'I can't afford it anymore.' Rhode Islanders slam utility and high costs of energy

Yahoo

11-03-2025

WARWICK – A hearing Monday night was supposed to be about proposals that would see a net decrease in energy bills for most Rhode Islanders, but it sure didn't feel like it.
Beforehand, protesters rallied outside the offices of state utilities regulators to complain about Rhode Island Energy's prices, and during the standing-room-only hearing, speaker after speaker aimed criticism at the state's largest gas and electric utility.
Joyce Fiore was one of several customers who brought their bills up to the podium to read off the skyrocketing numbers. Her electric bill jumped from $164 in December to $580 in February, she said.
'I've lived in Cranston for close to 50 years now, and I've never seen bills like this,' she told the two members of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission who were present at the hearing.
While electric rates have been abnormally high in Rhode Island for a while now, the bill impact has been greater this winter because it's been colder than the mild winters of the past couple of years. That's not only pushed up energy usage but also put pressure on wholesale electric prices on the spot market.
Natural gas rates have also increased in recent years, pushing up the cost of heating.
The General Assembly session that opened in January has been marked by an unusual number of pieces of legislation that aim to rein in Rhode Island Energy's costs.
For its part, Rhode Island Energy says it can do little about the energy rates that it passes on to ratepayers without a mark-up. They're largely determined by regional market forces, the company says.
'We understand the burden of high bills, and we know you feel it even more when temperatures drop, and supply prices continue to be high, as they have this winter,' Brian Schuster, director of external affairs at the company, said at the hearing. 'We feel it, too.'
But the 180 people in attendance were unconvinced, booing and heckling Schuster throughout his presentation.
The complaints come as Rhode Island Energy is planning to lower electric rates, as usual, for the spring and summer. For residential customers, starting April 1, the default energy rate would drop from 16.4 cents per kilowatt hour to 10.1 cents.
After accounting for a small increase in delivery charges, the bill for a typical customer that uses 500 kilowatt hours a month would go down by 17%, from $161.85 to $141.73.
But even though that's a steep reduction from the winter rate for what's known as last-resort service, it's still significantly higher than the rates of summers past.
Electric rates in Rhode Island spiked nearly three years ago as the war in Ukraine drove up European demand for natural gas, the primary fuel for power generation in New England. Even though prices have eased, they've yet to come down to previous levels.
There are also structural problems that inflate New England's wholesale electric prices. While the use of natural gas for power production has increased significantly in the region over the last two decades to become the dominant fuel source, pipeline capacity has failed to keep up.
Opposition from environmental groups has stymied new pipeline projects, so as demand for the fossil fuel has increased, the pipelines that bring gas from Pennsylvania shale fields and beyond have become more and more constrained.
A recent study from S&P Global, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, found that wholesale natural gas prices in Boston during periods of peak demand in the winter were 166% higher than the national benchmark.
The pipeline constraints also help explain why New Englanders pay more for natural gas for heating.
Under a second proposal that Rhode Island Energy filed with the utilities commission, gas rates would go up slightly on April 1. For a typical customer that uses 845 therms a year, the bill would edge up by 4.4%, from $1,785.11 to $1,863.68.
State lawmakers are proposing to bring relief to ratepayers in a number of ways.
Rep. Megan Cotter, who was at the hearing, has proposed slashing the cap on Rhode Island Energy's return on investment. She's introduced a second measure to look into turning the private, investor-owned company into a public entity.
Rep. Charlene Lima has introduced legislation that delays by a decade Rhode Island's obligation to offset all energy usage with renewables by 2033.
Sen. Dawn Euer is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit Rhode Island Energy from recovering from ratepayers the costs, among others, of marketing, lobbying or investor relations.
And Rep. Scott Slater has brought back his perennial bill to cap energy bills for the poorest Rhode Islanders.
But speakers at the utilities commission hearing argued that there are deeper structural problems with the state's energy system.
They contend that even though customers can sign on with third-party suppliers or, in certain communities, with municipal aggregation plans, Rhode Island Energy acts as a monopoly. And that the state utilities commission doesn't do enough to regulate the company.
'Give these people hope,' Aseem Rastogi, chair of Indivisible RI, said to the commission members. 'Give us all hope that you'll do the right thing for people over profits.'
State Sen. Elaine Morgan, one of several lawmakers in attendance, said something similar.
'You were commissioned by the General Assembly to protect us, the ratepayers,' the Hopkinton Republican said. 'We're asking for your protection right now.'
Kathleen Giroux, a former resident of Florida, said her heating bill for her 900-square-foot apartment in Smithfield went from $98 in November to $404 this month.
'I can't afford it anymore,' she said. 'I'm ready to pack it up and move back to Florida.'
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: More than 180 people come out to complain of high energy costs in RI