Aired Oct 13, 2026 · 23 min

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Energy costs, AI data centers, and grid reliability are becoming major issues in the 2026 midterm elections. But some of the most consequential decisions about America's energy future aren't being made in Washington. They're happening in state legislatures, local elections, and public utility commissions.

Matt Chester speaks to Caroline Spears, founder of Climate Cabinet, about why energy has become a defining political issue, how rising electricity bills and data center development are influencing voters, and which overlooked elections could have the biggest impact on energy policy.

Spears also explains how Climate Cabinet uses data science and AI to identify influential political races, why utility commission elections deserve more attention, and what the 2026 election results could mean for a new wave of data center legislation in 2027.

Matt Chester: In the lead up to this year's midterm elections, it seems a prerequisite is that every candidate running for any office has to have a position and a plan for energy, power costs, data centers, even permitting reform and reliability. With that intense focus, we're seeing the real action shift perhaps away from just Washington and into state legislatures, local races, even public utility commissions. Joining me to discuss it all today is Caroline Spears, founder of Climate Cabinet. Caroline, welcome.

So, Caroline, 2026 may well be our most energy heavy election we've had in the United States. And under that backdrop, what do you find are some of the approaches or notions about energy that political candidates in these races are still getting wrong right now?

Caroline Spears: What's been so surprising about the 2026 election and also about the election we just had in November of 2025 is how much energy issues are coming to the forefront. And you have this moment where energy issues were already top of mind for voters last year. You saw that in some of the November elections at the Public Service Commission in Georgia. Some of the governor races, they were already floating to the top because energy and electricity were intersecting with the cost of living and affordability issues that so many people are facing.

What's been surprising to me about going into this election is how those energy issues went from important in the last election to absolutely central. Every single candidate's talking about data centers. Every single candidate's talking about cost of living, affordability, gas prices. It's coming through in every single campaign we see. And as the central or one of the central main issues that we're hearing from people from candidates and from voters across the country. I've been surprised at how much that has completely dominated the political conversation all year.

Matt Chester: Yeah. Do you expect that to stick around in the future? Obviously, as long as we're in economic conditions where that's one of the kitchen table issues, it probably will. But I guess I'm curious of moving forward, even if the economy rebounds, will this moment kind of stick with us?

Caroline Spears: You know, I think what's coming through in the political ecosystem right now is that the conversation we're having is not necessarily about the economy. Like, you can look at the stock market, and it's been going up all year. The conversation we're having is around something, part of the economy that feels much more real to people, which is specifically cost of living. Right. This has been a trend for a few years. It's not like it's just started in the last couple of years. Cost of living has come up kind of in several election cycles over the last decade, but it's really dominating the entire conversation, specifically data centers and how they relate to economic anxieties that people have, but also how they relate to cost of living with electricity costs.

And the second place is really coming up on energy costs. It's not just electricity and data centers. It's also gas prices. And we've seen that gas prices doubled in the last year. And so that's coming through as well. In our experience working with folks this year, it's top of mind, but also not as big as the data center conversation.

Matt Chester: Sure. And amid all of this, I'd love to ask if there are any candidates or I guess currently serving officials who you think are getting the messaging and the game plan right?

Caroline Spears: Yeah, I mean, I can think of one person who really was early on this trend last year. There is someone called John McAuliff, who's a delegate in the Virginia State House, ran an entire campaign focused on data centers last year and overperformed by about 10 points in his race and in his district, kind of compared to what we normally used to in his district specifically. So I would say John McAuliff last year in the 2025 elections really took on data centers as a central part of his campaign. And in retrospect, that was kind of the canary in the coal mine or the early sign that this is going to be an issue that candidates could not just talk about, but that it was so central to where voters are that they would actually overperform by that much of a margin. John McAuliff's in Loudoun County in Virginia.

Matt Chester: So data center alley. That makes sense.

Caroline Spears: Data center alley. Right. Yeah. Kind of central to it.

And at the time, I thought, okay, this is someone who kind of knocked tens of thousands of doors, really got to know his constituents. And this is what his constituents said back to him. They gave him an overperformance of about 10 points. So I noticed that in 2025. And I was like, that's interesting.

What I think I, one thing I've been surprised by in 2026 is how the politics of last year's election in Loudoun County, Virginia, one specific section, like you said, data center alley kind of across across the nation has really exploded into a national conversation and is being talked about kind of across and throughout the country.

Matt Chester: Yeah, those are definitely those early signals that we're always looking for. So it's interesting that you said that there was about a year early there. You obviously have your finger on the pulse of this with your role at Climate Cabinet. I'd like to kind of take a step back and ask you a little bit more about what your organization does on the average day. What are your goals? What work do you do to advance these conversations?

