Always On’s Energy Policy Analyst, Sarah Montalbano, joined Fox 5 Live Zone with Guy Lambert on April 21, 2026, to unpack Governor Abigail Spanberger’s “Consumers First” framework, and why the slogan doesn’t match the policy. While data centers are a growing concern, Spanberger is scapegoating them to distract from the policies actually driving Virginia bills […]

by Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling We are currently working on an exciting new project called the Social Cost of Blackouts. In this upcoming report, we argue that regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and utility regulators should be required to determine whether proposed power plant regulations or integrated resource plans (IRPs) will result […]

Indiana’s electric grid is being asked to do a lot at once. Generation grew by more than 13 percent in 2025, the fastest jump of any state in the Midwest. Coal ran harder to meet that demand even as the national coal fleet shrank. Retail electricity prices climbed 10.5 percent in a single year. Even […]

Turn off your lights, shrink your bill. That’s the pitch utilities and efficiency advocates have sold for decades. Mitch Rolling, co-founder and director of research of Always On Energy Research, told KXEL’s Jeff Stein on News Talk that the math behind that is broken. On a grid increasingly built around wind, solar, and battery resources […]

Amy Cooke, President of Always On Energy Research, joined Harold Birzer on Hillsdale College’s WRFH (Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM) to discuss the devastating tornado that destroyed a $1 billion solar facility in Indiana and the questions it raises about the feasibility of powering America’s grid on wind, solar, and batteries. The untimely demise of […]

President & Founder of Always On Energy Research, Amy Cooke, joins SiriusXM Patriot’s Stacy on the Right to discuss the overnight destruction of a $1 billion solar facility in Indiana and what that tornado reveals about the cost of fragile power. Broadcast April 6, 2026. For more on this topic, read the work referenced in […]

In a November 8th, 2025, interview with the New York Times, Calvin Butler, the CEO of Exelon, one of the largest utilities in the United States, quipped that the best hack for lowering your electric bill is to turn off your lights. The notion that Americans can save money on their power bills by simply consuming […]

by Isaac Orr NextEra Energy Resources is descending upon my home county of Waupaca, Wisconsin, seeking to build a 300- to 375-megawatt (MW) solar facility called the Cloverleaf Solar Project. The project would be located on 1,500 acres near Clintonville, Wisconsin. You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Clintonville, or aren’t sure how to pronounce […]

Sarah Montalbano In 2018, Xcel Energy, an investor-owned utility serving millions of customers across eight states, was the first U.S. utility to pledge to deliver 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050. Eight years later, Xcel is pleading with Colorado regulators to let it continue running its coal plants until 2030. What happened to “steel for fuel,” […]

On March 3rd, JPMorgan Chase released its 16th Annual Eye on the Market Energy Paper. This year’s report, written by Michael Cembalest, is titled “Fighting Words,” and it is a 98-page analysis with hundreds of graphs and charts on the state of the energy industry. It spans most aspects of the energy industry, but as with all […]