Surging demand from artificial intelligence and data centers is colliding with an electricity system built for slow, incremental change. The result: multiyear interconnection delays, rising costs for existing customers, and growing reliability risks.

Cato scholar Travis Fisher and Glen Lyons, founder and chief advocate at Advocates for Consumer-Regulated Electricity, propose Consumer-Regulated Electricity (CRE), a reform allowing privately financed, off-grid utilities to serve new electricity-intensive facilities under voluntary contracts. Because these utilities would be physically “islanded” from the regulated grid, they would impose zero costs or reliability risks on existing ratepayers.

Their new briefing paper examines how CRE could help states attract new industrial investment while protecting households from cost increases, addressing what Fisher and Lyons call “the defining electricity challenge of the coming decade: speed to power.”

If you’d like to speak with Fisher or Lyons, please contact Madison: mmiller@​cato.​org.