Rising electricity prices are a hot topic as of late.

Many people are looking in all the wrong places to pinpoint the blame, specifically Democrats and wind and solar advocates looking to place it at the feet of Donald Trump and Republicans for accelerating the phaseout of wind and solar subsidies in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Others are pointing fingers at demand growth for data centers and AI.

The truth is that today’s electricity price increases have been years in the making, fueled by massive spending for the so-called “energy transition”—and the spending is still ongoing with no signs of slowing down.

In regulated markets, rate increase requests filed by electric utility companies are very clear about why they are asking to raise prices on their customers, and they are primarily concerned with investments for “clean energy” initiatives, such as replacing thermal generators with less reliable wind and solar facilities and the transmission and distribution network to accommodate them.

These moves to radically alter the nation’s electricity system came during a time of little to no energy demand growth, which took away valuable resources that could’ve been used to meet the growing demand of today (in the form of capital spending and assets like reliable and affordable coal and nuclear power plants).

To borrow a recent quote about America’s growing debt, applying it to the energy grid, “We are guilty of spending our rainy-day fund in sunny weather.”

Explosion in Rate Increase Requests

Many people like to theorize why electricity prices are rising, but the real answer is in plain sight.

In regulated markets, electric utility companies file rate increase requests (called rate cases) with state utility commissions to increase electricity prices for customers.

Rate increase requests from utility companies have exploded since 2020, jumping from $3.6 billion to $11.3 billion in one year, an increase of over 200 percent. While the jump from 2020 to 2021 can be explained by the delay of rate increases during COVID, the upward trend hasn’t gone away and is hard to ignore, with 2022, 2023, and 2025 all reaching new record highs.

The reasons behind these massive rate increases are plentiful, but many of them stem from the ongoing—and failing— “energy transition.” Mandates for wind and solar buildouts and the transmission and distribution networks to accommodate them, battery storage facilities, EV charging infrastructure, home heating electrification, thermal closures, wildfire