By Oliwia Krupinska, Policy & Regulatory Analyst, ACT

Our Clean Energy Day in Rhode Island brought together 15 representatives from ACT’s 350+ company members and NGO partners to speak with legislators and administrative officials about the state’s progress to a cleaner economy.

Governor McKee highlighted that his biggest concerns related to energy are affordability and well-paying jobs. Rhode Island has some of the highest energy rates in the country, which can be a great burden to residents and unappealing to businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector. To create lower energy costs would mean not only a lower bill for residents, but also an influx of companies into the state. 

The group also met with the Office of Energy Resources and Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, which oversee a variety of clean energy programs in the state. These connections opened up the opportunity to talk about a process that can be just as challenging as passing legislation: program implementation. 

Throughout the day, the group also met with a group of legislators who all enthusiastically shared their clean energy priorities. Some highlights of this year’s legislation and key conversations include: 

• Passing laws to drive building decarbonization 
• Ensuring energy affordability for all Rhode Islanders
• Protecting and improving access to good-paying jobs 
• Developing a clean heat standard
• Closely watching what happens in Washington, with millions of dollars in funding for energy assistance and other vital programs up in the air
• Improving energy efficiency programs and pathways for distributed generation interconnection

Rhode Island is a state eager to learn from the experiences of others and always looking to collaborate with allies, including the private sector as well as other states. At ACT, our Policy Team strives to be the connective thread that makes decisionmaking easier and we see ourselves as perfectly positioned to continue supporting Rhode Island by stewarding our relationships with policymakers.In addition to planning for the future, members also inquired about the opportunities that are already in place.

These discussions allowed the group to dive deeper into how to develop specific projects in the state and opened up the conversation of how existing programs can be improved over the coming years to make the most of the funding that has been allocated to them. To learn more about the upcoming Clean Energy Days in other states, please reach out to the Policy Team by contacting Natalie Treat, our Director of Public Policy, at ntreat@joinact.org. 

‍

Event Photos

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