Caroline Spears: Yes. So I started Climate Cabinet because I was working in a solar company. And I noticed that the company I was working at was building over 60 projects in Massachusetts and none in Arizona at the time, which told me one thing about our ability to build the clean energy economy, which is it's a lot of state officials of all different types that are really changing our ability to build. They really dictate the grid. They dictate how we build energy, where we build energy and what types of energy resources we're prioritizing and why. What I did with that information is I decided to start Climate Cabinet. We are a national organization where we help candidates run, win, and legislate on clean energy and climate issues at a national scale.

Matt Chester: Have you seen the role of the organization evolve as the conversation and the understanding behind everything energy and climate has evolved in these past couple of years?

Caroline Spears: It's so different than when I started, but it was so fascinating very early on. And I kind of did volunteer. You know, before you start a company or an organization, effectively, you're kind of doing a lot of conversations with people in the space to be like, is this something? Is this a need? And you're kind of trying to power map the space. What I really found in those conversations and what makes the 2026 conversation so different than the 2019-2020 conversation was that we're in a really different spot on energy. There's a lag and where policymakers are in the market is, but that lag is starting to catch up.

Conversations that I was having in 2019-2020 were... A lot of policymakers just hadn't realized that the cost curve on solar had dropped. You know, it dropped 50 percent in just a few years. I mean, that's a pretty shocking price drop. And so a lot of people were stuck with the sort of 2008 version of power and electricity markets, which is probably the last time they checked in on it. You know, load growth wasn't happening until recently. So politicians weren't exactly tracking the latest in market developments on energy and electricity on a yearly basis. Yeah.

And so at the time, people were like, oh, solar, isn't that the thing you put on your roof? And we were having a conversation around, it's actually cheapest to grid now, kind of internationally. It's pretty fast to grid as well. And also, battery technologies were just starting to come online and kind of open up this new future of how we can reduce costs for folks and kind of flatten some of those peak demand issues.

I would say the big difference between 2020 and now is in 2020, Matt, I was having a ton of conversations saying, OK, solar energy is like this. Here are the parameters. Batteries are coming on board. Here's the benefits that these can provide. And it was sort of an uphill battle. Like we would go to policymakers to say, hey, can we... Can we talk to you about energy? And people will be like, ah.

Now it's the opposite. It's like water flowing down a hill. Policymakers want to get up on this issue. They know it's a cost of living crisis issue. They're looking for solutions. It's like the gravitational pull of policy interest on this. It's like a complete 180. It's been challenging to keep up. I don't know how you felt about it in the last couple of years, but it's been wild.

Matt Chester: You're absolutely right. It's gone from a topic that I would eagerly bring up at the Thanksgiving table to now I show up and people have questions for me.

Caroline Spears: Yes. Matt, we're in the same spot where I used to be that person where I was like, OK, can I talk to you about energy? Everybody's like way too many people know what PJM is now.

Matt Chester: Yeah, there's another canary in the coal mine, if people know PJM.

Caroline Spears: Yes.

Matt Chester: When you mentioned the example of, you know, more solar at your previous company being built in Massachusetts than Arizona, and, you know, that highlights the politics that can maybe overtake the fact that you think, well, Arizona, that's some prime sunny area. So it highlights the fact that a lot of this is a state and a local issue, even when, you, there's global nature, national nature of them as well. I'm curious how you think we should get people to see and care more about this, care about those local elections that can have such an outsized impact when those are the elections that do traditionally see lower engagement and turnout.

Caroline Spears: You know, unfortunately, we have historically seen such terrible voter drop off and voter roll off. People will fill out that. And we've all had this experience. You're like, I know the top few people on my ballot. And then you get to the end of the ballot and you're like, oh, there's judges now. And from an energy perspective, that section of the ballot that's so critical for energy and electricity is that Public Service Commission election, not elected in most states, but in states where it is. Lord, is that important?

You've got the Public Service Commission election. You've got the Land Commissioner election in some states that control siting and permitting for big energy decisions. And you've got your state legislatures. And state legislatures, I think, can sometimes fall off the radar a little bit of the energy and electricity conversation because they do so much. They also pass the entire state budget and the education policy, but they also have a huge role on electricity and energy markets as well.

So those are kind of the sections of the ballot that, yeah, voters, we saw a big change last year. We saw a lot of turnout for that Georgia Public Service Commission election. Earlier this year in Arizona, I'm kind of tracking that trend. Earlier this year in Arizona, there was another utility election called the Salt River Project election that got explosive turnout. Yeah. Kind of never before seen. And I'm interested in looking at the results from this November's election and kind of saying with the dominance of energy and electricity prices, are we going to see similar similar that trend continue of a lot more voters filling out that section of the ballot than kind of ever have been before?

