This week’s conversation is with Arnab Pal, executive director of Deploy Action, president of Clean Infrastructure Advisors, and former principal advisor at the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office under the Biden administration alongside Jigar Shah.
I reached out to Pal for guidance on where he saw state-level policy going around renewables development after the 2026 blue wave election. Simply put, few could’ve provided better guidance. We have no idea what could happen next after an unprecedented election result, but he couldn’t have been more clear-eyed and, as he put it to me, focused on the future. I appreciated our conversation and decided it was worthwhile to provide it to you in full.
The following transcript was lightly edited for clarity.
When it comes to state policy, what opportunities are created by this blue wave election?
I think this opens up a bunch of possibilities but I also think we also need to be very careful in understanding what the election was about in terms of what we focus on in the energy sector. The focus was on affordability. That was the number one message. On electricity, housing, gas.
The problems I see from these wave elections is that somebody wins — a party, an ideology — after campaigning on something and then they govern on something completely different. The message to take away here is, people can’t afford their day-to-day lives. What we’re working on at Deploy Action and other groups focused on electricity and energy, we’re all really focusing on the issue of consumer protection and affordability. We should not try to package in our own individual goals and call it affordability.
One of the starkest results, at least to me, was what happened in states where permitting had been streamlined for renewable energy — Wisconsin, Michigan, New York. The Republicans campaigned against those laws streamlining those permits and lost handily. How do you see these results affecting permitting certainty for renewable energy at the state level in parts of the country?
If it truly addresses affordability, I think permitting is certainly on the table. Especially because governors are going to be judged on what they accomplished and some of these states are going to be having a Democratic governor for the first time in one or two decades. I think they’re going to really hone in on that. And a lot of permitting is state-level. Conversations around federal permitting are often around transmission — a lot of the project-level is at the state level.
But permitting is really only one part of the puzzle. It’s the part everyone likes to focus on because it’s easier to understand. There’s also the market structures of how utilities operate. How they’re incentivized to make money. How they bring on new customers. That’s really going to determine how we bring down bills, or at the very least limit the increases in these bills over the next five or ten years.
Can you give some examples?
So one of the things we focus on [at Deploy Action] is trying to not change the utility business model but alter it to take into account efficiency, especially when it comes to transmission and distribution. Right now utilities’ cap-ex and their ability to earn a return on that is building transmission and distribution lines. In some places it’s generation too. What we’re saying is, we need to create an incentive structure where they’re first incentivized to use existing lines, so as you bring more customers online it reduces the need for new infrastructure per customer which will ultimately bring down costs for everyone.
The perfect example here, and another policy example here, is data centers. It’s completely understandable why they ran against them and why the public is not a fan. But there’s a way to do data centers intelligently in a way to reduce people’s bills. The way to do that is not these monstrosities but smaller data centers that can be coupled with battery storage and renewables instead of gas and diesel. These smaller ones can be used as their own distribution resource which allows you to bring on new paying customers without building more lines. These are things we’ve been working on in Virginia, in California to a lesser extent and in Pennsylvania, and the election opens up the possibility to do more of this work.
How do these state-level data center moratoria affect renewable energy development?
It depends.
I think there’s a very nuanced and smart compromise to be had. These new governors need to consider that instead of an outright ban there needs to be an understanding there are data centers of a certain size that can actually be beneficial to ratepayers and done without using massive amounts of water and renewables. The moratoria needs to turn into policy. The way to get a policy in place that’ll help people every day with their lives and their bills while actually preventing some of the harms people are thinking about with data centers is to set that size limit.
Do these pauses affect transmission development?
It shouldn’t theoretically. I think the argument that would come up though is people would say big data centers would mean more demand for more transmission. And yes, we want more demand growth but you want to build more transmission to bring down costs. You don’t want to build more transmission just to build more transmission.
What do you think is the biggest challenge this election result poses for renewable energy?
Focus.
Here’s the thing: It’s a new election. People will have tons of ideas. The renewables’ best argument is we are the cheapest solution and oftentimes the fastest solution. If what you’re trying to do is bring on new demand, whether it’s for EVs or for certain types of data centers, and then at the least cost supply for that demand.
There’s a lot of things we can focus on with renewables but if we stick to the purpose of this being to bring down people’s bills and create a steady grid for everyone then, well, the opportunities are strong and will be available to us in the industry.
