Your energy bill keeps rising – here’s what we can do about it

Pennsylvania is welcoming the new year with an old problem: while temperatures have hovered around single digits in some counties, energy costs are too high for many people to afford. 

The impact is huge: 1 in 5 Pennsylvanians had trouble paying their utility bills last year, and shutoffs are up 38%. Every day, my neighbors in South Philly stop by our district office asking for help keeping their heat on. The alternatives are turning on their oven, skipping medication to afford to pay their bills, or simply doing without heat in the freezing cold. 

Warmth in the winter is not a luxury; everyone should be able to live comfortably through the coldest months. But so many people are working so much – multiple jobs, overnight shifts, on weekends – and still can’t get ahead. For poor and working people, the struggle to keep up with a mountain of bills is nothing new; between utilities, groceries, student debt, medical debt and housing, the bills have kept growing and wages have failed to keep up. The affordability crisis is widespread, and energy costs in particular have become a fast-growing problem.  

So why is this happening? And more importantly, what can we do to keep costs down and the heat on for everyone? 

One factor is rising energy demand. Due to immense growth in digital technologies – artificial intelligence, cloud devices, crypto mining – demand is outpacing supply. In response, Big Tech corporations are rapidly building out data centers. Increased air conditioning use due to climate change and the electrification of fossil fuel-based industries also contributes to the strain on the grid.   

Second, not enough generation is coming online quickly enough to meet this increased demand. We know wind and solar projects are the cheapest and fastest energy sources to build. But PJM, our region’s grid manager, has moved slowly, effectively blocking nearly 2,000 energy projects from connecting to the grid. 90% of those projects are clean energy sources that could lower costs for ratepayers. And last year, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans gutted the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered the surest path to jumpstarting clean energy investments in the U.S. As a result, shovel-ready renewable energy projects have been scrapped, and programs that saved consumers money on their energy bills, like Solar for All, were illegally halted.  

All of this together feels like a challenge nearly too big to tackle. We have no choice but to try to do just that if we’re going to avoid the worst predictions of energy shortages. Blackouts and brownouts will cost people their livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives as temperatures soar (or plummet) and they are unable to turn on their air conditioning (or heat). People will die.  

We know that generating more clean power is both the fastest and cheapest way to get more energy on the grid.  

That can be done through legislation to install more solar on large warehouse roofs, open the door to new geothermal and nuclear investments, and promote battery storage to make these energy sources even more reliable 24/7. And we must find a way to make our membership in PJM work better for Pennsylvanians: According to a new report, the average Pennsylvania household would save $505 a year if PJM connected more clean energy to the grid.  

Hardworking parents and families shouldn’t have to foot the bill for data center development driven by major corporations, especially during a nationwide affordability crisis. That’s why we’re advancing my colleague Rep. Rob Matzie’s bill, House Bill 1834, which ensures that costs from data centers, like upgrades to transmission and distribution infrastructure, won’t be passed on to ratepayers. Hardworking parents and seniors are already having a hard time paying the bills; they shouldn’t be expected to pay even more.  

As chair of the House Energy Committee, I’m also interested in ways we can directly reduce costs by improving the efficiency of the grid (including by adopting demand response measures, advanced transmission technologies; and virtual power plants, which would allow customers to enroll power cells like sustainable batteries and EV chargers into a program that supplies energy to the grid during peak demand) and by updating energy efficiency standards so we all use less energy in the first place.  

Our neighbors are counting on these reforms. And we must act quickly if we’re going to avoid the worst of the looming energy crisis. That crisis will be felt by working people and families as overdue bills pile up, blackouts and brownouts become a reality, and people risk their lives in the cold.  

It’s incumbent upon us, as lawmakers, to lead with a new vision for the future – one where everyone has heat, power, and time to spend with their loved ones. In the richest country in the history of the world, we can do better. And in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we must.