In 2024, Always On Energy Research (AOER) modeled the economic and reliability impacts of the energy policies passed in the six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and published these findings in “The Staggering Costs of New England’s Green Energy Policies.”
Each of these states, with the exception of New Hampshire, has established aggressive installation requirements for solar, offshore wind, onshore wind, and battery storage and requires deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector, primarily by reducing the use of natural gas for power generation in the Independent System Operator of New England (ISO-NE) region.
Decarbonization policies in these states also require a shift away from natural gas and fuel oil for home heating, as well as a transition from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles. For a more comprehensive discussion of the energy policies enacted by each New England state, please see Section I in the previous report. Requiring the electrification of the home heating and transportation sectors will nearly double peak electricity demand on the ISO-NE system and increase overall electricity demand by 106 percent. Building enough capacity to meet these requirements—a challenge that is compounded by the shift toward non-dispatchable generation resources like offshore wind, onshore wind, solar photovoltaic systems, and battery storage, and away from natural gas generation—will cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
Our analysis determined that meeting these decarbonization and electrification policies would nearly cost New England electricity customers an additional $815 billion through 2050, compared to the cost of operating the current electric grid, and make the region more vulnerable to rolling blackouts. Increasing costs by an additional $815 billion (in constant 2024 dollars) would more than double electricity bills for the average New England family, with yearly expenses rising from $2,100 per year in 2024 ($175 per month) to $4,600 per year in 2050 ($383 per month), creating real hardship for families who already pay some of the highest electricity prices in the United States.
However, there are lower-cost ways to reliably meet electricity demand and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the region. This report demonstrates how a focus on deploying reliable nuclear and natural gas power plants could yield hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for New England electricity customers compared to the grid outlined in the Renewable scenario in the previous report.
Our analysis examines three new scenarios: a Nuclear scenario, where rising demand for carbon-free electricity and electrification are met with new nuclear power plants, a Natural Gas scenario, where the region meets rising demand with new natural gas power plants and pipeline capacity, and a Happy Medium scenario, where a blend of technologies achieves a cost-optimized, 50 percent carbon-free electricity grid by 2050.
Of these new scenarios, the Nuclear scenario would yield the largest reductions in GHG emissions, but it would also cost the most, increasing costs by an additional $415.3 billion through 2050, compared to the current grid. While this scenario would save nearly $399.5 billion compared to the Renewable scenario, it demonstrates that decarbonization will not be easy or inexpensive.
At an additional $106.9 billion, compared to the current grid, the Natural Gas scenario is the lowest cost, and lowers total annual GHG emissions by 24.5 percent across the electric, home heating, and transportation sectors in 2050.
The Happy Medium scenario would balance costs and reduce total annual emissions by 50 percent in 2050, at an additional cost of $195.8 billion, compared to the current grid. While meeting the rising demand for power due to the electrification of the home heating and transportation sectors in each of these scenarios is expensive, all the studied scenarios offer significant savings compared to the Renewable scenario described in our previous report and do not result in rolling blackouts. Therefore, these portfolios offer a more affordable, reliable, and reasonable path forward for energy policy in the New England.
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