As part of our Shave the Peak program, we’ve been aggregating data released by ISO-New England, the non-profit Independent System Operator with a responsibility to maintain reliable electricity to the six New England states. Every day, we track various stats, including when and what the peak demand was, when and what the most expensive price of electricity was, how high CO2 emissions reached, what the fuel mix looks like, etc.
If you are in the market for a new or used electric car, plan to get it before September 30, 2025. The “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump on July 4 gets rid of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles (EVs) as of the end of September.
From time to time, we report on how municipal aggregation is going in Massachusetts – and soon, Rhode Island. It’s that time again. For about 90% of the customers in each state, consumers have three choices for their electricity supply – the utility’s Basic Service, municipal aggregation if their community has adopted that model, or retail service from a (often predatory and greenwashing) competitive electricity provider. All of these customers receive delivery service (poles, wires, metering, billing) from regulated investor-owned utilities; the difference lies in the electricity supply. The remaining 10% of customers receive power supply from municipal utilities.
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Larry Chretien
andMikaela Hondros-McCarthy
As summer approaches, thousands of our followers prepare to “Shave the Peak.”
Shave the Peak is our program designed to inform people, via text and email alerts, how and when to reduce power use on days when electricity demand is significantly higher than usual. As we begin to see temperatures rise above 90°F this summer, skyrocketing demand on the power grid leads to an increase in fossil fuel consumption and wholesale prices (which ultimately get passed onto retail customers – us).
Calling all Rhode Islanders! The House budget was released last Tuesday and included electric vehicle (EV) registration fees (p. 6) for battery electric, plug-in hybrid, and hybrid electric vehicles. While the bill has been passed by the House and heads to the Senate floor for a vote on Friday, we encourage you to contact your legislators and let them know why you oppose these fees or that you are concerned with how they will impact you. We will walk you through the outreach steps later in this blog.
Calling all Rhode Islanders! We are nearing the end of our legislative session, and we are still pushing for the Building Decarbonization Act (H5493/S91) to be voted out of committee and passed by the House and Senate. Read on to learn why this bill is critical for Rhode Island, and if you’re interested in supporting the bill, check out this blog post for more directions.
We are super excited about the sunnier and longer days, as well as seeing long-asleep plants begin to bloom. There is a lot of uncertainty at the federal level and about the future of the car industry, but we are here to deliver some positive news about the electric vehicle (EV) market.
In Massachusetts, third-party electric suppliers, also called “competitive suppliers”, are allowed to sell electricity directly to residential customers of Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil (although the cost of delivering the power is always charged by the local utility). While the idea behind allowing these companies to operate was that they would increase competition and bring down electric prices, this is not how things have worked in practice.
For the past several weeks, we’ve been working hard on a campaign to protect key regulations, called Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII), which would have steadily increased the supply of electric vehicles (EVs) available to drivers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, such that 100% of new car sales would have to be electric by 2035. These regulations were key to both Massachusetts’ and Rhode Island’s climate plans. Now, they’re off the table.
For those of us working on the clean energy transition, professionally or as volunteers, the last few months have been awful in many ways. We’re seeing policies change for the worse, funding cuts, and layoffs. The planetary consequences are real, but there’s also an enormous human impact on all the people who have made working on the transition either their vocation or avocation.
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