- Utility bills are rising at double the rate of inflation. A big part of the solution is adding more generation capacity, and renewables appear to be the fastest and cheapest way to do that.
- In a Newsday piece, a national green bank executive notes that the Department of Energy says it supports “all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.” So why not more backing for solar and wind?
- South Dakota erects obstacles to prevent farmers from using their own land to produce solar energy as the federal government terminates a $7 billion solar program.
- A right-of-center think tank fellow says energy sources should compete without subsidies or roadblocks.
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What Should America Do About Soaring Utility Bills? More Electricity Generation Is a Big Part of the Answer
Americans are growing more and more concerned about soaring utility bills. A PowerLines survey found that 73% of respondents were very concerned or somewhat concerned about their electric and gas bills rising this year. And 63% say that utility bills “add to my financial stress.”
An article in The Hill on Sept. 9 concluded that “rising power prices are becoming a political liability for Republicans as electricity costs outpace inflation.”
But Republicans have a different take. They say that policies during the Biden Administration to encourage renewables and retire fossil-fuel plants are at fault. A Sept. 29 Wall Street Journal editorial called electricity prices a “political flashpoint” and pointed to the New Jersey U.S. Senate race. The Journal blamed “federal emissions regulations, the state’s renewable energy mandate and rich green-energy subsidies [that] have made baseload nuclear and coal plants uneconomic. Five large coal plants and one nuclear reactor in the state have shut down since 2017.”
What is certain is that bills are rising. In our last newsletter, we noted that PowerLines reported that “utility rate increases requested and approved totaled…$29 billion in the first half of 2025.” That’s a record. During the same period last year, the figure was $12 billion.
Take a look at this graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It shows that in the past five years the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for electricity has risen from an index of 214 to 294, an increase of 37.4%. That’s about 10 points more than the overall CPI.
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The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for electricity jumped 6.4% in the year ending Aug. 31, compared with 2.9% for inflation in general. Residential electricity prices are forecast to rise another 15% to 40% by 2030.
As the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) explained in May: “Much of the recent and forecasted growth in electricity consumption is coming from the commercial sector, which includes data centers, and the industrial sector, which includes manufacturing establishments.”
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association reports that U.S. electricity demand will rise 50% by 2050, powered by “300% projected growth in data center energy consumption over next 10 years” and “9000% projected growth in E-mobility power consumption through 2050.”
U.S. electricity demand was flat for two decades. It started rising around 2021, and the EIA now expects average growth from the commercial sector of 2.6% annually and from the industrial sector of 2.1%. Supply – that is, the capacity to generate power – will have to meet the rising demand. If not, consumers will suffer from even higher prices and from unreliable power generation. The Department of Energy (DOE) in July predicted that “blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030.”
The Washington Post reported a year ago, “In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.”
The electric grid needs updating, but a big part of the solution is to increase America’s capacity to generate electricity. Deloitte estimates that “investments could total US$1.4 trillion from 2025 to 2030—with similar expenditures until about 2050.”
But, strangely enough, the Trump Administration is discouraging the fastest and cheapest way to add power, which is through the use of solar and wind energy.
Americans may be surprised to learn that solar has been by far the most popular way for the U.S. to add power since 2020. Solar capacity has risen by 75 gigawatts (GW) over the last four years, compared with 25 GW for natural gas and a loss of almost 50 GW for coal.
The reason is not subsidies. Solar is being added because the cost of photovoltaic cells has plummeted, as has the cost of batteries to store the energy that those cells produce so that it can be used when the sun isn’t shining. Solar voltaic cell costs have dropped 90% in the past decade, and the cost of a turnkey battery storage system fell 40% in 2024 alone, according to BloombergNEF.
It is no wonder that in the first year of the second Trump Administration, another 52 GW of capacity will be added from solar and battery power, compared with 5 GW from natural gas and zero from coal.
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As we have reported in the past, the investment firm Lazard’s latest Levelized Cost of Energy Report, which compares energy sources for new-build power generation on an unsubsidized (that is, no tax breaks) basis, found, “Renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation. As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. This is particularly true in the current high power demand environment, where renewables stand out as both the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy generation resource.”
Bloomberg NEF, in its own study of unsubsidized power, projects that onshore wind generation costs will fall by more than one-fourth by 2035, solar will drop one-third, and battery storage by half.
