Last year, we called on all our members to reach out to their federal representatives in defense of the Clean Air Act’s provisions regarding tailpipe emissions from vehicles. Unfortunately, we lost that fight, and Congress used the Congressional Review Act to strip states of the right to enforce several key vehicle regulations described in this blog post. Now, they’re at it again.
This summer, we’ve been tracking peak demand, peak temperatures, and prices with help from the data collected by ISO New England (ISO-NE), the grid operator for our region. We monitored energy trends on a daily basis to provide insights to our Shave the Peak subscribers.
In the Bay State, the legislature is grappling with the question of how much to spend on the efficiency program known as Mass Save. This blog is mostly about that debate and how it affects about 20 percent of the homes in Massachusetts heated by oil, but the basic point being made here applies equally to the other New England states: state energy efficiency programs are our best defense against the harsh and frequent vicissitudes that plague the oil market.
Data centers use a lot of power. So much power, in fact, that new data center load has increased electricity prices in PJM (a regional power grid operator that covers a territory from Delaware to Chicago) by tens of billions of dollars.
There’s a lot at stake in the negotiations between the Massachusetts House and Senate over energy affordability legislation. Each branch has passed its own version, and now three members from each side are meeting to reconcile differences in a conference committee. It is expected that they will come out with one final product before Election Day in November. We have written a lot about the bills each side has passed, as well as the affordability offered by Governor Maura Healey in the spring of 2025.
It's been a minute since we published our last Car Corner blog post, and a lot has happened since then. If you've been tracking the world of electric vehicle (EV) news, you've likely seen a bunch of headlines with disappointing updates about vehicle models getting discontinued or projects getting cancelled. Luckily, that's not the whole story.
Anna Vanderspek
andAbigail Bowen
When an investor-owned utility, like National Grid or Eversource, builds an electric substation or makes some other infrastructure investment, it takes on debt to do so and then pays off that debt over time through revenue raised from ratepayers' bills. Before it is paid off, utilities use a mix of low-interest bonds and more expensive equity funding from their shareholders to finance their debt. This use of high-cost equity financing sends money to utility shareholders (which encourages people to invest in the utilities) but burdens ratepayers with higher bills.
After a several-month process, on Friday, August 21, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) made several decisions in response to a rate increase request from Rhode Island Energy (RIE). This rate case was primarily about what RIE would charge for distributing electricity and gas (think poles, wires, and pipelines). It did not affect the supply of gas or electricity. Overall, the decisions are good for ratepayers and will support the Ocean State’s efforts to comply with the 2021 Act on Climate.
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) recently proposed changes to the structure of the Massachusetts rebate program for electric vehicles (EVs), MOR-EV. You can share your feedback on the proposed changes with DOER in writing or by attending a virtual or in-person public hearing. Here are all the details!
Some electric vehicle (EV) owners in Massachusetts with eligible vehicles will soon be able to receive compensation for plugging in their EVs and sending electricity back to the grid. The process of sending electricity back to the grid from your EV, also known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), can help EV drivers earn extra money from their vehicles while reducing stress on the grid during peak energy demand days. This V2G opportunity will be administered through electric utility companies National Grid and Eversource through their ConnectedSolutions program.
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