in already water-stressed locations. Data centers also generate noise and heat pollution for neighboring communities.  Further, data centers often require new transmission and generating infrastructure which increase the cost of electricity. Rarely do data center owners and AI proponents bear these costs. Instead, they fall to the communities that are forced to share their resources and electric grid. When AI evangelists argue that the technology will someday pay for itself through climate benefits, these immediate, tangible harms must be included on their side of the ledger.

Looking to the future

We already know the causes of, and solutions to, the climate crisis—and the costs and harms of delaying action. Instead of relying on a hypothetical future AI “solution,” we need to focus on overcoming the real hurdles stalling climate progress.

Namely, we need policymakers to commit to climate action, commit to polluter accountability, and commit to overcoming vested interests. Not holding out for some hypothetical silver bullet, but committing now to doing the real work, the hard work, the grunt work: mobilizing action, and sustaining progress.   

Moreover, we must now also ensure policymakers are taking action to prevent AI from being part of the problem. On speculative demand; on offloading of environmental, health, and economic risks and costs; on active pursuit of fossil fuels; on promise and perils—on all of these, tech companies must be challenged and must be held to account.

Unfortunately, implementing these solutions requires hard work and a level of commitment that has been lacking. Prioritizing time and money spent on AI, rather than contributing to known solutions, is at best a distraction, and at worst exacerbates the problem. We need to stop kidding ourselves—AI is a tool, and while it may be useful, the most effective tools we have for solving climate change are policies, not algorithms.

This is particularly vital as energy costs have become an everyday point of discussion for Massachusetts families, businesses, and policymakers. High prices during one of the coldest winters in years forced too many families to keep their homes at unsafe temperatures. A brutal blizzard left hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts households in the dark for days. And now, gas and oil prices are soaring due to the US-Israeli war against Iran. These events all underscore the same challenge: Our energy system requires immediate attention so that the decisions being made have a real impact on the affordability, resilience, and reliability of our electric grid—now and for the future.

It is no surprise that in the energy affordability bill within the Massachusetts State House, and Governor Maura Healey’s recent executive order targeting energy supply, solar energy is raised as a key solution to help the state cover its increasingly high energy needs while making the cost of electricity more affordable. As these discussions evolve, it’s vital to remember not just the value proposition of distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar and battery storage, but also the importance of ensuring its benefits reach everyone in the commonwealth, especially underserved communities where these investments have the greatest impact on both affordability and resilience.

A new report from Applied Economics Clinic (AEC), commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and its partners Clean Energy Group and Vote Solar, offers key insights to help inform state efforts to unlock its vast solar and storage potential in environmental justice (EJ) neighborhoods—where people of color, low-income people, and limited-English proficient speakers live. Electrification with Equity IIestimates the technical potential of behind-the-meter (BTM) solar and solar paired with storage in EJ neighborhoods, looks at housing conditions to better tailor programs that enable adoption for end users, maps the overlap with extreme heat and energy burden data, and offers insight on the barriers and their solutions to scale up deployment in and for EJ communities. It is a companion to another new report from AEC that looks at solar and storage issues and opportunities in Massachusetts more broadly. This report was developed in collaboration with an advisory committee bringing perspectives from different sectors—including environmental justice organizations, affordable housing, and clean energy developers—to reflect on-the-ground experiences and priorities for EJ neighborhoods.

Here are a few key findings around BTM solar and storage technical potential, as well as key barriers and recommendations to successfully unlock these valuable resources.

Solar and Storage Potential in EJ Neighborhoods

EJ neighborhoods across the Commonwealth have an enormous BTM solar potential. Building on DOER’s 2023 Technical Potential for Solar study and using the 2023 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, AEC estimates that the technical potential of BTM solar in Massachusetts EJ neighborhoods is 31 gigawatts (GW) of solar, enough to power all of the state’s almost 3 million homes. The potential for BTM storage paired with solar is estimated to be 13 GW.

Activating this resource is key to fulfill the state’s decarbonization and affordability goals. Peak electricity demand in Massachusetts is predicted to reach 24 GW by 2050, double the 2020 peak of 12 GW. This means that the technical potential for new BTM solar and BTM solar paired with storage (simplified as “BTM solar and storage” in this blog) in EJ neighborhoods is greater than the expected increase in peak demand. Despite the overall success of the SMART program at facilitating the growth of solar and storage, data shows that just 1% of the program’s allocated solar capacity is located on low-income properties. 

The Commonwealth is heavily dependent on fossil gas (also known as natural gas), which provides more than 65% of in-state net electricity generation. Covering increases in peak demand with clean generation is crucial given that more than 80% of polluting power plants—with their associated health risks—are located in or within a mile of EJ neighborhoods.

In addition, not only do BTM solar and storage adopters save directly on their bills, but these cost saving benefits flow to all ratepayers because these resources help with lowering peak demand. Addressing the peaks minimizes the need for expensive transmission and distribution investments and reduces wholesale electricity prices.In fact, during a 100^oF peak event in June 2025, a study from Acadia Center found, BTM solar saved New England consumers at least $8.2 million on one of the most expensive days of the year for the grid. Those savings are particularly impressive considering how small the BTM solar deployment is across Massachusetts, and makes actualizing the full potential even more appealing.

Access to BTM solar can lower bills alleviating the energy burden of households.

