Leveling the Analytical Playing Field for State Regulators
How a federal technical and talent hub could strengthen state energy affordability and deployment efforts
10.15.26 4 min read
The Problem
State regulators are making increasingly complex, high-stakes decisions about the electricity system: the confluence of electricity demand from data centers, manufacturing, and electrification is driving utilities to propose major investments in infrastructure.1
Public Utility Commission (PUC) analytical capacity has not kept pace: many commissions have limited access to specialized expertise in modelling and forecasting analysis that allows them to make independent, informed decisions with public funds.2
Utilities can have substantially greater analytical resources than the regulators overseeing them. The talent pipeline of people who are trained to work on public interest analysis, and want to, is limited.