Environment and energy

Environment and energy policy in the United States covers air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, electricity prices and reliability, and how much energy the country produces. In 2026 surveys, most Americans chose environmental protection over economic growth when asked to pick one, yet far fewer called environment and climate policy very important to their vote than said the same about the economy, and the two parties’ voters sit far apart. The hard disagreements are about tradeoffs among emissions, cost, reliability, security, local impacts and who decides, more than about whether the environment matters at all.

In plain words

Environment and energy choices affect everyone’s air, water and power bills.

Almost everyone wants clean air, clean water and lights that stay on at a price they can pay. The fights start when those goals pull against each other.

Building wind and solar farms can cut pollution, but someone has to live near them and the power lines that carry their electricity. Keeping coal and gas plants running can protect the grid on the hottest day, but those plants release carbon dioxide. Producing more oil and gas at home can lower costs and help allies, but it can slow the shift to cleaner fuels. And people disagree about whether Washington, the states or their own county should make these calls.

So when someone says “the environment matters to me,” that tells you something real. It does not tell you which of these tradeoffs they would accept.

Defined terms

Environment and energy debates use these terms in specific ways on this page.

• Greenhouse gas (GHG). A gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide or methane. U.S. totals are reported in million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMT CO2e), which converts each gas to the warming effect of carbon dioxide.
• Generation mix. The share of electricity produced from each source (natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, hydropower and others) over a period.
• Resource adequacy. Whether a power system has enough supply to meet demand, including at peak times and under stress, with a margin to spare.
• Dispatchable power. Generation that operators can turn up or down on demand, as opposed to output that depends on wind or sunlight.
• Retail electricity price. The average price a customer pays per kilowatthour, usually reported in cents per kilowatthour.
• Renewable portfolio standard (RPS). A state rule requiring utilities to supply a set share of electricity from qualifying renewable sources by a set date. A broader clean electricity standard may also count nuclear and other low-carbon sources. See who decides.
• Environmental justice. The question of whether pollution, climate impacts and the burdens of energy projects fall unequally on particular communities.
• Permitting. The federal, state and local approvals a project needs before it can be built, including environmental review.

What the public prioritizes

Public priorities on environment and energy in 2026 look different depending on which question was asked. Each result below is accurate for its own question and population.

Choosing between goals. In Gallup’s March 2026 Environment poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, 58% said environmental protection should be prioritized even at the risk of curbing economic growth, while 34% said economic growth should come first. A similar 57% put environmental protection ahead of developing energy supplies such as oil, gas and coal, against 36% who favored energy development.⁠² The same poll found 63% saying the government is doing “too little” to protect the environment, the highest Gallup has recorded since it first asked in 1992.⁠²

Worry about climate. In that survey, 44% of U.S. adults said they worry “a great deal” about global warming or climate change and 22% “a fair amount,” while 23% said “not at all”.⁠¹ Water came first among the environmental worries Gallup tested: 56% worried a great deal about pollution of drinking water.⁠²

Importance to the vote. Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. adults conducted September 28 to October 4, 2026, asked registered voters how important each of 16 issues would be to their vote for Congress. The economy led at 84% “very important”; energy policy was at 54%; and environment and climate policy was at 41%.⁠⁴ Pew reported that environment and climate policy showed one of the two largest partisan gaps on its list, 51 percentage points between voters backing Democratic and Republican candidates.⁠⁴

Which energy sources. Pew’s March 2026 survey of 3,524 U.S. adults found 57% saying the country should prioritize developing alternative sources such as wind and solar, down from 79% in 2020. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 28% chose renewables and 71% chose fossil fuels, while 83% of Democrats and Democratic leaners chose renewables.⁠³ Support for nuclear power moved in the other direction in that survey: 54% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats said the federal government should encourage nuclear power production, up from 42% and 32% in 2022.⁠³

Local facilities. In the October 2026 Pew survey, 61% of voters said they dislike political leaders who support building data centers in areas near them, while 8% said they like that in a leader.⁠⁴

Why environment and energy priorities are hard to measure

Measuring what Americans want on environment and energy runs into at least five problems, each of which applies to any participation result, including the one My Vote Forward’s framework would produce.

Forced choices and ratings measure different things. Gallup’s 58% figure comes from a forced choice between two abstract goals.⁠² Pew’s 41% figure is a rating of how much an issue will matter to a vote among many issues.⁠⁴ A person can sincerely prefer environmental protection in principle and still vote on prices. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions. See question design.

