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The Democrats’ sweeping success at the national level in last week’s midterms was mirrored in major swings at the state level as well. In Pennsylvania, where Democrats flipped the state Senate, the party will control both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since 1993.
After four years watching bills clear the state House of Representatives only to stall in the Republican-controlled Senate, the party’s leaders say they plan to seize the moment. That’s especially true on the Energy Committee, chaired by Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler of Philadelphia. She knows voters will be looking to her committee to address two pivotal issues that helped decide the midterms: rising utility bills and controversial data center development.
The trifecta in Harrisburg represents “a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility” for Democrats, Fiedler said in an interview a few days after the dust settled.
“We’ve got to act quickly,” she said. “What we saw in the results of Tuesday’s election made clear that people are not happy with the status quo. People want to see change. People do not want excuses.”
With that in mind, she said her colleagues on the Energy Committee have about 15 bills that have already passed the House and will be reintroduced “first thing” in the new session, aimed at addressing “what’s on people’s minds.”
In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Fiedler discussed the party’s approach to affordable utility bills, renewable energy development and an issue that hung over the elections both nationally and locally: data centers.
BEN SEAL: Post-election, what have the early conversations among your Democratic colleagues focused on?
ELIZABETH FIEDLER: At the very top of the list is affordability. We have to find a way to lower people’s bills. We have already passed quite a few bills in our committee and also in the House that would do just that.
[Lancaster Democrat] Nikki Rivera’s battery storage bill would allow us to store energy at a time when it’s abundant and then release and use that energy during times of peak demand, like during a heat wave. Return on equity reform is a bill I introduced last session that the governor himself talked about in his budget address. That’s focused on making sure that the shareholders of utility companies are not making excessive profits.
We’ve got to take a careful look at everything we can do right now to help people. And that definitely includes lowering the cost of energy, lowering utility bills and getting more renewable energy online. So [Berks County Democrat] Jacklyn Rusnock’s solar on warehouses bill is a great example. [Allegheny County Democrat] Arvind Venkat has a geothermal bill.
SEAL: A lot of the legislation that’s been sitting in the Senate has been described as “low-hanging fruit.” Are there more ambitious proposals that you think might gain traction?
FIEDLER: I’m all for bold and ambitious ideas. Now is a great time to go on the offense on renewable energy and, in particular, solar. The technology has made huge steps forward over the last couple of years.
I am excited for the future of Solar for Schools. The more we can do to spread the word about it to more schools the better, because then schools can save millions of dollars by installing solar panels, and they can put that money back into kids’ education. That’s a real win-win-win. I also plan to introduce legislation to offer a residential solar tax credit.
A lot of the work that we want to do is making up for changes that were made at the federal level. The [Inflation Reduction Act] and other federal programs were supposed to support the construction of renewable energy projects across the U.S. When the president decided to dismantle and defund those programs, it had a huge impact.
With a relatively modest appropriation, the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority could do huge energy infrastructure projects. So I am hopeful on the appropriations front. We’re talking about hydropower on state dams, and there’s also huge potential for both geothermal and solar.
SEAL: Clean energy advocates often point to the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards as a limitation in moving the state forward. Do you think there might be updates that would accelerate the state’s timeline for renewable energy adoption?
FIEDLER: Yes. A resounding yes. It’s been a very long time since it was updated. All reports and expectations are that in just a few years we’ll be facing significant power outages. We’ve got to take that into account while we also take into account the climate crisis and global warming, more extreme weather, changes in seasons—all the stuff that is our reality now.
SEAL: How do you think the legislature will respond to the strong public sentiment against further expansion of the state’s data center build-out?
FIEDLER: We have already passed [in the House] a number of bills that would change the landscape and place much more stringent regulations and requirements on data centers. House Bill 1834 is a great example, focused on making sure regular people do not subsidize the build-out of energy systems and transmission for data centers. That to me feels like the absolute bare minimum of what we should be doing.
I’ve worked with my colleague Kyle Donahue, [a Lackawanna County Democrat], on a model ordinance bill [guiding municipalities on standards for data center development], and an interconnection bill [ensuring ratepayers don’t bear the costs of energy generation and transmission]. Municipal officials would already have in hand some of these guarantees. And then that gives them the ability to make the decisions that they see fit for their community. It’s really important that there is no rubber stamp.
And we were able to get Rep. Kyle Mullins’s water and energy usage disclosure for data centers in during the budget this past year. So we have made some progress. But there’s still a lot of outstanding questions and a lot of work to be done.
SEAL: Is a data center moratorium up for discussion in the new session?
FIEDLER: Discussions are very much ongoing.
SEAL: Sen. Nikil Saval, Democrat of Philadelphia, said the composition of the Senate had imposed an “imaginative constraint” on Democrats. With that constraint lifted, are there climate and environment proposals that could enter the conversation?
FIEDLER: There are a lot of big ideas that it is past time for us to act on. We’ve got a lot of the game plans in place and have been working very hard over this past session in the Energy Committee and the majority in the House.
I don’t think there is a single magic solution to the climate crisis that we face right now, but there are a lot of pieces to it. [The Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard] is certainly one of those very key pieces. So I’m extremely excited and only a little bit nervous.
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