If the Trump administration is delivering anything to the
working class so far, it’s overwhelming household costs: Come for the $16 eggs at the grocery
store, stay for the eye-popping utility bills if Trump enacts the tariffs
he has promised for this weekend. So far, Trump has hinted that he might exempt
oil, but billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian electricity will be affected. There’s
no question that if they indeed take place, 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and
Mexican imports will raise energy costs in dramatic ways that ordinary
Americans will feel.
Fifty-two million Americans struggle to pay their energy bills, says Isaac Sevier, executive director of Public Grids, an organization advocating public ownership of utilities nationwide, and Trump’s move will “make that deep affordability crisis even worse.”
To take just one example, New York state has been investing billions in a clean energy transmission line from Quebec. With Trump’s tariffs, according to the Public Power Coalition, New Yorkers will pay an additional $290 million a year for energy. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has estimated that the tariffs would raise the cost of electricity for ordinary Massachusetts ratepayers by some $100 million. Higher electricity prices will then raise the cost of other goods that require energy to produce and transport.
For all we know, Trump may still back down on this issue—even after tariffs take effect. One thing we learned this week, as the White House rescinded an order issued less than two days prior, is that it’s hard to predict what Trump is going to do.
But the fact that we’re facing such a likely energy affordability crisis, with so many Americans facing a cold winter and a hot summer, shows how urgently we need to diversify our energy sources, experts say—and, especially, rethink how we distribute necessary public goods like energy. That’s particularly true as Trump’s friends in Silicon Valley prepare to drain energy supplies even further with AI.
Geothermal energy is considered highly resilient to all this political commotion, since the heat pumps for it are made domestically. In Massachusetts, one quarter of the buildings in the state are expected to use geothermal heating and cooling by 2050, and geothermal is also thriving in red states like Oklahoma. The rest of the country would be smart to get on it, both to weather Trump-made volatility and benefit from good manufacturing jobs. When I spoke with Kate Gordon, a former senior adviser to the secretary of energy under Biden, she emphasized the importance of using energy sources like geothermal in the same place that the energy is produced; hydropower, she said, is another example. She sees both as crucial to domestic manufacturing, also a critical priority.
However, this crisis shows that our energy system needs more than diversity. New York is now building publicly owned renewable energy, and clean energy advocates are exploring that model elsewhere as well. Under the private utilities through which most Americans get their energy, says advocacy group Public Grids’ executive director, Isaac Sevier, “we already pay a tariff because of how much corporate profit is priced in, compared to what the price would be under public power.”
For-profit businesses must make profits, making it all but certain that tariffs will impose suffering on consumers. “The energy corporations aren’t going to absorb those costs,” Sevier says. “They will pass it along to people already suffering with paying their bills.” But when energy is publicly owned, the costs imposed by misguided policies like Trump’s need not be passed along to the ratepayers.
Gordon, now CEO of California Forward, a group pressing for more sustainable and resilient economic development in that state, agrees. “One hundred percent, we should be thinking about different models of business and ownership,” she says, noting that by law corporations are obligated to make profits for their shareholders. “All the net-zero pledges and all the great statements are just noise because that’s not their legal obligation.” Whether through public ownership, employee ownership, or community benefits agreements, public goods like energy will increasingly require more innovative institutions. “I actually do really think we need to have that conversation,” Gordon says, “because this feels very tenuous, relying on the private sector, when it’s not their obligation.”
One solution that’s not viable is “Drill, baby, drill”—the petrostate rallying cry Trump repeated to cheering supporters in festivities surrounding his inauguration. The haunting recent images of Los Angeles burning and the hurricanes battering North Carolina show how urgently we need to move away from fossil fuels. In any case, even oil and gas executives don’t think more domestic drilling makes economic sense; they won’t do it without higher gas prices.
The erratic nature of Trump’s announcement—when he announced the tariffs Thursday, he essentially asked for an extension on the homework question of whether oil was included—is in character. Just a few days ago, millions lost access to their Medicaid because of a freeze on all federal funding that has since been walked back. This is a chaotic government and will continue to be so. Historically, arguments for localized energy sources have implied that it is too risky to depend on the global market because of political instability in the Middle East and elsewhere. Now it’s clear that the political instability is here at home, and our energy profiteers are only going to add to the problem. Our winters are cold, and our summers are increasingly hot. We will need policy that ensures our energy security without exacerbating these challenges by adding to climate change.
