When Donald Trump was elected in both 2016 and 2024 on platforms explicitly promising to make the federal government hostile to climate action, environmental advocates quickly shifted their focus away from Washington, D.C. Many insisted that state and local governments would step up to fill the void, taking over the mantle of pushing for clean energy and emissions reductions. This decentralized approach forms the foundational thesis of coalitions like “America Is All In,” an organization that brings together cities, counties, and states that have vowed to uphold America’s international climate commitments in the absence of federal leadership.
Yet, for all the enthusiasm surrounding local climate action, an unspoken caveat has long defined these efforts: the states leading the charge on aggressive climate policy have historically been concentrated in a handful of reliably liberal regions, primarily along the West Coast and throughout New England. Industrial heartland states and fast-growing parts of the Sun Belt have largely remained sidelined due to divided government or strict conservative opposition.
The recent midterm elections could fundamentally alter that political map. In a series of historic legislative victories, the Democratic Party secured control of both state legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion—a political sweep commonly known as a “trifecta”—in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. For years or even decades, these three pivotal states had operated under Republican or deeply divided control, lagging behind the rest of the nation in adopting comprehensive clean energy mandates. Democrats also restored trifectas in Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada during the same election cycle, though those are territories where the party last held unified control earlier in the decade.
“It is impossible to overstate how monumental these results are,” said David Weiskopf, senior policy director at Climate Cabinet, a national nonprofit organization that works to elect climate-focused candidates and pass forward-looking state environmental policy. Weiskopf pointed out that if the six states where Democrats just secured trifectas were treated as an independent country, they would collectively rank among the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the entire world, rivaling major nations like Canada and Saudi Arabia. “This is just a massive opportunity to make progress,” he added.
The shifting political landscape opens up unprecedented pathways for sweeping new environmental and energy policies across the industrial Midwest, the mid-Atlantic, and the desert Southwest.
Wisconsin
Compared to its immediate neighbors in the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin has lagged far behind when it comes to phasing out fossil fuels within its power sector. While neighboring Michigan and Minnesota have both enacted landmark legislation mandating that their electric grids transition entirely to 100 percent clean energy sources by 2040, Wisconsin set a modest 10 percent renewable electricity standard more than twenty years ago. Although the state long ago surpassed that initial milestone, it never bothered to establish subsequent targets. Furthermore, unlike the vast majority of American states, Wisconsin does not even require utility companies to systematically plan for the long-term construction of future power plants. Consequently, the state continues to draw a significantly larger share of its electricity from coal than its immediate regional neighbors.
Renewable energy advocates across the Badger State believe they can achieve meaningful, short-term legislative gains now that Democrats have secured their first trifecta since 2010. Erik Kanter, the policy director for the environmental nonprofit Clean Wisconsin, expressed optimism that the newly empowered legislature can easily find common ground on what he describes as “low-hanging fruit.” This includes passing mandatory resource planning laws that would force utilities to look ahead, a shift Kanter argues will naturally nudge power companies toward building new renewable energy infrastructure rather than pouring millions of dollars into extending the lifespans aging coal and gas plants.
Additionally, the Wisconsin legislature previously failed earlier this year to pass a bipartisan-backed measure that would have required massive data centers to source their power entirely from clean energy sources. Kanter expects that legislation to finally cross the finish line now that Democrats hold the reins of power. Lawmakers are also widely expected to revive critical funding programs like the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. This longstanding state fund dedicated to parks, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem preservation once enjoyed broad bipartisan support before losing backing from Republican lawmakers in recent years.
Beyond these immediate priorities, Weiskopf of Climate Cabinet believes that even more ambitious policy moves are on the horizon. He anticipates that Wisconsin’s incoming class of lawmakers will pursue a comprehensive 100 percent clean electricity standard, effectively filling what he describes as a “Wisconsin-sized hole” in the middle of the Upper Midwest. Implementing such a standard would not only accelerate the phase-out of domestic coal combustion but would also make it easier for neighboring states to meet their own climate targets, given that the entire region relies upon the same interconnected electrical grid.
Pennsylvania
For years, the Pennsylvania Senate earned a reputation among state Democrats as the definitive graveyard for climate policy. Even though the party managed to flip the lower chamber of the state legislature several years ago, powerful Republican leaders in the upper chamber routinely refused to bring environmental and climate bills to the floor for a vote. Moreover, Pennsylvania’s status as a dominant national producer of both natural gas and coal created severe internal friction, making it difficult to forge unified agreements even within the Democratic Party itself regarding aggressive clean energy proposals.
