Nationwide, on average, household energy bills could increase by more than 7% by the end of the decade, according to an analysis by National Economic Research Associates.
The industry consulting group estimates household energy bills would mirror the national increase in Nevada, Colorado, Utah and Montana. Meanwhile, energy costs are predicted to spike by nearly 30% in Wyoming, 25% in New Mexico and 14% in Arizona.
This comes at a time when most of the nation's new power to the grid is coming from renewable energy projects, and energy demand is higher than ever, said Ben King, an energy policy researcher with Rhodium Group who was not involved in the analysis.
"It is an inconvenient time to be making it more difficult to put stuff on the grid when we've got this level of growth," said King, noting the demand is largely being driven by AI data centers. "If you're making it more expensive to build the stuff that we know is in the pipeline right now, then you may just not be able to plug in that next data center, for instance."
Even before the act was passed, the U.S. was already seeing a drop in clean energy investment due to fading federal support. In the first five months of this year, companies canceled more than two dozen projects.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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