To the extent that American consumers experience energy headwinds, they certainly don’t result from any shortage of available resources, technological ingenuity or private investment capital.  

At a moment when American manufacturing, technological innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and economic growth demand reliable electricity, both federal and state regulatory agencies too often hold up growth.  

Fortunately, reform opportunities to unleash greater energy abundance exist.  

At the federal level, legislation in the form of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs (BAAJA) Act of 2026 offers necessary reform by lowering energy costs, accelerating approval of infrastructure projects, stopping abusive environmental litigation and providing construction companies and private investors the certainty needed to move forward.  

At the individual state level, similarly important opportunities for reform exist.  

The stakes are enormous, and time is short.  

America’s artificial intelligence (AI) revolution requires greater electricity capacity, as do semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies essential to maintaining our economic and national security superiority against a resolute adversary in China.  

Current permitting, siting and regulatory regimes, however, prevent that needed infrastructure improvement from materializing.  

To remedy that, America must initially make it easier to build.  

To that end, federal and state reform can streamline permitting requirements, establish more predictable approval deadlines and eliminate duplicative regulatory obstacles that discourage private investment.  

Equally important, policymakers can address interconnection bottlenecks that leave proposed electricity generation projects languishing in administrative queues rather than supplying American homes and businesses.  

Recent research illustrates the problem.  

In energy-rich Pennsylvania, for example, an energy reform analysis prepared by Synapse Energy Economics for Advanced Energy United identifies a fragmented regulatory structure in which only approximately 5% of municipalities maintain favorable siting rules for utility-scale clean energy projects.  That patchwork creates uncertainty, delays investment and ultimately increases costs borne by consumers.  The report finds that Pennsylvania utility customers can save $225 annually by 2029 simply by removing regulatory barriers and expanding battery storage.

Other states face similar challenges.  Arizona – the home of multiple new semiconductor plants – suffers permitting obstacles that impede new generation, while Indiana faces an enormous interconnection backlog exceeding 60 gigawatts of proposed capacity.  Wisconsin provides another instructive example, where inadequate utility planning and oversight saddle consumers with unnecessary costs.  

That sort of regulatory paralysis constitutes an extraordinary self-inflicted economic handicap. 

Texas offers a more positive example demonstrating how a comparatively competitive, technology-neutral energy marketplace can encourage generation investment and innovation.  Its continued growth nevertheless underscores the need for faster interconnection and infrastructure expansion.  

Secondly, America must make electricity more affordable through free-market competition, not government favoritism.  

Specifically, government shouldn't arbitrarily pick winners and losers among natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, battery storage or emerging generation technologies.  

Instead, we need technology-neutral rules that allow competing providers to demonstrate which resources deliver the most reliable electricity at the lowest cost.  That includes removing artificial favoritism, whether related to utility-scale solar and wind projects, advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors or innovative storage technologies.  

Competition, not bureaucratic preference, must determine the optimal mix.  

Third, reform efforts must facilitate modernization of America’s electrical grid to maximize flexibility and reliability.  

In that pursuit, although building additional generation capacity is essential, extracting greater value from existing infrastructure is equally important.  Emerging grid-enhancing technologies can increase transmission efficiency, while distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar, residential batteries and demand-response systems can help manage peak electricity consumption.  

Those innovations offer opportunities to reduce unnecessary infrastructure expenditures, improve resilience and give consumers greater control over their electricity costs.  

America obviously possesses the resources, technological expertise and entrepreneurial capacity to power another generation of extraordinary prosperity.  What it needs now is a government willing to get out of the way.  

Accordingly, the federal government should remove unnecessary obstacles, states should modernize their permitting and planning systems and private competitors must remain free to innovate and invest.  

To maintain our global preeminence, American energy policy should generate electricity, not paperwork.  Proposed federal and state reform can make that more possible.