A New Bill in Rhode Island Would Give Electric Ratepayers More Resources to Fight Back

The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission on Friday voted to approve Rhode Island Energy’s proposed summer rates for residential customers, saying customers can expect relief following costly winter bills.

But the new rates have been met with such backlash by community members concerned about surging electric rates that state Rep. Megan Cotter has co-sponsored legislation that would fund customers’ participation in hearings about ratemaking and other issues before the RIPUC.

Part of the reason the new summer rates have been approved, despite public comments and protests, is that community members lack the necessary resources to get a seat in the rooms where decisions about their energy system are being made, said Emily Koo, senior policy advocate and Rhode Island program director at the Acadia Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focusing on climate solutions.

That’s why Cotter, in partnership with the Acadia Center and the Conservation Law Foundation, introduced legislation to create an intervenor support program. The bill would enable individuals or organizations seeking legal representation to take part in evidentiary hearings at the RIPUC and the Energy Facility Siting Board.

“The resources, attorneys, and regulatory and technical knowledge that are needed to be able to participate and present evidence in a way that can actually change decisions is really an issue of access, and so we’re seeing decisions and proceedings not reflecting the public interest,” Koo said.

Unlike public comment hearings, evidentiary hearings work more like a courtroom, Koo explained. During those meetings, commissioners serve like a panel of judges, looking at proposals and evidence presented by the interested parties.

Koo is optimistic that the bill will eventually pass in the state.

“I think that there is a lot of appetite for engaging in the regulatory process, and that this is a really great inclusive program option,” she said.

To read the full article from Inside Climate News, click here.

Maine GOP lawmakers, think tanks blame alt. energy ‘mandates’ for rising costs

Some right-leaning groups are blaming alternative energy for rising rates.

A group of Republican lawmakers from Maine and across New England as well as members of conservative think tanks held a virtual meeting on Tuesday to say “net zero policies” and “energy mandates” are driving up energy costs, squeezing homeowners, and forcing small businesses to absorb price increases.

Clean energy advocates, including Acadia Center, say the group is making false claims.

They say most of the energy in New England comes from fossil fuels and electric energy is projected to bring down costs in the years ahead.

Acadia Center writes in part:

“Fossil fuel-interest think tanks are back with a new round of the same tired and misguided attacks against clean energy policies in New England.”

To read the full article from WGME, click here.

High Energy Costs in the Northeast Fuel Innovation

Saving energy is big business in the Northeast, where electricity costs are 70 percent higher than the U.S. average as of February 2025. In addition to high costs, there’s also increasing demand for electricity in New England, which is expected to grow by about 17 percent from 2024 to 2033, and in New York, where it might nearly double by 2042. On top of that, the Northeast grid is expected to be at “elevated risk” for winter shortfalls of electricity, says the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

Why Democrats joined Trump’s pipeline push

A once-dormant debate over natural gas pipelines in the Northeast is back — courtesy of President Donald Trump.

The idea of building pipelines roiled the region a decade ago. The controversy all but disappeared amid political opposition, as officials in New York and other states ramped up climate targets and rejected permits for planned pipeline projects.

Acadia Center, an environmental group, estimates that natural gas transmission capacity into New England has increased 40 percent since 2014. But those expansion projects have failed to provide consumers with financial relief, said Jamie Dickerson, the group’s senior director for the climate and clean energy program.

“If the concern is the rising cost of folks’ gas bills — which, obviously, it rightly is — I think the logical step is to get off gas and diversify your energy supply and not to double down more on the fuel that’s been sort of driving bills up this winter,” Dickerson said.

To read the full article from E&E News, click here.

Cutting clean energy won’t lower New England utility bills, advocates say

A growing chorus of New England state officials — and not just Republicans — is calling for cuts to clean energy programs in an attempt to rein in high electric bills.

These efforts are underway everywhere from Maine, where legislators are trying to repeal incentives for rooftop and community solar, to deep-blue Massachusetts, where regulators recently slashed $500 million from a proposed energy-efficiency plan.

The irony, clean energy advocates say, is that many of the investments under threat contribute relatively little to customers’ monthly bills and save everyone money in the long run.

