The 2026 Kentucky General Assembly is actively considering several significant bills that directly impact every Kentuckian who pays a utility bill, ranging from structural changes to the state’s regulatory body to consumer protection measures. Here at the Mountain Association, we are closely monitoring the below bills and encourage residents, business owners and community leaders to be in contact with your representatives.
Senate Bill 57 [AN ACT relating to nuclear energy development.]
This bill would allow utilities to invest in planning and construction of nuclear power plants without longstanding processes established to make sure utilities are making smart investments. With this bill, they could just pass nuclear costs onto ratepayers – even if the plant never actually gets completed. Any other type of proposed new construction for utility generation, like solar, would still require regulatory approval.
Senate Bill 250 [AN ACT relating to securing affordable, reliable, and clean energy.]
This bill would establish that fossil-fuel plants are “clean energy,” but solar with storage – for example – is not. This is a marked shift away from least-cost strategies to meet customer needs.
‘…by defining clean energy to include conventional coal and gas-fired power plants, to exclude dispatchable renewable energy, and to grant special status to nuclear energy by holding it to a lesser standard than other sources of energy. ‘
House Bill 398 [AN ACT relating to decommissioning costs for electric generating units.]
This bill would allow utilities to charge ratepayers for the cost of decommissioning power plants without requiring the PSC to ensure that it’s responsible and necessary first. This removes incentives for the utility to maintain generating units in optimal condition, since the retirement and decommissioning costs have been prepaid by customers.
House Bill 535 [AN ACT relating to investor-owned electric utilities and declaring an emergency.]
Securitization is a complicated method of lowering the costs of long-term debt that is paid for by ratepayers. It can make sense, but this bill would remove protections that ratepayers need to make sure we’re not paying more than we should.
‘Done incautiously, as proposed in this bill, ratepayers become unwitting financiers of open-ended risk rather than beneficiaries of lower cost debt.’
No longer concerning as of March 6 due to successful advocacy!
Senate Bill 8 [AN ACT relating to public utilities and declaring an emergency.]
UPDATE: This bill was revised to exclude the concerning points around who can and can’t intervene in a case.
This bill would block important advocates from intervening on behalf of residential ratepayers. This would make the Attorney General the sole voice for residential customers, excluding low-income, affordable housing and other residential customer advocates from cases before the Public Service Commission. While on paper, the Attorney General should represent residential customers, in reality they advocate for commercial and industrial users as well – and these groups often want different things from rate cases.
