“Volatility in natural gas prices, including the huge spikes following Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, has certainly contributed to some price increases on the supply side. But the transmission and distribution costs have actually been going up at twice the rate of inflation nationwide, the report\u2019s author, Brendan Pierpont, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat trend of increasing transmission and distribution costs is something that is noticeable all across the country, and so I think it\u2019s an underlying factor in rate increases everywhere,\u201d Pierpont said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Utility companies have a lot of freedom in setting rates for transmission and distribution \u2014 and that directly contributes to how much profit they make. Utilities get to pick what gets upgraded when, and they also have an incentive to spend heavily, thanks to regulations that allow them to collect return on investment, usually around 10 percent<\/a>, for those expenditures. This is actually built into the price most people pay for electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s how it works: Every year, utility companies ask regulators to approve a \u201crevenue requirement,\u201d which is basically a budget for what the utilities think it will cost to deliver enough electricity to their customers. Those estimates include spending on new equipment but not the cost of repairing old equipment. It also includes that return on investment, or profit, which regulators regularly approve<\/a>. In Pierpont\u2019s words, \u201cThat rate of return has a direct link to the costs that customers pay for electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What utilities don\u2019t seem to be doing, however, is expanding the grid in a way that would benefit clean energy producers, the Energy Innovation report finds. Investments tend to cover local upgrades, like installing new metering equipment, rather than installing the high-voltage transmission lines that renewable energy sources need to connect to the grid. Meanwhile, consumers are facing more frequent outages that last longer<\/a>, while utilities keep making more money for installing new, potentially unnecessary equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s like the utilities have a rewards credit card,\u201d said Joel Rosenberg of Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification. \u201cAnd they get to keep the rewards for how much they spend, and the [customers] have to pay off the bill, even if that bill takes 80 years to pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This plays right into the misconception that investment in renewables leads to higher rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the states leading the way to clean energy are actually seeing lower energy prices than the rest of the country. Data from the US Energy Information Administration shows that 17 states, including California and Massachusetts, have increased their share of renewable energy sources by more than 20 percent<\/a> since 2010. And with the exception of California, all of those states have seen the price of residential rate increases rise more slowly than inflation. The higher rates in California can be explained, in part, by rate increases to account for wildfire prevention<\/a>. In Massachusetts, natural gas is the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n States where residents are seeing electricity bills that outpace inflation tend to be the ones with the highest reliance on natural gas, as highlighted in the Energy Innovation report. Some states in New England, including Massachusetts, have depended on natural gas for around 60 percent of electricity generation since 2020 and have seen prices increase by around 10 percent in the same period. Volatility in the price of natural gas also means that some of the highest price spikes are spread out over several years<\/a>, so there could be more high prices in these states\u2019 futures.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n