Gov. McKee signs executive order aiming to reduce energy costs, sparks environmental debate
Earlier this month, Gov. Dan McKee signed an executive order directing a review of the state’s net metering program, which requires utilities to credit homeowners and businesses for the excess renewable energy they produce.
The program ensures that solar projects “can sell excess electricity back to the grid for a relatively high rate,” said Ben Butterworth, director of climate, energy and equity analysis at Acadia Center, a climate-focused non-profit.
McKee’s proposed change would “essentially destroy” the solar energy industry in the Ocean State, said Butterworth.
“It’s a serious concern,” he added. If it is no longer financially feasible to produce solar energy in Rhode Island, the industry would “essentially just pull out of the state.”
Several green-energy advocacy groups have noted concerns with McKee’s changes to renewable energy policy.
Butterworth said the proposed $75 million cap on energy efficiency investment “leaves a lot of benefits on the table that could be achieved if you increase the spending of the program.”
“The cheapest megawatt of electricity you can buy is the one that you don’t buy,” Butterworth said. “Energy efficiency helps to lower the overall electric system costs by reducing demand.”
To read the full article from the Brown Daily Herald, click here.
Opinion: CT leaders are making energy more unaffordable. ‘Like mini-Trumps, they want more of the same dirty energy’
As the Connecticut legislature gets underway, lawmakers are looking for ways to lower energy bills. The great news is that with a combination of energy efficiency and clean energy like solar, wind, and batteries, lawmakers can put Connecticut on track to meet our energy needs with low-cost, healthy, renewable energy. This approach has an additional bonus of reducing health and climate-harming pollution, keeping our children, elders, and neighbors safe.
Experts agree that the most economical way to drive down electricity bills is to use less energy through efficiency measures — insulation, window and door sealing, more efficient lighting and appliances. Experts also agree that renewable energy is rapidly going down in price and will help reduce costs. The Acadia Center finds that over the last 20 years the states that receive a higher percentage of their energy from renewables, had smaller electric rate increases. Analysis shows that New England will reap significant energy bill savings and life-saving emissions reductions by developing offshore wind. Researchers at UMass Lowell estimated that incorporating batteries into the New England grid would result in a 55% reduction in overall electric system costs in New England. Clean energy is the pathway to lower energy costs, cleaner air, and a stable climate.
To read the full article from CT Insider, click here.
Why New England must say no to new gas pipelines
New England must protect energy affordability by rejecting the pressure campaign to build new interstate gas pipeline capacity, a 15-year-old idea that fails on all the basic economics — before talking about damaging consequences for climate and public health.
The economic case for a pipeline has never been weaker, even after a major winter storm. Consumers will be worse-off financially, and clean energy solutions have never been more cost-effective. To relieve winter energy constraints, the region needs to diversify generation, build out grid connections and storage and invest in efficiency and demand flexibility.
Not double down on costly, volatile fuels we already rely on too much.
There is simply no need for a massive new pipeline. Gas demand in Massachusetts was flat to declining from 2019-2024. And setting aside Connecticut, an outlier on gas demand, regional gas demand has been flat. If anything, the region needs cheaper, more targeted solutions to relieve scarcity on the coldest days of the year.
Elevated oil generation and power prices don’t justify a new pipeline. Gas and power prices jumped significantly across the country (gas futures were up 70% before the cold snap), even in regions without constrained fuel supply.
And frigid conditions exposed the poor reliability of gas equipment. Even on the peak of the most difficult cold day this winter, almost half the capacity keeping New England’s lights on was zero- to low-emissions, when factoring in energy efficiency.
A bill in Massachusetts sought to saddle electric ratepayers with the costs of a new gas pipeline. This would create a long-lasting charge on electric bills negating potential reductions to power supply costs — unthinkable in the current affordability crisis, especially for an asset that would outlive its usefulness before being paid off.
Pipeline companies won’t build without long-term contracts. No entity (utilities, power plants) is willing to contract for new gas supply because they either have enough, or they buy from the spot market. It’s a financial issue: no contracts means no financing, no pipelines .
If forced, New England ratepayers would pay dearly for a new gas pipeline:
- For the direct delivery costs of a billion-dollar-plus pipeline.
- For the price of the gas supply itself, now forecast to increase 33% year over year (2026-2027).
- For decades of locked-in costs from local distribution pipes.
Those distribution costs — maintaining and repairing aging local gas pipes — are already rapidly rising and cannot be affected by expansions in supply. Repair costs imposed on ratepayers already total billions and billions of dollars, with Massachusetts gas users facing between $23,500 and $31,000 per customer over the life of the program.
