Author: Em McPhie Published: 10/21/2026 Localism Works
Soaring bills and power shutoffs are policy choices
State leaders have the power to protect households from utility shutoffs, rein in excessive investor profits, and expand access to affordable, locally controlled energy. Yet no state earned higher than a C — and 30 received Fs — on ILSR’s newly released 2026 Community Power Scorecard, which reveals exactly where states are falling short and how they can do better in the coming year.
- What we’re measuring: The scorecard evaluates 20 state policies, examining how they’re written to support local clean energy and hold utilities accountable. This year’s updated methodology includes plug-in solar, virtual power plants, and solar permitting — policies that can help households and communities play a larger role in powering the grid. See how your state scored.
- Keeping the lights on: In 2024, amid sharp increases in electricity rates, 1 in 5 low-income households received disconnect notices, according to the St. Louis Fed. Across U.S. households, 17.5 million kept their homes at unsafe temperatures, while 33 million reduced or gave up basic necessities in order to afford utility bills.
- Next steps: Bolstering disconnection prevention policies is one of five major steps states can take to become national community power leaders. Find the other four shortcuts here, and ask candidates for state legislatures and elected utility commission seats to commit to advancing these policies if elected in November.
The Byhalia Pipeline’s defeat is a blueprint for the data center fight
Before South Memphis residents were fighting Elon Musk’s xAI data centers, they were organizing against an oil pipeline that threatened their land and drinking water. The Byhalia Pipeline’s cancellation in 2021 offers a concrete lesson for communities confronting powerful corporations: organizing can build the public pressure necessary to strengthen legal challenges and push elected officials to act.
- The backstory: The Byhalia pipeline’s proposed path bypassed a more affluent, majority-White suburb while cutting directly through the predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood of Boxtown — “a point of least resistance,” according to an agent of the oil company. The community rallied to prove him wrong, and thanks to intense legal and grassroots efforts, the project was canceled.
- Part of a pattern: Like the Byhalia pipeline, data centers are the continuation of a long legacy of environmental racism, Dr. Sacoby Wilson told Building Local Power earlier this year. “From power plants, gas, coal-fired plants, to incinerators, to petrochemical operations, to refineries, they tend to concentrate in low-income communities, communities of color, Indigenous communities, right? I’m framing data centers as an emerging threat following the same pattern of going to the ‘avenue of least resistance,'” he said.
- People power reaches the courtroom: Legal advocacy against the Byhalia pipeline was strengthened by grassroots organizing — “getting people together, getting people to care, knocking on doors, showing up to the Zoom that the elected state court judge held,” Trey Bussey of the Southern Environmental Law Center recalled during a recent panel featured in the second bonus episode of “The Data Centers Are Coming.” With data centers on the agenda for upcoming legislative sessions, the success of this strategy should serve as a lesson: “We’ve got to be ready and got to be connecting across our communities.”
- The stakes are high: “What is at risk is our democracy. What is at risk is our air quality, our water, and our access to it. What is at risk is also this accumulation of power, this concentration of power at the top, where our voices start to matter a lot less,” said KeShaun Pearson, director of Memphis Community Against Pollution. Listen to the final episode of “The Data Centers Are Coming” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or other platforms, and put its lessons into action by finding an organization building people power in your community.
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