The average energy burden—the percentage of a household income that goes into paying for energy—in Massachusetts is about 3%. It rises to 10% for low-income populations, and, as high as 31% in certain neighborhoods. When looking at EJ neighborhoods facing higher than that statewide average energy burden, this study finds a technical potential of 11.4 GW of solar paired with 4.9 GW of storage. A 2024 study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) shows that rooftop solar reduced the median 2021 energy burden for low-income adopters from 7.7% to 6.2%, pointing to the value that BTM solar can provide in alleviating energy costs for those that need them the most.

BTM solar and storage can advance energy security and support communities’ energy resilience. EJ communities are more likely to live in dense urban areas and neighborhoods that lack green spaces, exposing them to the urban heat island effect. These communities are also more likely to live in places with inefficient heating and cooling systems, costing these households more in energy. For this study, AEC finds that more than 90% of Massachusetts’ total BTM solar and storage potential in EJ neighborhoods is within a hot spot area, underscoring the value that deploying solar in these areas can bring.

A 2025 Berkeley Lab study found that low-to-moderate income households generating 80-100% of their electricity needs with rooftop solar leads to significant reductions in energy bills. This can translate into households being able to keep their homes at comfortable temperatures, especially when facing extreme heat. Access to BTM solar and storage can also provide backup power during grid disruptions, including for resilience hubs in community buildings and shelters bringing cooling and other essential services during outages.

Barriers to unlocking this solar potential

Although the Commonwealth offers a suite of energy, climate and housing programs, the BTM solar and storage potential in EJ neighborhoods remains largely untapped.

The study found the main barriers for deployment, include financial challenges, technical issues, workforce roadblocks, market conditions, and program coordination. Lack of incentives for renters and condo owners requires special attention, as only a third of BTM technical potential in EJ neighborhoods is located in single family homes.

The state has clear energy targets and procurement requirements for specific technologies such as offshore wind, but there is no specific carve out for BTM resources including solar and storage. Likewise, most clean energy programs lack equity participation targets or incentives hindering the flow of benefits to those that need them the most.

Solutions to unlocking this solar potential

The Commonwealth has a mandate to ensure the equitable distribution of energy and environmental benefits. However, to date, most of the state’s solar and storage policies and programs have no explicit and enforceable equity provisions.

This analysis identifies a suite of recommendations to tackle these challenges, including incorporating equity-focused funding, incentives, targets, and carve-outs to successfully overcome underinvestment in EJ neighborhoods and ensure that these communities have direct access to the benefits that on-site solar and storage can bring. Greater and context-specific focus on communications and outreach are tools that will help EJ communities understand better the value that solar and storage has to offer them. Attention to transparency from clean energy solicitors will also be crucial to build trust and protect EJ communities. And securing employment opportunities for trainees will only strengthen the commonwealth’s clean energy economy.

The full study elaborates on existing program gaps and recommendations to soundly advance an equitable clean energy transition.

We need action from Massachusetts policymakers

BTM solar and storage are proven technologies that have a lot to offer to the Commonwealth, and in particular, to its most vulnerable populations. Advancing these resources in EJ communities is key for addressing the energy affordability crisis, improving public health and making communities more resilient to extreme weather.

The recommendations included in the new Electrification with Equity II report are common-sense solutions informed by existing programs, and build on proven experience in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Provisions supporting solar and storage are reflected in the latest version of the “An Act relative to energy affordability, clean power and economic competitiveness” (House Bill 5175), including around plug-in solar and solar permitting. As the Massachusetts legislature discusses ways to strengthen this energy affordability bill, our recommendations focused on offering targeted incentives, and electric system readiness should be integrated into this crucial bill.

That means establishing equity participation targets and include carve outs for distributed energy resources. The Clean Energy Equity Act (House Bill 3540, Senate Bill 2303) sets a framework for the fair allocation of clean energy benefits. And An Act Maximizing and Optimizing Small-scale Assets in Communities (House Bill 3521, Senate Bill 2270) stablish goals for the deployment of distributed energy resources—including solar and storage—in the commonwealth.

Further, we need policymakers to support MassSave as an effective way to advance solar and storage readiness. Proposed cuts to MassSave at a time when it’s increasingly serving low- and moderate-income households contradicts any effort to make energy more affordable and will hinder the limited resources the program has to support electric upgrades. With over 50 percent of our region’s electricity generated from gas, families are already exposed to price volatility; cutting Mass Save leaves them even more vulnerable to demand spikes from extreme heat and harsh winters.

Massachusetts policymakers, we’re counting on you to ensure that the benefits of a clean energy economy are successfully unlocked for our neighbors in the Commonwealth’s environmental justice communities, at last.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have conspired to slow the transition to clean energy in this country, undercutting solar and wind power, propping up coal plants, and backing fossil fuels over renewable energy at every turn. Clean energy, though, has pushed back, and pushed forward. Solar in particular came into the second Trump administration with a whole lot of momentum, and that momentum has carried renewable energy to many new heights lately.

Here are four examples of impressive renewable energy progress, how they came about, and what to watch for next.

US solar blows past its generation record

What happened: US solar generation in 2025 was a stunning 28% higher than in 2024. The electricity flowing from all our solar—on rooftops and parking lots, in fields and deserts—was equivalent to the amount used by every household across 14 states in the Midwest and Northeast, from Wisconsin to New Jersey and up to Maine. Solar generation in a single month (July 2025) was more than a full year’s worth of solar generation just a decade ago.

How it happened: A lot of solar capacity has come online lately. 2024 was a record year for new solar installations in the United States, 21% higher than the previous record-setter. While new installations in 2025 were down from that height, last year still had the second-highest tally ever. Texas installed a Texas-sized amount of that recent solar, California followed, and Indiana took the #3 spot, up from #15 in 2023. The total capacity by the end of 2025 was enough to meet the electricity needs of tens of millions of US households.