The category is bundled. “Energy policy” can mean lower bills, more drilling, faster wind and solar, or nuclear plants. Pew changed its own item from “climate policy” in 2022 to “environment and climate policy” in 2026 and warned that the trends “are not directly comparable”.⁠⁴ When a subject list puts all of this under one heading, a high priority score can hide people who want opposite things.

Partisanship dominates the variation. In Gallup’s data, Republicans who worry a great deal about global warming fell to “a new low of 6%” in 2026, while Democrats had averaged 69% since 2017.⁠¹ A national average blends two very different distributions. See measurement.

Views move with events and prices. Pew’s renewables-first share fell from 79% in 2020 to 57% in 2026.⁠³ Residential electricity averaged 16.00 cents per kilowatthour in 2023 and 17.23 cents in 2025, in nominal terms.⁠⁵ Whether rising bills changed opinion, or something else did, cannot be read from these numbers alone.

National answers miss local intensity. Majorities may favor clean energy in the abstract while specific projects meet local resistance. Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center counted at least 888 state laws and local ordinances restricting renewable energy siting across 48 states by the end of 2025, 865 of them local.⁠¹² The data center result above shows the same pattern for a different kind of facility.⁠⁴

The real tradeoffs

Environment and energy decisions in the United States involve tradeoffs that remain even when everyone agrees on the facts. Naming them is more useful than ranking the subject as a whole.

Emissions and cost. The U.S. power system still relies mostly on fossil fuels. In 2025, natural gas produced about 41% of utility-scale electricity, coal about 17%, nuclear about 18%, and renewables about 24%, including wind at about 11% and solar at about 7%.⁠⁶ Changing that mix requires new investment, and who pays, through bills, taxes or neither, is a choice. How much specific policies raised or lowered prices is disputed; see evidence.

Speed of transition and reliability. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) reported in January 2026 that 13 of 23 assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years, and that summer peak demand is forecast to rise by over 224 gigawatts in that period, 69% more than the prior year’s 10-year projection, with new data centers accounting for most of the projected increase.⁠⁹ Retiring plants faster cuts emissions sooner; retiring them before replacements arrive raises reliability risk. Building replacements faster runs into the siting and permitting problems below.

Production, security and emissions. U.S. energy production reached a record 107 quadrillion British thermal units in 2025, the fourth consecutive annual record.⁠¹⁰ Domestic production can support lower prices, jobs, and exports to allies. Producing and burning more fossil fuel also adds emissions, unless offset elsewhere.

Local burdens and broad benefits. A transmission line, a solar farm or a pipeline concentrates its costs on the people nearby while spreading its benefits widely. A 2021 EPA report modeled that, with 2°C of global warming, Black and African American individuals are 34% more likely than others to live in areas with the highest projected increases in childhood asthma diagnoses from climate-driven changes in particulate pollution.⁠¹¹ Concerns about unequal burdens apply to energy projects as well as to pollution.

Present costs and future damages. Spending now to reduce future harm requires deciding how much future harm is worth today. That choice, expressed in economics as a discount rate, drives very different answers. See evidence.

One national rule or many state rules. A single federal standard is predictable and treats every state alike; state-by-state policy allows experimentation and local preference. See who decides and tradeoffs.

The strongest arguments across perspectives

Environment and energy debates in the United States are often described as two camps. The strongest arguments come from at least seven positions, which overlap and which many people combine.

Emissions reduction is urgent. Supporters of faster action point to the physical record: NOAA reported that 2024 was the planet’s warmest year in its record since 1850, 1.29°C above the 20th-century average, and that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade.⁠⁸ They argue that power plants, pipelines and vehicles last decades, so investments made now lock in emissions or reductions for a generation, and that delay makes later cuts steeper and costlier.

Affordability comes first. Those who stress affordability note that the average residential price rose from 16.00 to 17.23 cents per kilowatthour between 2023 and 2025, and that August 2026 averaged 18.16 cents (preliminary) against 17.57 cents a year earlier.⁠⁵ They argue that energy costs fall hardest on lower-income households, that mandates and subsidies shift costs onto ratepayers and taxpayers, and that policy should not raise the price of a necessity.

Reliability is non-negotiable. Grid-focused critics argue that dispatchable plants should not retire until firm replacements are online, citing NERC’s finding that more than half its assessment areas face adequacy challenges.⁠⁹ Supporters of the transition answer that storage, transmission and faster interconnection can provide reliability, and that the binding constraint is the slow pace of approving new supply rather than the choice of fuel.

Energy security and production. Advocates of domestic production argue that record U.S. output,⁠¹⁰ strengthens national security, supports allies, and keeps prices lower than they would otherwise be. Some add that U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 were 17% below 2005 levels⁠⁷ during years when production grew, and argue that innovation and fuel switching, rather than restrictions, should drive further cuts. Critics answer that expanding production for decades conflicts with deep emissions cuts.