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Generate: Intelligence, the newsletter of Generate Capital, using data from Bloomberg, NextEra and Wood Mackenzie, recently estimated costs of different unsubsidized generation resources in 2030. The expense for a megawatt hour of electricity using solar plus battery power was $58 to $97; for onshore wind plus storage, $54 to $72; for combined cycle gas turbine, which generates electricity using heat exhaust to steam that then drives a separate steam turbine, $85 to $115.
Texas, the number-one producer of oil and natural gas and certainly not a state where elected officials are fierce advocates of mitigating climate change, has become the leader in adding solar and wind power, as this Sept. 19 graphic from Reuters shows. ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, reports that between January and August of this year, wind and solar generated almost as much power as natural gas.
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Texans know energy, and they have increased the amount of ERCOT’s clean-power capacity by one-fourth since 2022 in the wake of the disaster of Winter Storm Uri, which killed more than 200 when the grid failed in February 2021.
Lazard’s point about “quickest to deploy” is important as well. Building a new natural gas power plant or expanding an old one is an expensive, time-consuming proposition today. Utility Dive reported on Sept. 5, “Over the last few years, the wait time for a large gas turbine has increased from around two-and-a-half or three years to as long as seven years. Data center construction is driving a lot of gas turbine demand.”
While turbine makers GE Verona, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, and Siemens are expanding their facilities, the order backlog for gas turbines remains stubborn, said Utility Dive. Partly as a result, Ampacity, a utility construction firm, says that solar and energy storage are “twice as fast to deploy compared with competing types of generation.”
John Ketchum, the CEO of NextEra, the third-largest U.S. utility and the number-one user of natural gas to create electricity, said earlier this year, “You can build a wind project in 12 months, a storage facility in 15, and…a solar project in 18 months.” A new gas-fired power plant will take seven or eight years.
In addition, renewables are well-suited to use as distributed energy resources (DERs), that is, smaller-scale facilities usually situated near sites of electricity use, such as community solar, which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explains here. “Rapid expansion” of DERs “is transforming not only the way electricity is generated, but also how it is traded, delivered and consumed,” reports the International Energy Agency.
DOE and the White House readily acknowledge that the U.S. is facing a new energy crisis. As a presidential action of Jan. 20 stated:
We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness…. Our Nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes.
The situation this summer was so dire that the DOE ordered the delayed retirement of coal plants and oil generators to manage demand peaks. In August, the department even extended until November three previous orders that kept open fossil-fuel plants in Puerto Rico, Michigan and Pennsylvania to provide emergency back-up power.
Renewable energy is poised to help solve the crisis, but, instead, solar and wind are being blamed for causing it. On a September trip, Secretary Wright attacked European nations for moving toward more use of wind power, which he said was responsible for high energy prices.
“We don’t want to be in the race for the most expensive electricity in the world. “We want to be in the race for the most affordable electricity in the world,” Wright said earlier this month after the Administration said it was cancelling $679 million in federal funding for ports to support the country's offshore wind industry – part of a broader campaign against offshore wind by President Trump.
The New York Times quoted Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor of energy at Princeton University, as calling Wright’s assertion that wind and solar had led to higher electricity prices in the United States as false. “There’s no evidence for that,” Jenkins said, adding that in many parts of the country, the opposite was true, with renewables lowering the cost of electricity.
According to Jenkins, “What they’re doing right now is making it much, much, much harder than necessary to build economically competitive wind and solar resources across the U.S., while going out and saying all kinds of things in public that just aren’t true about them.”
The animosity toward solar and wind at a time of crisis is bewildering to many observers. The Administration also cancelled a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, the largest transmission line in the U.S., at a time when new energy capacity, mostly solar, is waiting in long queues to get on the grid. Policies in the reconciliation bill that was signed in July are “expected to more than halve the amount of clean energy built over the next decade,” reports Canary Media. The White House also said in August that it was terminating the billion Solar for All program despite billions of dollars slated for Republican states (see below).
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was expected to bring 155 MW of capacity online by 2030, but tax credits were cut. Projects can still qualify for the credits as long as they begin operating before the end of 2027 or start construction by next July 4.
In a comprehensive article on Sept. 25, the Washington Post’s Nicolas Rivero probed “Why the White House is abandoning solar,” as the headline put it. He started by noting that Wright “has said solar panels are ‘just a parasite’ on the grid that couldn’t power the planet even if they blanketed the entire surface of the Earth. The Energy Department’s X account — which once cheered solar projects during the Biden administration — now says solar panels are ‘essentially worthless when it is dark outside.’”
