A Nonpartisan Comparison of Gubernatorial Candidates’ Energy Policies
Wisconsin is entering an important period of energy investment and transition.
Electricity demand is expected to grow as manufacturers expand, transportation becomes increasingly electrified, and data centers seek access to large amounts of power. At the same time, utilities must replace aging infrastructure, maintain dependable service, control costs, and decide which generation and grid resources should serve Wisconsin for decades.
The next governor will influence these decisions through appointments to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC), state budgets, administrative policy, economic-development agreements, and cooperation with the Legislature.
This voter-education guide summarizes and compares the gubernatorial candidates’ publicly stated positions on renewable energy and related electricity policy. It does not endorse, oppose, rank, rate, or assign grades to any candidate.
Candidates are presented alphabetically and evaluated through the same policy framework.
The Evaluation Framework
The comparison examines four characteristics of a modern Wisconsin energy system.
Clean
Does the policy seek to reduce air pollution, greenhouse-gas emissions, water impacts, and other environmental consequences associated with producing and delivering energy?
For purposes of this analysis, “clean” is broader than “renewable.” Nuclear power, for example, produces low operational carbon emissions but is not classified as a renewable resource.
Renewable
Does the policy support the responsible development of wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal energy, biogas, distributed generation, and complementary technologies such as battery storage?
This category also considers whether a candidate has offered measurable deployment targets, financing mechanisms, permitting changes, or other implementation policies.
Reliable
Does the policy support an electric system capable of serving Wisconsin homes, farms, hospitals, schools, and businesses at all hours and during extreme conditions?
Relevant policies include transmission, storage, demand response, generation diversity, resource planning, regional coordination, and firm or flexible generating capacity.
Independent
Does the policy increase Wisconsin’s ability to produce energy within the state, reduce exposure to imported fuels and volatile commodity prices, and retain more energy investment within Wisconsin communities?
This category also considers whether major new electricity users would pay the costs of the generation and infrastructure needed to serve them.
Cross-Cutting Policy Questions
Several issues affect all four areas and are therefore discussed throughout the comparison.
Affordability
Energy affordability includes more than the initial cost of constructing a power plant.
Coal and natural-gas facilities require ongoing fuel purchases, transportation, maintenance, and exposure to commodity price fluctuations. Wind and solar require significant upfront investment but do not incur continuing fuel expenses. Renewable integration may also require transmission, storage, grid controls, and other reliability resources.
A complete comparison must examine the cost of the entire electricity portfolio rather than the construction cost of one resource in isolation.
Land Use
Every large energy system has a physical footprint.
Wind and solar projects require land, roads, substations, and transmission. Conventional energy also requires generating stations, pipelines, rail infrastructure, fuel storage, transmission, and waste-management facilities. Nuclear power requires plant sites, cooling infrastructure, security areas, transmission, and long-term fuel and waste management.
The relevant questions include how much land is needed, whether compatible uses can continue, whether the use is temporary or permanent, how the community benefits, and what restoration or decommissioning requirements apply.
Public Service Commission Governance
The governor appoints members of the PSC, subject to Senate confirmation. Commissioners make consequential decisions concerning utility rates, power plants, transmission, customer programs, and long-term utility investments.
The candidates therefore differ not only on particular technologies but also on how Wisconsin’s regulatory system should make energy decisions.
Candidate Policy Summaries (Listed Alphabetically)
Joel Brennan
Renewable and Clean Energy
Brennan supports establishing a requirement for Wisconsin utilities to reach 100% clean energy by 2050. His approach places substantial emphasis on restoring integrated resource planning, through which utilities would compare generation, transmission, storage, efficiency, environmental impacts, reliability, and cost before undertaking major investments.
The planning process could create a structured method for comparing renewable resources with conventional generation, storage, transmission, and energy-efficiency measures. The public materials reviewed provide less detail on interim renewable-energy targets, distributed solar, transportation electrification, or specific wind and solar deployment programs.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Brennan’s proposal gives considerable attention to long-term system planning. Integrated resource planning is intended to evaluate future demand and determine which combination of resources can meet it reliably and economically.
He also proposes linking utility financial performance more closely to affordability outcomes rather than relying primarily on returns from capital investment.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Brennan’s approach would examine utility costs through a formal planning process and seek to link utility earnings to measures of customer affordability.
