In a new op-ed for Utility Dive, Federation of American Scientists Senior Fellow Arjun Krishnaswami sounds the alarm on what is actually the biggest barrier to abundant, affordable clean energy: powerful institutions that profit when supply is scarce and prices stay high. Drawing from his experience in the Biden White House, Krishnaswami argues that while permitting reform is necessary, it’s nowhere near sufficient. The real barrier isn’t just bureaucratic red tape—it’s profit motive. Utilities and grid operators, like PJM Interconnection, are resisting reforms and instead preserving systems that reward scarcity and protect fossil fuels.

He points to PJM’s recent capacity auction as a clear example, highlighting how the market is structured to favor aging, uneconomic fossil fuel plants while stalling cheaper clean energy projects. With electricity demand surging and climate disasters accelerating, he urges reforms to grid governance, utility regulation, and energy infrastructure financing. We don’t have a shortage of clean solutions; we have a surplus of entrenched interests that profit from holding us back. 

Utility Drive: Want abundant energy? Ask who benefits from scarcity.

By: Arjun Krishnaswami 
July 30, 2025

Key points: 

• We won’t achieve energy abundance unless we contend with the powerful interests that benefit from scarcity. Doing so requires reforming electricity markets, refreshing regulation of electric companies and rethinking the way we pay for grid infrastructure.
  
  
• Let’s start with the problem: we are not building nearly enough clean energy to curb climate change and keep electricity affordable. 
  
  
• This is no longer an economic issue. Clean electricity is now often cheaper to deploy than new coal and gas, and in many cases cheaper than existing fossil-fuel-fired power plants. So what is stopping us from building it fast enough?
  
  
• There is no doubt that some clean energy and transmission projects have been thwarted by local opposition and lengthy litigation. And it is a worthy goal to make government incentives as effective as possible. But by portraying the primary villains defending scarcity as local landowners, conservation groups and the diversity of the liberal coalition, Klein and Thompson ignore important characters and policies that, if left unchecked, will continue to hamstring the pursuit of abundance.
  
  
• For example, consider the situation unfolding in the electricity market organized by the PJM Interconnection, which operates the electricity grid for 65 million people in 13 mid-Atlantic and midwestern states and Washington, D.C.
  
  
• It ranks as the worst grid operator in the country in terms of the speed and effectiveness of its interconnection process. The average project waits five years for PJM to give it permission to connect to the grid. In fact, PJM closed its doors to new project applications in 2022 and has yet to re-open it. As a result, electricity demand is outpacing supply, prices are rising rapidly, and new clean energy projects are dying as they wait for word from PJM.
  
  
• PJM has the power to speed up the process to connect new projects, which would increase electricity supply and cut electricity prices. But PJM has largely resisted reforms and focused instead on extending the life of existing power plants.
  
  
• Here is where it is helpful to ask: who benefits from an electricity shortage and the resulting high prices? It is not conservation groups or liberal stakeholder groups with competing goals (who have no voting power in PJM’s governance structure). It is the incumbent utilities that own the fleet of aging coal-fired power plants, which are struggling to compete with new clean energy projects.
  
  
• If cheap clean energy is allowed to enter the market, these companies will make less money. The outdated processes for approving new projects help prevent cheaper energy resources from threatening their business model. The companies have significant decision-making power — together, power plant owners, transmission owners (many of whom also own generation) and other energy service suppliers make up 60% of the voting power in PJM decisions.

• Energy will not be abundant in the mid-Atlantic unless we take on the interests that are benefitting from scarcity. That means reforming the electricity market to stop overpaying existing power plants at the expense of customers, changing the rules to make it easier to connect new power plants to the grid and updating governance structures to make sure that customers are properly represented.