Homegrown Energy: A policy blueprint for energy affordability

Americans are facing a growing energy affordability crisis. Rising bills — driven by aging infrastructure, rapid data center growth, and fossil fuel volatility — are putting increasing strain on household budgets, and these pressures will only intensify as demand surges and gas system costs rise.

Addressing this challenge will require massive investment in the energy system. It also presents a generational choice: whether this spending reinforces a model that concentrates wealth among large energy and technology companies, or builds one that lowers costs, strengthens communities, and centers households.

That choice is already taking shape. Communities are increasingly wary of large-scale data center development that would drive up costs, consume land and water, and deliver few direct benefits. At the same time, utilities are projected to spend more than $1.4 trillion by 2030 to expand electricity and gas systems, costs that will ultimately flow to customer bills without deliberate policy intervention.1

Yet nearly 9 out of 10 single-family households are effectively blocked by current policy from accessing solutions that would lower their bills and give them greater control over their energy use: whole-home electrification, rooftop solar, and battery storage. The result is a misaligned system, where households are being asked to pay for a massive infrastructure buildout while being denied access to the very solutions that would help them save.