Columbia Energy Exchange

Affordability was one of the key issues that drove US voters to the polls last week, and the resulting message for the newly elected Congress is clear: driving down costs is job number one. As part of that, energy affordability has become the most politically consequential issue in US energy policy.
But energy affordability is wrapped up in many other issues, from the Iran war to surging energy demand and an aging electric grid. So what can lawmakers do to address today's energy affordability crisis while also making durable improvements to the resilience and security of the US power supply?
Today on the show, Bill Loveless speaks with two keen observers of US energy policy, Aliya Haq and Rich Powell, about Democrats' sweeping wins in the Senate and the House and what the results tell us about the political environment for energy policy over the next two years.
They discuss the push to pass The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act in the lame-duck session of Congress, the tension between oversight and legislating, and the voter backlash against data centers. They also cover quick grid fixes like reconductoring and the clean firm technologies both parties could support.
Aliya Haq is president of the Clean Economy Project, a nonprofit focused on accelerating clean energy. She previously led US policy and advocacy at Breakthrough Energy and served as federal climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Rich Powell is CEO of the Corporate Energy Buyers Association. Previously, he led ClearPath, a conservative organization advocating clean energy policies.
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff, Bill Loveless, and Daniel Sternoff. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dara Diamond, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Energy costs are a big consideration for voters in much of the US today as they head to the polls. But the decisions that shape those costs will ultimately fall on state regulators and policymakers, and will vary across different regions.
Today's episode turns to New England, which sits at the center of a shifting energy landscape. States there spent years focused on how fast they could decarbonize the region's power supply. Now the conversation is dominated by cost.
The challenges reflect deep-seated structural issues—the cost of aging infrastructure, transmission costs, and a regulatory system built for a different era. And they're colliding with a new wave of pressures: rising electrification, growing demand from EVs and heat pumps, and a resurgence in manufacturing.
Connecticut has spent more than a decade at the center of this shift, working to balance reliability, affordability, and decarbonization within a shared regional grid it doesn't fully control.
So are rising electricity prices a reflection not just of load growth but also structural problems in how the system is planned and regulated? Is New England's current electricity market structure capable of delivering this combination of affordability, reliability, and decarbonization the region needs? And what are the big energy policy lessons that other parts of the country can learn from New England's clean energy transition in recent years?
On today's episode, Bill Loveless digs into these questions with Katie Dykes, who was the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2019 until this past summer. Before that, she chaired Connecticut's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Earlier in her career, she worked at the US Department of Energy and the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Obama administration.
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff, Bill Loveless, and Daniel Sternoff. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dara Diamond, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Every permitting bill promises the same thing: build faster. The harder question is what the trade-offs are, and who bears them.
That question is at the heart of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA), the US Senate permitting deal introduced in September by the leaders of the chamber's two energy and environment committees. 
A new white paper from the Center on Global Energy Policy finds that the bill would make it meaningfully faster and more predictable to build energy infrastructure of all kinds, especially interstate transmission. But those gains come with a cost. Federal approvals would become faster to obtain but harder to reverse. Leverage would shift from states, wildlife agencies and other reviewers to project applicants. Accountability would shift from before construction to after it. For consumers, lower energy bills are plausible but conditional, and could arrive years after households start paying for new infrastructure.
With supporters pushing for a vote when the Senate returns after the November 3 midterm elections, the bill faces a narrow window. It needs 60 votes in the Senate and then agreement with the House.
So who wins and who loses under this bill? What can past energy projects tell us about how the bill would perform? Does it help clean energy more than oil and gas? And can it pass in a short lame-duck session?
This week host Bill Loveless talks with Robin Millican, Noah Kaufman, and Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh, scholars at the Center on Global Energy Policy who contributed to the new analysis along with Vivek Shastry, Tom Moerenhout, Ira Joseph, and Lily Bermel. They discuss how the bill would change environmental review and litigation, what it means for transmission, data centers, and the climate, and what Jack's new interactive permitting tool shows about where the time savings would really come from.
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff, Bill Loveless, and Daniel Sternoff. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dara Diamond, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

