Trump’s Energy Chief Braces for Blame Over Price Hikes

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THE TOP FIVE

1. Energy Secretary: ‘We’re going to get blamed’ for energy price hikes

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump campaigned last year on slashing electricity rates by as much as half. His administration is now bracing for political blowback from the opposite effect — surging electricity rates as data centers drive up demand for an already limited supply, all while Congress and federal agencies curb development of the fastest-to-deploy solar and wind facilities. “The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told Politico during a visit to wind- and corn-rich Iowa. Yet, he added: “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We're going to get blamed because we're in office.”

Rising electricity prices are already emerging as a political issue ahead of upcoming elections, including in the New Jersey’s governor race, where rates soared by 20% in June. According to an Energy Innovation analysis of the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans and signed by Trump, wholesale electricity prices could rise by as much as 74% by 2035 as a result of the law.

2. Federal regulators let utilities recoup cost of Trump’s orders from ratepayers

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ruled that the utilities whose coal and gas-fired power stations are subject to Trump’s order to keep fossil fuel plants open could recoup the cost from ratepayers. The commission couched its decisions — which approved pathways for recovering costs from ratepayers, but did not yet greenlight rate hikes — largely on bureaucratic legal grounds, arguing that it’s “reasonable” to pass the costs along to households and businesses in the places where the electricity is used.

The ruling concerned two separate cases, and the panel’s decision diverged somewhat between them. In a case involving the PJM Interconnection, FERC gave permission to spread the costs around the nation’s largest grid system. In another involving the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator, the regulator approved concentrating the cost recovery around Michigan, where the coal in question is located. FERC rejected questions about easing the cost to consumers with rebates as “beyond the scope” of the narrow proceedings. As a next step, the utilities that operate the plants will still need to come back to FERC for permission to hike rates on the grounds the two rulings set out.

3. Pro-renewables Republicans warm to Trump’s Treasury guidance

It could have been worse. The Treasury guidance issued Friday dictating what wind and solar projects will be eligible for federal tax credits could have effectively banned developers from tapping the write-offs set to start phasing out next July. In the weeks before the Internal Revenue Service released its rules, GOP lawmakers from states with thriving wind and solar industries, including Senators John Curtis of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, publicly lobbied for laxer rules as part of what they pitched as the all-of-the-above “energy dominance” strategy on which Trump campaigned. Grassley went so far as to block two of Trump’s Treasury nominees “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent,” as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin covered earlier in August.

Since the guidance came out on Friday, both Grassley and Curtis have put out positive statements backing the plan. “I appreciate the work of Secretary [Scott] Bessent and his staff in balancing various concerns and perspectives to address the President’s executive order on wind and solar projects,” Curtis said, according to E&E News. Calling renewables “an essential part of the ‘all of the above’ energy equation,” Grassley’s statement said the guidance “seems to offer a viable path forward for the wind and solar industries to continue to meet increased energy demand” and “reflects some of the concerns Congress and industry leaders have raised.”

4. Danish wind giant secures a major U.S. deal despite Trump pushback

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas secured one of its largest orders ever — 950 megawatts of turbines — despite the Trump administration’s aggressive pushback against wind projects in the U.S. The backers of the new development, described as a tech giant, haven’t yet been revealed, according to the news site The Danish Dream. But the company’s stock soared on Monday after Treasury’s guidance proved less punitive than some had anticipated. Just last week, Vestas finance chief Jakob Wegge-Larsen told the trade publication Recharge that demand from data centers would buoy the wind industry despite the political headwinds.

5. EPA chief fuels fears of lithium battery fires

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin returned to his native Long Island Monday to hold a press conference with opponents of battery energy storage systems who object to the clean energy technology on safety grounds. In a press release, the agency said battery fires “have raised legitimate safety concerns from communities nationwide, especially in metropolitan areas.” New York has relatively little battery capacity compared to states with more wind and solar generation, and just last month put out its first bulk order for energy storage. But Zeldin accused the state of promoting batteries as a “partisan push to fill yet another delusional ‘green goal’” and putting “the safety and well-being of New Yorkers second to their climate change agenda,” and complained that New York had “banned the safe extraction of natural gas.”

In January, a large battery fire ignited at the battery facility of the Moss Landing Power Plant in Monterrey, California, spreading to roughly 100,000 lithium-ion modules at the station. The accident and resulting pollution fallout from the fire has since spurred a nationwide backlash to batteries, as my colleague Jael Holzman has written. Zeldin on Monday also touted new EPA safety guidance for grid-scale batteries, calling on developers to put in place “clear and comprehensive incident response plans.”

THE KICKER

The United Kingdom’s famously overcast skies aren’t keeping the country from hitting new solar power milestones. Solar power generation in Britain so far this year surpassed the total for 2024 as panel installations have continued to grow this year. The country has produced more than 14 terawatt-hours of electricity from solar this year as of August 16, about one-third higher than this point last year, according to a Financial Times analysis of University of Sheffield data. That’s enough to power 5.1 million homes for a year, or the entire London Underground for more than a decade.