Americans are worried about energy prices, support permitting reform

There have been a lot of recent surveys quantifying how concerned Americans are about rising electricity costs and unreliability risks. A Heatmap poll found that most Americans are already feeling significant financial pain from rising electricity prices:

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Embold Research conducted a really useful survey on electricity concerns and solutions as well. They similarly found that 70% of Americans are worried both about the cost and reliability of electricity today.

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Folks in and around Texas are particularly concerned about power reliability, which makes sense given their relatively recent power outages from events like Winter Storm Uri.

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Two-thirds of Americans support speeding up permitting to build energy infrastructure faster:

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And most would be more likely to support a political candidate who makes it a priority to quickly build transmission lines and update the grid. Most Democrats and Independents also support candidates who make it a top priority to build solar and wind, although that's not true among Republicans.

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They also found that including information that solar and wind are cheap didn't move the needle on the Republican lack of support for those technologies. They concluded with some recommendations for how to address this challenge:

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In short, make the points that not only are clean energy sources cheap, but they also make the grid more reliable through diversification, modernization, and speed – they can be built faster than any alternative. Permitting reform will help address power reliability and costs, but most people already understand this.

Potential Energy also did a webinar (password is PEEnergyAffordability2025!) about how to message clean energy during a cost of living crisis. They similarly highlighted that it's important for people to connect ‘cheap’ and ‘clean’ energy, and so we should be using those terms together a lot.

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