The cost of supplying gas is now only one third of a typical bill, with distribution closer to two thirds — the opposite from 10 years ago. A new pipeline is just more of that increasingly costly delivery infrastructure, in pursuit of unlikely savings on the smaller, shrinking supply portion.
This is the core folly behind pipeline arguments.
And why are supply savings unlikely? Much has changed since 2014-2015: America is now the world’s single largest exporter of gas. Given further projected increases in exports, New England will be swimming against a rip tide, with supply prices — both gas and electric — linked to higher international bidding.
So, power and gas demand have both been largely flat, gas supply/import capacity into the region has increased and yet gas and power prices have gone up.
Lowering regional prices is therefore not simply a matter of increasing supply.
Peak winter electric demand was flat between 2014 and 2026 (20.6 to 20.4 gigawatts ). Gas demand has also been flat over the last decade, excepting Connecticut. Meanwhile, gas import capacity has quietly increased through small expansion projects by more than 30% since 2010. But between 2019 and 2024, while gas supply grew by 362 million cubic feet per day, gas commodity prices actually increased in all New England states, including by 33% in Massachusetts.
So, instead of a gas pipeline, let’s keep building two clean energy pipelines: First, larger-scale clean supply resources, such as solar, onshore wind, bulk energy storage, as much offshore wind as can get built and proactively planned interregional transmission projects.
Second, smaller-scale clean demand resources such as energy efficiency, electric and gas demand response, distributed solar and storage, smart EV charging, and beyond.
Efficiency already saved $1 million in one hour during last month’s peak.
States must stay the course and reject a needless and enormously expensive gas pipeline. If anyone asks why?
Tell them the truth: “It’s the economics, stupid.”
Jamie Dickerson is senior director of Climate and Clean Energy Programs with the Acadia Center in Boston. Kyle Murray is director of the center’s State Program Implementation.
To read the article from MassLive, click here.
Governor McKee’s plans to slash energy costs spark debate among environmental and business groups
PROVIDENCE — As he runs for reelection, Democratic Governor Daniel J. McKee is touting proposals to slash energy costs — part of an “affordability” agenda popular among Democratic officials from New York City to Maine.
But McKee’s plan to lower energy costs by $1 billion over five years hinges in large part on rolling back renewable energy targets and programs, prompting opposition from environmental groups and advocates for another agenda popular among Democrats: addressing climate change.
Emily Koo, Rhode Island program director for the pro-clean energy Acadia Center, said McKee’s plan would only result in “prolonging our dependence on dirty, expensive fossil fuels.”
“Delaying the Renewable Energy Standard abandons the linchpin to achieving the state’s emission reduction mandates and renders the Act on Climate and the recent 2025 climate strategy obsolete,” she said.
To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.
McKee’s Proposed Cuts to Renewable Energy Programs Assailed at Rally
PROVIDENCE — Five years after lawmakers passed the state’s first firm climate mandates, the historic Act on Climate law is in danger of getting rolled back by the same governor who signed it.
Rhode Island’s environmental groups have already spent much of this year’s General Assembly session on defense, ever since Gov. Dan McKee rolled out his budget last month that slashed and capped various renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
Emily Koo, Rhode Island director at the Acadia Center, said energy efficiency programs help Rhode Islanders use the cheapest electricity — the electricity they don’t use.
“Energy efficiency directly lowers bills, and by reducing demand, suppresses prices across the region,” Koo said. “By putting the blame on state mandates and taxes, the governor’s budget ignores the benefits of clean energy and the primary drivers of energy costs.”
To read the full article from ecoRI, click here.
Gov. McKee wants to rewrite RI’s renewable energy laws to cut utility bills by $1 billion
Gov. Dan McKee is doubling down on his proposal to rewrite Rhode Island’s renewable energy laws with the stated goal of cutting utility bills for homes and businesses by $1 billion over five years.
Emily Koo, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy group, said a data-driven review of the renewable programs could be useful.
“It’s just disappointing to hear his affordability agenda framed as at odds with clean energy,” she said.
To read the full article from the Providence Journal, click here.
Mass. falling short of key climate targets, with some bright spots, after one year of Trump attacks
The report card is in, and 2025 results show that Massachusetts is going to need to cram if it’s going to meet its ambitious climate commitments.
The governor, who faces reelection this year, also proposed a roughly 4 percent cut to environmental programs in her fiscal year 2027 budget.
