This piece from TWW’s Steve Handy and Davis County, UT Commissioner Bob Stevenson first ran in The Salt Lake Tribune on June 5, 2025 and can be accessed here.
Voices: Utah’s energy costs are rising. An outdated grid is to blame.
The bottom line is simple: Expanding our state’s transmission system will cut energy costs, reduce outages and power our economy for the future.
By Steve Handy and Bob Stevenson | For The Salt Lake Tribune | June 5, 2025
If your electricity bill has felt more painful lately, you’re not imagining it. Utah families have seen energy costs rise over the past 12 months, with Rocky Mountain Power announcing a rate hike of more than 18% this year alone. And while inflation and supply issues get a lot of the blame, there’s a deeper reason bills are going up — our outdated power grid.
Utah’s transmission infrastructure — like that in much of the U.S. — was built for a different era. Most of our grid was constructed more than 60 years ago, long before the rise of modern appliances, electric vehicles or massive data centers. It simply wasn’t designed for today’s energy demands — or tomorrow’s.
After remaining stagnant for decades, electricity demand is expected to rise nearly 16% across the country over the next five years, with data centers, electric vehicles and onshoring of manufacturing all fueling the surge. In fact, the West is experiencing some of the highest growth rates nationwide.
Yet as demand grows, the grid is failing to keep up. A staggering 2,600 gigawatts of energy — nearly twice the total U.S. electricity generation capacity — is currently waiting to connect to the electric grid, which lacks sufficient transmission infrastructure to carry it to homes and businesses. This includes major solar and wind projects across the Intermountain West that could lower costs for Utah families — if only we had the lines to connect them.
Furthermore, grid congestion — essentially traffic jams on the power highways — forces utilities in Utah to rely on more expensive power sources when cheaper power can’t reach us, especially during peak times like hot summer days or winter cold snaps. This happened in March, when a winter storm knocked out power to thousands of northern Utahns. These costs are then passed along to customers on their electric bills.
But there’s a solution. By expanding and modernizing the transmission grid, we can unlock affordable energy from Utah’s own vast resources and from neighboring states. This would reduce reliance on high-cost power purchases and help stabilize rates.
In fact, a recent study found that strategic transmission investment and expansion across the Western U.S. could reduce generation costs by 32%. For Utahns, this means lower bills and fewer power disruptions.
More transmission also provides better access to domestic energy, creates local jobs, and spurs economic growth in rural communities where new infrastructure is built.
But to realize these benefits, we need policymakers to act. Permitting delays and regulatory red tape have stalled key transmission projects in Utah and across the region. Projects like PacifiCorp’s Gateway South transmission line, which will carry energy from Wyoming into Utah and the broader West, faced years of delay before finally breaking ground.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox understands the importance of expanding transmission to the state’s future. Boosting transmission capacity is a central pillar of his proposed Operation Gigawatt, which aims to double the state’s power production over the next decade. More transmission capacity will ensure the reliable delivery of electricity from both traditional and renewable energy sources.
We need more momentum through initiatives like this. That means accelerating permitting reform, investing in transmission expansion and prioritizing grid improvements in state and federal policy.
The bottom line is simple: Expanding our state’s transmission system will cut energy costs, reduce outages and power our economy for the future. If we act now, we can cut energy costs for all Utahns.
Steve Handy is a former Utah legislator and state director for The Western Way.
Bob Stevenson is a Davis County Commissioner.