We didn’t just get expensive electricity, we built a system that makes it inevitable

[rangerrebew]

We didn’t just get expensive electricity, we built a system that makes it inevitable
By
William Murray
|
February 25th, 2026
 
Most Americans don’t think about electricity until the monthly bill arrives.

It comes once a month, often quietly, but lately it’s landed like a thud. Heating your home now costs hundreds more a month than it did just a few years ago. You use the same appliances. You flip the same switches. Nothing in your daily life has changed – except the price.

Why?

When one looks inside the electricity system, the experience is less like analyzing an immense machine than being fed into one, resembling the immortal scene in “Modern Times” where Charlie Chaplin’s factory worker is swallowed by the equipment he’s working on.

The American electricity market is not guided by an “invisible hand” of supply and demand, but by an accumulation of misaligned rules laid down over decades. Layer upon layer of regulation, subsidy, mandate, and accounting rules to a point where the system became fixed in an upward, inflationary tilt, impervious to efforts to change.

There are at least a half-dozen federal environmental regulations that have more to do with rising electricity prices than tariffs or the data-center buildout, and a good example to start with is called Construction Work in Progress (CWIP).

As a new issue brief makes clear, it helped change who pays for America’s infrastructure.

https://www.cfact.org/2026/02/25/we-didnt-just-get-expensive-electricity-we-built-a-system-that-makes-it-inevitable/

[IsailedawayfromFR]

A lot of what's in the article does not apply to the bulk of Texas as it mostly has its own grid that does not cross state lines.

A big reason Texas did it that way.

[DefiantMassRINO]

What's this 'we' crap?

We have liberal Dems, Greens, and NIMBY's to thank for the increasing inefficiencies and increasing cost of electricity generation and transmission.

The energy shortages of the late 1970's (Iran embargo) and early 1980's (Boston LNG shortage) are imprinted upon my psyche.

There's also the more recent memory of the 2003 Northeast Blackout.  New England ISO was only spared by an employee eating lunch at his desk.  Instead of investing more into improving our electricity grids, we wasted money on solar and wind turbine nonsense.  We also shuttered nuclear, coal, gas, and oil generation facilities without 100%+ replacement of the lost generation capacity.

An all-of-the-above diversified domestic energy portfolio is required for national and economic security.

Don't lump me in with Al Gore, John Kerry, Greta Thunberg, and their lemmings.

Accountability demands we call out the public officials and policies responsible constraining US economic growth and obstructing energy affordability.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Excellent article, ty @rangerrebew .