In mountaineering, a false summit is an apparent peak below an actual one where climbers, believing they’ve reached the highest point, mistakenly turn back. In the energy policy world, where I work, stopping short in the face of false summits is all too common.
Foundations and nonprofits begin the process of policy change but often don’t finish. While significant sums of philanthropic money go toward passing climate legislation — and passing new laws is indeed a crucial step — turning these victories into real change often takes years, if it even happens. Philanthropy, which has long been criticized for acting too slowly on the climate crisis, needs to do better at following through on the laws they spend so much money to get passed.
Given Donald Trump’s impending White House return, as well as the rightward shift of several state legislatures, new clean-energy laws might be few and far between outside a handful of longtime leading states. Grant makers must act quickly to shore up climate momentum at the state level by banking recent state legislative wins that haven’t been implemented. To do that, they need to tackle the bottlenecks that have delayed successful new programs.
Regulatory Breakdown
The breakdown occurs when translating laws into regulation. When, for example, state legislation sets a new target for energy production from renewable sources, state regulatory agencies interpret the law and decide how to achieve the target. That would be fine if states had a well-functioning regulatory process. But they don’t, because none do.
It’s a fundamental problem that no one is addressing.
Consider, for example, the case of the Illinois legislation that included groundbreaking climate provisions that went nowhere. In 2021, the state passed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. Described by the National Resources Defense Council as a “nation-leading law to fight climate change,” it calls for 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.
Part of the law requires improvements in how new energy resources, such as solar farms, connect to and deliver energy to the electric grid. So, the state’s regulatory agency — the public utility commission — set up a working group to investigate. Two years later, its report contained zero actionable recommendations. Zero.
A major section of New Jersey’s Clean Energy Act suffered a similar fate. The 2018 law set an ambitious target for the deployment of energy storage in the state, but as of this writing, no policies have been changed nor programs launched. That means New Jersey’s utility commission has spent the last six years deciding critical implementation details — or, more accurately, not deciding them. Regulatory staff did recently propose a new energy-storage program, but it has almost no chance of achieving the state’s target on time, underscoring how broken the process has been.
These are just two of countless examples I’ve observed across the country. My point isn’t to throw shade. Every legislative victory is worth celebrating and none happen without diligent, concerted effort. The policy staff at state utility commissions who turn legislation into regulation are among the smartest, most dedicated people I know.
But they work in a broken system, and we’re losing precious time to fix it. Investment in the transition to low-carbon energy keeps rising, but so do carbon emissions. Most scientists think the Earth will reach 2.7°C of warming by 2100, with cataclysmic consequences. Terrifyingly, the Earth is on track to surpass 1.5°C of warming this year.
Reaching the Summit
Some state laws could help address the climate crisis. They just need a better, faster process for implementation. There are two ways grant makers can help achieve that goal and, in effect, reach the summit.
First, funders can invest in accelerating the way state utility commissions develop new regulations. Simply put, today’s process is designed to fail.
Let’s say a law passes and a commission opens a new legal process — known as a proceeding or a docket — to put it into practice. Typically, this begins with the commission receiving formal comments from various stakeholders, including private companies, utilities, and organizations representing public or environmental interests, only a fraction of which are helpful.
Wading through them takes weeks or months and produces a draft proposal, which is essentially a patchwork of competing interests. Nonetheless, this document forms the basis of a lengthy adversarial process involving hearings, workshops, and written comments over many months or years.
Instead of fulfilling the goals of the legislation, the process adjudicates a lack of consensus it engendered in the first place. The resulting regulations and programs, when they eventually arrive, reflect the dysfunction that went into creating them.
What would a better approach look like? Maryland’s utility commission recently laid crucial groundwork for a new energy storage target in less than three months. My organization helped the commission use a decision-making approach known as design thinking that accounts for people’s needs and technical feasibility while encouraging compromise and collaboration. The result was an initial roadmap on how to reach the target, an engaged group eager to keep working together, and agreement that the implementation was much farther along than anyone expected.
Grant makers should fund organizations that help regulatory agencies execute similar approaches. That includes groups such as Gridworks, which works with utility commissions to more efficiently advance clean-energy policy, and Minnesota’s e21 Initiative, which facilitates collaboration between various stakeholders to decarbonize the state’s electrical system. Beyond funding organizations, foundations can also actively advocate to accelerate the regulatory process.
The second way grant makers can shepherd successful policy change is by bridging the gap between ideas and actions. Foundations invest tremendous resources in developing new ideas and codifying best practices. Typically, this includes what I call the “four Ws:” white papers, webinars, workshops, and workgroups. But where do they lead?
In the worst-case scenario, nowhere. Reports sit on shelves, events and initiatives lack follow-through, trees fall in the woods and no one hears.
Regulatory staff know that a veritable ocean of resources exists to inform sound policy design. But even locating the most helpful resources takes time many don’t have, to say nothing of digesting and using the content. In a classic study, the World Bank reviewed its publications in 2014 and found nearly a third had never been downloaded.
Simple tools could be transformative here. Instead of funding more white papers and events, funders could create a database of resources across different energy policy topics — a one-stop shop to help busy staff translate key insights directly into new regulations.
A.I.-based tools could even produce full drafts of regulatory decisions. With the right training, these tools could combine all the history and research on a policy topic with the latest stakeholder input, saving weeks of staff time.
In a second Trump administration, the focus of the clean-energy transition will need to shift from federal to state action. But a second shift is also needed: from passing state legislation to quickly implementing effective regulations.
Modernizing the energy regulatory process will accelerate the launch of new programs and the deployment of new technologies. And the faster communities see benefits and job growth from these programs, the harder they will be to unwind — and to argue against in future administrations.
