NEW IDEA: It's Time to Open the Grid
When it comes to cheaper and cleaner electricity, we need more than talk, tinkers, and temporary solutions. It's time to think bigger and bolder than ever before.
America has an energy problem – and Americans know it. Last year, electricity prices rose at more than twice the pace of inflation and investor-owned utilities requested the most rate increases in any year on record. Demand is surging and supply is failing to keep up. Cheaper clean energy projects often wait in line for years to get underway.
In exit polls of the 2026 midterm elections, 54% of Americans said they were “very concerned” about gas and energy prices. Voters in battleground districts ranked utility bills as one of their three most important issues.
Over the past months, politicians and think tanks have released various plans around energy affordability that have contained important ideas: cutting red tape to build more abundant clean energy and upgrade our infrastructure, providing emergency rate relief funds for consumers, making data centers pay their fair share. These policies are critical.
But as those fights play out in 2026, Project 2029 is looking ahead. This is a time to offer long-term solutions and not just short-term bandaids, to deal with causes of our problem and not just the symptoms, and to rethink our energy structure for the 21st century.
That’s why today, Project 2029 is releasing our newest proposal: Open the Grid.
In most of the country, Americans can choose phone carriers and internet providers, but usually have limited or no electricity options. They pay utility bills set by a company that faces no competition, often holding a government-granted monopoly over the wires, the meter, and the power itself. New innovators that can offer cheaper, faster, cleaner alternatives are blocked in most states by laws that make competition illegal. Opening the electric grid to competition and innovation can help lower costs, address the climate crisis, and power America's energy future all at the same time.
As Axios wrote in an exclusive preview of this new proposal:
“The new plan aims to tackle overlapping problems. Think rising bills, increasing energy demand from AI and electrification of the economy, long waits for new power projects to connect to the grid, and what the group calls anti-competitive laws that favor incumbent utilities.”
Decades ago, Washington ended the telephone monopoly and opened the market to competition, and within just a matter of years the cost of calling family in the next state over fell to nothing. Now it's time to break open the electric grid and tear down the legal walls that trap billions in savings for American families and businesses.
The Open the Grid plan has four parts:
1. Open the Grid to Competition to Boost Supply and Lower Costs
2. Fix the Incentives: Pay Utilities for Results, Not Capital
3. Ban Utilities from Using Your Bill to Fund Their Political Spending
4. Protect Consumers and Ensure Universal Service
By harnessing the forces of competition and innovation, and breaking the stranglehold of monopolies, Americans can get access to cheap, clean, and plentiful energy that will power our economy and homes. You can read the full plan here.