Exclusive: Dems' "Project 2029" targets utility monopolies
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Lexi Critchett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Project 2029, a group writing policy blueprints to pitch to the next Democratic White House, is proposing sweeping power market changes to boost competition and speed connection of new generation.
Why it matters: The group is led by well-connected Democratic insiders, and it will circulate the plan to potential 2028 White House candidates and on Capitol Hill.
State of play: Midterm exit polls showed that power bills are a voter priority, notes Project 2029 head Chad Maisel, a Biden-era Domestic Policy Council aide.
- With the 2028 cycle underway, "we need plans for real reform that will actually deliver," he told Axios.
The big picture: "Opening the electric grid to competition and innovation can help lower costs, address the climate crisis, and power America's energy future all at the same time," the document states.
- The new plan aims to tackle overlapping problems.
- Think rising bills, increasing energy demand from AI and electrification of the economy, long waits for new power projects to connect to the grid, and what the group calls anti-competitive laws that favor incumbent utilities.
How it works: The proposal would force more vertically integrated utilities — the ones that own power plants and transmission — into competitive wholesale markets.
- Another piece would ease hurdles to bringing power plants online, even while grid upgrades are still pending — but in ways that ensure generators absorb risk instead of ratepayers.
- "If the lines are congested, the plant can be curtailed, meaning it has to throttle down and lose any sales it may have made," it states.
- Overall, it cites Texas' freewheeling power market as a model.
What we're watching: Elsewhere, Project 2029 wants more competition in consumers' choices of retail power providers.
- This would bring more players and new options, like packages combining rooftop solar and batteries, but with protections like transparent pricing.
- It calls for preempting state laws that bar competition in power supply, as well as thwarting residential on-site power and "microgrids."
Other provisions would ban utilities from charging customers for political spending and call on Congress to create new reliability standards.
Zoom out: Project 2029 consulted a variety of people, authors said — including power sector professionals.
- "Utilities are not a monolith," lead author Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of the company Arcadia, said in an interview.
- "Quite a few utilities, I think, would appreciate the sort of broad reform in the power sector that this is proposing," said Bhatraju, whose firm helps companies procure and manage energy.
The bottom line: The new Congress hasn't even started, but energy maneuvering around 2028 is already underway.
Sign up here for Axios' Future of Energy newsletter.