What’s next: The pace of new installations will be driven in part by deadlines and restrictions imposed by last year’s megabill, and will also depend on the vagaries of the tariff regime under this administration. This year is sure to break the record for solar generation yet again, though, with all of 2025’s installations leaping into action and more solar coming online every day. Preliminary results suggest that solar electricity generation year-to-date is more than 20% higher than in the same period last year.

US wind breaks record after record

What happened: Wind power is the largest source of renewable energy in this country, and it keeps growing. For example, last month in New England, wind farms added up to a record amount of peak generation—more than 30% above where the region’s wind record had stood just six months earlier. Plus, a record-breaking project is starting to come online in the US Southwest: SunZia will be the largest wind project in North America—and, with its associated transmission line, the largest US renewable energy project ever.

How it happened: InNew England’s case, a lot of credit goes to offshore wind. While the region’s land-based wind farms play an important role, what’s new are the injections of power from offshore wind turbines. Vineyard Wind, located in the waters off Massachusetts, has been generating power from a majority of its turbines since last year, and will be fully online very shortly. Once it’s completed, it will be the first large-scale offshore wind project in the United States—indeed, in all of the Americas. Add in strong offshore winds, and you have a recipe for some awesome generation—including at times when the region needs it most.

In the case of SunZia, the “how” includes a whole lot of patience. The project involves a remarkable 916 wind turbines in New Mexico and a 550-mile transmission line to carry the power to Arizona, where it goes on to serve customers in California. And it took over two decades, most of that in permitting, to get to this stage.

Even as it is coming online, SunZia is breaking other records: the amount of wind generation showing up in California’s electricity mix has leapt to new records multiple times in the last few weeks.

What’s next: Overall, the way forward for wind power is much fuzzier and more challenging than it should be, in part because of the Trump administration’s particular animus toward it, especially offshore wind. So one thing to watch for is the progress of the various lawsuits against the administration, which are trying to put an end to their various illegal moves to block wind farms.

But some next steps are clearer, including for the handful of offshore wind projects that are moving forward.

• The workers responsible for bringing Vineyard Wind to life installed the blades on the final turbine last month, so once the electrical systems and final tests are done, it’ll be all systems go.
• Revolution Wind, also in the area south of Massachusetts/east of Long Island, is itself almost fully built, and just started sending power to New England too. That contribution will ramp up as the project moves to completion.
• The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, under construction, will be the largest in the country and one of the largest in the world when it comes fully online next year; last month it sent its first megawatt-hours to the mid-Atlantic electricity grid from some of the turbines already in place.
• Two other offshore wind farms also under construction, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, will soon be strengthening the New York electric grid.

Onshore, the new SunZia wind and transmission capacity will continue to show up in increasingly high levels of wind for California.

And wind records will continue to be broken elsewhere. Each of the other regional transmission organizations (grid operators) across the country—in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, New York, the midcontinent, Texas, and the Southwest—have scored records in the last few months.

US renewable electricity passes the 25% mark

What happened: Renewable energy generated more than a quarter of US electricity in 2025 for the first time.                                                               

How it happened: All that new renewable energy capacity adds up to more renewable electricity. Wind maintained its spot as the top renewable source, accounting for more than 10% of US generation last year. Solar’s fast growth brought it to almost 9%—four times its contribution in 2018. Hydro power was the next largest contributor, at 5.5%.

What’s next: Though there’s been considerable variability over the years, renewable energy’s contribution to overall US electricity supply has increased by an average of 1.2 percentage points per year. The federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that renewables will be the source of the most growth in generation in 2026, with solar increasing 17% and wind 5%.

US renewable electricity out-generates gas on a monthly basis

What happened: In March 2026, for the first time ever, US renewable electricity beat gas generation over the course of a full month. Renewables accounted for 35% of generation, vs. gas’s 34.4%, according to Canary Media.

How it happened: Spring is always a strong time for renewable energy—the sun is shining, the winds are blowing, the waters are flowing. And the interlude between winter’s cold and summer’s heat is when demand for electricity is lowest. That all means less demand for gas. This recent crossover milestone, though, is principally a consequence of all the new renewables capacity of late.

Renewables’ strong showing last spring meant that these sources plus nuclear generated more than half of US electricity in March 2025 for the first time ever. That is, fossil fuels fell below the 50% mark. That happened again in April 2025 and March 2026.

What’s next: Watch for more months when renewables outperform gas, and fossil fuels get pushed below 50% (as a prelude to much greater push-downs in the years ahead); spring, and then fall, will be where that phenomenon will be more likely. More such achievements will require renewables continuing to grow and outpace increases in demand at a time when demand for electricity is growing more rapidly than it has for years—and all while contending with a major push for new gas-fired power plants and a Trump administration aggressively thwarting new clean energy deployment. But renewables have proven themselves time and again.

More 2025 wins, around the world

Renewable energy is making even more of a mark globally. Here’s a sample:

• According to analyst firm Ember, wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the European Union for the first time over the course of 2025.
• In Colombia, solar power alone supplied more electricity than coal on an annual basis for the first time.
• Solar globally grew by a record amount in 2025, said the International Energy Agency (IEA), with China accounting for more than half that growth, the European Union achieving record numbers, and India posting 60% growth.
• Solar was “the single largest contributor to growth in global energy supply in 2025,” the IEA said—”the first time on record that a modern renewable source has led global primary energy supply growth.” Solar supplied more than 25% of that increase, compared to 17% for gas.
• Wind installations globally also hit a record (also led by China).
• Overall, the world installed a record amount of wind and solar—17% more than in 2024.