This would represent a change in how utility performance is evaluated, though implementation would require regulators to define standards for affordability, reliability, and performance carefully.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal questions are how self-generation would be defined, whether generation would need to be renewable, how demand-response obligations would be enforced, and what interim steps would lead to the 2050 clean-energy objective.
David Crowley
Renewable and Clean Energy
Crowley supports expanding access to clean-energy technologies and describes climate policy as an opportunity for job creation and economic development. His publicly available materials emphasize energy efficiency and access more than specific renewable-generation mandates.
The materials reviewed do not establish a detailed statewide renewable-energy percentage, a timetable for replacing particular generating resources, or a comprehensive wind, solar, and storage deployment plan.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Crowley emphasizes appointing PSC Commissioners with technical competence and a commitment to reliability, transparency, innovation, consumer protection, and long-term planning.
This approach places considerable responsibility on administrative leadership and the regulatory process rather than establishing a detailed generation portfolio in the campaign platform.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Crowley proposes expanding weatherization and energy-efficiency initiatives. These programs can lower household costs by reducing the amount of energy needed rather than relying exclusively on new generation.
His position also emphasizes protecting consumers and increasing accountability in utility decision-making.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal question is how the administration would translate broad support for clean energy, efficiency, and consumer protection into measurable policies for generation, transmission, storage, and emissions.
Francesca Hong
Renewable and Clean Energy
Hong supports statutory clean-energy and carbon-reduction standards. Her bold agenda includes a proposed requirement for 60% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% clean electricity by 2040.
Her platform also supports a state green bank intended to attract private capital for renewable energy, energy efficiency, resilience, and related infrastructure.
Additional proposals address electric vehicles, electric school buses, building standards, labor requirements, and community benefits.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Hong’s approach anticipates a rapid expansion of renewable generation and grid infrastructure. Meeting the proposed targets would likely require substantial additions of transmission, storage, interconnection capacity, demand management, and firm or flexible resources.
The platform establishes specific clean and renewable objectives, although additional detail is needed on the operational sequence to achieve them while maintaining reliability.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Hong supports limiting the energy burden on lower-income households and restricting the use of ratepayer money for certain utility lobbying and executive compensation expenses. She also supports permitting local governments to establish publicly operated utilities.
These proposals raise broader questions about utility governance, financing, and the balance between consumer protection and infrastructure investment.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal questions concern the speed of transmission and generation development, financing and ownership of new infrastructure, local siting, storage and firm-capacity needs, and the conditions under which a temporary data-center moratorium would end.
Andy Manske
Renewable and Clean Energy
Manske’s energy platform centers on nuclear generation rather than wind and solar. He describes nuclear power as a low-carbon, land-efficient energy source that could provide a much larger supply of electricity.
He does not reject wind and solar outright, but his public platform gives nuclear development the primary role in Wisconsin’s future energy system.
Because nuclear power is low-carbon but not renewable, the platform addresses clean electricity and renewable electricity differently.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Manske argues that nuclear generation could provide large amounts of dependable electricity and reduce reliance on weather-dependent resources.
His platform proposes accelerating nuclear approvals and subsidizing new construction. The available materials do not provide detailed timelines, reactor selections, financing structures, transmission requirements, or methods for allocating construction and cost-overrun risks.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Manske argues that building multiple nuclear plants would produce very inexpensive electricity. New nuclear projects, however, require substantial capital, specialized labor, licensing, fuel arrangements, cooling systems, transmission connections, security, and waste planning.
Whether the proposal would lower consumer rates would depend heavily on financing terms, construction performance, regulatory treatment, and which parties bear development risks.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal questions concern capital costs, licensing and construction timelines, taxpayer or ratepayer exposure, fuel and waste management, and how near-term electricity needs would be met before new nuclear facilities could begin operating.
Kelda Roys
Renewable and Clean Energy
Roys supports a statewide goal of reaching 100% clean energy by 2050. Her platform describes wind and solar as important sources of new electricity and connects clean-energy development with lower long-term fuel exposure and economic growth.
She also supports expanding Focus on Energy and increasing investment in Wisconsin’s clean-technology sector.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Roys’ approach combines renewable development with efficiency, regulatory capacity, and long-term planning.
Her published materials provide less detail on interim generation targets, storage quantities, transmission expansion, or the role of firm-generating resources during the transition.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Roys supports expanding energy-efficiency programs, increasing PSC staffing and technical capacity, and strengthening consumer representation through the Citizens Utility Board.
