After 9 months, the Trump administration has failed to deliver on repeated campaign promises to cut electricity prices in half. Instead, bills this year have increased in 47 states, a new congressional report finds, leading 76% of Americans to say they’ve become a source of stress in their lives. This week, the country voted like it. In Georgia, where a Republican-dominated utility commission raised rates 6 times in 2 years, two Democratic newcomers pledging “aggressive action” to bring prices back down and give consumers more choices routed incumbents. In Virginia, the surge of data centers has burdened customers with $2 billion more in surprise costs; in New Jersey, where the Trump administration has gotten in the way of more than a few long-planned offshore wind energy and transmission projects and threatened to permanently block any others, prices have soared almost 4 times higher than the rest of the country. Both states elected new governors who made sure voters knew they’d take on a problem the Trump administration has only made worse. “Something has to be done,” one longtime New Jersey resident said ahead of Election Day. His electricity bill has climbed to nearly $400 a month. “The cheapest energy today is also the cleanest and fastest to deploy,” EDF’s Joanna Slaney said, “and that’s what America needs.”
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