When President Trump took office in January, our staff at Climate XChange understood that state actors were facing an unprecedented barrage of news about federal rollbacks that demanded timely analysis and guidance. We emphasized that, while rescinding federal funding, threatening clean energy deployment, and rolling back pollution standards could set the country back substantially, states have an extensive array of tools at their disposal to fill each of these gaps. We highlighted the leadership and courage of states that remained undaunted in their climate action. And, finally, we continued to remind state actors that no matter what administration takes the reins in Washington, state governments retain the widest jurisdiction to tackle decarbonization across the major sectors of the economy. Statehouses are where issues like building emissions, charging networks, electricity supply, and more will have to be tackled, and under any administration, statehouses have an obligation to lead.

Climate XChange took several strategic initiatives in 2025 to help provide state actors with guidance on navigating the impacts of the Trump administration’s climate policies. First, we reframed our newsletter to call out federal updates that impact state climate policy, helping readers understand what policies were in retreat and how states could respond. Our updates included highlights on the flurry of Executive Orders from President Trump’s first day in office, resources for federal grantees as the administration took aggressive steps to revoke Biden-era grants, context and analysis for major EPA deregulatory announcements, and notes on the impact of Executive Orders that specifically challenged the rightful jurisdiction of states to regulate climate pollution. We also provided more regular coverage of federal policy and funding changes across the board, helping our network track the changes that mattered amidst the whirlwind of noise.

Second, we published analyses and targeted our SCPN webinars throughout the year on what states can do to counteract the impacts of federal policy changes. Back in March, our analysis identified concrete ways that states could fill the gaps left by each of EPA’s announced climate-related rollbacks, and our responsive webinar was keynoted by Janet McCabe, EPA’s second in command under the Biden Administration. When it came time to assess the One Big Beautiful Bill Act over the summer, our analysis of state tools to mitigate the bill’s impacts was joined by Evergreen Action, and our webinar on the topic drew hundreds of eyes across the country. As transportation proved to be one of the most vulnerable sectors to federal rollbacks, we hosted a special webinar in June calling out responsive tools for states, and returned to this theme again in December, when we highlighted state tools to expand charging networks.

Time and time again over the year, we saw that state actors need help navigating the aggressive flow of policy reversals coming from the current administration. And time and time again, our team at Climate XChange has been able to help identify what news mattered, contextualize why, and point state actors to what they can do to help fill emerging policy gaps. We know this work will continue in 2026 and beyond, and we’re proud to serve this important function in the climate movement.

Providing Foundational Policy Information and Tailored Policy Assistance

In October 2024, Climate XChange released our redesigned State Climate Policy Dashboard, creating a user-friendly website that simplifies policy research by compiling state-level climate policy information and resources in one place. In 2025, we continued to improve and update the tool. In addition to functional updates that make finding information easier, like adding a site-wide search tool, we completed two content updates to the platform in January and July to reflect newly enacted policies and rollbacks. To ensure these updates stayed true to on-the-ground perspectives, we also executed an external review of the new Dashboard, receiving feedback on our policy coverage from 38 state actors across 30 states.

The Dashboard also powers the tailored pro bono technical assistance we provide network members. In 2025, we completed 91 assistance requests for policymakers and advocates, helping inform decisions in state legislatures across the country. This support spanned all states and sectors, from identifying opportunities for methane reduction policies in Delaware to providing best practices on cumulative impact assessments legislation in Illinois.

In 2026, we will continue adding policies to the Dashboard and implementing improvements to the tool. We’re also working to identify high-impact Dashboard policies states can enact given their specific political and policy landscapes. We will highlight the benefits of these policies across sectors to enable data-driven decision-making.

Providing Foundational Policy Information and Tailored Policy Assistance

In 2025, we identified the rapid spread of data centers as one of the biggest trends impacting state-level greenhouse gas emissions targets across the country, while posing significant concerns to other state and local priorities, including energy affordability, water security, local economic development, and more. As we heard from members across our State Climate Policy Network about the impacts that data centers already posed to their communities, we realized that we needed to track this issue, offer actionable education, and identify emerging best practices for state actors.