“You don’t want to let yourself fully imagine what it can be, because you’ve been let down in the past,” said Lindsey Williams, a state senator representing a heavily populated district within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. “Now we’re in that moment of, wow, there’s so many things that we can accomplish.”
Every single year since 2019, Senator Williams has introduced legislation that would establish mandatory energy and water efficiency standards for everyday consumer appliances such as commercial ovens and residential showerheads, a practical measure she estimates could save consumers millions of dollars annually. Although her proposals previously stalled indefinitely in committee, she firmly believes the legislation will finally advance during the upcoming legislative session.
Williams and her Democratic colleagues hope to leverage their first state-level trifecta since 1993 to enact a comprehensive, wide-ranging climate agenda. Alongside pushing for new laws that would clear regulatory hurdles for community solar installations and large commercial warehouse rooftop solar arrays, Democratic lawmakers are eager to pass a robust emergency funding package for the state’s struggling public mass transit systems, including the public transit network in Philadelphia. A proposed $1.5 billion financial infusion would help prevent a catastrophic transit “death spiral” for systems experiencing severe budget shortfalls while simultaneously reducing regional reliance on gasoline-powered automobiles.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s reelected centrist governor, Josh Shapiro, appears broadly supportive of several key components of this agenda. Although Governor Shapiro previously withdrew the commonwealth from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative—a multi-state carbon pricing pact spanning the Northeast—he has pledged to pursue a localized cap-and-trade system for power plant emissions within Pennsylvania if he can secure sufficient backing from the legislature. He has likewise designated state funding for mass transit as a top legislative priority for the upcoming session.
Nevertheless, navigating these initiatives will require immense political dexterity. While Democrats have secured majorities in both legislative chambers, their margins are razor-thin, leaving them with a narrow, potentially fleeting two-year window to pass transformative climate policies before the political balance of power shifts once again.
“We need to be brave and lead,” Senator Williams said. “Yes, what are the low-hanging fruits, but what are the big ambitious things that we can get done this session?”
Arizona
The last time the Democratic Party held a complete trifecta in the Grand Canyon State was all the way back in 1966, decades before global climate change had entered mainstream public consciousness. Because Arizona is blessed with abundant sunshine and strong wind resources, its commercial renewable energy sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, leaving the state with an electric grid that is already significantly cleaner than those found in heavily fossil-fuel-dependent regions of the country. Furthermore, many of the newly developed master-planned suburbs sprawling across the Phoenix metropolitan area are heated primarily via electricity rather than natural gas.
Despite these natural advantages, conservative lawmakers in the state legislature have spent years erecting legislative roadblocks against environmental regulations. They have enacted statutes explicitly prohibiting state agencies from directly regulating greenhouse gas emissions or restricting baseline energy consumption, causing numerous climate and water conservation bills to fail.
Lauren Kuby, a prominent Democratic legislator representing the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, noted that she and her colleagues have assembled an extensive legislative wish list addressing multiple compounding crises. Their foremost objective is to reform the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s elected utility regulatory body. According to Kuby, the commission has historically been far too slow to embrace modern clean technologies like utility-scale solar, battery storage, and “virtual power plants”—distributed networks of residential and commercial buildings that coordinate their electricity usage to ease strain on the grid.
Lawmakers are aiming to pass legislation directing the commission to mandate robust utility investments in solar and storage infrastructure. As part of this sweeping institutional overhaul, legislators may even pursue changing the agency’s official name, stripping out the word “corporation” and replacing it with “public utilities.” The transition will likely be aided by the victories of two Democratic candidates who appear positioned to secure open seats on the commission.
Beyond energy policy, the newly established Democratic trifecta provides a historic opportunity to finally break long-standing legislative logjams on water management—an existential issue in an arid desert state where climate change is actively exacerbating severe, long-term droughts. Kuby and fellow lawmakers have spent years trying to advance legislation that would implement much-needed oversight and regulation of heavy groundwater pumping in rural parts of the state. These rural valleys currently host massive industrial dairies and sprawling corporate alfalfa farms, operations that have been heavily criticized by local residents for causing land subsidence and drying up residential drinking wells.
Although similar groundwater bills have repeatedly died during previous legislative sessions under Republican leadership, Kuby remains confident that a compromise framework can be enacted in the coming year, bringing a definitive end to the unchecked water extraction occurring in desert regions outside major urban centers.
“That has been languishing and has not been heard in the legislature, even though we have agreement from a lot of Republicans on water and environmental protection,” Kuby said. Reflecting on the political shift, she added, “It’s a game-changer.”