Green Groups’ Election Takeaway: Focus on Trump Energy Agenda Costs

Democratic victories across the electoral map Tuesday affirmed for climate action advocates that high energy costs are a huge vulnerability for President Donald Trump and his allies—one they plan to use as they fight his agenda and work to flip control of Congress next year.

“The energy affordability crisis is a seismic event that will shape next year’s elections and beyond,” wrote Sara Schreiber, senior vice president of campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, in a post-election memo.

LCV’s state affiliates invested $7 million in taking the “clean energy is cheaper energy” message to voters in Georgia, New Jersey and Virginia. “This election was a decisive rejection of the Trump Administration’s ban on clean energy, multi-million dollar taxpayer bailouts for expensive dirtier energy sources like coal, and other ineffective proposals that will make costs go even higher,” Schreiber wrote.

The Democratic victors tapped into voter frustration about high electricity prices, while championing clean energy as part of the solution. U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill launched her successful campaign for New Jersey governor with a promise to freeze utility bills and accelerate solar power in the state, while former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger sailed to victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial race by pledging to lower energy bills and help the state’s offshore wind industry past the recent blockades Trump has erected.

Electricity bills across the nation were rising before Trump took office and the reasons for the run-up are complex—they include increased capital and equipment costs and rising demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. But environmental advocates argue that Trump’s policies are making things worse, for example, by ordering costly old coal plants to keep running while stifling offshore wind and other new clean energy development that could help meet demand.

“Voters understand that if you’re taking energy off the grid, that is not a good solution to energy costs,” said Jack Pratt, political director for EDF Action, the political advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Clearly, utility bills have become a big issue in these elections. And, I don’t think that the Trump agenda provides believable answers for voters.”

Nowhere was the issue of high energy costs more directly on the ballot than in Georgia, where a state utility regulator race took on national significance. Democratic candidates ousted two Republicans from their seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, campaigning against a series of recent rate hikes the commission approved for the state’s largest utility, Georgia Power. Democrats Peter Hubbard, a clean energy consultant, and Alicia Johnson, a health executive, embarked on a “My Power Bill’s Too High” tour across the state to rally supporters behind the idea of transforming the commission and the state’s energy mix.

Hubbard and Johnson are the first Democrats to win a state-level office in a statewide election in Georgia since 2006. Democrats are hoping that their victories are a bellwether of the party’s chances in the state next year, when Sen. Jon Ossoff is running for re-election and Georgia will choose a new governor. But environmental advocates also see the races as showing their own pathway forward.

“I think we’re in a position right now where the economics of clean energy are politically advantageous for a movement in a way they haven’t been before,” said Jed Ober, a longtime political operative who just took over as leader of the NRDC Action Fund, the political advocacy arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We have a real message that is based in sound policy—that clean energy brings costs down.”