Most States Flunk Community Power Scorecard – CleanTechnica

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Did you know there was a thing called the Institute of Local Self-Reliance? On its website, it says it is “a national research and advocacy organization that partners with allies across the country to build an American economy driven by local priorities, accountable to people and the planet.” It advocates for locally owned energy systems, community power choices, and protection from being financially abused by utility companies. It has offices in Minneapolis, Portland, Maine, and Washington, D.C. Each year, the ILSR conducts a survey to determine where all 50 states are with regard to its list of priorities. For 2025, its Community Power Scorecard shows that most states could do far more to provide their residents with affordable, reliable, clean energy and to capture the economic windfall that renewables make possible.

The Community Power Scorecard

This annual scorecard focuses on laws that let communities capture the largest local benefits, shifting from the status quo to an equitable, democratically accountable community power system. The states that score the highest support locally owned clean energy and competitive access to the electrical grid, empower communities to be more self-reliant, and ensure that everyone benefits from clean energy. High-scoring states also hold utilities accountable, protecting consumers and competitors from inflated costs and other abuses of monopoly power. Poor state scores suggest lawmakers should take immediate action to improve. The Community Power Scorecard evaluates state policies as they are written, not as they are implemented. It gives a score to 18 policies that have a maximum of 87 points. Of the 50 states and D.C., only one state earned an above average grade of B, 13 hit the C average, 14 received Ds, and 23 states received a failing F grade. (Which state do you think scored the worst? No peeking.)

With few exceptions, states are terrible when it comes to giving people control over their energy systems and limiting the harm done by monopolistic utilities, John Farrell, co-director of the ILSR told Inside Climate News recently. “I like to think of this as an aspirational kind of project to say to people, ‘There’s a lot of work that we need to do here,’” he said about the report released last week. Once again this year, Illinois ranked highest for community power policies. It received a B grade thanks to its consumer-friendly rules for owning rooftop solar, plentiful opportunities for subscription-based community solar, and many other rules and laws that give people choices on their energy use. “Illinois scores well across most of the elements in the scorecard,” Farrell said. “All of these policies sort of create an environment to allow widespread ownership and development of clean energy at the local level. Illinois checks the boxes on those, and they do really well.”

No state got an A on the community power scoreboard. Oregon received the second highest score and was one of 12 states receiving Cs. Fourteen states got Ds and the remaining 23 got Fs. Alabama ranks last, with South Dakota only a little bit better. The scorecard, which had its first edition in 2018, shows the sum of results in 18 categories. The categories have different weights. One that has a big effect on the overall score is net metering, which refers to state laws or rules for compensating rooftop solar owners for excess electricity they send back to the grid. Eight states (Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Virginia) and the District of Columbia received the highest scores on that metric. South Dakota was lowest.

Community Power Rankings

In some categories, the authors can give a negative score if the effect of a state law or rule is worse than doing nothing. The main caveat is that the scores are based on the laws and rules themselves, and not on implementation. This helps to explain why Illinois, with its history of ambitious laws that sometimes have had lackluster implementation, does so well. Since last year’s report, Iowa, Michigan, and South Carolina showed improvement, while Missouri lost ground. “There wasn’t any huge jump,” Farrell said. “It was more changes around the margin. Some states made incremental improvement, but then it wasn’t enough to change their grade.”

National Policy Changes

Asked about how he is feeling about the national energy policy landscape under the current president, Farrell said, “There are a lot of interesting opportunities.” That is putting it mildly! One thing that gives him hope is the Federal Trade Commission’s affirmation that it will keep the corporate merger rules that were adopted under former President Joe Biden. “That says they’re still concerned about monopoly power in the economy, and a lot of the affordability issues around clean energy are tied up in that monopoly power issue,” Farrell said. Of course, CleanTechinca readers know that pledge could go out the window in a heartbeat in today’s topsy turvy political environment.

But the things that give Farrell hope often get lost in the many reasons to be concerned. “Some of [Trump’s agenda] is not really driven by any particular principle, or any conservative or liberal interpretation of the law,” he said. “It’s about how are we making a statement to our followers about loving coal energy as a sort of symbolic gesture to making America great again. That has very little to do with energy, resilience, affordability, or reliability.” He has concerns about the Trump administration’s deletions of climate data that had been accessible to the public and hopes that this will not extend to Energy Information Administration data that remains available. He views this data as essential for having the transparency needed to hold utilities accountable.

His other big concern is that federal payments will be delayed or halted based on how the administration feels about the recipient. “Is South Carolina going to get all this IRA money, but California is not?” he asked. “I think it’s possible they could try to do that. It may still be illegal, but we are already seeing evidence that they’re sometimes ignoring court orders. So, you know, we’re in a constitutional crisis there.”

It’s hard to remain optimistic in the face of such headwinds, but Farrell remains committed to the goals of the ILSR. What his organization is really trying to do is democratize the generation and distribution of electricity in the US, an idea that flies in the face of established practice. That’s an idea that is anathema to investor-owned utility companies because it threatens their business model, which was created long before the days when people could make their own electricity. Farrell may be ahead of his time, but the policies he and ISLR promote are finding acceptance in more places every year.