Neither of those claims are true. In 2021, the World Economic Forum reported a study showed that putting solar panels on half the world’s rooftops would meet global electricity needs. And, of course, storing solar energy in batteries makes power available at night – one reason Texas has become “the fastest growing battery storage market,” according to its state Comptroller.
In a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 23, however, President Trump told world leaders that “the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet.”
He posted on Truth Social on Aug. 20: “Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS. THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA.”
Correlation, of course, is not causation, and the relationship between utility rates and renewables use is not so simple. For example, according to EIA, Iowa generates 59% of its electricity from wind, more than any other state. The latest data from EIA show that the average utility expense for Iowans per kilowatt hour is 11.94 cents, compared with a U.S. average of 14.38 cents. Number-two for wind is South Dakota (see below), which generates 81% of its electricity from renewables, and has utility cost of just 12.30 cents.
The real question is how to hold down electricity costs going forward.
In February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin seemed to approve of renewables when he designated one of his five pillars for “Powering the Great American Comeback”:
Pursuing energy independence and energy dominance will cut energy costs for everyday Americans who are simply trying to heat their homes and put gas in their cars. This will also allow our nation to stop relying on energy sources from adversaries, while lowering costs for hardworking middle-income families, farmers, and small business owners. I look forward to working with the greatest minds driving American innovation, to ensure we are producing and developing the cleanest energy on the planet.
Renewable energy appears to meet these qualifications. It is homegrown and lowers costs, and it is the cleanest source of generation.
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In a Newsday Opinion Piece, the Coalition for Green Capital’s CEO Argues That Renewables Like Solar Are the ‘Best Way to Solve the Power Crisis’
A guest essay in Newsday on Sept. 2 carried the headline, “The best way to solve the power crisis is with renewables like solar energy.” The author was the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), Richard Kauffman, who previously served as chairman of energy and finance for the state of New York.
In Newsday, Zeldin’s hometown newspaper, Kauffman began by quoting the DOE’s July report (see above) as saying that “a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply [are] threatening America’s energy security.” The CGC chief also noted that the DOE said it was committed to “all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.”
Renewables fit that definition, yet, as Kauffman wrote in the Long Island, NY, publication, “The Trump Administration has taken steps to boost coal and discourage what can be the cheapest and fastest solution to adding electricity capacity: solar, wind and batteries to store power for when it’s needed most.” Kauffman added:
Many Washington officials still see renewable energy as a luxury. That is an outmoded view. Solar and wind mitigate the effects of a changing climate, but think of that as a bonus. Renewables offer energy that can be transformed into electric power more quickly and less expensively than other sources.
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In South Dakota, Multiple Obstacles Are Blocking Solar Power
The Trump Administration has taken action to terminate $7 billion in funding for solar projects in every state, as we noted above. But the federal government isn’t the only obstacle to the adoption of renewable energy. On Sept. 10, The Guardian, a British publication with global reach, related the story of a South Dakota farmer who wanted to install solar panels on his land to earn extra income. The property was his own, but local residents and political activists stopped him.
“Unless you’re a farmer, a hunter or a fisher, there’s really nothing to do in this area,” said Colton Berens, a 33-year-old US army veteran and fourth-generation farmer in Walworth County. So not many people his age stick around. “However,” said the Guardian piece, “when Doral Renewables, an Israeli-owned energy company, contacted his family in 2022 with a proposal to build a 3,200-acre (1,295-hectare) solar array on the Berens’ property, Colton saw a chance for his family to benefit – as well as an opportunity to breathe life into his ‘dying’ community.”
The project would have generated about $1 million in annual tax revenue split between the county and its school. Doral also agreed to upgrade roads in the area and plant native grasses under the panels for sheep.
Wrote reporter Stephen Robert Miller: “Once news of the proposal spread, what the family believed to be its private business became a heated, county-wide argument that ultimately killed the promise of solar in Walworth county.” The story is not unique. Miller reported:
Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, Republican districts across the country have received about $200bn in clean energy investment. And yet many red communities have also joined a rising tide of resistance against the growth of clean energy. By the end of 2024, according to researchers at Columbia Law School, at least 459 counties and municipalities across 44 states had severely restricted renewable energy through things like buffer requirements, fees and bans that limit what their neighbors can do with their land.