Lots more clean energy is on its way

Renewable energy’s momentum is a product of the many advantages it offers. Renewable energy is not just the cleanest but often the cheapest source of new electricity in the United States. Solar and wind have the advantage of potentially being faster to get installed than new gas plants, given the multi-year backlogs for gas turbines. And worldwide disruptions have brought into stark relief more of the risks of dependence on fossil fuels.

None of that means that new fossil fuel plants won’t get built, particularly given a big thumb on the scales from the White House. It does mean, though, that where clean energy is allowed to compete, the outcomes will likely to continue to testify to those advantages.

And projections bear that out. Solar, wind, and energy storage (batteries) combined had a record year in 2025, and made up more than 90% of new energy capacity in this country, according to industry association American Clean Power. And they will make up 93% of what gets built in the power sector in 2026, forecasts the EIA. All that will add up to more clean energy, and give us even more possibilities for phasing down fossil fuels and accelerating the transition to a clean and just energy future.

The transition to clean energy is a marathon, not a sprint. The people and communities behind clean energy in its many forms and uses will continue to push boundaries and break record after record. Count on it.

Operators botched a safety test and took the reactor into an unstable state, causing a rapid rise in power that triggered violent steam explosions that blew apart the reactor core and surrounding structures. Fires burned for days. A massive amount of radioactivity dispersed across the former Soviet Union and much of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were evacuated or relocated from contaminated areas, and a 30-kilometer radius “exclusion zone” was established that is still in place today. Dozens of emergency personnel died within weeks from acute radiation syndrome, and thousands of children developed thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine exposure. Ultimately, tens of thousands of cancer cases throughout Europe are projected to occur from the radioactive pollution caused by the disaster.

The United States and many other countries have sought to distance themselves from the potential for a Chernobyl-like accident by asserting that their nuclear regulators would never have licensed a reactor with the safety flaws of the RBMK (a Russian acronym for “high-power channel-type reactor,” the Chernobyl-4 design), and that light-water reactors (LWRs), by far the most common type of power reactor in operation, are far safer. While this argument has some validity, soon after the accident it became clear the safety benefits of LWRs compared to the Chernobyl-4 RBMK were not as great as advertised—a point later illustrated by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi triple LWR meltdown in Japan. And today, many of the regulatory requirements and standards that underlie this confidence in the safety of the US nuclear fleet are being thrown by the wayside as the Trump administration recklessly pushes to “unleash” nuclear energy as quickly as possible.

It can’t happen here… or can it?

After the April 1986 Chernobyl accident, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the independent nuclear safety and security agency created a little over a decade earlier to oversee commercial nuclear facilities, conducted a review of its potential implications for the safety of US nuclear power plants. In the process, the NRC convinced itself that such a catastrophe could simply not happen here. The agency highlighted numerous factors that distinguished the Soviet approach to nuclear power plant design and operation from that of the United States and other Western countries. Chief among these were requirements for nearly leak-tight, robust “containment” structures, strict limits on operation in unstable states that could experience rapid, uncontrollable power increases, and offsite emergency plans to protect the public in the event of a serious accident. Consequently, the NRC concluded that “no immediate changes are needed in the NRC’s regulations regarding the design or operation of U.S. commercial nuclear reactors.”

While the NRC did not believe its regulations were inadequate after Chernobyl, it certainly didn’t suggest they were too tough at the time. But in subsequent decades, the agency has been under constant pressure from the nuclear industry and many lawmakers to weaken its standards. This resulted in the lax oversight that allowed the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio to come close to experiencing a serious loss-of-coolant accident and potential meltdown in 2002, and forced the NRC to temporarily slow down the pace of deregulation. But ultimately, the industry influence campaign culminated in the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in May 2025, which have undermined the foundation of independent nuclear facility licensing and oversight that Congress put in place over 50 years ago when it split the Atomic Energy Commission into separate regulatory and promotional agencies—the present-day NRC and DOE.

And the worst is yet to come. The NRC is in the process of rewriting all its regulations and guidance in response to EO 14300, “Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” with the explicit purpose of watering down safety and security standards to accelerate licensing of new facilities and reduce oversight of operating ones. And EO 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” directed the DOE to create a pilot program that would expedite the approval of three new nuclear reactors with the goal of achieving “criticality” (initiating a neutron chain reaction) by July 4, 2026—requiring an unprecedented and reckless rate of speed for construction and commissioning.

As a result of this vast lessons-unlearned exercise, companies may soon be building reactors across the United States that have more in common with Chernobyl than most people may realize. For example, in March, the NRC issued a permit in record time to TerraPower, a company co-founded by Bill Gates, to construct a 345-megawatt power reactor called the “Natrium” in the town of Kemmerer, Wyoming. The NRC approved the Natrium, a fast-neutron reactor, even though the design lacks a containment structure, is vulnerable to rapid, autocatalytic power increases, and uses a coolant, liquid sodium, that can catch fire—all adding up to what can be reasonably called a “Cowboy Chernobyl.”

