Politico reports monthly electricity bills have become a new electoral
flashpoint, prompting North American and European leaders to act to contain
power costs. In the UK, Prime Minister Andy Burnham scrapped a power tax shortly
after entering Downing Street; France’s National Rally leader Le Pen proposes
cutting power taxes and exiting the European electricity market. In the US,
voter anger over data centers’ potential to raise bills forced Pennsylvania
Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro and Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott to
impose restrictions on high‑energy facilities they had previously backed.
Populists from US progressives to Germany’s AfD are using high power prices as a
mobilizing issue. Eurasia Group chairman Gerald Butts says multiple macro and
micro factors are elevating electricity’s importance and that exponentially
higher electricity demand over the next 25 years is a reasonably reliable bet.
Separately, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz did not push oil to the $150
many analysts expected, a signal that oil may be less geopolitically constrained
and less indispensable than before.
