Peach State Powerplay

This Week's Trend In Brief:

• Earlier this month, Democrats flipped two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, turning what is usually a quiet regulatory contest into a clear signal that voters now treat rising power bills as a top-tier political concern.

   

• While some voters’ concerns about energy affordability arose naturally, national environmental NGOs (ENGOs) and their state affiliates poured millions into shaping a narrative that reframed rising utility costs as a crisis driven by Republican retrenchment of climate policies and increased tech sector power demand.

   

• ENGOs’ major investment in an otherwise sleepy off-year election appears intended to staunch the backsliding of climate policies they have advanced over the past several decades, which have taken a major hit in recent years amidst concerns about grid resilience and national competitiveness in the AI race.

   

• With at least 14 public utility commission seats on the ballot across nine states in 2026, the Georgia result previews how a coordinated ENGO affordability message will try to shape those contests and play on voters’ angst over rising utility bills.

   

• Companies racing to build AI capacity and the energy infrastructure powering it must act quickly to ensure this misrepresentative narrative does not take hold and impact who voters choose to shape the future of energy policy across the country.

Digging Deeper:

Earlier this month, Democrats flipped two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) in an off-year special election upset, breaking nearly two decades of Republican control. What might normally have been a quiet regulatory contest instead became a high-visibility fight over rising power bills, and that shift did not happen by accident. While some concerns about rising energy costs were organic, environmental NGOs (ENGOs) orchestrated a coordinated, professionalized, and well-funded effort to recast affordability around their preferred narrative and use that frame to defeat Republican candidates. Taken together, these developments signaled that affordability is no longer a niche policy debate but a deliberate political battlefield that ENGOs are actively shaping as they prepare for 2026. 

Leading up to the November election, ENGOs spent millions to shape a narrative that reframed rising utility costs as a crisis driven by Republican retrenchment of climate policies and increased tech sector power demand. Georgia Conservation Voters poured more than $2.2 million into the PSC races, which included launching a website “blaming the two Republican incumbents for energy bill increases.” This effort was backed by the national League of Conservation Voters’ $4 million “affordability” campaign, which was also designed to tie Republicans to higher energy costs. Now, the victors and other Democrats are openly crediting their win to the success of this coordinated messaging campaign. Peter Hubbard, one of the new commissioners, framed his victory as a mandate from voters “frustrated by soaring power costs,” declaring that Georgians are “tired of subsidizing corporate interests” while pointing to AI and data centers. DNC Vice Chair Jane Kleeb hailed the election as proof that an affordability-focused strategy is “clearly working,” while former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee argued that Democrats won by tying Republicans to “higher electrical bills” under Trump. Like Hubbard, many Democrats and climate activists are linking data centers and AI directly to voters’ concerns about rising utility bills, a theme echoed in New Jersey and Virginia. Now, it has become a core ENGO talking point, deliberately positioned to shape public sentiment and define the terrain for the 2026 battles ahead.

ENGOs’ major investment in an otherwise sleepy off-year election appears intended to staunch the backsliding of climate policies they have advanced over the past several decades, which have taken a major hit in recent years amidst concerns about grid resilience and national competitiveness in the AI race. At the federal level, several pillars of the climate agenda have been rolled back, pared down, or delayed, from the retrenchment of key Inflation Reduction Act spending programs to the softening of EPA’s proposed power-sector rules in response to reliability warnings from regional grid operators. At the same time, the rapid expansion of AI load growth has led federal agencies and grid operators to acknowledge that the U.S. cannot remain competitive in the AI race without a more reliable, dispatchable energy backbone, complicating the climate movement’s push for aggressive mandates. These setbacks have triggered a recalibration within the climate movement, and what played out in Georgia is a preview of that new strategy. Major ENGOs have shifted their messaging toward cost relief, consumer protection, and balanced energy mixes, signaling a strategic move to reclaim middle-of-the-road voters who have grown increasingly skeptical of aggressive mandates. And as the results in Georgia have shown, these tactics are likely to be deployed at far greater scale in 2026, when control of public utility commissions will carry even higher stakes for both policymakers and the companies they regulate.

With voters in at least nine states set to elect 14 public utility commissioners in November 2026, Georgia’s PSC election is the clearest early preview of how a coordinated ENGO affordability message will try to shape those contests and play on voters’ angst over rising utility bills. Their early investments in Georgia, Virginia, and New Jersey already show a disciplined strategy, defining affordability on their terms by blaming Republican policy choices and positioning regulators as the frontline actors responsible for rate relief. Analysts have already pointed to Democratic gains in Virginia and New Jersey as evidence that “Democrats are suddenly winning the messaging war” on energy costs. Former Gov. Inslee underscored this when he described the recent results as a “referendum” on Trump’s energy policies. This frame did not emerge overnight, as the League of Conservation Voters explicitly declared that “energy affordability is on the ballot” heading into the elections, “running multi-million dollar campaigns to drive the conversation around costs” and ensure “the public understands who is focused on the issues that matter and who is making the problem even worse.” The Georgia outcome affirmed that ENGOs have built a message architecture around affordability that will likely dominate PUC and statewide energy races into the 2026 midterms.

With the wave of PUC elections scheduled for 2026, the recent election results serve as an early warning that companies must act quickly to ensure this misrepresentative narrative does not take hold and impact who voters choose to shape the future of energy policy across the country. As AI and data centers become the easiest political targets for rising electricity prices, companies building the next generation of digital infrastructure must recognize that ENGOs are actively shaping that storyline and will continue to define affordability on their terms unless industry pushes back. Activists and their allies are currently winning the affordability argument, buoyed by rising past-due utility balances and a roughly 12 percent increase in monthly energy bills between 2024 and 2025. With voters bracing for further increases and energy costs poised to dominate the 2026 midterms, companies cannot afford to let ENGOs define the terms of debate. The task now is to demonstrate, with credibility and clarity, how new infrastructure can be built without worsening rate pressures, and to proactively ground the conversation in facts rather than ideology. Those who shape the affordability narrative early will set the battlefield, while those who wait will fight on their opponents’ terrain.

Trends in Energy is your weekly look at key trends affecting the energy industry, brought to you by the competitive intelligence experts at Delve. As the political and regulatory landscape continues to shift, reach out to learn how our insights can help you navigate these challenges.