“They see these programs as some sort of addition that’s being put on their bill that they don’t see the effects of,” said Kyle Murray, director of state program implementation for climate nonprofit Acadia Center. ​“Cutting these programs will not really save us money, and it will actually end up costing us more money in the long term.”

To read the full article from Canary Media, click here.

Two New England energy companies in surprising alliance with fossil fuel lobby, undercutting climate targets

Last year, two major energy companies working in Massachusetts joined the ranks of an innocuous sounding group: the Consumer Energy Alliance. The organization calls itself “the voice of the energy consumer,” while espousing the “all-of-the-above” approach to energy — oil, natural gas, wind, and solar.

But, according to financial documents, the alliance was formed and is operated by a fossil fuel lobbying group based in Houston. Its stated purpose includes “the promotion and defense of natural gas.”

In Massachusetts, a state that’s set aggressive climate targets, cooperation and buy-in from utilities is a pillar of how the state plans to get there. That makes it “incredibly troubling” that both Eversource, one of the state’s largest gas and electric utilities, and Avangrid, offshore wind developer and the parent company of Berkshire Gas, became members of the alliance last year, said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director for the advocacy group the Acadia Center.

“At a time when we know we need to be transitioning off of fossil fuels as soon as is practicable, these companies have instead opted to join with a group dedicated to frustrating that aim, and indeed directly at odds with some of the positive initiatives that these companies have been advancing in the Northeast” like geothermal networks, offshore wind transmission, and more, Murray said.

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

Planning the Future Electric Grid: The Need for An Independent Transmission Monitor

Executive Summary

ISO New England, the regional electric grid operator, has estimated that the cost of expanding the transmission system to accommodate New England’s future demand for power will be between $16 billion and $26 billion. The $10 billion separating ISO New England’s high and low estimates is not just due to uncertainty about the future: it is largely due to uncertainty regarding how well the future transmission system will be planned, which will in turn determine the efficiency of that future system and its ultimate cost. Currently, proposals to improve and expand the transmission system are developed according to separate and distinct planning processes. The failure to coordinate these disparate processes threatens the efficiency of the future transmission system and places the region on a path to spend far more than is necessary to build it. An Independent Transmission Monitor (ITM) would look across current transmission planning processes to ensure that future proposed improvements to and expansions of the transmission system are harmonized to maximize system efficiency overall while minimizing their aggregate cost.

Why is an Independent Transmission Monitor Needed?

New England’s peak electricity demand – measured when the region’s demand for electricity is higher than any other time of the year  – is expected to double in the next quarter century.^[1] ISO-New England has estimated that the cost of increasing the capacity of the transmission system to meet that doubled peak will be between $16 billion and $26 billion dollars.^[2] Currently, there are multiple, distinct processes for assessing the current and future needs of the transmission system. They are the Regional System Planning (RSP), Asset Condition Project (ACP), and Local Transmission Service (LTS) planning processes. Unfortunately, there is no coordination among the RSP, ACP, or LTS planning processes—transmission investments approved pursuant to any one of the three planning processes do not account for transmission investments approved pursuant to either of the other two. This lack of coordination is producing a patchwork of transmission system upgrades that fail to take the efficiency of the entire system into account, fail to incorporate available technologies that would enhance the operation of the transmission system, and increase rather than reduce the region’s need for future transmission investments.

The largest share by far of recent investments in transmission infrastructure has been ACPs—projects to repair, upgrade, or replace aging transmission equipment in existing rights of way. Since 2018, $4.1 billion has been spent on ACPs, compared to $2.2 billion spent on reliability projects—projects to build new transmission in new rights of way—developed pursuant to the RSP planning process.^[3] At least $5.4 billion more in ACP investments are projected through 2030—again outpacing planned spending on RSP reliability projects over that period.^[4] The concern regarding the magnitude of ACP investments is not that the region is spending more to upgrade existing transmission instead of building new transmission. Rather, the concern is that despite the eye-watering sums being spent on ACP upgrades they are not being designed to maximize the amount of power that can be carried via transmission lines in existing rights of way. Each ACP that fails to maximize the capacity of existing transmission represents a lost opportunity to prepare New England to meet the projected doubling of the region’s peak demand. Moreover, the failure of ACPs to increase capacity in existing rights of way will require additions of capacity in the form of new transmission in new rights of way, with all the environmental, community, and economic impacts associated with new construction. Building new transmission would cost much more and take much longer to build—five to ten years—than upgrading the region’s existing 9,000 miles of transmission lines.

