The Midterms Spotlighted Energy Costs. Congress Can Address Them This Year.

In the national voter poll conducted for the Associated Press and major TV networks during Tuesday’s midterm elections, nearly 9 in 10 voters said the cost of living was a crucial or major factor in their vote. Eighty-six percent said they were concerned about the cost of utilities such as electricity, natural gas and water, including 54 percent who were very concerned. Worry about energy prices crosses party lines: in a Pew Research Center survey this fall, 81 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans said they were very concerned about gas and energy prices. Candidates across the political spectrum campaigned on bringing those costs down. That concern doesn’t end on Election Day.

Relief on energy bills can’t wait for a new Congress

Congress returns next week for its lame-duck session with a bipartisan bill aimed squarely at energy costs and ready for a vote: the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA). The Senate is scheduled to take its first procedural vote on the bill Monday, Nov. 9, and the House could act as soon as later this month or early December. Voters back it: a Third Way poll taken in late October found that 79 percent of registered voters supported the bill after hearing a description of it, and 66 percent still did after hearing arguments against it. Families across the country need relief on their energy bills now. Some have suggested setting the bill aside and starting fresh next year, but that would only delay the relief they need.

Waiting would mean starting over: new text, new hearings and new negotiations, competing for floor time on a crowded agenda. All of that could take another year or more. We don’t have that kind of time to meet rising energy demand and drive down prices. Any new bill would still need 60 votes in the Senate and a presidential signature. BAAJA was built from the start to earn broad, bipartisan support. In the past few weeks alone, seven building-trades unions including the Teamsters, more than 100 manufacturing and business groups, the nation’s rural electric cooperatives and public power utilities, and free-market groups including Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity have urged Congress to pass it. Even groups that want changes elsewhere in the bill have singled out its grid provisions as a strength. Starting over would trade this hard-won agreement for an uncertain outcome next year.

Time matters for another reason, too. Grid projects take years to plan and build, so every year these reforms are delayed pushes the savings further out for families who are already feeling the squeeze.

The fastest way to deliver

Negotiated by Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mike Lee and Martin Heinrich, the bill takes on one of the biggest long-term drivers of electricity costs: a grid that has not kept pace with growing demand. Bottlenecks keep lower-cost power from reaching the customers who need it, and the projects that would fix them can spend a decade or more in planning disputes, permitting reviews and litigation before construction begins. Just last week, two neighboring grid operators in the central U.S. ended their sixth straight joint study without recommending a single project to connect their regions.

Independent analysis shows what fixing that is worth. Resources for the Future projects the bill would roughly double the capacity to move power between regions and lower the cost of running the power system by 3.5 to 7 percent a year, saving more than $350 billion through 2050. Rhodium Group estimates it would lower average household electricity bills by $50 to $78 a year by 2040.

The bill would:

• Plan ahead, across regions. It requires regional and interregional transmission planning that looks ahead to future electricity demand, so power can reach the places that need it and regions can lean on each other when extreme weather hits.
• Tie costs to benefits. It sets benefits-based cost allocation rules, so what customers pay lines up with the reliability and access to lower-cost power they receive.
• Get major lines approved faster. It strengthens the federal backstop for siting major interstate power lines and lets developers of the largest lines seek federal and state approval at the same time instead of one after the other.
• Streamline permitting with firmer deadlines for federal reviews and faster resolution of legal challenges, so the infrastructure needed to meet rising demand is not stuck in limbo for years.

The common thread is simple: settle what gets built, who benefits and pays, and who is affected up front, rather than relitigating those questions for years. That is how projects move from the drawing board to construction, and how customers start to see the savings.

Families need relief on their energy bills. The lame-duck session is Congress’s chance to deliver it. Lawmakers should pass the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act this year.