Chernobyl lessons: learned and unlearned

In 1989, following its review of the causes of the Chernobyl accident, the NRC issued a report entitled “Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States.” The report listed a number of specific areas in response to the accident that warranted attention by the NRC. These included reactivity accidents, accidents at low and zero power, multiple-unit protection, fires, containment, emergency planning, severe-accident phenomena, and graphite-moderated reactors. Today, the NRC, the DOE, and the nuclear industry are all busy unlearning the lessons of Chernobyl in each of these areas. Below, we focus on one of the most critical: the need for containment.

To contain (with a structure) or not to contain (with a structure)? That is the question

Ten years ago, on the 30^th anniversary of Chernobyl, the NRC once again invoked the critical role of reactor containments in differentiating the safety of the US fleet from the Chernobyl design:  “U.S. reactors have containment buildings equipped with walls that are several feet thick and have a steel liner on the interior to help prevent the release of radioactivity during a severe accident,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said in a statement. “During the Three Mile Island Unit 2 accident, the containment structure served that function effectively.”

Yet only two years later, the NRC decided to abandon its longstanding design principle that “reactor containment and associated systems shall be provided to establish an essentially leak-tight barrier against the uncontrolled release of radioactivity to the environment …”. For new, non-light-water reactors—designs like the Natrium that use coolants other than ordinary water—the agency gave the green light for approving designs without conventional containment structures. Instead, the NRC would also accept so-called “functional” containments, wonk-speak for a regulatory rollback that would allow reactor applicants to take credit for other design features to provide a containment-like function and forgo a physical containment.

In addition to the Natrium, another proposed non-light-water power reactor design without a containment is the Xe-100, an 80-megawatt, “pebble-bed” high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). Its developer, X-energy, is applying to the NRC to build four Xe-100s adjacent to a Dow chemical plant in Seadrift, Texas. Unlike LWRs, these types of reactors use “tri-structural isotropic” (TRISO) fuel,  which the DOE likes to say is “the most robust fuel on Earth.” X-energy and other HTGR developers claim that the fuel is so safe that a physical containment is not needed.

However, as detailed in this legal filing that UCS helped prepare for a hearing petition filed by the group San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper against the Xe-100 construction permit application, TRISO fuel is not nearly as robust as its promoters claim, and there is significant uncertainty about how it will perform in certain types of accidents. Indeed, X-energy’s own accident analysis shows that the fuel could exceed the maximum safe temperature by several hundred degrees Celsius. The company has simply not made the case at this preliminary stage that the reactor can be safely operated without a containment.

X-Energy has only recently begun a multi-year testing program to attempt to address uncertainties in fuel performance. Nevertheless, the NRC appears poised to allow construction of the containment-less design to proceed before the data from such testing is obtained. But even if the fuel performs far worse than the application assumes, it is highly unlikely that the NRC would require X-energy to undertake an extremely costly retrofit to add containments to the four reactors before allowing them to operate.

Given the emphasis that the NRC formerly placed on the safety benefits of physical containments, why would it take this step? The answer is simple: cost. Physical containment structures, which typically require large quantities of high-quality reinforced concrete, are expensive. A 2020 MIT study found that the containment was one of the largest contributors to the cost of light-water reactors. Thus a quick way to cut nuclear power project costs would be to leave out the containment.  And for some new reactor types and deployment models—think small modular reactors being hauled by truck to your local data center—having a physical containment would be completely impractical as well as unaffordable. 

The problem here is that eliminating physical containments is a truly pound-foolish approach to reducing the high cost of nuclear power, as the Chernobyl experience has shown. What the NRC is allowing them to be replaced with, functional containment, is not an adequate substitute. One of the primary roles of containment is to provide “defense-in-depth”—an extra level of assurance in place to compensate for gaps in understanding of how the reactors themselves will work during accidents. And for new reactor designs with limited or no operating experience, there is an awful lot that the developers and the NRC simply do not understand and cannot accurately predict. Thus, the role of containment in helping to offset the unknown risks posed by new, experimental designs is more important than ever.

But the NRC is approving functional containments for new reactors, such as the Natrium and the Xe-100, based on paper safety studies that have had little to no actual real-world validation. The agency is allowing applicants to exclude accident scenarios from their safety analyses that could demonstrate the need for a physical containment, based on speculation that they are so improbable they do not need to be considered. This is little different than the approach Soviet reviewers took when they approved the Chernobyl design with only a partial containment.

According to the NRC’s 1986 Chernobyl review, “credible accidents with potentially serious consequences” were not discussed in the Soviet safety analysis, “presumably because they [were] considered to be of sufficiently low probability to justify disregarding them in the design basis.” These included “rapid reactivity excursions” and other accident sequences that occurred during the Chernobyl accident. The report also stated that “an important result of the decision to consider only pipe breaks below the reactor as credible is that there is no containment surrounding the outlet piping above the reactor.”

This reasoning will sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the “risk-informed” regulatory approach that the NRC  recently approved for new reactor licensing, which includes processes for addressing questions such as the adequacy of functional containment. In the new 10 CFR Part 53 rule issued in March, applicants are allowed to use either “probabilistic risk assessments” or “systematic risk evaluations” to develop the spectrum of accident sequences that are considered in the licensing basis. The lack of any guidance for carrying out such a “systematic risk evaluation,” including a standard for determining the worst-case accident that needs to be considered in designing a reactor, provides ample opportunity for the kind of subjective cherry-picking that the Soviets used in developing the Chernobyl design and justifying the lack of a full-blown containment.

