Resetting the Energy Policy Paradigm in 2026

The Problem

• Policymakers need to be clear about their objectives on energy and climate policy. We can — and must — prioritize both long-term decarbonization and an abundant, secure, and affordable American energy supply. Meeting both goals is critical to fueling economic growth and competitiveness, and doing so responsibly. This requires a direct and transparent discussion about the values and criteria policymakers will use to evaluate real and unavoidable policy tradeoffs and to make decisions.
  
• For too long, decision-makers have been guilty of advancing ideological agendas through energy policy: promoting politically preferred technologies and blocking alternatives.
• Today, energy affordability has rightly become a focal point for consumers, voters, and policymakers. Energy costs are skyrocketing and energy demand in the United States is expected to grow — 1.5%-1.7% per year through 2040, more than double the growth rate seen since 2000, according to one estimate, driven by data center growth, new manufacturing, and more widespread electrification of households, vehicles, and whole industries. Erratic decision-making by policymakers hasn’t helped matters.
  
• The Trump administration is waging an ideological war on cheap American energy in the face of growing demand, driving up prices and making our country less prosperous and competitive. This gives liberals an enormous opportunity to reclaim a pro-American-energy agenda that takes emissions reductions seriously.
  
• To capture this opportunity, policymakers need to be clear-eyed about what is required to expand American energy supply, constrain energy prices, and accelerate the ongoing trends toward the electrification of the economy — and be honest about real tradeoffs.
• What liberals cannot afford to do is simply recast the same old policies as the topic du jour — as is the case with “affordability” right now. The messaging shift has to be accompanied by substantive policy adjustment, and policymakers cannot be held captive by the whims of advocacy groups with agendas.

The Terrain

• Our polling shows that voters rightfully see climate change as a serious problem, but they do not prioritize addressing it over issues like affordable energy, health care, and jobs.
  
• Decades of alarmist rhetoric that contributes to climate anxiety have failed to move public sentiment broadly, while the abstraction of climate targets has made the issue more academic — and less relevant—in the public mind.
• The issue has become polarized, making progress more difficult. Addressing climate change has come to be seen as a “Democratic” priority with which the party is overly preoccupied. Even phrases like “clean energy” or “renewables” can evoke a charged response.
• The good news is that in most instances, because commercial clean energy technologies — like solar and batteries — are cost-competitive, you don’t have to ask consumers to choose between their wallets or reducing climate pollution. And where clean technologies haven’t yet reached commercial scale, the United States can leverage its comparative advantage in innovation to get them there. With strong federal statutes already on the books, ongoing domestic energy production, leadership from the states, and a thriving new energy economy, the outlook is not as bleak as present circumstances might suggest.

The Searchlight Approach

Policymakers should prioritize results, not purity. To do this, the Searchlight approach to energy and climate policy seeks to:

• Reorient around measurable, concrete results. Current metrics of success in this area have largely focused on quantitative assessments of projected emissions reductions; these metrics can misdirect efforts away from reducing emissions or toward policies that are not politically durable — neither of which makes progress for global climate policy. Searchlight will develop new and innovative tools for tracking progress in concrete, accessible ways — like reducing consumer energy costs, converting commercial heavy duty fleets to electric, and bringing new energy sources online to curb demand. We will focus on the policies and actions that achieve those clear, measurable impacts while consistently measuring the tradeoffs.

• Build power with utilities. To date, and across the political spectrum, proposals to address electricity affordability have not reflected some basic fundamentals of the power sector and grid: its physical footprint, cost to build and maintain, and bedrock support for our economy. These factors grant significant leverage to its prominent owners and operators: electric utilities. One path, increasingly taken by advocacy groups, is to villainize those businesses, but achieving real affordability on energy bills will take more tools and more unlikely allies than many advocates have discussed. Rather than shutting out partners or eliminating options, Searchlight will seek ideas that focus on the affordability ends without ruling out effective means to get there.

• Invest in innovation. Innovation has been a major driver of both cost reductions and emissions reductions in the energy sector for decades. The success of clean technologies comes from basic research and development, de-risking through loan guarantees, and commercialization and deployment through tax credits, among other incentives. The U.S. needs to invest in additional innovative clean technologies (especially in industrial sectors) and ensure their supply chains rely on secure trading partners. Searchlight will identify innovation priorities and investment models to pursue these frontiers.

• Address insurance risk. Searchlight will undertake research and policy development on homeowners and other insurance lines and climate-related risk. It is vital to consider new policy ideas in this crucial part of the economy because it is increasingly a driver of homeowner and business costs. Searchlight will identify gaps in coverage and cost to chart new pathways on this issue.

• Protect the environment. The legal and regulatory authorities to charge fees for polluting exist, should be guarded against rollbacks, and should be expanded appropriately. A new Congress and administration should immediately act to enforce regulatory compliance aggressively and increase fees appropriately. Searchlight will catalog these areas as well as identify new uses for revenue generated from penalizing bad actors.

• Assess, retain, and reform our global energy relationships. Tariffs are reshaping global trade, including in several critical energy industries. Without speculating on the end result of their volatility, tariffs will likely present a new revenue source that will be difficult to quit. Additionally, relevant policy and incentive shifts are reshaping the competitiveness of U.S. industries versus those based in China or other countries, up and down supply chains and across technology portfolios. Searchlight will explore ways policymakers can repurpose and reconfigure the tariff regime and the associated revenues in the context of changing comparative advantages among U.S. and global industries to achieve climate and energy benefits.

During the first few months of 2026, Searchlight will use these objectives to inform convenings of key industry actors and other stakeholders in this policy space, draft proposals for policymakers to consider, and design new tools that will track and measure energy affordability. There needs to be a new agenda for accelerating global decarbonization in a politically sustainable way that is good for Americans and the planet. The old way has failed to produce a lasting consensus, and that must change.

Conclusion

It’s time to reset the energy and climate paradigm.  We take the work of reducing emissions seriously. In order for that work to happen, policymakers must be honest about the tradeoffs that are inherent in this space, and embrace a reality where the electorate is skeptical of the need to sacrifice for the sake of global emissions reductions. Advocates need to build a coalition and policy agenda that is durable across time and political ideologies. Climate change is a multi-decadal challenge, and we can’t tackle it if our policy frameworks careen back and forth with every election. We are currently experiencing the limitations of that strategy, with a new Congress and administration hollowing out all of the regulatory – and some of the legislative – climate progress made by the prior one.

This means looking beyond regulatory action to advance meaningful legislative changes, and broadening the coalition that is interested in a growing clean energy economy. The narrowness of the coalition advocating for U.S. climate policy – and the narrowness of the policy agenda itself – is hindering our country’s energy future. The path forward must prioritize affordability and security, quantifiable success, hard-nosed assessment of the tradeoffs, and growing the coalition of voters who see this work as vital to their own personal stability.