The Democratic Party’s embrace of affordability politics is pushing what remains of U.S. climate policy to the brink.
In a bid to quickly lower electricity costs, a growing number of Democratic-governed states are pulling money away from programs to save power and boost renewable energy, often by cutting charges on utility bills or redirecting those funds toward customer rebates.
Governors across New England and the mid-Atlantic are retreating from the blue-state climate model that defined the Biden era: utility-bill charges, public subsidies and strict mandates aimed at cutting emissions and building a cheaper, cleaner grid, even if the payoff would come years later.
Now, some are targeting those same policies — even the climate goals they once championed — as politically and financially untenable. Those policymakers say it’s a necessary response to soaring utility bills that have come to dominate cost-of-living concerns — and good politics, too, as affordability is emerging as a defining issue of the midterms.
