Transition Finance Weekly - 8/21/2025
Grid Transparency in NJ, Cities Pay for Climate Disasters, AGs Try to Save Energy Offices
Exploring the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition
Each week here in Transition Finance Weekly, researchers and analysts from Pleiades Strategy summarize the top stories and trends related to the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition in the states.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. What would you like to see in this newsletter? What kinds of developments would you like us to track? You can reach us at newsletter@pleiadesstrategy.com.
Subscribe to our Substack (it’s free!)
1. PJM Comes Into the Sunlight
New laws will help ensure transparency about how America’s largest grid operator influences what customers pay.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy just signed two new bills bringing long-overdue transparency to PJM, the country’s largest grid operator, and a major choke point in the clean energy transition.
Under the new laws, New Jersey utilities must now publicly disclose how they vote in PJM meetings, and explain how those votes align with affordability, reliability, and sustainability goals, and the state will investigate PJM’s pricing model for energy projects — giving the public timely insight into PJM decisions.
PJM, which serves all or part of 13 states and D.C., recently hit its capacity auction price cap of $329.17 per MW day, which was negotiated with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to limit increases for ratepayers. PJM’s secretive, anti-renewables decision-making process keeps rates high; it has prioritized fossil fuel expansion while delaying more than 1,300 clean energy projects and needed transmission build out.
NJ State Sen. Raj Mukherji: “While electric bills skyrocket, PJM’s decision-makers have been setting our regional power grid policy in secret. That ends today…. This is about sunlight, accountability, and putting consumers at the center of our energy policy.”
2. As Markets Shift Towards Disclosure, GOP AGs Try To Push Backwards
Regulators and companies worldwide are pressing forward — but some AGs are stuck in the past.
23 Republican state attorneys general, led by Iowa AG Brenna Bird, are attempting to sabotage the Science Based Targets initiative, and with it, global climate regulation. Their latest letter to the SBTi aims to intimidate banks and asset managers away from cutting emissions and accounting for climate risks, alleging that their net-zero commitments could violate antitrust laws.
This is a last-gasp effort by some American politicians to block banks from managing climate risk, protect fossil fuel funding, and slow the global financial shift already underway. It comes as regulators around the world (including in California, the EU, China, and India) step up climate disclosure and transparency requirements across the financial sector.
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison: “Antitrust law does not prohibit people from exercising their First Amendment right to work together to influence legislative or regulatory policy.”
3. Energy Bills Are Rising
Electricity prices are now growing at double the rate of inflation.
This summer, electricity prices surged across the U.S., growing twice as fast as the overall cost of living. As summer heat forces families to pay to keep air conditioners running, they take the cost hit; and as outdated fossil infrastructure strains utilities, the costs of replacement and expansion get passed on, too.
Fossil fuel volatility continues to drive instability in natural gas prices, largely due to international exports and fragile supply chains. As utilities remain dependent on gas-heavy grids, these rising fuel costs translate into higher power bills.
Meanwhile, renewables remain the cheapest, fastest-to-deploy solution, and grid-scale battery storage could save $7 billion in the 14-state Southwest Power Pool (SPP) territory alone. But the current policy of the federal government, contrary to its “energy independence” rhetoric, is to subsidize fossil fuels at the cost of lost opportunities to modernize.
Floridian Ken Thomas: "You just don't realize how important your power is until you don't have it. In Florida's heat, you just can't live without air conditioning. And this time of year particularly…. It's painful to see that bill when it comes in."
4. Democratic AGs Fight to Save State Energy Expertise
Federal reimbursement cuts hit state clean energy offices.
In a new lawsuit, 19 Democratic attorneys general and governors have taken the Department of Energy to court after it gutted reimbursements for state clean energy offices. The DOE placed “arbitrary” caps on reimbursements after it had already made agreements with certain states.
This money pays for the engineers, planners, and analysts who support state and local energy policy, and the federal cuts come just as climate challenges escalate. These staff are responsible for everything from home weatherization programs to energy efficiency to state and local transit to building new energy projects. States say they can’t meet energy goals or manage demand without well-funded local expertise.
Oregon AG Dan Rayfield: “This cap strips away the resources we need to keep that work going — and the people and expertise behind it. We can’t meet Oregon’s energy needs if the federal government pulls critical infrastructure that supports the people and expertise behind this work midstream.”
5. Extreme Weather Hits Municipal Budgets Hard
It’s not just homeowners who pay; cities and counties pay, too.
Earlier this month, Milwaukee was hit by a 1-in-1,000-year storm that dropped over 10 inches of rain in just 48 hours. The resulting flooding left more than 1,800 homes damaged or destroyed and also hit public infrastructure – hard. Early estimates found $23 million in damages to roads, parks, bridges, waterways, and other public infrastructure.
Costs like these fall directly on local governments (and ultimately taxpayers), and there will be more and more of them. Climate-driven flooding is accelerating across the country, straining already underfunded local budgets. And in cities like Milwaukee, mounting flood risks threaten to erode tax bases as property values fall and residents move.
SPOTLIGHT: GOP Raked in $100 Million from Big Oil, Then Voted to Kill Clean Energy and Hike Utility Costs
A new report shows fossil fuel cash flowed to hundreds of members of Congress as they prepared to vote on the largest anti-energy bill in decades. GOP lawmakers who passed President Trump’s tax bill this summer received over $100 million from oil and gas companies, and delivered what Donald Trump promised in secret meetings with industry execs during his campaign: new subsidies, regulatory rollbacks, and an all-fronts assault on clean energy. In the process, all of these legislators seriously damaged the clean energy industries in their home states, killing manufacturing jobs by the thousands and sending consumer energy prices soaring.