These proposals focus on both reducing energy consumption and improving the institutions responsible for reviewing utility costs and investments.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal questions concern interim milestones before 2050, transmission and storage requirements, the design of renewable-energy obligations for data centers, and the methods used to measure whether consumer savings are being achieved.
Tom Tiffany
Renewable and Clean Energy
Tiffany’s platform places greater emphasis on preserving conventional generating resources and developing nuclear power than on expanding wind and solar. He also supports creating new restrictions specifically for renewable energy projects.
He has criticized policies that encourage large-scale renewable projects on agricultural land and supports limiting incentives for utility-scale wind and solar development.
His approach would preserve a larger role for existing firm or “baseload” generation while encouraging new nuclear technologies.
Reliability and Grid Planning
Tiffany argues that Wisconsin should prevent the premature closure of dependable generating facilities and appoint PSC Commissioners who prioritize reliability, affordability, and firm generating capacity.
This approach emphasizes the output of individual generating plants. A complete reliability strategy would also need to address transmission, flexible resources, regional markets, storage, demand response, fuel availability, and the economics of maintaining aging facilities.
Affordability and Utility Regulation
Tiffany attributes part of Wisconsin’s utility-cost problem to energy policies that encourage renewable development without producing sufficient dependable in-state generation.
His approach seeks to lower rates by reducing regulations and preserving existing resources. The long-term effect on customer costs would depend on plant-maintenance expenses, future fuel prices, the economics of proposed nuclear technologies, and the cost of alternatives.
Principal Implementation Questions
The principal questions concern the criteria for retaining existing plants, the treatment of uneconomic facilities, the timetable and cost of new nuclear technologies, Wisconsin’s continuing exposure to imported fuels, and the absence of a detailed wind, solar, storage, or distributed-generation strategy.
Areas of Agreement
Despite significant differences, several themes appear across multiple platforms.
Most candidates acknowledge that electricity affordability has become a serious public concern. Several support preventing data centers from transferring their costs to existing customers. Most recognize that Wisconsin will need additional electricity and infrastructure, although they disagree sharply over the technologies, ownership structures, regulations, and timelines involved.
There is also broad recognition that appointments to the PSC will influence Wisconsin’s energy future. The disagreement concerns what commissioners should prioritize and how those priorities should be measured.
Major Policy Differences
The clearest distinction is the role assigned to renewable energy.
Hong and Roys propose explicit long-term clean-energy objectives, with Hong also establishing a near-term renewable standard. Brennan emphasizes a planning process through which renewable resources would be compared with other options. Crowley emphasizes efficiency and clean-energy access but has published fewer generation-specific details.
Manske and Tiffany place much greater emphasis on nuclear or existing firm generation. Manske proposes a nuclear-led expansion of electricity supply, while Tiffany emphasizes retaining existing generating plants, limiting large wind and solar development, and pursuing advanced nuclear technology.
The candidates also differ over data centers. Their positions range from a temporary moratorium or possible prohibition to conditional approval, separate tariffs, self-generation, demand response, publicly owned clean infrastructure, and general protections against cost shifting.
Conclusion
Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidates offer substantially different approaches to energy policy.
Some emphasize binding renewable-energy standards. Others focus on integrated planning, consumer protection, efficiency, nuclear development, or the preservation of existing firm generation. Their data-center proposals also differ in important ways, particularly regarding cost responsibility, clean-energy requirements, land use, and public ownership.
No energy technology is free of costs, risks, or physical impacts. Sound policy requires careful consideration of affordability, reliability, environmental consequences, land use, implementation timelines, and Wisconsin’s continuing dependence on fuels purchased outside the state.
The purpose of this guide is not to tell readers which candidate to support. It is to identify the policy choices before Wisconsin and provide a consistent foundation for further public discussion.
*Methodology and Nonpartisanship Statement
This publication is intended solely for nonpartisan public education.
It summarizes publicly available candidate positions using the same subjects and general analytical framework for every candidate included. Candidate names are presented alphabetically. The publication does not endorse, oppose, rank, rate, grade, or recommend any candidate or political party.
The analysis distinguishes among documented policy proposals, general statements of support, and areas where detailed public positions were not identified. Inclusion or omission of a particular proposal reflects the publicly available materials reviewed and should not be interpreted as support for or opposition to any candidate.
Readers are encouraged to review each candidate’s complete platforms and reach their own conclusions.