Regulatory overreach and federalism. Critics of federal climate regulation argue that decisions with this much economic weight belong to Congress and to the states, not to agencies interpreting older statutes. The Supreme Court adopted a version of this view for one rule in 2022. Defenders of federal regulation reply that Congress wrote the Clean Air Act broadly on purpose and that pollution crosses state lines. See who decides.

Environmental justice. Advocates argue that pollution and climate impacts fall unequally, citing modeling such as EPA’s 2021 report,⁠¹¹ and that communities near plants, highways and new energy projects deserve more say and more protection. Some critics accept the concern about unequal burdens but dispute particular methods for identifying communities or allocating benefits.

Nuclear and permitting as common ground, contested in detail. Nuclear produced about 18% of U.S. utility-scale electricity in 2025,⁠⁶ and support for encouraging it rose in both parties in Pew’s data.⁠³ Its supporters see firm low-carbon power; its critics point to cost, construction timelines and waste storage. Permitting reform draws interest from people who want more pipelines and from people who want more transmission lines, but they disagree about whether faster approval should mean less environmental review, and about which projects should benefit.

Evidence

The evidence on environment and energy comes in three kinds that should not be mixed. Physical measurements (temperature, emissions, generation) come from agencies such as NOAA, EPA and the Energy Information Administration.⁠^6,7,8 Forecasts (demand growth, reliability risk) come from planners such as NERC and carry assumptions.⁠⁹ Opinion data come from surveys such as Gallup and Pew and describe what people say in response to specific wording.⁠^1,3,4 The most recent EPA greenhouse gas inventory year shown on EPA’s inventory page is 2022, when gross U.S. emissions totaled 6,343 MMT CO2e.⁠⁷ The evidence page covers what these sources show, where they are disputed, and what is unknown.

Competing interpretations

Environment and energy opinion data support more than one reading, and the readings carry political consequences.

Broad support or low intensity? One reading of Gallup’s 58% is that a durable majority wants stronger environmental protection.⁠² Another reading of Pew’s 41% “very important” is that, when people vote, the subject ranks below the economy for most of them.⁠⁴ Both can be true: a preference can be widely held and weakly decisive.

Values or information? Gallup found 64% attributing global warming mainly to human pollution, with 90% of Democrats and 28% of Republicans saying so.⁠¹ Some read the gap as a difference in information or trust in institutions; others read it as a difference in values about risk, cost and government. The framework treats such gaps as data about participants, not as proof that either side is uninformed.

Opinion following prices or prices following policy? The decline in renewables-first answers.⁠³ coincided with rising prices⁠⁵ Some argue voters are reacting to costs created by policy; others argue prices reflect fuel, demand and grid costs largely independent of climate policy. Survey trends cannot settle that causal question.

Application to this framework

My Vote Forward’s framework separates priorities, opinions, proposals and private voting. Environment and energy shows why the separation matters.

1. Priorities. A priority for “environment and energy” says the subject matters relative to others; it does not say whether the person wants more drilling or more solar. The framework’s priorities chapter requires publishing the subject list and wording, and collective priorities explains why a combined ranking is not a mandate.
2. Opinions. An opinion is only meaningful against specific words. Hypothetical example: “Require the state’s utilities to reach 80% clean electricity by 2040” and “Keep residential rates from rising faster than inflation” may draw support from the same person and conflict in practice. See opinions.
3. Proposals. A proposal must name the body with authority, its cost and its funding. Retail rates are set largely by state utility commissions, vehicle emission standards by federal law, and siting often by counties. See proposals and who decides.
4. Tradeoffs. Rating the importance of clean air is different from allocating a budget or deciding whether a program works. See tradeoffs.
5. Representation. Participants are a self-selected group, and on a subject this polarized the mix of who participates can swing the result. See representation.
6. Private voting. Opinions shared in the framework are never treated as votes. See private voting.

Unresolved questions

Environment and energy priorities leave several questions that this page cannot answer.

• Should environment and energy appear as one subject or several (for example, pollution, climate, electricity prices, energy production) in any priority list? Splitting it reveals conflicts; it also changes how other subjects rank.
• How should a participation result weigh people near a proposed facility against people far away who share its benefits or costs?
• When a national majority and a local majority disagree about a project, what should a published result say about each?
• How much of the recent shift in energy opinion reflects prices, partisanship or other events? The data reviewed here do not answer that.
• Can a priority question capture intensity, so that a strongly held minority view is not erased by a weakly held majority one? See collective priorities.