Is electricity dimming oil’s political power?
Surging power demand is turning electricity prices into a political flashpoint across the U.S. and Europe.
Increasingly, they are tied to the monthly electric bill.
That new reality has political leaders across North America and Europe rushing to stave off spiking power prices with an urgency unimaginable even a year ago.
“They are very concerned about their utility bills and the cost of electricity, which is something that I feel like I didn’t really see in previous cycles,” said Oscar De Los Santos, who leads the Arizona Democrats trying to ride a wave of voter discontent to victory in the state’s House of Representatives for the first time in 60 years.
The drivers of higher costs vary by country, but the growing transatlantic sensitivity can be traced back to the same source: The world is using more power than ever.
That trend is already reshaping the political map. Populist candidates as varied as progressive Democrats in the U.S. and far-right members of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, are turning high electricity prices into a political rallying cry. In Europe, the focus on electricity is an outgrowth of the continent’s attempts to cut climate pollution and curb its reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Data centers are the story in the U.S., with Democrats and Republicans alike eager to position themselves as the defenders of low electric bills with November’s midterm elections on the horizon.
President Donald Trump is promoting a plan that asks technology companies to generate or pay for the electricity of their AI facilities. In Arizona, Democrats are trumpeting their efforts to end data center tax credits in a bid to win back the State House this fall.
“You ask people, ‘Well, why do you think your electricity bill is so high?’ And more and more and more people were talking about AI data centers,” De Los Santos said.
Oil is still king of global energy markets, and politics. But a shift is underway. Last year, global electricity demand grew at twice the pace of total energy demand, as new industries hoover up electrons.
Power consumption from electric vehicles grew 38 percent in 2025, while data center electricity demand rose 17 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. Buildings were the single-largest driver of electricity demand growth last year, as rising incomes and extreme heat prompted more people worldwide to install air conditioners and heat pumps.
“There are a whole bunch of macro and micro factors that are conspiring to make electricity a lot more important than it has been,” said Eurasia Group Chair Gerald Butts, who has served as an adviser to two Canadian prime ministers, including Mark Carney. “We’re just using it for more stuff, right? And the prospect of using it for exponentially more stuff over the next 25 years is, I think, a pretty strong bet.”
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has labeled the coming decades “the Age of Electricity.”
“When somebody asks me, ‘is energy cheap or expensive today?’ I say it is $95 per barrel,” Birol said, referring to the price of oil in a recent interview. “Now, very soon when they ask me, ‘is energy cheaper?’ I will say 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. It will be the unit that people will look into.”
The mounting pace of global electrification is one of the reasons why oil prices — while high — didn’t rise as much as expected after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran earlier this year.
Analysts initially predicted prices would hit at least $150 per barrel as Iran all but closed the Strait of Hormuz and global supply contracted. But the rising number of electric vehicles cut into global demand for crude, Butts said. In recent weeks, the international benchmark for oil has hovered between $85-$95 a barrel.
“It’s a big macro market signal that oil is just not as geographically constrained or as essential as it used to be,” Butts said. “Essentially, oil is not worth what it once was.”
‘Who to be mad at’
Electricity has traditionally played second fiddle to oil in terms of political importance, with governments tailoring their decisions around voters’ sensitivity to high fuel prices.
French President Emmanuel Macron abandoned a proposed fuel tax in the face of widespread protests in 2018. Four years later, then-President Joe Bidenordered up the largest withdrawal in history from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve when gasoline prices eclipsed $4 a gallon.
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