James Martin-Schramm is Senior Policy Analyst for the Clean Energy Districts of Iowa.

Iowans went to the polls amid widespread concern about the cost of living. The election results weren’t a mandate for any particular energy policy, but they sent a clear message: affordability, fairness, and accountability matter. Those priorities should guide Iowa’s decisions about its rapidly changing electricity system.

The Clean Energy Districts of Iowa (CEDI) recently completed analyses of 2025 electric utility data, comparing average bundled revenue per kilowatt-hour—the revenue utilities collect from each customer class—among Iowa utilities and sixteen large investor-owned utilities across the Upper Midwest. These revenues collected by utilities, of course, are costs experienced by ratepayers.

The results deserve attention. Alliant Energy’s Iowa residential customers paid 17.77 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 11.21 cents for MidAmerican customers—a 58 percent difference. For commercial customers, the gap was even larger: 14.86 cents versus 8.99 cents, a 65 percent difference. Alliant’s residential and commercial averages also exceeded the medians for Iowa municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives.