Save now, pay later: Critics warn McKee’s plan to ease energy bills comes with a tab

Gov. Dan McKee framed his proposed rollbacks of green energy incentives around affordability — saving Rhode Island ratepayers $1 billion in their energy bills over the next five years, according to analysis by the state budget office.

Especially with less money available to make the switch to clean energy in their own homes and workplaces under McKee’s proposed cap on state energy efficiency funding.

“It’s a serious concern of mine to cap energy efficiency, and to imply that cutting energy efficiency spending will benefit Rhode Islanders,” said Emily Koo, senior policy advocate and Rhode Island program director for the Acadia Center.

Rhode Island Energy’s $95 million energy efficiency budget for 2026 is already 18% less than the $117 million budget for 2025, and nearly one-third below the annual amount that Rhode Island Energy pledged to spend in a three-year plan submitted in 2023.

Limiting state funding also fails to recognize the long-term savings for ratepayers who winterize windows and doors, upgrade furnaces and thermostats or even switch to high-efficiency electric heat pumps, Koo said. And in her view, the drought of federal funding for energy efficiency investments makes preserving, and boosting, Rhode Island’s rebate program even more important.

Koo also serves as a member of the advisory board to the Rhode Island Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council, a consortium of state agencies charged with developing a plan to meet Rhode Island’s decarbonization mandates under the Act on Climate law. The council’s first comprehensive review of state progress and future projections, unveiled in November, warned the 2050 net-zero emissions mandate is out of reach without “additional ambition” to incentivize a clean energy transition. Its analysis assumed the existing incentives and funding McKee now wants to roll back.

To read the full article from the Rhode Island Current, click here.