What’s missing from today’s policy conversation? What do you wish policy professionals (or anyone interested in policymaking) understood about the challenges we face?
In this “Policy Matters” feature, we invite leading thinkers to go beneath the surface, to highlight perspectives, research, and lived experiences that often escape public attention.
Could new transmission lines lower your electricity bill?
By Catherine Hausman, associate professor of public policy
Electricity is in the news: What will data centers do to consumer prices? Is Michigan moving fast enough on sustainability in its electricity sector? Should the government be supporting specific sources of electricity generation—nuclear, geothermal, coal, wind, solar? Is the Ann Arbor grid sufficiently reliable? Why did Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance highlight the Puerto Rican grid? Electricity is a crucial good for households and a key input for businesses, so smart policymaking is important.
There's particular interest right now in finding ways to keep electricity costs down. Beyond the headlines, one of my hopes is that policymakers can find smart ways to accelerate long-distance transmission buildout so that we can leverage low-cost resources like solar and wind farms.
To understand why we have the transmission grid we have, we have to look to the past: The grid was built at a time when vertically-integrated companies served local demand centers, largely with nearby power plants and fairly short-distance transmission lines. That's not well-matched to today's world, in which very cheap, very green power is being produced in the middle of the United States, keeping prices and greenhouse gas emissions down. While at the same time, prices are spiking on the coasts.
It would be great to transport more of that wind power to the East Coast, but that will require more long-distance lines, crossing multiple states. And in my research, I've been struck by how the same parts of the country that have seen the biggest jumps in electricity prices—the coasts, especially the Northeast—are the parts that our model predicts would most benefit from long-distance transmission.
Discussions about how to accelerate transmission development are happening at all sorts of levels, and creative solutions are being proposed. My research points to the importance of institutions and grid governance. Who gets to decide where and when transmission lines get built, and are consumer interests adequately represented in that process? In lowering prices, transmission can decrease some power plant profits, so consumers and producers are unlikely to support the same policy reforms. And if incumbent power plants get an outsized voice in this process, we won't get a grid that best represents society as a whole.
The best policy solutions aren't necessarily easy. As engineers have pointed out, the U.S. electricity grid is the largest machine in the world. And it's embedded in a complex set of institutions, laws, and market structures. But the University of Michigan is a great place to do this work—I'm continually learning from my colleagues and my students all across campus: in engineering, law, political science, and more. I remain hopeful that we can build a grid for future generations that truly serves the public.
Related spring 2026 State & Hill stories
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Civic courage in an age of executive action 
A house on fire: rescuing state capacity ← Read all stories in the spring 2026 edition State & Hill
