Calvin Butler, Exelon’s CEO, told Reuters this week that the company plans to push for changes in Mid-Atlantic state laws that currently bar regulated utilities from owning generation. “I believe the 2026 legislative sessions are going to be an opportunity for us,” he said.

A deregulated experiment under strain

Back in the 1990s, many states in the PJM Interconnection, the giant regional grid that serves more than 65 million people from Illinois to New Jersey, moved to deregulation. Utilities like Exelon kept their monopoly on power lines but were stripped of their power plants. Independent generators stepped in, creating a competitive wholesale market that was supposed to keep costs down.

But Butler argues the system isn’t working anymore. Demand is spiking thanks to energy-hungry data centers and the electrification of cars, trucks, and industry. PJM has already warned of looming supply shortfalls. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of recent bill increases in Exelon’s service areas came from generation costs, not the wires and poles that the utility controls.

“I’m one of the staunchest supporters for competitive markets when they work, but we are seeing that the competitive marketplace in PJM is not working,” Butler said.

A fight brewing in statehouses

For Exelon to own new power plants, lawmakers in states like Maryland and New Jersey would need to reverse course and allow regulated generation again. Butler says his team is already laying the groundwork with governors and legislators.

Exelon’s pitch: utilities can build plants more cheaply than private developers. They borrow at lower interest rates, already own land and easements for projects, and can often fast-track permitting. Butler has also tied the idea to equity, promising to prioritize community solar projects in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Independent power companies are pushing back hard. They argue letting utilities back into the generation business risks reviving monopolies and could ultimately raise costs. “Utilities will just pass those expenses to captive ratepayers,” one executive told me off the record.

The bigger picture

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects national power demand to hit record highs this year and next. That’s not just because of AI and cloud computing. It’s also the millions of heat pumps, EV chargers, and electric buses beginning to plug into the grid.

Exelon, with nearly 11 million customers, sits at the heart of this transition. Its footprint includes some of the poorest urban neighborhoods in the country, places where even small bill increases hit hard. That’s what makes this fight over regulated generation more than just a legal debate. For households in Baltimore rowhouses or Atlantic City apartments, the outcome could shape whether their bills ease or keep climbing.

Both projects are part of Tokyo’s attempt to answer a pressing question: how does an island nation with little spare land, deep coastal waters, and a heavy reliance on fossil fuel imports carve out a renewable future?

Officials have labeled offshore wind the “trump card” of Japan’s decarbonization strategy, a critical piece in reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. Floating technology is essential here. Japan’s seabed plunges steeply just off its shores, making fixed-bottom turbines impractical. And unlike nuclear plants—once the country’s low-carbon backbone—wind structures can be engineered to ride out earthquakes and typhoons. “Floating structures are relatively stable even in the case of earthquakes or typhoons,” explained Kei Ushigami, who leads marine renewables at Toda Corporation, one of the companies behind the Goto project.

The turbines are set to officially spin in January. If all goes to plan, they’ll help boost wind’s share of Japan’s electricity from just 1 percent today to up to 8 percent by 2040. But getting there is daunting. To meet targets, Japan would need to deploy about 200 massive turbines each year. The problem: the country lacks the domestic manufacturing base to churn them out.

Solar developers face similar hurdles. Kyocera’s record-setting floating array at Yamakura Dam—180,000 square meters dotted with 50,000 panels—was designed to sidestep land scarcity while keeping panels cool enough to generate 20 percent more electricity than ground systems. Floating solar has since spread across reservoirs nationwide, a clever adaptation for a mountainous country short on buildable land. Yet engineers had to stress-test the platforms in French aerospace wind tunnels to ensure they could survive typhoon-force gusts.

Even with technical success, both wind and solar ventures collide with local livelihoods. Fishermen on the Goto Islands were promised revenue-sharing and patrol jobs, but some say the project was pushed through without real dialogue. “It was presented as a done deal,” said Takuya Eashiro, who heads the Fukue fishing cooperative. Others acknowledge the trade-offs: dwindling fish stocks due to warming seas have already made their way of life precarious. Some families now hope turbine maintenance could provide work for their children.

Costs are another storm cloud. Inflation has already forced Mitsubishi to abandon three offshore wind projects it deemed unprofitable. Analysts argue Japan’s bidding system needs to account for global price volatility and supply chain constraints. “The infrastructure is not yet in place,” warned Hidenori Yonekura of Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.

Still, there’s momentum. Floating wind and solar aren’t just clever stopgaps—they’re proof that Japan can harness its geography rather than be hemmed in by it. Whether that proof scales fast enough is the question. The sea may be vast, but so are the demands of an island nation still burning coal for two-thirds of its electricity.

The coordinated day of action was organized by Third Act, a climate network notable for its demographic makeup. Founded by author Bill McKibben, the group mobilizes retirees who see their generation’s accumulated wealth and political clout as leverage. “For once, it’s not just being left up to young people,” McKibben told a crowd in Washington, D.C. “Older Americans have about 70% of the country’s financial assets. So it’s particularly appropriate that they’re putting pressure on here.”

That generational reckoning echoed in Boston, where 61-year-old Mary McCabe held a poster of her son as a baby. She said it was her first protest, spurred by headlines warning of the narrowing window to avoid catastrophic climate change. “This decade is critical for us to take action,” she said, voice shaking.

