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Funding for Rhode Island’s energy-efficiency programs could be cut by more than $42 million next year in an effort to rein in residents’ soaring power bills. That rollback would deprive the state of more than $90 million in benefits and potentially eliminate hundreds of jobs while creating only modest up-front savings, a new analysis finds.
Rhode Island Energy, the utility that administers the state’s energy-efficiency offerings, has proposed to slash spending on that front by 18% compared to last year and more than 30% compared to the budget originally projected in the nonbinding three-year plan introduced in 2023. If approved, the cuts will save the average household $1.87 per month, according to Rhode Island Energy.
The result of these changes, according to climate action nonprofit Acadia Center, would be more expensive electricity and more exposure to volatile natural gas prices in the long run.
“Energy efficiency is a tool for suppressing supply costs, for suppressing infrastructure costs in the long-term,” said Emily Koo, Acadia Center’s program director for Rhode Island and one of the authors of the group’s analysis. “I am not seeing our leaders think beyond the immediate.”
Rhode Island has traditionally been a leader in energy-efficiency programming. Over the past 15 years, the state has repeatedly placed among the top 10 states in the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual energy-efficiency scorecard. Since 2009, the state has spent more than $2 billion on efficiency incentives and services, yielding more than $6 billion in environmental and social benefits.
Now, however, the dynamics of energy markets are creating new obstacles. Nationwide, electricity costs have gone up at twice the rate of inflation over the past year, and gas prices have increased by more than four times the inflation rate. Rhode Island, like other New England states, has the added difficulty of already having some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Add in cold Northeastern winters, and the state is girding for an expensive season ahead.
As in neighboring states, regulators, elected officials, and utilities in Rhode Island are scrambling for ways to provide some relief for residents and businesses. These efforts have increasingly looked to the bill fees that fund renewable energy incentives and energy-efficiency programs as possible targets for quick, if small, bill reductions. In Maine, for example, leaders from both sides of the aisle have sought to lower incentives for customers and community solar developments that send power back to the grid, and in Massachusetts, utility regulators ordered energy-efficiency administrators to cut $500 million from a planned $5 billion three-year budget.
Now, Rhode Island Energy is proposing rollbacks of its own, saying that its latest plan prioritizes customer affordability. The company has the support of the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, which points to the growth in accounts with overdue utility bills to bolster its argument that the changes will provide needed relief to consumers.
“There is simply a financial limit as to how much cost the ratepayers can bear,” the department wrote in its public comments on the proposal.
Advocates, however, say the approach is short-sighted.
“This is weaker. It’s a retreat,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the nonprofit Green Energy Consumers Alliance, which opposes the proposed cuts. “It just feeds into the narrative — that we don’t accept — that ratepayers aren’t seeing benefits from energy efficiency.”
Rhode Island’s energy-efficiency offerings include home energy assessments, weatherization services, rebates on energy-saving appliances and heating and cooling systems, and contractor training. Residents and businesses that take advantage of these programs generally save money by reducing their energy use.
The programs also create savings for the average consumer, whether or not they participate. Because the improvements slow energy consumption, they allow utilities to build less pricey infrastructure, the cost of which is passed on to customers. Efficiency measures can also lower peak demand, reducing the need to buy costlier, dirtier power from peaker plants. In Rhode Island, efficiency programs lowered electricity use 5% between 2005 and 2024; without these interventions, use would have increased 15%, according to an annual state report.
Advocates, therefore, argue that Rhode Island Energy’s plan to shrink energy-efficiency spending won’t actually result in more affordable power in the long run.
“You spend money on energy efficiency or you’re going to spend even more money on power supply,” said Forest Bradley-Wright, state and utility director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Acadia Center’s analysis also finds that more than 800 jobs in the energy-efficiency sector could be at risk if the cuts are adopted.
The draft plan has been through multiple iterations; the most recent version was released on Sept. 5. The state energy-efficiency council is expected to vote on the proposal at its Sept. 25 meeting. The plan will then go to utility regulators for final approval.
Advocates say they intend to keep pushing for high funding levels until the process concludes.
“The benefits we’re experiencing today are already translating into lower bills,” Bradley-Wright said. “There’s a track record of success, but let’s not take it for granted.”
Talia Boyd was spending over $300 a month to keep her home just outside Asheville, North Carolina, cool this summer. It was an enormous sum for the single-wide trailer she shares with her baby daughter and teenage son.
