Josh Shapiro talks constantly about electricity affordability. Yet Pennsylvania’s alternative energy laws cost families over $700 million annually in overpriced electricity bills. 

These are state statutes—not federal rules or grid decisions. The legislature could end its border restrictions with one bill. Shapiro has not demanded it. 

He can’t claim ignorance either. The Public Utility Commission’s annual reports document the costs; the PUC called price increases “meteoric.” The issue has been raised with his chief of staff, the Consumer Advocate’s office, and a sitting PUC commissioner. Each acknowledged it. None has fixed it. 

Shapiro blames the grid operator, utilities and data centers while ignoring renewable energy costs his state controls. Fixing those costs would mean confronting the interests these laws were written to protect. His Lightning Plan would raise the alternative energy mandate to 50 percent of sales by 2035. His administration defended RGGI’s carbon charge in court, abandoning it only in a budget deal. 

His agenda protects special interests, not ratepayers. 

West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey took the dispute to federal court after Harrisburg failed to act. His state has a stake: Its generators lost more than $25 million in credit sales in 2025 alone. 

Why is West Virginia’s attorney general doing more to lower Pennsylvania electric bills than Pennsylvania’s governor? The fix is one bill. Shapiro could demand it tomorrow. Until he does, Pennsylvania families keep paying the cost of his silence.

Josephine Ferro
East Stroudsburg, PA