Matt Chester: It's a powerful tool when when they're already motivated to try to, you know, kind of direct them in the right way. And I know at Climate Cabinet, you've taken what you guys call a moneyball approach to kind of picking and choosing which are the most impactful elections that you want to focus on. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that means in practice?

Caroline Spears: Absolutely. So moneyball is a baseball term. If folks may be familiar with the movie or the book, movie had Brad Pitt in it, which is, you know, helpful for a lot of people going to watch it. A baseball team, the Oakland A's. Now I mentioned the Oakland A's and I get boos in certain areas of the country. So, you know, the Oakland A's, the team formerly known as

Essentially, there are players who you may not think about and may not be kind of, I would say, in the politics version. Maybe they're not the people who show up on CNN all the time, but they're kind of going under the radar, but they have outsized impact. And Moneyball, the book and the movie, show that you can use data science combined with kind of your on-the-ground intelligence to find data folks with outsized impact. So what we do at Climate Cabinet is we use data science and we have a great national team located in over 10 states across the country that finds under the radar folks who have outsized impact on clean energy and climate issues helps them across the country. So it's the same concept. You got these, you know, under-resourced, kind of overlooked, I would say overlooked policymakers with outsized impact.

Matt Chester: Yeah. Yeah. And so what sort of data points are you looking for to recognize both they're maybe undersourced but have that potential for great impact?

Caroline Spears: OK, so this is where we start really diverging from baseball because there's a great scene from the movie where they're like, what does it take to get on base? Our version of that at Climate Cabinet is we look at two things. We look at policy window and we look at climate impact. There's kind of two sections of the equation. So policy window asks, can you win? Do you have votes needed, 50 plus one, to get over the finish line, both from an electoral perspective and you're looking at policy? Do you have the policy votes needed to get over the finish line?

Climate impact asks, is it worth it? If you win that role, how much oversight does this position or does this office hold? So we put those things together. So we have a great data science tech team that uses a lot of AI in our products, as well as I mentioned, a great team across the country. And those are kind of the two pieces that we look at. And that's the equation that we use.

Matt Chester: Yeah, because I was going to ask, you have the data side, but then do you have to also balance it with kind of the human assessment of the candidates and of the races, things that maybe don't show up in the pure numbers?

Caroline Spears: Exactly. And anyone who's used an AI tool or two will tell you, you know, you can get some part of the way with tech or with AI or data science, but it's not going to get you the whole way. You still need that person in there. So, for example, what the data science can tell us is they can tell us the outcome of 30 elections in the last five years in this one area. We basically use our data science. We can target really precisely and we can look at every district and I can tell you what every candidate in the last 10 years kind of did in that district.

What that's not going to tell you is where the human touch comes in is now you've got to meet the next person running. Do they have a plan? Do they have a plan to knock doors? Do they have a plan to reach voters? We have a great political team that actually helps us assess, OK, the opportunity is there, which is kind of what the data science can tell you. But do you have the right person in the right moment with the right strategy to actually take the opportunity and translate that into policy or political success?

Matt Chester: Yes, it's so interesting. And so I'm curious, again, as we're about a month out from the elections, as you and I are having this conversation today, for any of our viewers or listeners who may be aligned with the goals of your organization on climate issues, are there specific key elections that you would highlight that they should be keeping an eye on? And what are the practical outcomes that might be realistic should those elections go the way you're hoping?

Caroline Spears: Yeah, there's two big buckets of elections that I'm really looking at on Election Day. And just to preface this, I know there are elections going on in D.C. The U.S. Senate's up. The House is up. At Climate Cabinet, again, it's like moneyball. It's the people you don't think about most of the time. So we don't really focus on D.C., but we focus on state and local across the country.

The first bucket that I'm really looking at is state control. There are about five states across the country where control of the state legislature is being fiercely contested this election. So that's your Michigans, that's your Pennsylvanias. Really interested to see who will kind of take trifectas in those five states.

The second bucket is I'm really looking at what I lovingly refer to as weird statewides. Those are your public service commission elections. We have a big election in Georgia this year on PUCs. There's an Arizona PUC election this year. I'm really looking at those, like you said, especially to see if voters can filling out that section of the ballot because energy issues are such a big deal right now. So I'm looking at public service commissioner elections and I'm looking at kind of a land commissioner election as well. Those are ones that control kind of siting and permitting. Those are the two buckets. That's what I'm watching on election night.

Matt Chester: In terms of trying to inform the voters as they go down to that ballot where it has the PUC or the PSC, how do you recommend that they kind of best inform themselves? I guess, one, if they're outside the energy space about what this election, you know, what this elected seat actually does, but then two, you know, whether or not the candidate aligns with what they would want to see. How do they inform themselves about those things?