Why are opportunities to optimize ACPs being missed, and why aren’t necessary increases in capacity being efficiently allocated between transmission in existing and new rights of way? Because RSP and ACP planning processes are separate and siloed: ISO New England is responsible for RSP planning while ACP planning is delegated to the entities that own the regional transmission system. (ISO New England operates but does not own the transmission system.) Moreover, transmission owners have near total discretion in planning ACP projects and are not required to consider cost-effective alternatives to the like-kind replacement of aging transmission equipment. For example, Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs)—hardware and software solutions that improve the efficiency and capacity of existing transmission—are often overlooked by transmission owners as they plan ACP projects, even though their cost-effectiveness has been well-documented. For example, a $300,000 investment in GETs by the Pennsylvania utility PPL saved approximately $50 million in avoided project costs and an additional $20 million each year in grid congestion charges^[5]. Neither are transmission owners required to consider the installation of high-performance conductors (HPCs)—which can carry up to twice the power carried by conventional transmission lines^[6]—as part of their ACPs. HPCs also avoid many of the costs associated with building new transmission in new rights of way, typically costing less than half the price of new lines for similar capacity increases.^[7]

LTS projects—projects to address reliability concerns within a transmission owner’s service territory–suffer the same deficiencies as ACPs. Transmission owners plan and develop LTS projects to address the needs they identify, entirely at their discretion. And, as with ACPs, transmission owners are not required to consider GETs and HPCs as cost-effective measures to maximize the efficiency of their LTS projects.^[8]

The Role of the Independent Transmission Monitor

The ITM would not be associated with any of the entities—ISO New England or transmission owners—responsible for the RSP, ACP, or LTS planning processes. Further, the ITM’s authority to review proposed transmission projects would extend across the RSP, ACP and LTS planning processes.^[9] The ITM would be responsible for ensuring that transmission projects of every type, size, and scope were designed to include all cost-effective measures to increase the efficiency and capacity of the entire transmission system. The result would be the optimization of transmission in existing rights of way, the minimization of the need for new transmission in new rights of way, the adoption of technologies to enable the efficient routing of power across the entire transmission system, and the development of projects that are fully integrated into a planning process that is comprehensive–and not restricted–in scope.

Next Steps in Developing an ITM

While ISO New England is supportive of an ITM that would respond to the New England states or FERC, it has not taken the initiative to establish one.^[10] Because incumbent transmission owners receive a fixed rate of return on their transmission investments they lack the incentive to support an ITM that would recommend cost-effective alternatives—GETs and HPCs—and other measures that would reduce transmission investments overall. Responsibility for the establishment of an ITM thus lies with the six New England states. Acadia Center believes that an ITM is essential to eliminating the inefficiencies inherent in New England’s disaggregated transmission planning processes and supports the establishment of an ITM with sufficient resources to meet its engineering, financial, and regulatory responsibilities to stakeholders. Acadia Center will work to encourage and support the initiatives of the New England States Committee on Electricity,^[11] state consumer advocates, and other interested stakeholders to establish an ITM, continue to build public awareness regarding the threat that unbounded transmission investments have on energy affordability, and foster consensus regarding the need for transmission planning reform.

Acadia Center Recommendations

Acadia Center is working to raise awareness of the need for an ITM and for public oversight of the billions of dollars in transmission upgrade projects proposed by utilities and transmission owners. We are working to support efforts by states and NESCOE to create an ITM for the ratepayers of New England and to prioritize the creation of an ITM in the region. Acadia Center is working to identify the key components of an effective ITM.  Please contact us at info@acadiacenter.org for more information or visit www.acadiacenter.org.

 

[1] “The Energy is About to Shift,” Acadia Center and Clean Air Task Force (Dec. 2024), p. 5. https://acadiacenter.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/AC_CATF_EnergyShift_Report_2024_R10-1.pdf

[2] 2050 Transmission Study, ISO New England Inc. (Feb. 2024), p. 16. https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/100008/2024_02_14_pac_2050_transmission_study_final.pdf

[3] CT GENERAL STATUTES – SECTION 16A-3A 2025 INTEGRATED RESOURCES PLAN – Transmission Solutions White Paper (February 26, 2025), pp. 5-6. https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/deep/energy/transmission/transmission-white-paper-final.pdf

[4] Id. at p. 6.

