Robinson Meyer, in a HeatMap article, recently captured a shift now sweeping through statehouses: Democrats are retreating from their own climate ambitions because the cost of implementation is hitting voters too hard.
“Affordability is the entry ticket for any other policy goal that politicians have,” said Josh Freed of the center-left think tank Third Way. “If electricity is expensive, electrification simply isn’t going to happen.”
Across the country—New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, even climate-forward California—leaders who once championed decarbonization are now delaying mandates, approving new gas capacity, and stepping back from aggressive climate timelines because the arithmetic no longer works. As New York Governor Kathy Hochul put it:
“We need to govern in reality.”
The political winds are shifting because electricity costs are rising faster than wages. And in every Western state, one cost driver is towering over the rest: Wildfire Related Expenditures.
That's right -
Not future climate spending.
Not transmission buildout.
Not net-zero goals.
Wildfire
Wildfire losses have become the largest climate-driven financial shock to utilities, insurers, and ratepayers. In the last decade utilities have absorbed tens of billions in wildfire liabilities.
Ratepayers have absorbed major GRC-based increases to fund vegetation management and grid hardening.
States have created wildfire funds, securitization mechanisms, and emergency regulatory regimes to prevent utility bankruptcy.
This is no longer a California problem. It is now a national affordability problem.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most power company managers prefer the entrenched, well-known, wildfire risk providers, ignoring firms with lower cost, more accuracy and more flexibility. Money is spent blindly.
In most firms, vegetation management programs still operate by rules of thumb, not analytics. Grid-hardening programs are planned using compliance maps, not risk-based ROI. Public Safety Power Shutoff operations rely on coarse data and err on the side of broader outages.
Every dollar spent without precise, pre-fire, geospatial intelligence compounds the affordability crisis.
The Low-Cost Climate Solution Everyone Is Missing: Pre-Fire Geospatial Intelligence
If states are stepping back from climate policy because of cost, then utilities must find ways to lower risk without raising rates.
The overlooked solution is simple: Spend less by spending smarter.
Wildfire mitigation costs 5% of the cost of fighting a wildfire, but mitigation programs put in the wrong place are wasted money. A risk-driven mitigation plan is not acreage-driven, nor compliance-driven, and is defensible to PUCs, bond holders and the public.
Pre-Fire Mitigation Is the Lowest-Cost, Most Pro-Climate Tool Utilities Have
There is no cheaper climate policy than preventing the fires that destroy billions of dollars in homes, infrastructure, forests, and carbon stocks. Pre-fire analytics are cost effective and deliver four advantages:
1. Optimized Vegetation Management Waste
Veg management is the single largest O&M spending category in many WMPs. Using geospatial analysis for prioritization, reduces risk while not increasing costs. Non-urgent trims are delayed, increasing overall safety.
2. Evidence-Based Grid Hardening
Not every circuit needs a covered conductor. Not every pole needs replacement. Again, optimization with geospatial intelligence, determines the inspection priority. Most ignition events occur in areas that are not prone to large wildfires. The key is to focus inspections on areas where a spark will create a wildfire with significant economic damage. This does not mean ignore the small, nuisance wildfires, rather reduce the risk of the big fires first.
3. More Surgical PSPS Decisions
Better risk data = tighter outage footprints = fewer customer-hours lost.
4. Lower Long-Term Liability and Rate Pressure
The biggest driver of rate hikes is capital recovery and the multiple aspects of wildfire liability. This includes insurance costs, financing costs and, of course, legal actions after the fires.
Reduce fire ignition → reduce claims → reduce cost drivers → reduce political pressure.
Finally, you can tell your local political leaders:
The cheapest form of climate action is preventing the billion-dollar fires that reverse decades of emissions progress in a few days.
Utilities That Move Now Can Be Part of the Political Moment
If the defining political theme of 2025–2026 is affordability, then utilities that adopt a cost-effective, data-driven wildfire mitigation will be best aligned with their regulators, their governors and local politicians, and their customers. The narrative is shifting:
Climate action cannot be expensive.
Electrification cannot raise bills.
Mitigation must save money, not consume it.