Energy Musings - January 22, 2026
Rhode Island electricity prices are among the highest in the nation, mainly due to the state's green energy policies. The governor's budget proposal includes cuts to offset resident outrage.
Another State Backtracks On Green Energy Narrative
Affordability is today’s political watchword. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are trying to grab the mantle. However, for some politicians, it means confronting the damage their green energy policies have meant for their residents. It is called: Confronting Reality.
The most recent politician to confront the green energy reality is Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee (D). It is likely because he is seeking re-election for a third term this November, but he trails badly in the current Democratic primary poll. According to the most recent poll we found (November 13-17, 2025), Helena Foulkes, a former CVS executive, has 29% support, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi has 13%, McKee has 11%, write-in has 6%, and undecided has 42%. In the same poll, McKee had a 54% unfavorable rating for his performance as governor, and only a 15% favorable rating.
A key component of the budget McKee proposed for fiscal 2026, starting July 1, is a rollback in various green energy plans and cuts to utility bill charges. The governor also plans to increase a few taxes while boosting spending. McKee is reading the tea leaves that high and rising electricity bills have created disaffection among Rhode Islanders, and voters are holding him responsible.
The average Rhode Island residential ratepayer is paying $0.29 per kilowatt-hour for his electricity, which is $0.11 higher than the national average. Based on average monthly consumption of 583 kilowatt-hours, residential customers face a bill of $163. If the proposed budget and policy actions are enacted, the governor’s plan would save a residential customer $180 a year, or $15 a month.
In the budget presentation that McKee’s office posted on its website, the following chart was included. It lists a series of proposed modifications to energy policies that impact ratepayer bills. Note that the emphasis was on the residential cost, since commercial and industrial prices are lower.
Rhode Island budget plans to cut energy costs.
The projected savings would come over the next five years and stem from reforming Rhode Island’s green energy programs, several of which were amped up earlier by McKee. McKee has been a green-energy cheerleader and is anxious to put Rhode Island at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Now he faces unhappy residents over their utility bills, who threaten to oust him from office.
How high electricity prices are slamming Rhode Islanders.
The chart showing savings from reduced compliance costs for ratepayers acknowledges the high cost of green energy in Rhode Island. This burden is huge for cutting the emissions of the one million Rhode Island residents, a rounding error in the world’s emissions total. The public isn’t happy about paying the bill designed by politicians and regulators without their approval.
McKee notes that the current Renewable Energy Standard (RES), which requires utilities to transition to clean energy sources by 2033, will cost ratepayers $988 million over the next five years. The proposed changes to the RES reduce customer burden by $572 million, a 58% reduction. The policy change is to push the RES compliance date to 2050, consistent with the state’s Act on Climate. In other words, spread the burden over an additional 17 years to make it more acceptable.
If the public examines this chart and McKee’s discussion, they will be shocked and outraged. McKee acknowledges that without a change to the RES, energy bills would quadruple by 2033! That would come after the 61% increase in rates that ratepayers have experienced from 2016 to 2025. It is this history and outlook that have outraged Rhode Islanders.
It was not surprising that environmental activists were upset with Gov. McKee’s budget proposal. The environmental newsletter ecoRI covered the proposal. The writer talked with various people impacted. No one knows what the impact on Rhode Island’s emissions will be if the program is enacted. The head of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management noted that the state needed more affordable electricity to convince residents to buy more electric vehicles and heat pumps. Electrifying everything is critical to the green energy plan. Still, it will create serious grid problems and exploding costs, as we recently covered in our January 12 Energy Musings, based on the recent Always On Energy Research report “Alternatives to New England’s Energy Affordability Crisis.” This report was a follow-up to their 2024 report, “The Staggering Costs of New England’s Green Energy Policies.”
These two reports make clear that renewable energy is not cheap. In the most recent report, the researchers demonstrated that a natural gas-based energy system would be the most affordable option, while still cutting a significant share of emissions. The natural gas scenario would cost $107 billion by 2050, compared with $815 billion for the renewables scenario.
Net metering sounds nice; it is brutally expensive and repressive.
Here is another green energy program whose costs have skyrocketed with little benefit to the climate. The net metering program is for solar arrays that residents are installing based on the belief that solar power is cheap. The plan’s design was intended to help the large solar arrays, but it failed to analyze the impact on costs.
We have been a participant in this program, although it was called something different in 2016 when we installed the solar array on our summer home. The 2016 version of the plan was the state’s third year. The rate the local utility would pay for the power generated by rooftop solar arrays began at $0.41 a kilowatt-hour. It was reduced to $0.37 in the second year, and to $0.3475 per kilowatt-hour in the third year. In 2016, we were paying $0.18 per kilowatt-hour for electricity, while we sold power from our solar array at $0.3475, a $0.1675 per kilowatt-hour profit.
The profit we earn is reflected in reduced charges in our monthly bills, with any surplus paid directly to us. Between the various credits for installing our solar array, the reduced bills, and supplemental payments, our investment was fully recovered in 60 months. The contract associated with this plan was for 15 years. We still have another five years to enjoy these returns.
McKee noted that the cost of the net metering program has increased by more than 250% in five years, going from $30 million in 2020 to over $111 million in 2025. The net metering program allowed large solar arrays exceeding 1 megawatt (MW). McKee is proposing to establish a grid-access fee for these large projects to ensure that they pay their fair share of fixed infrastructure costs. The governor’s plan would also freeze the virtual net metering credit rate as of July 1, 2026, to curb the program’s rising cost.
The budget proposal would also extend and cap energy efficiency programs by limiting ratepayer funding to $75 million annually, bringing Rhode Island’s program in line with those of neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts. Additionally, the program plans to eliminate utility shareholder incentive payments, in addition to the amounts already collected by Rhode Island Energy to cover operating costs and earn a fair return. They project this will save Rhode Island ratepayers $2.6 million annually.
It was interesting to note how the Rhode Island media covered the proposed budget announcement. Only one of the three media outlets (television station WPRI) cited the “rollback of climate costs” alongside the proposed 3% tax on millionaires. Neither television station WJAR nor the Providence Journal newspaper mentioned the utility bill savings; they only mentioned the millionaire tax and increased spending. Amazingly, even the governor’s budget press release failed to mention the green energy cost cuts. We assume McKee wanted to highlight the most favorable aspects of his spending proposal and did not want to draw attention to the need to cut back on green energy programs, because that would be a public acknowledgement of their failure and the cost to state residents. McKee knows he was the agent of this failure, so he stays as far away as possible.
With 42% or more of the Rhode Island electorate unsure of whom they would support in the Democratic primary, will McKee’s Hail Mary budget, with its slashing of the expensive green energy policies, be a winner? We won’t know for months. Regardless, it has exposed the false green energy narrative that Democrat politicians have sold to Rhode Islanders, who are being crushed as a result by high and rising electricity bills.