The NRC’s approval of the Natrium construction permit and its likely approval of the Xe-100 are setting dangerous precedents for all future reactor proposals, most of which are containment-free designs. But fortunately, there has been very little actual new nuclear plant construction yet, and the NRC has ample opportunity to change course before it allows irreversible mistakes to be made. On the occasion of the 40^th Chernobyl anniversary, the NRC should take a hard look in the mirror and reconnect with its 1989 finding that “the most important lesson [of Chernobyl] is that it reminds us of the continuing importance of safe design in both concept and implementation … and of backup features of defense in depth against potential accidents.”

This week also marks the 20^th anniversary of my own visit to see the devastation within the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which is seared into my memory. If anyone still needs convincing that it’s a terrible idea to allow reactors without real containment structures to be built across the United States, I highly recommend the Chernobyl tour (once the war is over of course).

One of the barriers slowing down clean energy development has been long wait times to connect projects to the grid. The interconnection process is how generating projects receive approval from California’s grid operator (CAISO) to connect to the grid. CAISO runs a series of studies to determine whether a project can safely connect to the grid, or if additional grid upgrades are needed to accommodate the new project.

The interconnection process is a critical step to getting new clean energy resources online. However, it had gotten bogged down by an overwhelming number of applications and become a notable barrier to connecting new clean energy. This blog post will cover CAISO’s reforms to the interconnection process and their effectiveness at addressing the long wait times.

How did the interconnection process work prior to reforms?

CAISO used to run interconnection studies for all projects submitted to them. Interconnection studies are tricky because the ability of a project to connect to the grid also depends on the other generating projects already connected, and planning to connect, to the grid. For example, if a planned project drops out, the studies that incorporated that project become less precise. This dependency makes interconnection studies more complicated as more projects are being studied. Although the time to get through the interconnection process was slowing down, the number of projects being submitted was manageable for the process to move along.

In 2023, CAISO decided that was no longer the case. During its annual application window, which are named clusters, with 2023 being Cluster 15, CAISO received 347 gigawatts (GW) of interconnection requests from 541 projects, compared to 373 projects in Cluster 14 and 155 in Cluster 13. This large spike in Cluster 15 was on top of 185 GW already sitting in the interconnection queue. For perspective, CAISO also noted that only 165 GW of new resources would be needed to meet the state’s 2045 clean energy portfolio.

What reforms were implemented?

To address the interconnection issue, CAISO initiated reforms, implementing an Interconnection Process Enhancement (IPE) 3.0 in 2023 with three steps to improve the process. First, CAISO extended the deadlines for Cluster 14 studies, and paused Cluster 15 studies to give the agency time to reform the interconnection process for Cluster 15 requests and beyond. The next step was focusing on these new reforms.

At a high level, the reforms were intended to limit the number of projects being studied and prioritize projects to align with grid needs, market interest, and project viability. Specifically:

• CAISO now accepts only enough projects to meet 150 percent of the available capacity based on the point of interconnection’s transmission constraints. This limits the number of projects being studied to a more manageable number.
• All projects requesting to connect to the grid are now scored and ranked to decide which projects pass the 150 percent capacity threshold to reach the study stage. This prioritizes the projects being studied.

The scoring system uses metrics across commercial interest, project viability, and system need to rank projects with indicators in each of these categories below. Commercial interest points are given by load-serving entities (LSE), and other large electricity buyers and project viability are provided by project engineers.

Projects with the highest scores at each point of interconnection move to the next stage up to the 150 percent limit. As a note, because the 150 percent capacity is based on transmission constraints at each point of interconnection location, projects with the highest overall scores may not necessarily move forward, since some points of interconnection are more competitive than others.

The final step of IPE 3.0 modifies CAISO’s transmission plan deliverability (TPD). The TPD process allocates deliverability capacity for projects connecting to the grid. Projects must secure deliverability capacity to be eligible for resource adequacy, which is often important for project developers to secure project financing and buyers. Updating the TPD process was needed to align it with the other reforms and ensure that the most viable projects received deliverability capacity.

Has the new initiative been effective?

With the final step of IPE 3.0 approved only earlier last year, it’s difficult to fully assess the impact of the reforms. Broadly, the goals outlined at the outset—reducing project intake and queue management—have been successfully addressed. Cluster 15 has been reduced to a significantly more manageable number of projects that will go through the interconnection studies, and these projects are seemingly more viable by being further along in the development process. When the application window was initially opened in 2023, 541 projects totaling 347 GW were submitted. Following the implementation of the new process, 145 projects totaling 68 GW were passed to the stage for interconnection studies.

Cluster 15 is a good initial case study for the reforms. While generally a smooth process, there are a few notable issues that stand out:

1. Cluster 15 reveals the high variation of project scores that pass into the validation stage. Low scores were able to move to the next stage in some areas, whereas high scores did not pass in other areas depending on how competitive the area was and how much capacity was available.
   • Recommendation: More geographically granular data on transmission constraints would be useful for informing where projects could be sited. This would ensure that projects with higher scores, and are thus more viable, are being moved forward across the grid.
2. A notable number of projects were withdrawn after passing the 150 percent threshold stage. The number of projects decreased from 177 to 145 with an associated decrease of almost 30 percent of capacity. Even with the increased likelihood that these projects are completed, additional withdrawals could create concerns that CAISO is no longer moving enough projects forward.
   • Recommendation: The CAISO should consider another assessment window after projects are withdrawn to allow the next highest scoring projects to move through.
3. A potential deficiency in the process is an equity component to support environmental justice objectives. The scoring system does not consider and could even systemically disadvantage projects that serve these communities. For example, a recent petition at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission noted that Tribes face more financial challenges to obtaining the high commercial readiness deposits in the interconnection process. The scoring and ranking process under IPE 3.0 could systematically exclude projects that may not be as financially viable, but serve critical grid reliability needs of Tribal or disadvantaged communities.
   • Recommendation: Future IPEs should implement pathways to ensure equitable access in the interconnection process for all communities to access clean energy.

