A presenter at the meeting warned that the United States is entering “a new era of sustained load growth” and said that mounting electricity demand — driven by AI data centers, vehicle and building electrification and a resurgence in domestic manufacturing — will require structural changes in how energy infrastructure is permitted and built. "The scale and drivers of today's rising electricity demand are relatively unprecedented," the presenter said.

The presenter said rising demand and recent federal actions risk making electricity less affordable. He cited testimony from another witness and said the reconciliation bill is estimated to increase annual energy costs by more than $16 billion in 2030 and by more than $33 billion in a later year mentioned in the testimony (the second year in the transcript was unclear). "Electricity bills are becoming unaffordable for too many Americans," the presenter said.

The presenter attributed higher costs and project cancellations to two federal actions: tariffs imposed by the president that he said raise equipment costs for energy projects, and the reconciliation bill, which he said is causing some clean-energy projects to be canceled. He also said an aging electrical grid is contributing to multi-year delays in interconnection queues that stall new generation.

Citing a policy study, the presenter said well-planned, high-capacity transmission investment could reduce household costs even after accounting for construction. He said, "a study that found that investing in well planned, high capacity transmission could save US households between $6.3 billion and $10.4 billion annually, and that's even after accounting for the cost of actually building those transmission lines." He added that clean energy is both affordable and quick to deploy compared with natural gas, which he said faces long turbine backlogs.

The presenter urged concern about a Department of the Interior policy that, he said, "requires the secretary to personally review and sign off on wind and solar projects on federal lands." He described that requirement as a "nakedly political decision" that he said could delay new generation additions to the grid and "drive up costs."

The remarks in the transcript were descriptive testimony and commentary; no formal motions or votes on these topics were recorded in the provided transcript.