WBUR

By Mindy Lubber and Natalie Treat

Electricity bills in Massachusetts have increased by 50% over the last decade, making it more expensive for households and businesses to operate. The average residential bill is now over $300 a month, according to EnergySage, putting Massachusetts 29% above the national average.

This challenge is hardly unique to the commonwealth. Electricity bills are spiking across the U.S., as aging infrastructure and slow deployment of affordable power — such as solar, wind, and battery storage as well as low-cost modernization upgrades to the electric grid — make it difficult to keep pace with demand.

As a result, electricity prices have become a burgeoning national political issue that ranks increasingly high among voter concerns. That angst will grow as we become more dependent on electricity in every part of our lives — from the heat pumps warming our homes, to powering our electric vehicles, to fueling the data centers that underpin our digital economy, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Massachusetts lawmakers have an opportunity to address this issue in a meaningful and holistic way.

To solve electricity affordability, we need more clean power — and we need it fast. Clean energy resources — specifically solar, wind, and battery storage — are the most affordable and quickest sources of energy to build today, even after Congress and the Trump administration have repealed federal support for these technologies. Consider that it costs between $38 to $78 per megawatt hour to build a solar project, and it can be done in 12-18 months, compared to $48 to $107 for a natural gas plant, which faces a turbine backlog of seven years.

States including Texas, Iowa, North Dakota, and Kansas — hardly paragons of climate or clean energy policy — are among the nation’s leaders in on-shore wind and solar power generation, and all boast electricity prices below the national average.

In Texas, the overwhelming majority of new power added or planned to be added to the grid is from solar, wind and battery storage, which helped keep power flowing throughout the state's brutally hot summer. In the absence of climate goals in Texas, it’s clear that the reasons for this growth are purely economic: renewable power is fast and affordable to build.

But the source of electricity is only part of the issue. While energy supply rates have increased over the last decade, another primary cost driver in Massachusetts is the price of delivering that energy. Our transmission and distribution systems also need to be addressed.

Gov. Healey has put forward broad-reaching legislation designed to bring down electricity costs in Massachusetts called the Energy Affordability Independence and Innovation Act. It includes new approaches to manage electricity load and enhance the electric grid with solar and other distributed energy resources, accelerate the process for getting new clean power online, and give the state more flexibility in purchasing energy, all while advancing forms of energy generation such as nuclear and thermal energy networks.

It also maintains Massachusetts’ nation-leading energy efficiency program, Mass Save, which helped more than 55,000 homes in 2024 to reduce costs through efficiency upgrades. Importantly, the legislation improves Mass Save by changing the way it’s financed, reducing the program’s costs to ratepayers.

The legislation won plaudits from business, labor and environmental groups, reflecting that clean energy and energy affordability are not just harmonious but mutually reinforcing. If enacted, the governor’s legislation is estimated to save consumers between $11 and $14 billion over the next decade, according to analysis from Sustainable Energy Advantage and Synapse Energy.

As leaders in climate solutions and corporate sustainability, we are keenly attuned to the challenges of both climate change and energy costs. While some believe the path to achieve energy affordability requires weakening or doing away with the state’s climate goals, nothing could be further from the truth. We call on the legislature to finalize this package to make the Massachusetts economy more competitive by attacking these dual challenges at once.

Mindy Lubber is CEO and president at Ceres. Natalie Treat at senior director of policy and engagement at the Alliance for Climate Transition.