[5] “Regulators need to require utilities to use grid-enhancing technologies: FERC’s Clements,” Utility Dive, Nov. 14, 2023) https://www.utilitydive.com/news/transmission-grid-enhancing-technologies-gets-utilities-naruc-ferc-clements/699686/

[6] Emilia Chojkiewicz et al., “2035 and Beyond: The Report—Reconductoring,” GridLab, 2024, p.3. https://www.2035report.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GridLab_2035-Reconductoring-Technical-Report.pdf.

[7] Id.

[8] CT GENERAL STATUTES – SECTION 16A-3A 2025 INTEGRATED RESOURCES PLAN – Transmission Solutions White Paper (February 26, 2025), p. 6. https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/deep/energy/transmission/transmission-white-paper-final.pdf

[9] Last December a coalition of electricity consumers filed a Complaint with the Federal Regulatory Commission (FERC) against more than two dozen utilities and all the major grid operators, including ISO New England, asserting that FERC should prohibit transmission owners from independently planning LTS projects and assign LTS planning authority to an ITM. See https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/filelist?accession_number=20241219-5368&optimized=false

[10] ISO New England Board of Directors’ Response to 2024 Open Board Meeting Comments (February 5, 2025) p.3 https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/100020/iso-board-response-to-2024-open-board-meeting-comments.pdf

[11] Comments on Transmission Planning and Cost Management (March 29, 2023) https://nescoe.com/resource-center/comments-on-transmission-planning-and-cost-management/

Massachusetts-based company launches program to fund community solar projects

With the federal dollars for renewable energy slowing to a trickle or stopping altogether, a Cambridge-based company is looking to provide funding for community solar projects in underserved areas through a new renewable energy credit (REC) program.

With uncertainty surrounding federal funding, programs like Solstice’s renewable energy credits could help bridge the gap for organizations trying to find the money to launch renewable energy projects, said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, a non-profit research and advocacy organization dedicated to combatting climate change. Solar developers and organizations working to adopt solar use a variety of different funding mechanisms and that extra $50,000 to $160,000 can put a project over the top, especially for smaller organizations, he added.

“We need to be creative in this environment about how we fund projects, and this seems like it could be promising,” said Murray.

To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.

Transforming Connecticut’s Grid: A Smarter Approach to Clean Energy Planning

In November, Vote Solar collaborated with partners, Acadia Center, Save the Sound, and Conservation Law Foundation, to submit comments to Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) regarding the future of our electric grid planning. And I know, utility commissions are not a kitchen table topic, but their decisions—like setting energy prices—have real impacts on your household budget and Connecticut’s clean energy future.

To read the full article from Vote Solar, click here.

The $500 million cut to Mass Save budget is ‘short-sighted,’ climate activists say

After gas bills spiked across Massachusetts, state officials are reducing the proposed budget for the Mass Save energy efficiency program by $500 million – a move environmentalists call “short-sighted” and argue will increase costs for residents in the long run.

The Department of Public Utilities approved a budget of $4.5 billion for Mass Save – which helps homes and businesses become more energy efficient through projects paid for by a surcharge on electricity and gas bills – for the next three years, after originally proposing a $5 billion budget. The reduction is expected to save residents and businesses about 25 percent on their gas bills and 15 percent on their electric bills, though exact amounts will vary, according to DPU officials.

“This plan, as ambitious as it is, actually only gets us to about half or less than half of the greenhouse gas reduction that we need to have according to our clean energy and climate plan,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, a non-profit research and advocacy organization dedicated to combatting climate. “Even this plan is a compromise in itself.”

The sticker shock of the high gas bills is partly due to an unseasonably cold winter and the fact that Mass Save only increases its rate once every three years, Murray said. The increase in the Mass Save budget barely keeps up with inflation, he added, noting that the cuts were “disappointing” and “short-sighted.” (In the previous three-year plan, the program had a budget of $3.94 billion.)

Several environmental and climate leaders, including Murray, have advocated for alternative ways of funding the program but acknowledge the challenge of funding the program through the Legislature, particularly in an environment where federal funding for climate projects is at risk.

To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.