Choosing the Right Energy Affordability Policies for Your State

Energy affordability is a crisis across the country, but the reasons bills are high vary from state to state.

In some places, climate impacts and wildfire costs are driving rate hikes; in others, it’s new infrastructure, data centers, or aging, inefficient housing.

The Just Solutions Energy Affordability Policy Library is designed to help climate justice advocates, organizers, and policy staff sort through these complexities and identify concrete policy options that can move the needle in their state. It offers a deep dive into dozens of policies that can be enacted at the state or local level to ensure households have access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy.

This Guide is meant to help you answer a core question:

Given what’s happening in my state, which policies should we focus on first, and how do we move them?

You can treat this as a choose-your-own-path tool and a narrative walk-through. You don’t have to move in sequence, but the sections below offer a logical flow that many state-based campaigns may find useful.

Table Of Contents
  1. 1. Start by understanding what’s driving unaffordable energy in your state
  2. 2. Protecting households now: near-term relief and safeguards
  3. 3. Addressing root causes and structural drivers

1. Start by understanding what’s driving unaffordable energy in your state

Guiding Question: what is contributing to unaffordable energy costs where we live and work?

To answer this question, you don’t need precise data to get started, but you do need ideas and hypotheses to get going. Try answering these questions as concretely as possible:

What’s been happening to energy bills over the past 3–5 years?

Who is being hit hardest (by income, race, geography, housing type, or utility territory)?

What do you think is driving high bills or bill increases?

Common contributing factors might include climate-related natural disaster impacts, new infrastructure and projects, fossil fuel price volatility, new large loads on the grid, poor building quality, and utility profit structures.

If you don’t have data on causes and impacts, consider policies that focus on bill and data reporting and transparency as early priorities. For example, some states require utilities to break out cost drivers on bills or to report fuel cost impacts separately.

How to use the library here:

Use the Keyword search to look up the issues you’re seeing (e.g., “data centers,” “grid infrastructure,” “housing” “efficiency”).

Scan the Why This Matters section of entries to see whether they match the problems you’re observing.

This step helps you narrow an overwhelming list of policies into a shorter set that actually speaks to your state’s reality.

2. Protecting households now: near-term relief and safeguards

Guiding Question: how do we protect communities who are struggling now?

Again, you don’t have to wait for perfect analysis to move policies that keep people connected to an energy source and reduce immediate harm. Early, near-term priorities often include:

Shutoff protections

Bill assistance

Arrearage management

For example, some states have implemented seasonal disconnection moratoria to ensure no household loses service during extreme heat or cold. These policies may not fix the root causes of unaffordability, but they can buy time, reduce harm, and build power by demonstrating that better protections are possible.

How to use the library here:

Filter by Affordability Strategy to find policies that focus on direct relief, customer protections, or arrearages (“Household Protections”).

Review the Model Policy Features to understand what’s needed to make these protections effective and equitable.

Pay attention to Potential Policy Limitations and Pitfalls—including in the Examples section—such as temporary programs that end abruptly, or protections that don’t reach people with the highest need.

If your work needs a “first win,” these policies can often be framed as basic safeguards and may be more politically feasible in the near term.

3. Addressing root causes and structural drivers

Guiding Question: Beyond immediate relief, how do we change community conditions that keep bills high?

Once you have some protections in place, you can look at policies that address underlying causes. These often involve bigger ideas and solutions that create much bigger long-term impact. Some examples include:

Household-level solutions:

Equitable building decarbonization and weatherization; enabling on-site generation options (rooftop or balcony solar); implementing efficiency upgrades. For example, some cities have adopted low-income weatherization programs that cut bills immediately and permanently.

Utility reform and oversight:

Requiring stronger accountability and cost allocation; aligning utility incentives with affordability and equity agendas; and accelerating clean energy in ways that actually reduce customer costs over time. For example, some commissions require utilities to demonstrate cost-saving alternatives before pursuing expensive infrastructure projects.

How to use the library here:

Use Affordability Strategy plus Community Impact filters to find policies that both reduce bills and deliver broader benefits like resilience and climate mitigation.

Read Complementary Policies to see how near-term protections can pair with structural reforms (for example, pairing arrearage management with long-term efficiency or rate design changes).

Use Examples to understand how similar policies have played out in other states, including limitations or challenges.

This step is where you can build a portfolio of policies that help now (near-term), and some that will ultimately change the underlying system (long-term).