With Pennsylvania trifecta, how will Democrats lead on energy and environment? – The Allegheny Front
Republicans have controlled the Pennsylvania Senate for more than 30 years, but that changed on Tuesday. Voters flipped four seats to the Democrats, handing the party a rare trifecta: single-party control of the Governor’s office and the General Assembly.
David Hess has been working on environmental policy and advocacy in Pennsylvania since the 1980s, and thinks the rising cost of energy is a key reason for the Democratic victories in Tuesday’s election.
“It had everything to do with the concerns people had about… the electric and natural gas bills that they’re getting, the price of gasoline,” he said. “It had to do, in particular, with data centers.”
Hess, who is a former secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, points out that the four Republican senators who lost all had data center projects in their districts. Data centers use a lot of power, and that has led to higher energy prices. According to an independent analysis, Pennsylvania homeowners are paying an average of 20% more for electricity than they were two years ago.
Pennsylvania Republicans have blamed the price hikes on climate policies in other states and Governor Shapiro’s electric grid policies.
Now that Democrats are taking control, Hess advises them to focus on reducing those costs by diversifying energy sources.
“The Republicans had a one energy source policy, that was natural gas. And to put more eggs in that basket just wasn’t going to work at all to reduce costs,” he said. “You need a variety of generation sources to do that.”
With a trifecta, Pennsylvania Democrats would pass energy reforms and rein in data centers
A recent report found that Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom of states in adding renewable energy to the electric grid. The state gets 5% of its electricity from renewable energy, compared with 37% in Texas, another gas-producing state.
Democrats have a chance to change that, said Sharon Pillar, founder and director of the non-profit Pennsylvania Solar Center.
Pennsylvania requires utilities to get only 0.5% of their electricity from solar energy, an amount that hasn’t changed since 2004.
Pillar wants the state to increase that amount because she says it will mean more energy and will also help the economy.
“We work with a lot of companies; they’re ready to go,” Pillar said. “They’ve been waiting on Pennsylvania for many years, and I think they’ll be very excited to come and invest billions of dollars into Pennsylvania.”
Pillar also wants lawmakers to approve community solar, which allows people who don’t have rooftop solar to buy energy from a nearby array.
Advocates for renewable energy, like Elizabeth Fiedler, a Democrat from South Philadelphia who chairs the House Energy Committee, also see a need for state investment in local electric grids.
“We need to do everything we can to get more energy online,” she said.
Fiedler supports a bill to allow Pennsylvanians to install balcony solar, which are solar panels that can be plugged into a wall outlet, as well as legislation to expand battery storage, so renewable energy can be used on demand.
“That’s super important because in just a couple of years there are predictions that we’re going to start to have major power outages,” Fiedler said. “We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure we’re using all the energy we have in a very wise way.”
Fiedler said the Democratic-controlled House already approved many bills to address these issues, but they stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Now she expects things to be different.
“We are ready to go, and that includes a bunch of bills that will lower people’s bills, lower the cost of energy for regular folks in Pennsylvania,” Fiedler said.
In a speech Wednesday, after the election results were finalized, newly-reelected Governor Josh Shapiro outlined top priorities for his second term, including mass transit funding, raising the minimum wage, codifying abortion rights and investing in housing.
David Hess hopes Democrats also stay focused on energy costs. He said the clock is already ticking on their leadership.
“If the Democrats get sidetracked on a whole bunch of other issues on their agenda without addressing stuff that’s right in front of their face and drove these results, I think they’re really missing an opportunity,” he said.
Gov. Shapiro said he and top-ranking Democrats in the General Assembly will release an agenda for their first 100 days of 2027 in the coming weeks.
data centersnatural gasrenewable energysolar
Julie Grant got her start in public radio at age 19 while at Miami University in Ohio. After studying land ethics in graduate school at Kent State University, Julie covered environmental issues in the Great Lakes region for Michigan Radio’s “The Environment Report” and North Country Public Radio in New York. She’s won many awards, including an Edward R. Murrow Award in New York, and was named “Best Reporter” in Ohio by the Society of Professional Journalists. Her stories have aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “The Splendid Table” and “Studio 360.” Julie loves covering agricultural issues for the Allegheny Front—exploring what we eat, who produces it and how it’s related to the natural environment.
