America’s energy future will depend on more than how much energy the country can produce. It will depend on whether policymakers can create a regulatory system that allows new energy projects, technologies, and businesses to actually get built.
That question was at the center of the Capitol Leaders Powering Prosperity Summit, which took place September 1–3 in Dallas, Texas. The summit brought together state legislators, policy experts, industry leaders, and innovators to examine the regulatory barriers standing between America’s growing demand for electricity and the energy resources needed to meet it.
The premise was straightforward: energy abundance is of little use if government processes make it unnecessarily difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to deploy.
The summit’s agenda therefore put regulatory reform at the heart of the discussion—from permitting and administrative procedures to utility regulation, judicial review, and state-level reforms designed to make energy markets more competitive. All key components of Americans for Prosperity’s Roadmap for Regulatory Reform.
The Regulatory Maze Is Becoming an Energy Problem
The summit opened with a discussion of “The Coming Energy Crunch,” examining the reliability risks created by rising electricity demand, regulatory gridlock, and the difficulty of bringing new generation and infrastructure online.
Those issues point to a larger problem. Energy policy is often discussed as a question of supply: Do we have enough generation? Enough transmission? Enough natural gas, nuclear power, or other resources? But supply cannot meet demand if projects cannot navigate the regulatory system.
That is why the summit moved quickly from diagnosing the energy challenge to examining the regulatory process itself. The “Fixing the Regulatory Maze” session focused on practical legislative tools for reducing the friction that developers encounter when attempting to build energy infrastructure.
The discussion examined issues such as permitting backlogs, duplicative requirements, lengthy approval processes, and uncertainty surrounding development. It also highlighted reforms that states can use to make government more predictable and transparent.
Among the approaches highlighted during the summit were one-stop permitting dashboards, statutory shot clocks, expedited judicial review, electronic filing and transparency requirements, elimination of duplicative permitting, and reforms to judicial deference.
These may sound like procedural changes; however, in practice, they can determine whether a project gets built—and how much it ultimately costs consumers. Just ask West Virginia.
In 2025, West Virginia passed two critical laws that have made the state leaders in how to simultaneously drive economic prosperity from data centers, while protecting consumers. Through these two bills, West Virginia has supported a strategy that eased certain land use requirements and allows data centers to develop their own power through microgrids, while also mandating that data centers self-fund their project to prevent utility costs from shifting onto local residential ratepayers. In other words, the communities’ benefit from economic growth without having to subsidize the centers’ power or water usage.
Further, West Virginia created the One-Stop Shop Permitting Program, which provides for the creation of a Permitting Dashboard to operate as a “one-stop-shop” for obtaining and renewing qualifying business permits, streamlining the permitting process in West Virginia. This ensures that businesses no longer have to go through multiple agencies with multiple permitting requirements, and can instead obtain the necessary permitting through one, singular portal.
Through these legislative measures, West Virginia is positioning itself as a major destination for data center development, with state officials recently announcing two new projects valued at more than $81 billion. The announcements build on a broader push that state leaders say has generated approximately $96 billion in private-sector investment and more than 19,000 projected jobs.
Moving From Regulatory Gridlock to Regulatory Certainty
For businesses considering billions of dollars in energy investment, uncertainty can be nearly as significant as cost.
A developer may be willing to invest in a new power plant, transmission line, data center, or other infrastructure, but if the regulatory process is unpredictable, the timeline for approval is unclear, or a completed project can be tied up in litigation indefinitely, investment decisions become more difficult.
That makes regulatory certainty an important component of energy policy.
The summit’s regulatory-reform discussions were designed around a basic question: What can state legislatures do to make the regulatory process work better?
Drawing on the West Virginia model, the summit pointed toward several answers.
First, states can establish clear deadlines for agency decisions. They can make permitting processes easier to navigate; they can reduce unnecessary duplication between agencies; they can increase transparency through electronic filing and public-facing systems; and, they can establish more predictable rules governing judicial review.
The goal is not simply to make regulation disappear. It is to make the rules clear, timely, transparent, and accountable.
Rethinking Judicial Deference
One of the most consequential reforms discussed at the summit—and a key tenet of AFP’s Roadmap for Regulatory reform—was ending judicial deference to regulatory agencies.
When courts review agency decisions, the degree of deference given to regulatory agencies can affect how much authority agencies have to interpret statutes and regulations—and how difficult it may be for regulated parties to challenge those interpretations. The summit properly treated judicial-deference reform as part of a broader effort to make the regulatory system more predictable and thus more inviting for potential economic investment.
For state legislators interested in energy development, the issue is particularly important. Energy projects can involve significant capital commitments and complex regulatory approvals. If businesses cannot reasonably anticipate how statutory requirements will be interpreted or reviewed, regulatory risk can become an additional barrier to investment.
That makes the question of who ultimately interprets the rules an important part of the broader conversation about regulatory accountability.
Breaking the Monopoly Model
Regulatory reform does not stop at permitting. The summit also examined the structure of electricity markets in its “Breaking the Monopoly Model” session. This discussion challenged traditional utility structures and examines policies intended to expand consumer choice and create opportunities for new energy providers.