South Dakota gets only 2% of its electricity from solar power but 59% from wind, so it is not a state that lacks understanding of the value of renewables. The Berens project did win some local support, but “a vocal opposition won out – complaining that such a large installation would visually mar the agrarian landscape and relying heavily on alarming misinformation.”
Late last year, the county adopted an ordinance that requires solar panels be at least a mile from any occupied dwelling and 1,000 feet from a property line, wrote Miller. “These restrictions, which are stricter than the state’s regulations, not only quashed the Berens’ project, but stamped out almost any hope that utility-scale solar could bring this economically depressed community in the future.”
In May, President Trump ordered the US Department of Agriculture to withhold federal funding for solar panels on productive farmland and asked state and local governments to do the same. “Those big solar fields, they’re taking our farmland. Our farmers are, like, mortified by it. They hate it,” he said later.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who is now U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, had opted out of the EPA’s Solar For All (SFA) program in 2023, so unlike many states, including those with Republican governors and legislatures, South Dakota did not have a government-run SFA program.
On Aug. 8, the EPA announced it was terminating the SFA program. EPA Administrator Zeldin stated: "The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included a $7 billion pot called 'Solar for All.' ... The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive."
The decision followed a March announcement by EPA that ended a pause ordered by President Trump when he took office. But five months later, the policy was reversed.
Across the country, projects were left stranded. Texas, with a Republican governor and legislature, received a $250 million grant, which would have been used in 10 municipalities around the state to reduce household energy bills. “Left in limbo are programs to provide rooftop solar on low-income single-family homes in Waco, bring community solar to Brownsville, install battery storage in Houston to serve neighborhoods during power outages and train solar technicians in Dallas,” reported the Texas Tribune.
Meanwhile, according to WHRO public radio, “Virginia’s impressive climb could slow dramatically” with the decision by the EPA to “cancel $156 million in grant funds for Virginia under Solar for All, a program geared for low- to moderate-income households.”
In Virginia, which is the number-one state for data centers, “utility-scale solar barely registered before 2020,” but the state “now ranks in the top 10 nationwide for total installed capacity, according to Solar Energy Industries Association statistics. The 7,133 MW up and running are enough to power 817,000 homes. Almost 9% of the state’s electricity now comes from the sun.”
SFA would have added to that total – and so would projects that have been slashed under the July federal budget reconciliation Big Beautiful Bill. That legislation “would squelch the anticipated development of 15 gigawatts of solar capacity and 1.1 GW of battery capacity by 2035,” the article stated.
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Solar and Wind ‘Only Produce Electricity,’ But Is That a Problem?
The Rivero piece in the Washington Post (see above) contained views from experts that are worth quoting.
For example, Secretary Wright noted that “one of the big problems with solar and wind is they only produce electricity,” Wright said. “Today, 15 percent of energy in manufacturing comes from electricity, same as it was 25 years ago.”
That may be true, but electricity prices are what are rising rapidly. Also, because of AI and robotics alone, the situation is rapidly changing.
“One hundred fifty years ago, zero percent of our energy consumption was coming from electricity, roughly,” said Josiah Neeley, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank. “A lot of [energy] consumption that isn’t electricity-based right now could move over to being electricity-based.” Neeley added:
If Secretary Wright has confidence that fossil or thermal is the answer and that solar power is not going to succeed, then you don’t have to try and support fossil and place restrictions on solar. Just let them compete and that’s what will happen.
Robert Stavins, the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard University who has generally centrist views, called the U.S. an “outlier” on solar. “The European Union is going forward. China is going forward. India has not changed its position. Brazil is moving forward. So, the U.S. is really an exception.”
Elon Musk, the former head of the U.S. DOGE Service, posted on X in June, “Solar power is so obviously the future for anyone who can do elementary math.” Wright responded on a podcast that Musk “has a wildly exaggerated view of where solar and batteries will go. If we could make a bet 50 years out, I’ll make a bet solar never gets to 10 percent of global energy.”
Rivero notes that “Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, argued that the Trump administration’s meddling in the energy market is a mirror image of the Biden administration’s moves to block fossil fuel projects.”
He said, “The pearl clutching has been ironic to me because it’s like, ‘Hey guys, this has been the ballgame from the left for decades now,’” Fisher said. “So, the fact that it’s now the ballgame from the right — I’m not wild about it, but there’s a sense of irony that comes with it.”
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