Democrats’ state wins open the door for major clean energy progress

Democrats’ historic wins in Tuesday’s midterm elections will give them control of Congress and a chance to combat the Trump administration’s anti-climate agenda, but the president’s veto power will limit their options. 

At the state level, however, Democrats’ victories offer immediate opportunities to advance clean energy as well as energy affordability. 

Democrats flipped governor’s seats in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas — and likely Alaska. They won control of both houses of state legislatures in five states where they did not previously have it — Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and their chances are looking good in Arizona as well. Come January, Democrats will have trifectas — hold the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature — in 21 or more states, up from 16, adding at least Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Democrats also broke Republican trifectas in Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Texas. 

States hold significant power over key facets of energy policy, including what kinds of power plants utilities can build or must shut down, how energy-efficient buildings must be, and how much pollution industries can emit. 

“Almost every policy you can think of to decarbonize our economy, except maybe border adjustment taxes, can be done at a state level,” Jay Inslee, former governor of Washington state, said at a Wednesday press conference. His state has instituted some of the country’s most aggressive climate policies, including a carbon cap-and-invest regime, a 100% clean electricity standard, incentives for electric vehicles and EV chargers, and ​“the nation’s leading building code standards,” he said — all of which ​“could not be stopped by Donald Trump.” 

Washington is one of about two dozen states with some form of policy calling for electricity to be 100% renewable, carbon-free, or carbon-neutral in the coming years. Almost all these policies were enacted because Democrats held sufficient political power to overcome Republican opposition. 

When Democrats are in power at the state level, ​“we don’t even have to wait for Congress,” Inslee said. 

How states can shape energy and climate policy 

BloombergNEF highlighted this dynamic in a postelection memo, noting that newly empowered Democratic trifectas ​“should lead to policies boosting clean-tech sectors like renewables, energy storage, heat pumps and EVs.” Democratic state governments could also push through policies requiring data centers to use clean energy and curb costs for residents in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and measures that would boost solar and battery development in Arizona and Nevada. 

Some states that have already passed clean energy mandates are eyeing opportunities to go further. In Michigan, Democratic leaders are considering new climate and energy measures after fighting back efforts from House Republicans earlier this year to repeal the state’s 2040 target for 100% clean energy. 

In Minnesota, two years of partisan deadlock in the state House held back efforts to expand virtual power plants and legalize plug-in solar, according to advocates promoting those policies. Now, bills will have a better chance to move forward. 

Trish Demeter, managing director at clean energy trade group Advanced Energy United, highlighted other opportunities in a Thursday press conference, including in states where anger over data centers and rising utility bills has galvanized voters. 

She pointed to Pennsylvania, where clean energy boosters are pushing a reform package meant to streamline the state’s ​“complicated and burdensome siting and permitting regime for building new large-scale wind, solar, and batteries.” Similar reforms have been gaining traction in other states that are struggling to build clean energy to meet growing demand for power, although those efforts face pushback from local communities. 

Pennsylvania environmental groups are also tracking a dozen environmental or clean energy bills that have been blocked by Republicans in the state Senate. Among them are a legislative package backed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro that aims to impose pollution, clean-energy, and affordability requirements on data centers, and another that would expand access to distributed solar and other energy resources. 

In Wisconsin, where Democrats have regained their first trifecta in 16 years, climate advocates are pushing for policies that will constrain utility spending on fossil-fueled power plants to serve data centers and promote solar, wind, and batteries instead. To this end, Advanced Energy United is lobbying Wisconsin Democrats to impose more-stringent utility planning regimes.

The breaking of Republican trifectas in Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Texas could also ​“constrain those states’ support for fossil fuels and restrictions on clean power,” BloombergNEF wrote. Republicans in the Texas legislature have pushed a variety of pro–fossil fuel and anti–clean energy policies in recent years, though sometimes unsuccessfully. 

And in Georgia, Democratic candidates for the state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, won a 3–2 majority after two decades of Republican control. That could position the PSC to work with Democratic Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms to push utility Georgia Power to expand consumer access to rooftop solar and energy efficiency and to prioritize clean energy and batteries instead of fossil gas–fired power plants to serve uncertain data center demand.

It’s the affordability, stupid

Governors and state lawmakers are most directly responsible for dealing with public outrage over high and rising electricity costs. 

Last year, Democrats won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia in large part by committing to lowering utility bills, which they’ve sought to carry out in conjunction with aggressive climate programs. This year’s Democratic gubernatorial victors — including Bottoms of Georgia, Amy Acton of Ohio, and Gina Hinojosa of Texas — ran on promises to promote clean energy, bring down utility bills, and curb unchecked growth of power-hungry data centers. 

These issues have risen to the top of voters’ concerns, said Caroline Spears, executive director of Climate Cabinet, a group that supports state and local pro-climate candidates. Of the 120 candidates her group backed this year, 86 had won election, nine had lost, and 24 were too close to call as of Wednesday morning. 

“This was the affordability election,” she said during a press briefing her organization held. ​“Talking to voters across the country, utility bills, electricity prices, gas prices, affordability came up over and over and over.” 

She added, ​“The good news is that climate solutions and clean energy solutions and affordability are the same.” Solar, wind, and batteries are cheaper and can be built faster than gas-fired power plants, and have made up more than 90% of new additions to the grid in the past several years. 

The Trump administration has put its thumb on the scale for fossil fuels, weakening pollution restrictions on coal plants, forcing aging power plants to stay running, and directing massive investments to support new gas power plants, pipelines, and export terminals. But states regulate utilities that deliver electricity and gas to customers, and hold varying degrees of power to direct the mix of fossil-fueled and carbon-free resources those utilities rely on. 

State regulators ​“have a lot more control over the incentives to bring cheaper, cleaner sources on the grid than we do at the federal level,” U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat and outspoken climate champion, said at a press conference on Wednesday. ​“They’re the ones who set the interconnection rules. They’re in many cases the ones who are directly facilitating with the ISOs and RTOs,” the entities that oversee wholesale energy markets and regional grid operations for about two-thirds of the country. ​“They’re the ones who are making sure that you can actually monetize the value you create.” 

Most of the country’s utilities have been backsliding on their carbon-cutting commitments over the past two years, primarily by delaying the closure of coal plants and dramatically expanding plans to build new gas-fired power plants. That shift in utility priorities has been largely driven by the seemingly insatiable demand for electricity from AI data centers. 

But opposition to data centers was a decisive factor in races up and down the ballot. 

“Basically every sitting Dem governor or governor-elect embraced clean energy as a key guardrail against data center pollution,” Lori Lodes, president of Climate Power, a clean energy and climate advocacy group, said at a press event. She cited examples from the platforms of Nevada Governor-elect Aaron Ford and Wisconsin Governor-elect David Crowley, as well as Acton, Bottoms, and Hinojosa. 

“This is an issue that really defined affordability for folks, and governors, senators, House elect members, all saw it as a huge opportunity,” she said.