America’s aging power grid has faced strain for years, exacerbated by severe weather events, an explosion of data centers and the demand created by artificial intelligence.
Now, electricity is emerging as a top issue on the campaign trail.
Campaigns in this fall’s races for New Jersey and Virginia governors, as well as candidates in the upcoming midterms, are taking note of surging utility bills, in the latest sign that affordability has become central to campaigns at all levels.
In her first general election campaign ad, US Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in New Jersey, declares that on “Day One as governor, I’m declaring a state of emergency on utility costs, using emergency powers to end these rate hikes and drive down your bills.”
Jack Ciattarelli, Sherrill’s GOP opponent, unveiled his own first-day plan calling for more energy generation.
“We need to expand our nuclear capabilities in South Jersey, we need to accelerate solar, we can’t rely on wind,” Ciattarelli said on Fox News recently, laying blame with the outgoing Democratic administration of Gov. Phil Murphy.
Three leading Democratic organizations spent $8 million on an August ad campaign that linked rising electricity bills to GOP policymaking, arguing that the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” passed this summer “removes clean energy from the electric grid, creating a massive rate hike on electricity.”
Americans for Prosperity, a leading conservative group, launched a seven-figure ad campaign urging lawmakers “to unleash America’s energy potential by cutting red tape and eliminating counterproductive regulations.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has acknowledged the looming challenge both for power generation and for Republicans politically.
“It’s what I worry about most seven days a week,” he told Fox Business. “We want to stop the rise in electricity for Americans.”
Speaking to Politico, Wright was even more frank.
“Who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”
The Department of Energy, meanwhile, blamed the Biden administration’s policies for driving up electricity prices, and pointed to its efforts to “meet this rising power demand, fueled in part by the buildout of AI and data centers.”
“With President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Energy is reversing course: Ending subsidies that supported more expensive, less reliable energy, reversing policies that forced the premature closure of baseload power sources and expanding access to affordable, reliable, secure energy 24/7,” said Emery Washington, a spokesperson for the department.
“DOE is pursuing a strategy of energy addition—reforming costly permitting processes, keeping base load power online, and building more energy infrastructure needed to keep the lights and energy prices low for the American people.”
Demonstrators rally in opposition to a plan by Elon Musks’s xAI to use gas turbines for a new data center, ahead of a public comment meeting on the project in Memphis, Tennessee on April 25. – Brandon Dill for The Washington Post/Getty Images
The power problem
The cost of power has set a record for two consecutive years in the country’s largest grid, covering a wide swath of competitive political territory that includes parts of Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey.
According to a May report from the US Energy Information Administration, “retail electricity prices have increased faster than the rate of inflation since 2022, and we expect them to continue increasing through 2026.”
The EIA separately noted this summer that “residential electricity prices in the Pacific, Middle Atlantic, and New England census divisions—regions where consumers already pay much more per kilowatt hour for electricity—could increase more than the national average.”
A big reason why is data centers. Campuses are springing up across the country, powering artificial intelligence technology and offering sought-after economic development. Their energy needs are enormous, however, with some data centers drawing as much power as 800,000 homes.
A data center owned by Amazon Web Services, front right, is under construction next to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania, on January 14. – Ted Shaffrey/AP
In Virginia – dubbed by one state industry group as the “data center capital of the world” – data centers consumed nearly a quarter of the electricity generated in the state in 2023, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent nonprofit.
A report from the Department of Energy last year, meanwhile, estimated that data center energy use “is projected to double or triple by 2028.”
Spiking demand is driving bills up for individuals. In New Jersey, residential rates have climbed by up to 20%, and the tri-state Regional Plan Association found that “increased demand from data centers is attributed to about two-thirds of the increased prices.”
It’s also putting tremendous pressure on power grids that are already strained. According to another Energy Department report, “our aging infrastructure is struggling to meet our modern electricity needs,” and “70 percent of transmission lines are over 25 years old.” Studies from Pennsylvania State University and Columbia University have also linked grid vulnerabilities to increasing severe weather events.
According to an analysis from Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank, power generation capacity could fall by 340 gigawatts by 2035, with one gigawatt being enough to power up to 1 million homes, while household energy costs could increase $170 annually due to the lost subsidies resulting from the “One, Big Beautiful Bill” passed over the summer.
Mikie Sherrill, left, and Jack Ciattarelli. – Reuters/AP
The campaigns respond
Democrats argue that surging demand validates their support for alternative energy sources, pointing to President Donald Trump and Republicans slashing clean energy tax credits and canceling work on a nearly complete wind farm in Rhode Island. Republicans say it’s all the more reason to deregulate and ramp up fossil-fuel production.
Sherrill is positioning herself in the debate. “New Jersey isn’t generating even close to enough in-state power to keep costs low, and we risk missing the clean energy targets that we need to protect our environment for generations to come. I’m not going to accept that,” she wrote in her “Day One Declaration” plan.
Ciattarelli also called out high electricity costs in his first general election campaign ad, pushing back on his rival’s critiques. “All Mikie Sherrill wants to talk about is President Trump. Come on, what does the president have to do with rising property taxes and higher electricity bills?” he says. “I’ll lower electricity bills.”
Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, unveiled a suite of policy proposals aimed at lowering energy costs, including a focus on local generation, weatherization, and regulatory reform. Notably, Spanberger’s plan referenced “making sure data centers don’t drive up energy costs for everyone else in Virginia.”
Additionally, Spanberger and a few others have made the connection between AI data centers and spiking electricity bills. It opens a fraught debate about the rising cost of electricity to operate a technology, artificial intelligence, that could threaten some voters’ jobs.
And the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, a branch of the leading environmental group, is up with an ad blaming Republicans for higher bills, saying “big energy is raising prices” and arguing that “Virginia Republicans are helping big corporations rip you off.”
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