Three years ago, Angelia Pressley started tuning in to Georgia Public Service Commission meetings and learned how much power the little-known regulatory body had over the lives of the state’s residents.
The commission, which is made up of five elected officials, could approve or deny electricity rate hikes, create energy efficiency standards and determine what percentage of the state’s energy portfolio was made up of clean energy over fossil fuels. As the commission’s own website states, its decisions “affect the lives of every Georgian each time a landline telephone is picked up, a light is turned on or a gas burner is used.”
Despite that mighty responsibility, Pressley said she couldn’t help but feel like commissioners were making decisions that prioritized utility company profits over the needs of residents. In the last two years, the commission has approved historic rate increases requested by Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric utility. As a result, the average Georgian saw their utility bills rise by 33 percent, or around $500 a year per household.
She was also outraged to see the commission approving natural gas plants to power the influx of data centers coming to the area. So in 2024, the environmental sustainability consultant and Clark Atlanta University faculty member decided to run for one of the open commission seats.
This year, women of color — like Pressley — are running for these seats in places like Montana, Alabama, Georgia and Arizona. If they win, they’ll bring much needed representation for the people in their communities, who are disproportionately affected by the rising cost of living, data center development and environmental pollution.
As of 2022, just 35 percent of utility commissioners were women, and 82 percent of all commissioners were White, according to data compiled by the Chisholm Legacy Project, a nonprofit that advocates for climate justice. According to Ballotpedia, Republicans control all 10 commissions that have elected commissioners. Nine of those commissions have elections this year.
If Pressley wins, she’ll be only the second Black woman to sit on the Georgia commission. The first, Alicia Johnson, won in a special election last December.
Jacqueline Patterson, founder and executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project and former senior director of the NAACPs Climate and Environment program, compiled the report to point out the lack of representation on these commissions. “The people who are on the front lines, who are most impacted, are not the people who are making these decisions,” Patterson said.
Women of color, in particular, are disproportionately impacted by decisions to raise electricity rates and by the pollution that comes with using dirty fossil fuels, such as natural gas, to power the grid, she said. Black women face disproportionately high rates of energy insecurity and are more likely to live in older and less energy-efficient housing that is more expensive to heat and cool. Communities of color also experience higher rates of utility shutoffs and are more concentrated near fossil fuel infrastructure.
Having more women of color on these commissions means those concerns would more likely factor into decision-making by regulators. And studies have shown “when women are holding resources, how much further those resources go, and how much more community-minded women are,” Patterson said.
The people who are on the front lines, who are most impacted, are not the people who are making these decisions.”
Jacqueline Patterson
Many Georgia residents have struggled with spiking utilities costs.
“I saw that the commissioners were really ignoring the request from rate payers to have clean energy, to lower their bills and just really to have some relief from the six increases in the past two years,” Pressley said.
In Georgia, where approximately 33 percent of the population is Black, the board has historically been made up mostly of White conservative-leaning men, who, Pressley says, “are just not familiar with the real needs of Black and Brown communities.”
If she were to win her election, she said she plans to talk with residents across the state to figure out where weatherization programs or bill assistance programs might be needed. She would also promote wind and solar over coal-powered plants and would like to investigate the environmental impacts of data centers.
While these races for utility commissions have historically flown under the radar, there are signals that this may be starting to shift. Experts are pointing to the win in Georgia as a promising sign that residents are starting to pay attention. Another race in Phoenix, for a utility board election in early April, garnered national media attention and big donations from the likes of Turning Point USA, as well as Jane Fonda, the actress and long-time climate activist. The election resulted in a slate of clean energy candidate victories.
One nonprofit, PowerLines, aims to raise the profile of these commissions and help voters understand what they do. “We’re trying to demystify and deconstruct and just break down very simply that public service commissions are the most important and most powerful government body you’ve never heard of,” said Charles Hua, the founder and executive director. “We call them the U.S. Supreme Court justices of energy,” he said. “That is how much power that they have.”
Last year, utility companies requested nearly $31 billion in rate increases, which Hua said is double what was requested in 2024. At the same time, 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills and four in five Americans are feeling powerless about those costs, according to polling done by Hua’s organization.
In a majority of states, voters don’t have the ability to elect their commissioners, who are typically appointed by the governor instead. But there are other ways residents can exert power, Patterson said. For one, they can put pressure on governors to appoint people who represent the diverse interests of residents. Voters also can get out the vote for gubernatorial candidates. “We need to have representational governance at all levels,” she said. “There’s never been a Black woman elected to governorship.”
Who serves on these commissions has become even more important under a presidential administration that has proposed cutting energy assistance programs for low-income people, has coordinated a push for both data centers and fossil fuels, and has deprioritized the importance of representation of women and people of color in government, Patterson said.
“We need somebody really thinking about the people and the public at the state level,” she added. “We’re not going to have that representation at the federal level.”
In Arizona, Clara Pratte, a member of the Navajo Nation, is running to be the first Indigenous person on the state’s utility commission. If she wins, she’d also be the first Indigenous person to be elected to a statewide office in Arizona.
Coal from the Navajo Nation has powered Arizona and much of the southwest for decades and yet many tribal members still do not have electricity. Pratte herself grew up in an unincorporated community on the nation that didn’t get electricity until she was in middle school. Running water came to her community when she was away at college.
To bridge the energy gap for residents, Pratte co-founded Navajo Power, a company that seeks to scale up solar power generation on the nation. She sees the potential renewable energy has to address energy inequity and accessibility for her community, which is why she wants to serve on the commission.
She’s also concerned about the rising electricity rates. Last year, Arizona Public Service, which provides electricity to over two million residents, requested a third consecutive rate hike that would raise bills by an estimated $240 a year.
“Affordability is the number one issue that I’m concerned about, because affordability, despite what some people might think, it’s an actual crisis,” Pratte said. “We’ve got people deciding whether they can run their air conditioner or if they can afford their medication.”
But for her community and other rural areas, affordable electricity and energy infrastructure is also a form of self preservation, she said.
“A lot of young people have to move away from these rural areas to go live in larger cities because of the job availability and connectivity [needed] for their job and for their children in school,” Pratte said. As a result, “we’re losing ways of life that can’t be restored back. These are generational problems that energy and the [Arizona] corporation commission plays a part in.”