Caroline Spears: The first kind of biggest challenge is a lot of these offices that we have, It's like, what do they do? You know, we have an office called the Texas Railroad Commission that doesn't deal with railroads. It deals with the oil and gas industry. So that's the first kind of educational barrier. What I would do kind of even before getting into who the candidates are and how they do on different issues, I would really look at something I do where I'm like, can you just tell me what the point of this office is? First of all, before you tell me your endorsement or who you think I should vote for, what is the goal? And then what are my goals in this? What do I want as a voter to see?

So at Public Service Commission election, confusingly called the Corporation Commission in Arizona. Right. All of these things are called different names. And it's just important to know that a lot of the time they're not called the thing that you think they should be called. So I think that's our first biggest educational barrier. So, I mean, I would say one of our goals is to make sure that for some of these offices, voters know what they are. It's the first step. The Corporation Commission sounds like it does something different. It regulates your energy and electricity bills. And one of the goals that we have this year is every voter in Arizona should know that when they're thinking about energy rates and electricity bills, the Arizona Corporation Commission is the entity that's largely responsible for that.

Matt Chester: Yeah. And you mentioned earlier some of the AI tools that your team has brought into this as well. Can you talk to us about how people might be able to use that to make themselves a more informed voter?

Caroline Spears: America elects 500,000 people to office every cycle. It's just an astonishingly large number. So I think, like we said, I feel that when I fill out my ballot. Matt, I don't know if you feel that when you fill out your ballot. You know, like we said, you kind of get to the end of the ballot and you're like, who are these people and why? Why am I voting for them?

One thing that I'm excited to do this election is taking a photo and uploading it and not asking, you know, AI is pulling from the Internet. I like doing my own research on which candidate. I don't want necessarily an AI summary for that. But taking a photo and saying, hey, what are all of these offices and what are the roles and responsibilities that they have? And then you can kind of say, this is what I want from someone in that office. So that's an opportunity.

I would say the other place that I've really thought about where AI could be helpful here is, OK, that's 500,000 people elected to public office. Now think they all vote on over 50 pieces of legislation every year. So doing the math, how many bills and pieces of legislation that is, it starts to become an astonishing number of text messages. To sort through. One thing AI is really good at is large language models. What we've been building is you can essentially, you can train AI and train an LLM, say, here's kind of what I'm looking for when it comes to data center policy, for example. And AI can go out, search through that kind of codex of legislation, and then make recommendations to you. So if you go to tamingdatacenters.com, you can go look at all of the pieces of AI legislation introduced. We have coverage in about five states right now and say, where's my state succeeding and where are they failing on some of the biggest issues facing data center policy right now, like cost?

Matt Chester: So we spent a lot of our time talking today about the approach of Election Day. But I think just as important is what happens afterwards. So I'm curious if you can speak to how we should make sure campaign pledges and well-picked candidates actually lead to legislation and government that fulfills these goals that we've been talking about.

Caroline Spears: There's an election coming up soon. After the election is when policy really kicks off. So if you think about how – so here's kind of a timeline to think about from election day to when we're going to start seeing policy passing. Folks don't get sworn in after the election until usually around January, a little earlier in some states, a little later in others. But you already have kind of a six-week period to a two-month period where folks are in lame duck session. The last legislature is still passing bills. And then also you have a – and what they're doing simultaneously with that is they're introducing all the bills that they want to pass next session. So there's this transition period between election day and session actually kicking off.

I think next year in 2027, we will see, we saw 300 data center bills in the first six weeks of this year. I bet that doubles in ’27. I mean, we are just seeing an enormous volume of people trying to answer voters, solve data center issues, make sure people and families and businesses aren't paying for, like, Amazon's training models. There's a bunch of different pieces of the data center puzzle that all of these look, elements of legislation are tackling. That's one trend that I'm really going to look at in 2027. I think the outcome of the election and the tenor of the election will really shape which bills move and which ones die. So if one outcome that kind of folks take away from the election is people are really upset about which aspects of data centers are people most upset about, I think that'll get reflected in next year's legislative session.

So I expect massive volume of data center legislation. There are also going to be a lot of state budget fights. And I think a lot of that will be state budget fights is the other big theme I'm looking at for ’27.

Matt Chester: Yeah, no, I think you're right. It's just because the election day will pass doesn't mean any of this is going to slow down. So we'll keep a close eye on that as well. And we'll have to check in with you to see post all of this craziness, what your takeaways are. But this has been a terrific conversation today, and I'm excited to see what our Energy Central community most takes away from it. So thank you so much for joining us today, Caroline.

Caroline Spears: Thank you for having me. And y'all. Yeah. Let us know your thoughts.

Matt Chester: Great. And yeah, and thanks to that community of viewers and listeners for checking out this episode of Power Perspectives. We'll catch you next time.