New England households and businesses are feeling the economic costs of the Left’s misguided green energy policies. With the region just recovering from the effects of Winter Storm Fern, the six New England states are now preparing for yet another blast of arctic air and violent wind. And in a few weeks’ time, when the region’s residents receive their utility bills, they will face the added shock of costly green energy delusions and falsehoods.
Under the Federal Power Act, Congress delegates to states how to generate power, set prices for electricity, and establish renewable energy mandates. Over the past two decades, the New England states have enacted left-wing climate mandates. By 2050, the region plans to generate 100% of the energy required to power the economy from renewable resources. These renewable energy plans are largely responsible for the area’s electricity costs being the highest in the country.
In 2025, the typical New England household paid $250.82 per month for utilities, a 50% increase from 2024. New England power rates are already 67% higher than the national average, and power prices will be even higher in 2026 as powerful winter storms pummel the region.
Left-leaning and ill-informed media pundits are trying to blame data centers and greedy electricity providers for the high power prices, but the real blame rests with the green energy mandates. For decades, New England politicians such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have blocked the construction of new natural gas pipelines to bring natural gas from the prolific gas fields of the Marcellus Shale region, located in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Natural gas from this Shale deposit is cheap. Households in Pennsylvania pay 50% less for electricity from natural gas than New England households pay. Boston, the economic center of New England, is only 300 miles from the gas fields of Pennsylvania. Voters in New England are beginning to realize that green energy policies are expensive and are failing to reduce carbon emissions by any meaningful amount.
During the recent cold snap, natural gas from the so-called Algonquin Hub, the distribution center for New England gas, soared tenfold due to woefully inadequate pipeline capacity. The Hub could not meet demand in New England, so utilities in the region turned to dirty fuel oil. Almost all of the fuel oil power generators were turned on to heat homes and businesses, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of dirty carbon into the atmosphere above New England.
To compound the problem, the wind power turbines of the Martha’s Vineyard offshore wind farm failed to produce power during the extreme cold. The giant blades would not spin because of the freezing temperatures.
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In addition, green energy from Canada’s hydroelectric power grid failed to offset the loss of electricity from wind turbines, as well as from New England’s lack of natural gas capacity. Canada’s abundant hydropower was supposed to be the “fail-safe” green energy source, but in order to meet soaring demand from Canadian consumers, the hydro industry in Quebec stopped exporting electricity to New England because it was even colder in Canada.
Data centers are not the major cause for rising electricity prices. Green energy mandates and other left-wing policies are the problem.
James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service officer who later worked for 30 years in law and finance. He writes a daily note on markets, economics, politics, and social issues.