The US may finally, after years of trying, be on the cusp of a nuclear renaissance. 
Commercial nuclear generation began in this country in 1958. Today, the US has 94 operating reactors, supplying roughly a fifth of the nation's electricity. But since 1996 only three new reactors have come online.
Now the picture is changing fast. In May 2025, President Trump signed four executive orders to speed up nuclear deployment; they include a goal to have ten new large reactors under construction by 2030. Nuclear startups have raised $4.6 billion this year alone. And with AI and data centers driving electricity demand growth, tech companies are signing long-term power agreements and backing the restart of shuttered reactors.
Still, caution is warranted. The delays and cost overruns at Georgia's Vogtle reactors remain a concern for some would-be investors. Advanced designs offer promise, but their ability to deliver power at competitive costs through repeated commercial deployment remains to be demonstrated.
At the center of this challenge is the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Dominance Financing, formerly the Loan Programs Office. In June, it issued a $17.5 billion conditional commitment to rebuild the nuclear supply chain and help launch ten large reactors. It is also financing three restarts, most recently with a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra for Iowa's Duane Arnold plant, the largest yet for reviving a nuclear plant. And just two weeks ago, it announced up to $4.2 billion to increase power generation from existing plants—so-called uprates—across Pennsylvania and Ohio. 
So what will it really take to turn this momentum into new reactors, delivered on time and on budget? Why does nuclear need federal financing at all? And what role does nuclear play in the nation's economic, security, and decarbonization goals? 
On today's episode, Jason Bordoff speaks with Julie Kozeracki, acting chief investment officer for the US Department of Energy's Office of Energy Dominance Financing and the office's nuclear sector lead.
Julie discusses the department's efforts to bolster US nuclear power capabilities, through both restarts and new builds. She explains how her office allocates resources toward commercializing new, more scalable nuclear systems. And she considers the roles that government and the private sector are each playing in this moment, and what policymakers can do to support a nuclear buildout.
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff, Bill Loveless, and Daniel Sternoff. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dara Diamond, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.

Permitting reform—to allow for faster approvals on new projects—is one thing that both climate advocates and energy developers have wanted for a long time. With demand for power climbing, the pressure to act is as strong as it has been in years.
Now, a new effort is on the table. Last month, leaders of the Senate's two main energy and environment committees reached a bipartisan agreement on the most significant permitting overhaul in decades. At its core, the bill would make it easier to build energy infrastructure across the board. It would shorten the window for legal challenges, tighten environmental review deadlines, strengthen federal authority to approve interstate transmission lines, and restrict the government's power to revoke permits once they're issued.
Reactions have been mixed. Industry groups and unions have welcomed the bill, while some environmental and climate groups have raised concerns. And with supporters hoping for a Senate vote right after the November elections, the clock is ticking. 
So what's actually in the bill? How might it speed up energy project build-out and streamline development? What are some of the objections to the bill and how does it address key environmental review processes? And what does the bill, and the disparate reactions to it, tell us about where U.S. energy policy is headed in the future?
In this episode Jason speaks with Daniel Palken about the core provisions of Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, and the major objections to it. Daniel is the director of Infrastructure for Energy and Permitting at Arnold Ventures. Before that he worked in the US Senate, most recently as a professional staff member for the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources and prior to that as the senior policy advisor to Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado for energy, climate, and minerals issues. 
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff, Bill Loveless, and Daniel Sternoff. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Dara Diamond, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.
Additional Resources
Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera v. FERC (D.C. Cir. 2021): A court decision sending a FERC approval of gas infrastructure back to the agency because it didn't adequately explain why it declined to use the social cost of carbon in assessing the project's greenhouse gas emissions.
Horizon Climate Group's interactive tool: Lets users view wind and solar deployment alongside federal land.
NLR (formerly NREL) 2024 report on renewable energy on federal land: Source for the figure that only 3 to 4 percent of wind, solar, and geothermal capacity sits on federal land.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2024 developer survey: Finds that local permitting and grid issues are the top barriers to renewable deployment (see slide 11).
MIT Technology Review coverage of China's transmission buildout: On the roughly 2,000-mile, 12 GW transmission line China built between 2016 and 2018.
Macro Grids in the Mainstream (2020): Source for the comparison between China's addition of hundreds of gigawatts of high-voltage transmission and the negligible amount added in the U.S.