Rising bills and a squeeze on electricity supply from the rapid growth of data centers is causing what some groups call an energy crisis in Pennsylvania.

PennFuture and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania are offering an agenda they say can help get costs under control.

Adam Nagel, PennFuture’s director of government affairs, said state lawmakers have often looked to fracked gas over the past two decades as a solution. Gas-fired power plants generate nearly 60% of the electricity used in Pennsylvania.

Nagel said relying too much on one source of energy risks “massive consequences” as electricity demand grows.

“Whether it’s price or whether it’s the ability to keep the lights on, no longer can we afford to rely on one form of energy as our predominant source of electricity,” Nagel said. “We need to balance that, and the cheapest and quickest way to do that is deploying renewables at scale as quickly as we possibly can.”

He said places with a “more balanced” energy portfolio have seen less dramatic price increases than Pennsylvania.

The set of policies released Thursday offer solutions for the immediate, short and long term.

Immediately, the groups said the state should prohibit utility shutoffs during the summer months, extending a moratorium that applies to the winter season. They said that would reduce fees for customers who are having trouble paying their bills.

Over the next five years, the agenda includes measures to encourage warehouses to add solar panels to their rooftops; to fast-track permitting for renewable energy production and storage projects; to regulate large electricity users, such as data centers; and to incentivize upgrades to existing gas-fired power plants to make them more efficient.

“ We believe things like weatherization, co-location with renewables; these are ways to help advance efficiency, generate more energy, and it does not require building new gas plant facilities,” Nagel said. “Let’s perfect the sites that already exist, rather than build more sites that will be equally as inefficient as the ones we already have.”

Long-term solutions suggested by the agenda include updating the state’s energy mix goals to 35% renewable energy by 2035. Pennsylvania’s previous alternative energy goals flatlined in 2021. The state gets 8% of its energy from solar, wind, low-impact hydropower, geothermal, biomass, fuel cells, and methane gas that’s captured from farm waste and coal mines.

Gov. Josh Shapiro last year put forward his “Lightning Plan” to streamline permitting, increase the amount of renewables on the grid, and make energy more affordable. None of the proposals have so far cleared the legislature.