ENB Pub Note: This is a follow-up to the Energy Bad Boys earlier article, and I am getting them on the podcast to go through their findings. Stating the obvious is one thing, but they show up to the party with receipts. There is a correlation to this story that Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr did not include, and that is taxes. The states that enacted the strictest regulatory burdens also have the highest tax rates. This is a huge correlation, and we see that the states with the highest taxes are the Energy News Beat’s most read states. Huge correlations.
As an interesting follow-up to last week’s post on rate increases filed by regulated utility companies, we discovered something that further supports the fact that clean energy mandates lead to higher electricity rates.
Specifically, states with clean energy and renewable energy mandates have sought 32 percent higher rate increase requests since 2020 than states without mandates, and mandate states have higher electricity prices as a result, which are growing at almost double the rate as no mandate states.
For simplicity, we will refer to the different states as “mandate states” and “non-mandate states.”
Here’s a look at what we found.
Background on Mandate vs. No Mandate States
As of August 2025, 28 states and Washington, D.C., had renewable energy mandates, which are frequently carve-outs for wind and solar generators, and 16 states had layered on an additional 100 percent carbon-free electricity mandate, which often includes nuclear power, large hydroelectric providers, geothermal, and carbon capture and sequestration as part of a larger suite of low or zero-carbon technologies.
According to LNBL, Massachusetts was the first state to enact a 100 percent carbon-free electricity mandate in 2017, followed by California in 2018, and 14 other states followed suit in the subsequent years, as you can see in the graph below.
Notably, there is a strong correlation between states with 100 percent carbon-free or renewable electricity mandates and political partisanship: 14 of the 19 states—74 percent—are reliably “blue,” having voted for the Democratic candidate in each of the last two presidential elections; 2 are purple, voting for the Democratic candidate in 2020 and Republican in 2024; and 2 are red, voting for the Republican candidate in 2020 and 2024.
The relative recency of these policies means that rate increase requests stemming from building the infrastructure needed to comply with these mandates (or the purchase of required renewable/clean energy certificates) are only just beginning.
Some might be tempted to dismiss the difference in rate requests as a function of population and load growth, but this does not appear to be the case.
Population and Load Growth Favors Non-Mandate States
Non-mandate states have been growing faster than mandate states since 2020, at a rate of 4.1 percent compared to just 1.1 percent for states with mandates. While populations among the two groups were basically equal in 2020, by 2024, non-mandate states had over 5 million more people than mandate states.
These growing populations will increase the amount of new infrastructure that needs to be built in the states that are gaining population, accounting for some of the rate increase requests.
Electricity sales are also higher in non-mandate states, ranging from 2.2 billion megawatt-hours (MWhs) of sales compared to 1.5 billion for mandate states, and sales have been growing at 2.5 times the rate.
With this in mind, one would think non-mandate states would need to invest more in infrastructure to accommodate increasing populations and electricity load.
This hasn’t been the case.
States with Clean Energy Mandates Request Higher Rate Increases
Since 2020, states with clean energy and renewable energy mandates have sought larger rate increases than states without.
In every year except 2024, states with mandates have sought higher electric rate increases than non-mandate states—21 percent higher in 2020, 33 percent higher in 2021, 56 percent higher in 2022, 204 percent higher in 2023, 45 percent lower in 2024, and 17 percent higher in 2025.
Mandate states with the highest rate increase requests from 2020 through 2025 include California, New York, Michigan, Virginia, and Illinois, while the non-mandate states were led by Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania.
As you can see, four out of the top five states with the highest rate increase requests since 2020 belong to states with clean energy mandates, with California far outpacing Florida.
Once again, the top-five non-mandate states experienced significant population and load growth during this period, as the population has increased by 5.2 percent collectively, justifying some of their investments. The top-five states with clean energy mandates, on the other hand, actually saw a .2 percent decrease in population collectively.
During this period, Florida utilities invested in storm prevention efforts, and California utilities invested in wildfire mitigation, contributing to them being the top two states on the list. However, as we lay out in previous posts, California utilities also clearly state that they simultaneously invested billions of dollars pursuing the state’s clean energy goals and other climate-related policies, such as electrification.
Overall, from 2020 through 2025, mandate states sought 32 percent higher rate increases than non-mandate states.
As we showed last week, one of the most cited reasons for seeking the highest rate increases among utilities is the need to fund clean energy investments and to pursue other climate policies, such as ongoing electrification efforts. Furthermore, S&P Global data show 19 percent of overall capital expenditures in 39 North American electric utilities will go to wind, solar, and battery storage.
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that investor-owned utilities in mandate states are seeking higher rate increases than those in states without—they have more reasons to justify rate increases and need to build more infrastructure to meet the “energy transition” mandates.
In the end, this translates to higher rates for states with clean energy mandates that are growing faster than non-mandate states.
Clean Energy Mandate States Have Higher Electricity Prices
This makes a lot of sense when you accept the fact that clean energy mandates add additional expenses for utilities to invest in on top of status quo investments to maintain infrastructure and prepare for load growth.
Conclusion
Many of these states don’t just have clean energy and renewable energy mandates, but electrification and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction mandates across entire sectors of their economy, as well—and many of the utilities we noted last week cited investments for these initiatives, too.
Policies matter, and that means elections have significant consequences on electricity prices.
While the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is indeed a policy that will have implications for the energy grid, it isn’t the reason electricity prices have been skyrocketing in recent years, as many of the changes in the bill haven’t even gone into effect yet.
We have yet to see whether the changes brought on by OBBBA will be beneficial or not, but one thing is for sure—those who have been most critical of it have also advocated for some of the most damaging and unaffordable electricity policies to date.
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