The culture war is coming for your electricity

Relations between states are becoming so strained over their different approaches to fossil fuels and renewables, some politicians are calling for a “divorce.”

Utah Republicans celebrated last week when PacifiCorp, one of the largest utilities in the West, announced it would stop serving customers in Washington state. PacifiCorp mainly operates in Utah, but also in Wyoming and Idaho — and, to the chagrin of some Utah legislators, blue states like California and Oregon. Utah legislators had previously pressured to break their utility’s ties with states with more aggressive climate policies. Now, PacifiCorp is handing over its 140,000 customers in Washington — along with two wind farms, a natural gas plant, and other energy infrastructure — to Portland General Electric for $1.9 billion. 

“We want a divorce from the three states that don’t look like Utah,” said Mike Schultz, Utah’s Republican House Speaker. “This is the first step forward.”

In announcing the sale, PacifiCorp noted that navigating “diverging policies” among the six states it serves had “created extraordinary pressure,” a challenge that had affected its financial stability. Utah is still heavily reliant on coal, while California, Oregon, and Washington have been moving forward with policies to shift away from fossil fuels. Washington, for example, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as a baseline. As of January, Washington required PacifiCorp to stop charging Washington customers for coal generation, reducing costs for ratepayers by $68 million compared to the status quo — and potentially shifting coal-related costs back onto states like Utah.

It’s not just money driving the wedge, but also identity. “Absolutely, this seems like a culture war thing,” said Matthew Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming who studies political polarization. He sees Republican politicians playing up cultural tensions to appeal to their base, particularly in places where coal’s long-term decline has fueled economic anxiety and resentment. “Some of this rhetoric that blames maybe what’s happening in the industry on coastal progressives and their climate histrionics — you can see how that sort of message might be resonant or cathartic with those communities that are having real problems,” Burgess said.

As the divide grows between blue states demanding clean energy and red states seeking to protect coal, oil, and natural gas, the economic realities of sharing the grid have become a point of contention. This is all unfolding at a time when concerns about rising costs have gripped the country. Electricity prices have climbed, with the average U.S. home’s energy bill 30 percent higher in 2025 than it was 2021 — a steep rise, but still in line with overall inflation. While Republicans often blame environmental regulations for rising electricity prices, Democrats typically blame Trump’s attacks on clean energy or the rise of energy-hungry data centers.

The tension over sharing energy costs with blue states rose in Utah in 2024, when Rocky Mountain Power, Utah’s largest electricity provider and part of PacifiCorp, proposed a 30 percent rate increase for most of the state’s customers. The utility said the increase was needed to cover the costs of building new infrastructure and complying with regulations in different states. Utah Republicans grilled Rocky Mountain Power and suggested it could break up with PacifiCorp, its parent company, because of the progressive climate policies it had to comply with in California, Oregon, and Washington. Last year, Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed a resolution encouraging an “interstate compact for regional energy collaboration” with Wyoming and Idaho. 

“Sadly, we know Utahns are paying more for power because of decisions being made in coastal states, places like Oregon and Washington,” Cox said at the time. “But this is so much more than that.”

This theme has popped up in other parts of the country. Last September, five Republican-led states — Montana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — asked federal regulators to stop a $22 billion transmission expansion designed to connect cities in the Upper Midwest to the Great Plains. They argued that sharing the cost of the project would effectively force their ratepayers to subsidize wind and solar for the benefit of Democratic states’ clean energy goals. 

Yet as Republicans complain about the costs of building clean energy, Democrats are blaming the costs of keeping fossil fuels alive, noting that the Trump administration is forcing expensive coal plants to stay open past their retirement dates in Washington, Colorado, Indiana, and Michigan. The Michigan coal plant cost ratepayers $80 million in the first four months of running it beyond its planned retirement date, according to the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission.

“Clean energy is just the way we’re moving,” said Meredith Connolly, director of policy and strategy at Climate Solutions, a clean energy nonprofit in the Pacific Northwest. “It’s really a question of just how fast we get there, and do you create these headwinds that slow down the transition or try to give an unfair leg up to fossil fuels? Those are the silly things we’re seeing that actually drive up electricity costs.”

There are plenty of pressures affecting utilities — market forces, the scramble to procure more electricity to power data centers, and even climate-driven risks. In many states, particularly in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, replacing outdated equipment, protecting power lines, and other measures to withstand more extreme weather conditions is the main driver of rising costs. In California, infrastructure upgrades to reduce wildfire risk (and thus liability costs) are a key factor behind the soaring electricity bills. PacifiCorp, for instance, has faced a slew of lawsuits accusing it of sparking fires in Oregon and California with poorly maintained equipment and has agreed to pay $2.2 billion in settlements.

Some climate advocates worry about what would happen if splitting up the energy market along partisan boundaries became a trend. “Our fates are tied across the energy market,” Connolly said. “And so these would be pretty artificial lines.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The culture war is coming for your electricity on Feb 27, 2026.