State policymakers have a unique opportunity to confront data centers’ impact on their electric grids, ratepayers, greenhouse gas emissions targets, and local air and water. But to do so, they need to understand the challenge, their jurisdiction over it, and the evolving suite of policy tools at their disposal. And they need to act quickly.

To ground our work, our team tracked 140 different pieces of state data center legislation introduced in 2025 sessions, analyzing the issue areas they addressed and the types of policy levers that they used. We used that analysis to inform our first data center convening in 2025, where we presented our findings and listened to SCPN members on how data centers were already impacting their climate work. For us, this work highlighted that data center impacts are multi-faceted, vary significantly from state to state, and face distinct political and legislative challenges.

Our team undertook a robust research effort to better understand where data centers are likely to have an outsized impact on greenhouse gas emissions, electric rates and reliability, water systems, tax incentives, and more. We found that some states that don’t attract as much national attention may be uniquely vulnerable to specific types of data center impacts, or vulnerable at a greater scale than most observers might appreciate. That analysis was presented in our November webinar on data center impacts, and our recent brief, Identifying Priority Jurisdictions for Data Center Regulation.

We’ve also found that there are emerging policy tools that address each of the impacts that states are facing, many of which are exclusive to state jurisdiction. In 2026, to support state action on these areas, we are publishing five policy toolkits that explore what states can do to address data center impacts on energy affordability and reliability, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, transparency, and tax and employment. Later this year, we’ll be using this analysis to help drive more actionable programming for our network through a series of webinars and workshops.

The state of policy is moving at a breakneck pace in the data center space right now, as city-scale projects flood interconnection queues and threaten to overwhelm the grid. Our team at Climate XChange is committed to helping states identify trends, best practices, and model approaches to confront this wave, and help steer it towards the best climate, environmental, and social outcomes possible.

As energy bills skyrocketed across the country in 2025, the Climate XChange team worked to support states in identifying and enacting robust policies that protect ratepayers and communities. Grid reliability became a key issue as the country grappled with record high electricity demand, fragmented and aging energy infrastructure, and increasingly frequent natural disasters.

Additionally, the rollbacks of federal climate goals made state-level climate and clean energy targets even more important. Meeting these goals requires increased electrification across sectors, as well as connecting new renewables to the grid, including solar and wind sited in remote areas. This means that every state, regardless of current electricity prices or presence of climate targets, must prioritize the modernization and expansion of its grid.

At the nexus of energy affordability, grid reliability, and clean energy deployment sits transmission — the infrastructure that delivers electricity over long distances from where it’s generated to where it’s used. In 2024, we launched a transmission series to support state policymakers and advocates in understanding and enacting state-level transmission policy, and we continued that support in 2025.

We hosted two transmission webinars focused on the role states can play in transmission reform and how states can engage in regional transmission planning. We also supported our cohort of state legislators through three legislator-only discussions on best practices for transmission legislation, as well as deeper dives into utilizing advanced transmission technologies to improve the capacity of our existing grid, and enabling the colocation of transmission lines along existing rights-of-way to streamline the deployment of new transmission infrastructure.

After laying the groundwork on the importance of transmission policy for meeting climate and clean energy goals, as well as bolstering grid reliability, we focused on energy affordability. Grid upgrades require significant investment up front to deliver long-term savings for ratepayers, but connecting these dots is difficult to communicate when bills are already rising across the country.

We hosted a webinar to review exactly how transmission saves consumers money, paired with communications best practices, to support state advocates and policymakers in discussing these difficult, technical topics with their constituencies. Through these six events, we engaged over 550 SCPN members and over 450 state legislators and legislative staff.

In addition to hosting a robust slate of events on transmission, our team recognizes the importance of free, comprehensive resources that can inform policy creation and implementation. We added coverage of policies related to enabling and incentivizing the deployment of advanced transmission technologies (ATTs) and grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to our State Climate Policy Dashboard, so that policymakers and advocates understand the landscape of where policies are enacted, along with model policies, key research, and relevant organizations.

With energy affordability, grid reliability, and clean energy deployment continuing as critical issues for 2026 sessions, we will continue bringing programming and policy updates on these topics to the network in 2026.