A committee member at a recent hearing warned that rising electricity demand driven by AI data centers, vehicle and building electrification and a resurgence in domestic manufacturing will require “structural changes” to permitting, interconnection and transmission to avoid higher costs for households.

The committee member said the urgency is not only about sustaining technological leadership but also about affordability. “The urgency isn't just about maintaining our edge in AI innovation. It's about affordability,” the committee member said.

The testimony focused on several interlinked challenges: long interconnection timelines that stall projects in queues, slow transmission-line development and fragmented permitting processes. The committee member said those problems are producing delays that make it harder to integrate new generation onto the grid and raise consumer energy bills.

The testimony cited federal and industry data to illustrate the pace of recent additions and near-term projections. It said U.S. developers added nearly 49 gigawatts of new grid capacity in 2024, about 95% of it renewable, and that industry estimates for the current year include about 63 gigawatts of new capacity split among utility-scale solar, wind, energy storage and a smaller amount of natural gas-fired generation. The testimony said developers are adding 32.5 gigawatts of solar, 7.7 gigawatts of wind, 18.2 gigawatts of energy storage and 4.4 gigawatts of natural gas-fired capacity in the year cited.

The committee member and witnesses argued that clean energy is among the most affordable and fastest-to-deploy resources, and that supply-chain and policy disruptions are raising project costs. The testimony said recently enacted tariffs and provisions in a reconciliation bill are increasing equipment and development costs and have led to some clean-energy project cancellations; the transcript cited estimated increases in annual energy costs of roughly $16 billion in 2030 and $33 billion by a later year, but the later-year date in the record was not specified.

Panel testimony also pointed to examples from states. The speaker said Texas and California illustrate that high shares of renewable energy can coexist with — and in some cases improve — reliability. The record said Texas added about 9,600 megawatts of clean resources, including roughly 5,400 megawatts of solar, 3,800 megawatts of energy storage and 253 megawatts of wind, and that ERCOT reported the risk of grid emergencies fell substantially after those additions. The transcript also cited the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment showing falling blackout risk as battery capacity came online.

The committee member criticized a recent Department of the Interior policy described in the testimony as requiring the department secretary personally to review and sign off on wind and solar projects on federal lands. The testimony said such a policy could delay projects and increase costs; it also cited a Department of Energy estimate, in the testimony record, that federal lands in the contiguous United States could support more than 7,700 gigawatts of renewable capacity.

Witnesses named in the hearing record included Mr. Gramlich, Mr. Huntsman and Mr. Tinch; the committee member addressed their testimony and said no single business or technical workaround can substitute for a coordinated, modern and responsive grid.

The hearing concluded with the committee member saying they looked forward to further discussion about integrating rapidly deployable energy resources while investing in long-term grid modernization.