That raised a fundamental regulatory question: Does the existing regulatory framework encourage competition and innovation—or protect incumbent structures at the expense of consumers and new entrants?
The session considered third-party electricity sales, Consumer Regulated Electricity Laws, Energy Freedom & Fairness policies, right-of-first-refusal laws, and other policies that can shape whether competitors are able to enter energy markets. Regulation can establish the rules of a market. But those rules can also determine who is allowed to participate in it.
The takeaway: if policymakers want more innovation, they must examine whether existing laws and regulations unnecessarily prevent new business models from emerging.
Protecting Ratepayers Through Better Regulation
Another key takeaway: regulatory structures ultimately have to answer to consumers.
The summit’s “Protecting Rate Payers” session focused on affordability and the impact that energy policies and regulatory decisions have on household electricity bills. The discussion included Renewable Portfolio Standards, Stable Energy Rates policies, plant-retirement policies, utility reform, and the tension between competition and ratepayer protection.
This is where regulatory reform becomes particularly tangible. Every additional requirement placed on an energy project can affect its cost. Every delay can affect financing and construction. Every restriction on market participation can affect competition. And every regulatory decision ultimately has the potential to show up in the price consumers pay for electricity.
The objective, then, is not deregulation for its own sake. It is a regulatory framework that protects consumers without unnecessarily preventing investment, competition, and new supply.
AI and Data Centers Are Testing the System
The emergence of artificial intelligence and large-scale data centers makes these questions more urgent—both because of their necessity to support domestic computational capacity, but also because of their prevalence in voters’ minds before the midterm elections.
The summit’s “AI & Data Center Surge” session examined the extraordinary growth in electricity demand associated with data centers and asks whether regulatory frameworks are prepared to accommodate that growth. One particularly important question discussed was whether data centers can become more flexible participants in the electric grid—adjusting electricity consumption when necessary rather than simply adding fixed demand.
But markets and regulations have to give companies a reason to behave that way and the session understandably explored whether states’ regulatory frameworks are rewarding flexible demand, how states can compete for investment, and how emerging technologies—including nuclear power—may contribute to meeting future electricity needs.
The lesson is broader than data centers: regulation needs to keep pace with technological change. A regulatory framework designed for yesterday’s electricity system may not be capable of efficiently managing tomorrow’s.
State Legislatures Can Lead
One of the summit’s most practical themes was that states do not have to wait for Washington to solve these problems.
The “Switching On State Reform” session focused specifically on lessons from energy reforms in Ohio and West Virginia—which, as shown above, have been profound. It examined how legislators can overcome opposition, build coalitions, use private-sector expertise, leverage federal policy, and prepare for legislative opportunities.
That state-level focus is significant. States control many of the regulatory decisions that determine whether energy projects can be developed efficiently. State legislatures can establish permitting procedures, define agency authority, reform judicial review, structure utility markets, and require greater transparency.
They can also evaluate whether existing regulations still serve their intended purposes.
In other words, regulatory reform is not merely an administrative issue, it is a legislative opportunity.
Regulation Should Enable Innovation, Not Block It
The summit’s “Energy Disruptors Dinner” reinforced that point by bringing policymakers together with innovators who are developing new approaches to producing, managing, and consuming energy. The discussion focused on the barriers these companies encounter, including regulatory uncertainty, permitting speed, market access, and the freedom to test new business models.
For policymakers, that creates an important feedback loop.
Legislators can write laws with good intentions. Agencies can implement those laws. But innovators experience the regulatory system in a different way: through permits, approvals, compliance costs, agency interpretations, and the practical question of whether they can get a project from concept to operation.
A successful regulatory system should recognize that reality.
The measure of a regulation should not simply be whether it was well-intentioned when adopted. Policymakers should also ask whether it works in practice.
Building an Energy-Abundant Future Requires Regulatory Reform
The summit concluded by connecting state action to the federal energy-policy landscape. The “Watts Happening in Washington” briefing examined federal energy policy, including the SPEED and PERMIT Acts, EPA policy, and the division of responsibilities between federal and state governments.
But the broader message of the summit was that states have substantial work to do regardless of what happens in Washington.
If America is entering a period of rapidly increasing electricity demand, policymakers cannot afford regulatory systems that unnecessarily delay new supply.
If consumers are facing pressure on energy costs, policymakers cannot ignore the effect that regulatory barriers have on development and competition.
And if new technologies are emerging faster than existing regulatory frameworks can accommodate them, policymakers need to be willing to modernize those frameworks.
The path toward energy abundance therefore runs through more than generation capacity or technological innovation.
It runs through regulatory reform.
That means faster and more predictable permitting, greater agency transparency, clearer limits on administrative discretion, meaningful judicial review, competitive electricity markets, protection for ratepayers, and regulatory frameworks that allow entrepreneurs and energy developers to respond to changing demand.
The Capitol Leaders Powering Prosperity Summit was designed, and succeeded, in bringing those questions into one room—and, more importantly, to move the conversation from identifying regulatory problems to identifying legislative solutions.
Because the central energy-policy question facing states may not simply be “How do we produce more energy?”
It may be:
“How do we reform government so that America can actually build it?”
The summit’s answer began and ended with regulatory reform.
Graham Owens is a Regulatory Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
