Why complaints about clean energy miss the real cost to consumers

Every winter, New Englanders open their energy bills and wonder why costs keep climbing. And every winter, the same voices offer the same answer: blame wind, solar, hydropower, and battery storage. They're wrong. Renewables paired with battery storage deliver reliable, cost-effective power precisely when peak demand is highest. Addressing the growing challenge of energy affordability requires reducing our overreliance on oil and gas and diversifying our fuel mix.

Here’s why: In December 2025, wholesale electricity prices in New England averaged nearly $130 per megawatt-hour, more than 50 percent higher than the year before, while natural gas prices rose by more than 60 percent year over year. These higher costs are not the result of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower imports, or battery storage. They are the predictable outcome of an energy system with aging infrastructure built around price-volatile fossil fuels.

Natural gas plants generate about 55 percent of New England’s electricity and typically set the wholesale power price. In extreme cold, competition with home heating can cause gas pipeline constraints, driving prices sharply higher. When gas becomes scarce, the New England grid operator turns to oil-fired power plants, among the most polluting and costly resources.

To fill the gap, grid operators also rely on imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), exposing energy bills to global markets and geopolitical instability. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. conflict with Iran, and  combined with the current Administration’s exporting gas supply overseas show just how dramatically global gas prices can spike. Fossil fuel “reliability” depends heavily on events beyond the control of local decisionmakers. That is not energy security; it is exposure. Consumers pay more, emissions rise, and reliability is compromised.

Renewable energy, by contrast, offers price stability and resilience precisely because it is local and fuel-free. Large-scale offshore wind is strongest in winter, directly reducing reliance on price-volatile gas and oil. Solar energy also contributes meaningfully during cold months, lowering overall system demand. Hydropower deserves special attention, because it is often the most misunderstood. Hydropower provides significant, low-carbon electricity that plays a critical balancing role during periods of high demand. It is not subject to fuel price volatility, and unlike gas, it is not constrained by pipeline bottlenecks. New England has long relied on affordable hydroelectric power from Québec. That reliance deepened in January, when deliveries started on a 20-year import contract.

Despite recent extreme cold conditions in Québec, this contract has delivered at 92% capacity since the start of operations, at a price roughly half New England's wholesale prices during the coldest period. Critics make a fatal error: you don’t assess the benefit of a 20-year contract on what happens during the coldest few hours of a single year.

Battery storage is what ties wind, solar, and hydropower together into a reliable, modern energy system. Batteries store excess electricity when clean energy is abundant and deliver it during peak demand hours, often winter evenings when demand is highest. Every megawatt-hour discharged from storage replaces generation from the most expensive oil- and gas-fired plants, lowering costs and improving reliability.

The affordability benefits of this diversified approach are substantial. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies continue to seek higher rates to maintain an outdated gas system that locks consumers into volatile prices and perpetual upgrades. Corporations recover their costs. Consumers do not.

The choice facing New England is whether to continue relying so heavily on an outdated system built around price-volatile fossil fuels, or to invest in a diversified energy system built on wind, solar, hydropower, and battery storage. One path locks consumers into costs they cannot control. The other builds the affordable, resilient energy future New England needs.

Trish Fields is interim executive director of the Alliance for Climate Transition.