The IPE is an iterative process, and many of the initial reforms in IPE 3.0 triggered additional issues that need to be discussed. The next iteration, IPE 5.0, launched this past year to address new and lingering issues such as managing stagnant projects in the queue. This continued engagement is important to ensure the processes for connecting clean energy generation to the grid are evolving to match the clean energy needs of the state.

Across the country, grid operators are struggling to complete interconnection studies in a timely manner, and connect clean energy projects to the grid. With the current federal administration hostile to clean energy, states like California need to remain steadfast in the transition to a clean grid. CAISO’s interconnection reforms are an important step in accelerating that transition.

While it may not feel like Louisiana is teeming with data centers just yet, the boom in energy-hungry artificial intelligence is poised to change the landscape. We’re talking about multiple cities’ worth of electricity demand being added to the grid over the coming decade.

New modeling by the Union of Concerned Scientists has found that data center growth could leave Louisianans paying for billions of dollars in additional electricity system costs over the next 15 years. And under current policies, the AI facilities in the state are set to be powered largely by fossil fuels, bringing potentially billions of dollars in public health costs and tens of billions in global climate damages.

Preparation for this type of massive, yet highly uncertain, load growth requires careful attention by regulators and policymakers tasked with protecting the public. In other parts of the country, data centers have brought risks of costly and dangerous power outages while also raising utility bills at a time when energy costs are already rising for several other reasons. And depending on how data centers are powered, they can bring significant harms to public health and the global climate. Unfortunately, Louisiana’s current policies and regulatory approaches are not well set up to address the wide array of risks posed by the data center boom.

Fortunately, there are steps that policymakers and regulators, particularly the staff and elected officials at the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC), can take to protect their constituents from these risks and ensure that Big Tech’s burdens don’t fall on Louisiana residents and businesses. Let’s get into the details.

Data centers set to make Louisiana’s grid way more expensive

Depending on the extent of data center load growth, our findings show that over the next 15 years, Louisiana’s wholesale electricity system costs could be a cumulative $14 billion to $26 billion higher than they would be without data center growth. We call these the “Mid” and “High” data center growth scenarios, respectively. This analysis draws from state-level results from our Data Center Power Play report, a national-level study using the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) modeling framework that was released earlier this year.

Louisiana ratepayers are at risk of paying substantial electricity system costs caused by data centers. “Bulk” electricity system costs are only at the wholesale level. Calculation was done by comparing the Mid and High Data Center Growth scenarios with a No Data Center Growth counterfactual scenario. Source: UCS

These costs are only at the wholesale level—essentially, the costs to build and operate large-scale power plants and transmission lines. It doesn’t reflect ”ratemaking” at the LPSC, the process whereby those wholesale costs are allocated to residents and other businesses.

However, the dollar amount reflected on energy bills includes other costs as well, such as the utility company’s profit margin.  These additional costs are covered by retail ratepayers, like residents and businesses. And Louisiana does not have comprehensive protections to insulate ratepayers from data center-triggered costs. In fact, the LPSC’s recent fast-track approval pathway, established through the recent “Lightning Amendment,” clears the way for potentially more than half of such costs to be passed to other ratepayers.

Data centers’ projected impact on the average Louisiana utility bill is uncertain, because that depends so heavily on how the LPSC allocates the wholesale electricity system costs between different types of customers (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial). But with electricity system costs potentially $26 billion higher due to data center load, and without comprehensive protections in place for other ratepayers, Louisianans are at risk of substantially subsidizing—to the tune of billions of dollars—Big Tech’s AI ventures.

Status quo would keep Louisiana over-reliant on a single fossil fuel: gas

About 75% of Louisiana’s electricity generation is currently from fossil gas power plants, making it one of the most gas-reliant states in the nation. Our analysis shows that under current policies, the state will meet growing demand with even more gas. This includes demand from data center companies, which thus far have not made any attempt to plan for flexible operations (essentially reducing demand during times of grid stress) in an effort to reduce overall costs and the need for new fossil fuel plants.

Therefore, without policy changes, the Louisiana power grid’s overdependence on a single fossil fuel, gas, would sustain into at least the 2040s, making up roughly two-thirds of the electricity mix in our 2041 modeling results.

Under current policies, Louisiana is projected to stay overreliant on gas-fired electricity. Source: UCS

The unpredictable spikes in utility bills that Louisianans are all-too-familiar with would therefore continue, since utilities pass fuel cost increases directly to their customers. The latest spike was caused by Winter Storm Fern in January 2026, which sent gas prices soaring above $30 per million British Thermal Units (MMBtu)—the highest in at least 29 years. For perspective, the price was around $3 per MMBtu just a week earlier. Though the effect on utility bills is not yet clear, ratepayers will feel the impacts of those price increases in the coming months even if they use the same amount of power.

While short-term commodity price changes aren’t captured by long-term modeling frameworks like ReEDS, those spikes can still have significant real-world impacts on energy burdens.  Some Louisianans were paying bills in 2025 that were 29% higher than the year before due to increases in gas prices. And during a 2022 price spike, some customers were paying double the fuel charges—these days roughly 20-30% of a total bill—than they were paying the year before.