“I don’t think anything here is insurmountable,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts state director for the Acadia Center, an environmental group. “We’ve got to get creative, and we’ve got to show a commitment to these things. We know that this is not just the morally right thing to do. We know it’s an affordability issue. This is why we have to do everything that we can.”
To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.
Trump administration’s roll back of climate regulations gives ‘polluters a free pass,’ Mass. critics say
In President Trump’s most aggressive move to roll back climate regulations, his administration on Thursday repealed a scientific ruling that has long governed regulations on emissions from vehicles, power plants, factories, and more.
Backlash from local politicians, scientists, and environmentalists came quick with Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell vowing to sue.
Daniel Sosland, president of the Acadia Center, a Boston-based clean energy nonprofit, called it “a very sad day.”
“It’s a setback to public health, it’s a setback to consumers, it’s going to increase costs, it’s going to reduce choices in the marketplace,“ he said in a telephone interview Thursday night. ”It’s going to then also affect the most vulnerable populations the most.”
Sosland added: “They haven’t provided any scientific basis for their decision, what the benefits are.”
The oil and fossil fuel industries stand to benefit the most, Sosland said.
“Following the money here leads to those voices who are promoting fossil fuels, and have been opposed to these reasonable, effective, cost effective approaches to introduce new technologies and reduce this threat to public health,” he said.
More pollution will lead to “tens of thousands of premature deaths,” he said, and the decision will unsettle the American economy and US automakers, and put a drag on innovation in manufacturing across the country.
“Other countries are racing ahead, embracing clean energy technologies, because they’re better for their economies, they’re better for people, they’re better for health, and in the long run, they’re also cheaper,” Sosland said.
“Climate change is here and hurting people,” he said. The evidence is overwhelming from accelerated storm damage, to wild fires, to floods, and human health effects, he said.
“It’s conclusive, and so we are much better off facing the challenge now,” he said. “It’s much cheaper to take steps now to mitigate the damages than it is to wait, and wait, and have things get worse and worse.”
To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.
Gov. McKee Sells Magic Means to Lower Utility Costs
Gov. Dan McKee understands energy like he does bridges.
Last month, the former Cumberland mayor released his fiscal 2027 budget for Rhode Island. It’s a doozy. It’s as if the governor works for the fossil fuel industry and the climate crisis is a hoax.
The programs McKee has cut represent some of the best mechanisms for Rhode Island to take control of its energy future and, as the Acadia Center has noted, keep near- and long-term system costs manageable.
“To tackle energy costs, Rhode Island must do everything within its power to bring more local clean energy online and build a stable energy future,” Emily Koo, Rhode Island program director at Acadia Center, said after the governor’s budget was announced. “The governor’s budget proposal locks Rhode Island into an outdated energy system and strips us of our most potent tools to address skyrocketing energy costs.”
“Rhode Island should be doubling down on the tools still firmly within the state’s control,” according to the Acadia Center. “Instead, Governor McKee’s FY 2027 budget sadly mirrors the short-sighted policies of the Trump Administration, cutting renewables and energy efficiency and delivering what would be a major blow to Rhode Island’s clean energy economy.”
McKee’s budget dismisses a main reason for the state’s renewable energy transition: to shield residents from volatile methane prices and keep some $3 billion annually in fossil fuel spending in the local economy.
The Acadia Center has outlined the “misguided provisions” in the governor’s budget:
Levies a substantial and punitive “grid access fee” (monthly, in perpetuity) and lowers compensation rates for large renewable energy projects (1 megawatt or greater), signaling that Rhode Island is closed to the renewable energy business. “The retroactive nature of the changes (on both existing and new net metering systems) would have a severe chilling effect on the industry at large, implying that Rhode Island’s public policies are not predictable or reliable enough to earn investor confidence.”
Solar developers are required to pay for infrastructure upgrades and to finance them under the laws in effect at the time of interconnection. The solar industry is concerned this provision will drive Rhode Island’s solar industry out of the state.
A range of virtual net metering customers, including municipalities, housing authorities, colleges, universities, and hospitals, would lose substantial value in negotiated discounted electricity. “There are sound, data-driven ways to reform incentive and compensation structures over time, but this proposal takes a cudgel to foundational programs. Instead, a thorough, methodical, and stakeholder-informed process before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) should determine how Rhode Island’s renewable policies can and should evolve to serve ratepayer interests best.”
