The Road to Energy Affordability Goes Through the Governor’s Mansion
This election season, energy affordability is among the headline issues for voters, who will soon cast ballots in three dozen governors’ races across the country. As the centers of gravity in their states, governors are under immense pressure to address rising energy costs. How they choose to address this issue has the potential to drive meaningful policy changes in the energy industry.
This was a key focus of Advanced Energy United’s conversations during Climate Week NYC, where United served as a Presenting Sponsor for Canary Media’s “Rural America & the Clean Energy Transition” Summit on Tuesday. The summit brought together leaders from across the industry to explore the issues shaping the next chapter of the energy transition, particularly for rural communities, through a variety of main-stage conversations and breakout sessions.
During our hosted breakout session, United President and CEO Heather O’Neill joined former Washington Governor Jay Inslee for a one-on-one discussion about the critical role governors should take in tackling rising energy costs and the actions state leaders can take to deliver more affordable energy.
At United, engaging governors and candidates for governor has long been a core part of our organization’s work. As Heather said during the discussion, “For about a decade now, we at United have been educating not just sitting governors, but also candidates for governor and their staff, about what’s possible.”
Last election cycle, United successfully engaged then-candidates Spanberger and Sherrill, and this year United has scaled that work through the development and release of a dozen State Policy Roadmaps, outlining actions incoming and incumbent governors can take to address growing energy demand, rising costs, and reliability challenges. United is sharing those recommendations directly with gubernatorial candidates and their teams and will continue that engagement with newly elected administrations.
Each of the roadmaps is grounded in the framework of our Advocacy Playbook and details how governors can meet the moment by leveraging advanced energy solutions to meet growing energy demand reliably, affordably, and cleanly:
- Achieve energy abundance via fair competition, better planning, and less red tape;
- Make the grid work for consumers; and
- Reform the system to orient around lowering bills, increasing innovation, and improving governance.
Put simply: “Build It. Make It Flexible. Make It Affordable.”
This same framing shaped Heather’s conversation with Governor Inslee. During the session, Inslee, who now consults with state leaders through the State Power Project to advance policy action for a more affordable economy powered by clean energy, shared what he has been hearing in his own conversations with governors and candidates. His message emphasized the role states can play in bringing lower-cost energy resources online and addressing the barriers that make new projects harder to build. Governor Inslee’s message: “if you build it, they will vote!”
The theme of the event, rural America’s role in America’s energy transition, remained top of mind throughout the conversation. As Heather noted, the discussion may have been taking place in one of the least rural places in the country, but much of the infrastructure needed to meet America’s growing electricity demand will be built in rural communities. That makes working with landowners and local communities essential as new energy projects move forward.
Heather pointed to United member Pattern Energy’s SunZia project as an example, calling it both a success story and a cautionary tale. The major transmission and renewable energy project connects New Mexico and Arizona, bringing significant infrastructure and economic investment to the region. Its lengthy development process also illustrates the challenge ahead of finding ways to build needed infrastructure more quickly while meaningfully engaging the stakeholders where projects are located.
Those projects can also require coordination that extends beyond state borders. Heather highlighted United’s previous work with Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham calling for greater interstate cooperation on transmission development, and our work supporting the Western Governors Association’s energy superabundance initiative, including the creation of a cross-state permitting take force, which underscores how state leadership can help move shared energy priorities forward.
Following the breakout session, Heather brought the affordability conversation to the main stage. In her keynote, she broadened the focus from what governors can do to what it will take to build an energy system capable of keeping pace with growing demand without putting additional strain on consumers.
She highlighted an approach for a more flexible, resilient, and cost-effective grid that can deliver reliable, affordable power to communities across the country, including rural households. Her message reinforced a message that ran throughout United’s participation in the summit: meeting growing demand means getting more out of the grid we already have and expanding access to technologies that give consumers greater flexibility in how and when they use energy.
Taken together, the conversations throughout the summit underscored why affordability has become so central to United’s work and why states will play such an important role in what comes next. Governors can influence how quickly new resources come online, how effectively states use existing infrastructure, and how communities experience the benefits of a changing energy system.
Thank you to Governor Inslee for joining us, and to the Canary Media team for bringing together leaders from across the industry and providing a forum for these discussions during Climate Week NYC.
Access our State Policy Roadmaps to see our recommendations for governors and state decision-makers across the country.