Diversifying away from price-volatile fossil fuels and toward zero-marginal-cost resources like wind and solar can help protect ratepayers from these types of bill increases. Otherwise, Louisiana households will continue to be forced to fund the unpredictable costs of utilities’ overreliance on those fuels, whose price is sensitive to an increasing number of extreme weather events, and global conflicts such as the wars in Ukraine and Iran. While the US has thus far been insulated from the latter in terms of gas prices, that is not all guaranteed to be the case as the war continues.

Data centers set to bring higher public health and climate damages           

Beyond utility bill increases, data centers are also set to trigger higher public health costs and climate damages from Louisiana’s gas plants. Our findings show that the public health damages could range from $1.5 billion to $3 billion from 2026-2041 due to increases in nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions, two pollutants that can cause respiratory and cardiac issues.  While these public health harms can cross state lines as pollutants flow downwind, the impacts are predominantly local.

Data centers drive billions of dollars in public health and climate damages as Louisiana relies on gas plants to meet growing electricity demand. Calculation was done by comparing the Mid and High Data Center Growth scenarios with a No Data Center Growth counterfactual scenario. Source: UCS

Over the same period, data center-driven increases in heat-trapping emissions from Louisiana fossil fuel plants could trigger $35 billion to $87 billion in global climate damages. While these damages are felt globally,  Louisiana already experiences a number of impacts that scientists expect to worsen as climate change continues, including hurricanes, heat waves, and sea level rise. It is therefore imperative that the state make concerted efforts to reduce both toxic air pollution like NO_x and SO₂, as well as heat-trapping emissions like carbon dioxide and methane.

But how much data center demand will actually come online?

One big question remains: how much data center growth is actually coming to Louisiana? The short answer: no one knows.

Regulated utilities have financial incentives to overestimate demand and overbuild, because they earn ratepayer-funded profits on capital infrastructure spending. We therefore have to take data center demand estimates from utilities with a skeptical eye.  

To account for the uncertainty, UCS ran multiple data center demand scenarios at the national level. Our “Mid Growth” scenario is in the range of other national-level studies. (See this blog for more on our latest national data center analysis.) However, in Louisiana specifically, looking at recent announcements in a vacuum makes the “High Growth” scenario seem far more likely, and maybe even conservative.

Our High Growth scenario projects about 5 GW of data center load added to Louisiana’s grid by 2041. Let’s compare this to Meta Platform’s plans for a new data center near Rayville, LA. The size of the data center expansion is thus far confidential, but Mark Zuckerburg said last year that the facility could grow to 5 GW, which would consume roughly six times the electricity as the entire city of New Orleans on an annual basis. Last year, the LPSC approved Entergy Louisiana’s application to build 2.3 gigawatts (GW) of gas capacity for this data center. And Entergy recently filed another LPSC application to build seven new gas plants totaling 5.2 GW on top of the already approved 2.3 GW, all for the expansion of Meta’s data center.

There’s much more to be said about this new application and who will end up covering the costs. But for now, I want to underscore the significant remaining uncertainty with the data center landscape in Louisiana and beyond, even as the press releases and LPSC applications make it all seem like a foregone conclusion.

To understand the uncertainty, we don’t have to look any farther than Meta itself. Right after Entergy got approval to build the first 2.3 GW of gas capacity for the data center, the tech giant fundamentally changed the financial structure of the planned AI facility. Meta offloaded 80% of the data center project ownership onto Blue Owl Capital—a much riskier company—and gave itself the option to exit the data center lease after just four years. The electricity infrastructure being built, meanwhile, will last for decades. Meta has financially shielded itself greatly, in no small part by getting a ratepayer guarantee of this long-lasting infrastructure.

Worries about an AI bubble bursting have only grown since UCS conducted this modeling in late 2025. These worries are due to a number of factors, including circular financing, lack of AI profitability in comparison to massive capital expenditures, private credit scares (of which Blue Owl is at the center), and now, Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

If the AI bubble isn’t bursting in the way some warn, and our High Growth scenario proves to be on the conservative side, then the need for safeguards is even more urgent, because the impacts will be that much greater. Policymakers at the LPSC should act now to protect communities from the wide array of risks stemming from the growth in data centers.

Looking ahead: better protections from data center threats are needed

As discussed above, we estimate that the growth in data centers could cause up to $26 billion in additional Louisiana electricity system costs between 2026 and 2041. The state would remain alarmingly overdependent on gas for its power sector needs, leaving ratepayers highly vulnerable to unpredictable price shocks. The additional pollution from these fossil fuel power plants specifically to serve data centers would trigger up to $3 billion in public health damages and up to $87 billion in global climate damages.

Fortunately, the commissioners at the LPSC have the ability to stave off a situation which is untenable for many of their constituents, particularly since an estimated 50% of households in the state are already financially struggling.

We recommend several reforms in our issue brief that would begin to put the state on a path toward a cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable electricity system. Included in these recommendations is an improved process for long-term utility resource planning, as well as comprehensive, mandatory ratepayer protections from data center-triggered costs.

We also recommend that the state take advantage of its significant clean resource potential, including by embracing long-range transmission planning by regional transmission grid operators MISO and SPP. Further, reforms are needed to enable a wider set of stakeholder voices to inform decisionmaking at the LPSC. For far too long, utilities have had disproportionate influence at the agency, and that is being perpetuated in part by low transparency and arbitrary barriers to participation.

The time is now for Louisiana utility regulators to protect their constituents from data center threats, and you can urge them to do so at this link. They should not continue to cater to Big Tech and utility company interests at communities’ expense.