New England's Heating Oil Crisis: Why Heat Pumps Are The Smart Switch
For several months, we have seen multiple news reports about the dramatic increase in gasoline and diesel prices...
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Fossil Fuel Subsidies, A Price Spike, & Governor Healey’s Changes To The APS
Massachusetts created the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (APS) back in 2008 to subsidize several technologies and actions, which, in theory, are supposed to help the Commonwealth reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. One might think of it as a strange cousin of the more sensible Renewable Portfolio Standard, which drives wind and solar development. In practice, the APS likely makes little to no impact on the state’s emissions because most of its subsidies go to natural gas-burning combined heat and power systems and biofuels, both technologies with negative to unclear impacts on emissions.
A Gas Tax Holiday Is Tempting, But Still A Bad Idea
Recently, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey proposed legislation to temporarily waive state taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline. According to the Governor's press release, this “gas tax holiday” would cost the Commonwealth $120 million over a two-month period. We understand the temptation to offer constituents some bill relief – especially with an election just a month away. But Green Energy Consumers is not running for office and, for what it’s worth, we have these comments:
Clean Air Act Under Attack... Again
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.
Shave The Peak: Summer 2026 Wrap-Up
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.
Rising Fuel Prices Make Mass Save More Important Than Ever
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.
What is Massachusetts Doing About Data Centers?
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.
Save the Jobs at Mass Save
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.
Electric Car Corner: Summer 2026
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
Securitization Can Lower Electricity Bills
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.