Delaying Rhode Island’s 100% Renewable Energy Standard from 2033 to 2050 will prolong the state’s exposure to costly, volatile natural gas, defer and divert job creation opportunities, and jeopardize the state’s ability to meet its economy-wide emission reduction mandates.
Caps Rhode Island’s cost-effective energy efficiency programs at $75 million per year — a stunning 24% below planned 2026 investment levels and 48% below the average of the past five years. Because of ratepayer-funded energy efficiency, Rhode Island’s electric load is 5% lower than it was in 2005, rather than 15% higher. In addition to directly lowering energy bills, energy efficiency is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy costs for all consumers.
To read the full article from ecoRI, click here.
Environmental groups and labor respond to Governor McKee’s push against renewable energy and energy efficiency
Environmental advocates, state legislators, and labor union leaders spoke out at a State House press conference to oppose Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee’s budget proposals and executive order on clean energy. The event was sponsored by Acadia Center, Climate Action Rhode Island, and the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
Acadia Center’s Emily Koo put it bluntly: “Cutting clean energy doesn’t protect Rhode Island rate payers. It protects an outdated energy system and keeps us dependent on dirty, expensive fossil fuels. These so-called state mandates, like our renewable energy standard and the charges that support renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, help reduce the largest and fastest-growing component of your bill: supply and delivery costs. It’s a glaring omission to report clean energy costs while ignoring all cost savings, one of the primary reasons for undertaking the energy transition in the first place. Clean energy isn’t at odds with affordability. It’s essential to it.”
Emily Koo, Senior Policy Advocate and Rhode Island Program Director for Acadia Center: Cutting renewables and energy efficiency is not the answer to Rhode Island’s rising energy costs. With this budget proposal, Governor McKee continues to pin the blame for escalating energy prices on the very tools that serve to protect Rhode Island rate payers from volatile supply costs and rising delivery costs – much larger portions of our bill. I’m here to outline the three most egregious provisions in Governor McKee’s budget proposal.
- First, it levies a substantial, punitive grid access fee and lowers compensation rates for large renewable energy projects, signaling that Rhode Island is closed to clean energy business. The retroactive nature of the changes to both existing and new net metering systems would have a severe chilling effect on the industry as a whole. This will drive the solar industry out of the state. A range of virtual net metering customers, including municipalities, hospitals, colleges and universities, and housing authorities, would lose substantial value from pre-negotiated discounted electricity, and, in many cases, taxpayers would bear the brunt of that loss.
- Second, the budget proposal delays and weakens Rhode Island’s leading renewable energy standard (RES), prolonging our dependence on dirty, expensive fossil fuels. Delaying the renewable energy standard undermines the linchpin of achieving the state’s emission reduction mandates and renders the climate act and the recent 2025 climate strategy obsolete.
- Third, the budget caps Rhode Island’s cost-effective energy-efficiency programs at $75 million per year, 48% below the five-year average. These are programs that have delivered deep, lasting savings for Rhode Island. These programs are required to show, and they do, that their benefits outweigh their costs. Throughout the last annual energy efficiency planning process, Acadia Center, the stakeholder Energy Efficiency Council, a large group of legislators (thank you all who signed onto that letter), and other local, regional, and national organizations spoke out against reducing energy efficiency investments and explained why that’s bad for Rhode Island rate payers.
I want to clarify that all parties involved in that proceeding did not support the reduction. The Energy Efficiency Council advocated for greater savings in its intervention before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), but ultimately, a $93 million budget was approved following the regulatory review. That reduced budget was $93 million. The cap is proposed at $75 million. While we opposed the budget reduction, the outcome shows that the regulatory process is working and that an arbitrary cap is neither necessary nor future-proof.
The cheapest megawatt is the megawatt we don’t use, often called a “negawatt.” Energy efficiency directly lowers bills by reducing demand and suppressing prices across the region. By pinning the blame on state mandates and taxes, Governor McKee’s budget ignores the benefits of clean energy and the primary drivers of energy costs.
Cutting clean energy doesn’t protect Rhode Island rate payers. It protects an outdated energy system and keeps us dependent on dirty, expensive fossil fuels. These so-called state mandates, like our renewable energy standard and the charges that support renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, help reduce the largest and fastest-growing component of your bill: supply and delivery costs. It’s a glaring omission to report clean energy costs while ignoring all cost savings, one of the primary reasons for undertaking the energy transition in the first place. Clean energy isn’t at odds with affordability. It’s essential to it.
To read the full article from Steve Alquist, click here.