2026 Dirty Dozen

For nearly 30 years, our Dirty Dozen program has named the candidates for federal office whose records most consistently side against the environment. This year, the list also reflects candidates’ records on an urgent issue for voters nationwide: skyrocketing energy costs.

Every candidate on this year’s Dirty Dozen has a record, a vote, a lobbying history, or a policy position, that is helping drive up the electricity and heating bills their own constituents pay. Whether through blocking or repealing clean energy projects, providing handouts to dirtier and more expensive fuels like oil, coal and gas, or embracing costly data center buildouts without protecting ratepayers from the bill or the pollution, these candidates have consistently sided with Big Polluters over people.

The 2026 Dirty Dozen includes five Senate candidates and seven U.S. House incumbents running in competitive races. Nearly all of them voted in 2025 for the Republican Tax Law also known as the Big Ugly Bill, which eliminated tens of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits. Independent economic modeling from the Rhodium Group and Energy Innovation projects that law’s energy provisions alone will raise average U.S. household energy costs by roughly $80 to nearly $200 a year by 2035 — with the steepest increases concentrated in states these candidates represent — even as data center electricity demand adds further pressure to utility bills nationwide.