For example, in 2019, the D.C. Council updated its renewable energy mandates to be the most aggressive in the United States. Under the law, the district would be required to obtain 100% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2032, and the law increased the district’s mandated 5% local solar requirements to 10%.

Then, in 2023, policymakers tripled the original 5% mandate by increasing the local solar mandate to 15% by 2041. As a result, renewable energy mandate costs soared from $65 million in 2020 to nearly $272 million in 2025, quadrupling in just five years.

The results were entirely predictable. Federal price data show that from 2019 to 2025, the district’s electricity price increases were the largest in the nation, rising by nearly 66%, compared to 50% for neighboring Maryland and 20% in Virginia.

The district’s renewable mandate costs now represent roughly 13.1% of the total cost of electricity, increasing the cost by 2.66 cents per kilowatt-hour. This brings the average annual cost of the mandates to nearly $775 per electricity customer in the district, including residential customers, businesses, and federal buildings.

As compliance costs soared, the D.C. Council once again amended the renewable energy mandates in 2024. This time, policymakers explicitly exempted the electricity sold to government buildings from paying the costs associated with them. And although the exemption was supposedly temporary, policymakers have already extended it through September 2029.

The district’s policy seems to be expensive renewable energy mandates for thee, but not for me. Luckily, there is a federal solution to skyrocketing electricity prices in Washington.

While the D.C. Council can establish laws and ordinances, Congress has the ultimate power to enact legislation for the district, and it could use that power to save residential, commercial, and federal electricity customers over $272 million, or roughly $775 annually per electricity customer in the district, by our estimates. Even Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration acknowledges that residential customers pay an additional $20 per month, or $280 annually, for the privilege of using expensive, home-grown distributed solar.

It’s one thing that local Washingtonians are forced to pay higher prices because of policies enacted by the politicians they voted for. But federal taxpayers are also paying the costs of more expensive electricity, as the mandates drive up the electric bills of federal buildings.

The General Services Administration alone owns or leases roughly 50 million square feet of office space in Washington. Data show federal buildings consumed 13.9 kWh per square foot per year in 2018, meaning the 2.66-cent-per-kWh premium paid to comply with the district’s increasingly unreasonable renewable energy mandates is unnecessarily costing federal taxpayers an additional $18.6 million per year.

In our recent report, Blue States, High Rates; Always On Energy Research; and the Institute for Energy Research identified renewable energy mandates as a major driver of electricity price increases, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Washington.

WANT LOWER ELECTRIC BILLS? LET UTILITIES BUILD POWER PLANTS AGAIN

By repealing the district’s current renewable mandates and preempting future ones, Congress would take a concrete step toward lowering the cost of living in one of the most expensive places in America, saving taxpayers millions of dollars every year and clearly demonstrating that expensive electricity is a choice.

Electricity in the district should be affordable for everyone again, not just for municipal bureaucrats’ office buildings.

Isaac Orr is the vice president of research, and Sarah Montalbano is an energy policy analyst at Always On Energy Research, a nonprofit modeling firm.