Xcel rolled out a $70 billion five-year plan with 9.2 GW of renewables and 2.3 GW of storage, and CEO Bob Frenzel said, “we believe that we can, in fact, protect the planet” while serving growing demand. That’s a sentence I haven’t seen from a utility chief in a while. Three weeks ago the headline was that oil is back in and climate is out at a marquee energy conference, and this morning Time is running a piece about how a Democratic wave could change how companies talk about climate.

“Talk” is the interesting word there. AEP just raised its plan to $100 billion, CenterPoint to $71 billion, and the money mostly follows the same logic regardless of vocabulary: load is arriving, and whatever can be built fastest gets built. Xcel’s mix leans renewable because that’s what its territory and its queue make cheap, and the planet line may be seasoning added with the election three days out. Or it may be the first honest description of a plan that was always going to look like this. I can’t tell from the outside, and I suspect the CEO would find it hard to say too.

Meanwhile, SCE’s Pedro Pizarro says wildfire reform slipping into 2027 will have “significant and costly consequences,” which echoes PG&E’s CEO a week ago almost clause for clause. Two utilities, one legislature, one deadline that keeps moving.

I keep wondering what happens to the vocabulary on Wednesday, whoever wins. The steel doesn’t care which words are in fashion, but the permitting fights do.

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