Advocates Trumpet Costs, Benefits of Clean Energy in Northeast

Two new studies released by advocates on opposite sides of the clean energy debate reach opposite conclusions about the economic benefits of renewables.

A coalition of free market think tanks on Jan. 13 trumpeted a new report by Always On Energy Research (AOER) concluding that if state renewable energy mandates in New England were abandoned in favor of new nuclear and natural gas generation, ratepayers would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 25 years

Not so fast, the Acadia Center said Jan. 16.

The 501(c)(3) working to reduce carbon emissions in the Northeast laid out a point-by-point rebuttal of the report three days after AOER released it, saying its analysis “grossly inflates the cost of clean energy, selectively ignores fuel savings and proposes highly unrealistic alternative scenarios.”

It also ignores the societal cost of carbon emissions, understates the cost of nuclear, overstates the installed capacity needed and does not consider the prospect of emerging clean-energy technologies, Acadia said.

Acadia similarly attacked AOER’s 2024 report, “The Staggering Costs of New England’s Green Energy Policies.”

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