Heat Exchange

MIT Technology Review’s guest opinion series, offering expert commentary on legal, political and regulatory issues related to climate change and clean energy. You can read the rest of the pieces here.

This has left many in the climate and clean energy communities wondering what do we do now? The answer, I would argue, is to return to state capitals—a policymaking venue that climate and renewable energy advocates already know well. This can be done strategically, focusing on a handful of key states rather than all fifty. 

But I have another piece of advice: Don’t get too caught up in “red states” versus “blue states” when considering which states to target. American politics is being remade before our eyes, and long-standing policy problems are being redefined and reframed.  

Let’s take clean energy, for example. Yes, shifting away from carbon-spewing resources is about slowing down climate change, and for some this is the single most important motivation for pursuing it. But it also can be about much more. 

The case can be made just as forcefully—and perhaps more effectively—that shifting to clean energy advances affordability at a time when electricity bills are skyrocketing. It promotes energy freedom by resisting monopolistic utilities’ ownership and gatekeeping of the grid. It increases reliability as battery storage reaches new heights and renewable sources and baseload power plants like nuclear or natural gas facilities (some of which we certainly do and will need) increasingly complement one another. And it drives job creation and economic development. 

Talking about clean energy policy in these ways is safer from ideological criticisms of “climate alarmism.” Research reported in my forthcoming book, Owning the Green Grid, shows that this framing has historically been effective in red states. In addition, using the arguments above to promote all forms of energy can allow clean energy proponents to reclaim a talking point deployed in a previous era by the political right: a true “all-of-the-above” approach to energy policy.

Every energy technology—gas, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal and storage, among others—has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. But combining them enhances overall grid performance, delivering more than the sum of their individual parts.

To be clear, this is not the approach of the current national administration in Washington, DC. Its policies have picked winners (coal, oil, and natural gas) and losers (solar and wind) among energy technologies—ironically, given conservative claims of blue states having done so in the past. Yet a true all-of-the-above approach can now be sold in state capitals throughout the country, in red states and even in fossil-fuel producing states. 

To be sure, the Trump-led Republican party has taken such extreme measures that it will constrain certain state policymaking possibilities. Notably, in May the US Senate voted to block waivers allowing California to phase out gas guzzlers in the state, over the objections of the Senate parliamentarian. The fiscal power of the federal government is also immense. But there are a variety of other ways to continue to make state-level progress on greenhouse gas emissions.

State and local advocacy efforts are nothing new for the clean energy community. For decades before the Inflation Reduction Act, the states were the primary locus of activity for clean energy policy. But in recent years, some have suggested that Democratic state governments are a necessary prerequisite to making meaningful state-level progress. This view is limiting, and it perpetuates a false—or at least unnecessary—alignment between party and energy technology. 

The electric grid is nonpartisan. Struggling to pay your utility bill is nonpartisan. Keeping the lights on is nonpartisan. Even before renewable energy was as cheap as it is today, early progress at diversifying energy portfolios was made in conservative states. Iowa, Texas, and Montana were all early adopters of renewable portfolio standards. Advocates in such places did not lead with messaging about climate change, but rather about economic development and energy independence. These policy efforts paid off: The deeply red Lone Star State, for instance, generates more wind energy than any other state and ranks only behind California in producing solar power. 

Now, in 2025, advances in technology and improvements in cost should make the economic arguments for clean energy even easier and more salient. So, in the face of a national government that is choosing last century’s energy technologies as policy winners and this century’s technologies as policy losers, the states offer clean energy advocates a familiar terrain on which to make continued progress, if they tailor their selling points to the reality on the ground.         

Joshua A. Basseches is the David and Jane Flowerree Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy at Tulane University. His research focuses on state-level renewable energy politics and policymaking, especially in the electricity sector.