Annual Reports

SWEEP Annual Report 2025

 

It’s been quite the year. It underscored, yet again, the urgency and importance of SWEEP’s efficiency work in states and communities across the Southwest, both to defend past progress and to achieve new victories despite the volatility and uncertainty at the national level.

In 2025, an explosion of AI-serving data centers, wildfires, extreme weather, and more combined to drive record-breaking electricity demand and costs, leaving Americans across the country struggling to pay ever-increasing utility bills. Decades of underinvestment in our electric distribution system sparked concerns about reliability and delays in grid interconnections in the face of this growing load. Federal rollbacks of clean energy policies and investments threatened to reverse years of forward momentum.

With energy efficiency always as our north star, SWEEP stepped up to respond to these challenges. We conducted analyses, crafted policy recommendations, and provided thought leadership, working shoulder to shoulder with state and local leaders to advance solutions in public utility commissions, state legislatures, city councils, and communities across the Southwest.

Affordability was the lens through which we prioritized potential policy solutions. Our advocacy propelled low-income utility rates in New Mexico, better utility accountability in Nevada, and the development of low-cost on-bill financing proposals for home efficiency upgrades in Colorado. Our report, Data centers: Power needs and clean energy challenges, proposed critical environmental and consumer guardrails for new large loads like data centers, helping drive the policy conversation across the region. Our new Housing Forward campaign implemented location-efficient housing and smart growth policies to ensure that Colorado builds homes that people can afford in the places they want to live, in walkable, connected communities near jobs, transit, and local businesses.

When critics suggested that constructing new buildings to modern efficiency standards was an unnecessary extravagance, SWEEP helped lead the charge in highlighting how efficiency – the energy you don’t have to use or pay for – drives sustainable savings for residents and businesses, as well as cleaner air, inside and out. We fought against attacks on efficiency standards in Arizona and clean vehicle programs in multiple states. While we didn’t always prevail, our efforts highlighted the public support for these initiatives and laid the foundation for new strategies to continue the march towards a healthier, more affordable energy future for all.

The SWEEP Board and staff also spent much of the year seeking feedback from partners, examining our effectiveness and ways to improve it, and forecasting new opportunities and challenges to write an updated strategic plan to guide our efforts for the next four years.

As SWEEP looks ahead to 2026, when we will celebrate our 25th birthday, I couldn’t be prouder of our organization and the committed team I get to work with. Together, with your ongoing support, I can’t help but have hope for the future, no matter how bumpy the road ahead may be.

With deep gratitude and resolve,

Elise Jones
Executive Director
March 31, 2026