The timing wasn’t accidental. Just a day earlier, the United Nations released a sobering report warning that current emissions trajectories point toward catastrophic warming. At the same time, the authors stressed that existing technologies—renewable energy, storage, efficiency measures—are ready to deploy at scale if governments and corporations act quickly.

Yet in many places, activists aren’t waiting for world leaders. In New York on Saturday, thousands marched down Park Avenue and into the shadow of Trump Tower, rallying under the banner “Make Billionaires Pay.” Their demands sprawled across issues—immigration, gender justice, Gaza—but climate remained central. Signs and chants tied disparate struggles to a single throughline: concentrated wealth and power come at the expense of people and planet.

Some demonstrators carried towering puppets of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Others rolled out a 160-foot “climate polluters bill,” itemizing the economic damage wrought by fossil-fueled disasters. Tatiana Cruz, hoisting the puppet of Musk, said her own awakening came after two close friends were deported. “The monster up top is similar in a lot of different scenarios,” she said, linking her fight for migrant rights with the push for climate accountability.

For retirees like Bob Follansbee, who biked from Dorchester to Boston’s financial district, and for first-time marchers like McCabe, the actions were deeply personal. Follansbee admitted his generation bore responsibility for the climate crisis but insisted it was also their duty to help fix it: “I feel it’s incumbent on us to stand up for the next generations coming.”

The banks targeted Tuesday—Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America—offered varied responses. Citi pointed to its $1 trillion commitment to sustainable finance, while Bank of America declined comment. Analysts, meanwhile, remain skeptical that shareholder pressure alone will change lending practices. “Typically you need acts of Congress or much more elevated political pressure,” wrote Eric Compton, an analyst at Morningstar.

Still, momentum is building. Third Act claims over 17,000 pledges from customers willing to cut up credit cards or close accounts if banks don’t pivot. And if this week’s twin demonstrations—one against Wall Street lenders, another against billionaire elites—show anything, it’s that climate protest is expanding across generations, causes, and geographies.

The questions now: Will the institutions being targeted listen? And if not, how far are people prepared to go?

So the big question isn’t whether America will build a new grid fast enough—it can’t—but how to squeeze every last drop of capacity out of the one we already have.

A New Kind of Energy Emergency

The Department of Energy recently launched its “Speed to Power” program, soliciting utilities and regional grid operators for shovel-ready projects that could bring on extra capacity quickly. In tandem, President Donald Trump invoked emergency powers to keep aging coal and gas plants from closing, arguing that “rapid adoption of solar and wind” has destabilized power markets .

Critics point out that Texas—the grid with the largest share of renewables—actually saw improved reliability this summer thanks to solar and batteries . But the administration has doubled down on fossil fuels, even rescinding a $4.9 billion transmission loan that would have carried wind and solar power from the Midwest to Eastern cities .

Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is layering on new grid security requirements to guard against cyberattacks and extreme cold snaps, underscoring just how many fault lines exist in the current system.

Short-Term Fixes: Squeezing More from the System

Analysts at RAND and elsewhere say there’s a set of stopgap measures that could buy the grid some breathing room while long-term investments crawl forward. Among them:

• Prioritizing projects already deep in the interconnection queue. Fast-tracking high-capacity battery and flexible generation projects could yield as much as 64 GW by 2030.
• Postponing retirements. Keeping some coal and gas units online longer, as California did with certain gas and nuclear plants, could shore up reliability in the near term—though it comes with environmental trade-offs. RAND estimates delaying half of scheduled retirements could add 22 GW of capacity.
• Hybrid renewables. Pairing wind and solar with storage transforms them into more dependable resources, unlocking up to 30 GW in the second half of the decade.
• Untangling the interconnection backlog. Even small improvements in completion rates—say, 5 percentage points—translate into an extra 26 GW online, according to queue data.

Each of these strategies carries its own tensions: environmental justice concerns around extending coal, financing hurdles for storage, bureaucratic bottlenecks in permitting. Still, together they could help the grid avoid immediate crunches.

Market Forces Don’t Wait

Even as Washington leans on coal plants, the private sector is rushing the other way. At the solar industry’s RE+ gathering in Las Vegas last week, executives pointed out that hyperscale data centers—the very ones driving demand—aren’t price sensitive. For them, the speed of new megawatts matters more than the fuel source. That puts solar and batteries, which can be built far faster than a gas plant, in a strong position despite federal headwinds .

Globally, renewables have already hit what the United Nations calls a “positive tipping point,” with solar and wind now the cheapest new power sources in most markets . Even here at home, over 90% of new capacity added last year came from clean energy .

What’s at Stake

If policymakers fail to bridge the gap, the consequences ripple well beyond utility bills. A RAND analysis warns that by 2030, AI alone could demand more electricity than the current net capacity of the U.S. grid. That raises the specter of companies moving data operations overseas in search of reliable power. With AI leadership and industrial competitiveness on the line, the energy debate is no longer just about climate—it’s about economic security.

For communities, this moment feels familiar. Like my hometown, where one dam powered jobs and sparked endless arguments about fish runs, the choices we make about today’s grid will define tomorrow’s landscape of opportunity and sacrifice. Whether America leans harder on fossil stopgaps or clears the way for a surge of renewables, the trade-offs won’t be abstract—they’ll be lived out in places where the lights either stay on or don’t.