Op-Ed: How clean energy met the moment in the New England summer of 2025
This summer, New England experienced multiple record-breaking heat waves. In June, Boston had its warmest start to summer on record, and Providence hit 100 degrees for the first time. Globally, the last 10 years have been the hottest ever recorded, and that trend is expected to continue.
Every summer now feels like a new record-breaker; heat is no longer an anomaly but our new reality. This isn’t just about discomfort. Extreme heat is a present and intensifying crisis, straining our health, our infrastructure, and our wallets.
And yet, when the heat was at its worst, it wasn’t fossil fuels that kept the power on: it was clean energy. This summer proved that renewables aren’t just a future promise; they are already delivering reliable, affordable, and resilient power when New England needs it most.
On June 24, when Boston’s heat index was projected to soar as high as 110 degrees, ISO New England, the customer-funded nonprofit responsible for managing the regional transmission grid, issued a series of escalating “power cautions” to prevent blackouts. At stake were rolling outages across the region, which would have put lives at risk, especially for older residents, medically vulnerable populations, and families without access to cooling. In this context, air conditioning is not a luxury, it is a lifesaving necessity.
That day, solar panels on homes, schools, businesses, and larger arrays provided up to 22% of the region’s power, nearly double their daily average. This reliable output stabilized the grid and saved customers tens of millions of dollars in a single day. Without solar, electricity prices, which were already climbing, could have spiked even higher.
And it wasn’t just solar: elsewhere in the Northeast offshore wind helped come to the rescue as well, especially in New York, where the South Fork Wind Farm hit an 87% capacity factor during a recent summer heat wave peak. This production drives huge reliability and affordability benefits, making the Trump Administration’s recent actions to halt offshore wind projects all the more shocking and harmful.
Ordinarily, during periods of peak demand, New England relies on “peaker plants” powered by oil, gas, and coal, fuels that are dirtier and more expensive.
These plants drive up energy bills, worsen air pollution, and increase carbon emissions just when we can least afford it. Many are located in New England’s environmental justice communities, where residents already bear disproportionate health burdens from asthma, heart disease, and other pollution-related illnesses. Relying on them during heat emergencies deepens inequity and endangers public health.
What’s more, these fossil facilities are aging and often unreliable due to heightened outage risks correlated to extreme heat conditions, which actually occurred on June 24, with a major unexpected loss of generation in the late afternoon — right as temperatures, demand, and prices soared highest.
It is no surprise that fossil fuel-funded groups are pushing disinformation campaigns that blame renewables for rising energy costs when in fact the reality is the opposite: renewables lower prices over time and reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuels. This summer demonstrated that clean energy can meet demand while maintaining reliability, delivering benefits for both the grid and consumers.
This summer was just a preview of what awaits us.
Extreme heat will only intensify across Massachusetts and New England in the coming years, placing unprecedented strain on the electric grid and putting all our communities’ health at risk, in particular, environmental justice communities, the elderly, and young children. While investments in solar, efficiency, offshore wind, and storage helped us through this year, much more must be done to prepare for future summers.
The progress we have made did not happen by accident. Decades of state-level investment in solar incentives, energy efficiency programs like MassSave, offshore wind projects, and battery storage created the foundation that allowed clean energy to step in when it mattered most and to grow in the future. As the federal government retreats from climate leadership, Massachusetts must continue to lead.
We can build on this success by scaling up what already works. That means expanding offshore wind, putting solar on every viable rooftop, procuring all cost-effective energy efficiency, and modernizing the grid so clean energy can flow where it is needed most. It also means phasing out fossil-fuel peaker plants, which jeopardize public health and impose the greatest costs on our most vulnerable communities.
Last year, the Massachusetts Office of Energy Transformation launched a process to eliminate fossil fuels from peaking power plants and combined heat and power facilities. Expanding access to energy efficiency and clean energy for all households, not just those who can afford it, will lower bills, reduce demand, and strengthen resilience across neighborhoods.
We need our elected officials to continue advocating for and accelerating grid modernization, and fighting back against the disinformation that clouds public debate. We have the tools to lower costs, protect public health, and build a more resilient energy system.
So the question isn’t whether Massachusetts can lead, it’s whether our leaders will ignore the noise and rise to the moment. When the next heat wave hits, it won’t be fossil fuels that save us. It will be the clean energy we choose to invest in today.
Larry Chretien is executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. Lindsay Griffin is Vote Solar’s regulatory director of the Northeast. Britteny Jenkins is vice president of environmental justice at Conservation Law Foundation. Kyle Murray is the Massachusetts program director at Acadia Center.
To read the article from MassLive, click here.
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