“We constantly kept ceiling fans going, and I had to get AC units,” she said — multiple ones that ran 24/7 to replace the cold air seeping out from gaps around the windows.
But now, the air leaks have been sealed, a door has been replaced, and a new heat pump has been installed — all at no cost to Boyd. Her monthly utility bill from Duke Energy has been cut in half, she said.
The improvements are thanks to Energy Savers Network, a small nonprofit that serves Buncombe County, where Boyd lives, along with neighboring counties Henderson, Haywood, and Madison.
“They really came out and they helped,” said Boyd, who works in home health care. “They talked. They took measurements. They walked through the whole trailer. I really appreciate the help, and I would love to spread the word.”
Boyd’s home is among the roughly 1,400 that Energy Savers Network has assisted with weatherization since its inception in late 2016. Across the state in the same time frame, thousands of other households have received similar services, mostly from community action agencies deploying federal dollars.
But Boyd’s story is somewhat unique. She’s in a smaller subset of people who’ve benefited from a Duke initiative meant not just to aid the energy burdened in times of crisis, but to permanently reduce their electricity use through home efficiency improvements.
And with politicians at the state and national levels turning against the clean energy transition in low-income communities and elsewhere, Boyd’s experience is rare good news that advocates hope can continue to be replicated.
Energy Savers Network found Boyd through Duke’s Customer Assistance Program. Part of a side deal the utility struck in 2023 to lessen the blow of its rate hikes, the program offers a monthly credit of up to $42 on bills for households at or below 150% of the federal poverty level — about $50,000 for a family of four.
In 2024, Duke began automatically providing the credit to any customers who’d benefited in the prior year from one of two buckets of federal aid: the Crisis Intervention Program, designed to prevent or reverse life-threatening emergencies like utility shutoffs, or the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, which offers one-time payments to help households with heating bills.
North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services manages the two funds and has a data-sharing agreement with Duke, which then enrolls customers in its program — a process that has minimized administrative expenses such as vetting participants for eligibility.
And though in its first year the bill assistance benefited less than half the number of households forecast, experts say that’s because funding for the two buckets of federal aid dropped, not because the need isn’t great. Advocates remain bullish about the prospect for Duke to serve 100,000 customers or more annually.
Totaling over $500 for a year, the bill credit alone is vital for families struggling to make ends meet, aid groups say.
But Boyd’s case demonstrates the full potential of the Customer Assistance Program: Virtually every household receiving help gets referred to a local entity that can assess homes and perform free efficiency upgrades, reducing energy burdens beyond the 12 months of financial aid.
The brainchild and passion project of former financial and utility consultant Brad Rouse, Energy Savers has undergone a few iterations over its nine years of existence. Its throughline is providing energy-efficiency retrofits, usually in a day’s time, via a team of volunteers guided by a professional.
When everything is running smoothly, that means the group can perform upgrades — such as adding insulation and sealing air leaks — for at least three homes a week, according to Rouse. But in its early years, Energy Savers sometimes struggled to meet that mark.
“The problem is we had a lot of client cancellations,” said Rouse, who today serves as Energy Savers’ executive director. If they were last-minute, the group didn’t always have a backup client ready to take advantage of assembled volunteers and staff. In that case, Rouse said, “we lose the day.”
But now, the organization has almost eliminated that problem. “The Duke Customer Assistance referral is one big reason why,” he said.
That’s because the utility sends so many referrals that it’s easier to find clients who will be ready by the time the Energy Savers team arrives, reducing the likelihood of cancellations. And when a client does fall through, there’s a waiting list ready to be tapped.
The group identifies households in need through multiple channels, including farmers markets, community events, and word of mouth. But its largest source of referrals these days is the Customer Assistance Program, said Steffi Rausch, director of operations.
“We send out a bulk mailing to [potential clients] first and then we try to follow up with phone calls to get them scheduled,” Rausch said.
Boyd, for instance, first got help paying her utility bills through Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, which accessed one of the federal crisis assistance funds for her. She was soon enrolled in Duke’s $42 bill-credit program and then referred to Energy Savers. “They popped up at my doorstep,” Boyd said.
In the last 11 months, 26% of Energy Savers’ referrals have come from the Duke Customer Assistance Program, according to Rausch. So far, 36 of those referred families have made it through the weatherization process.
“I’m very impressed with Duke at this point,” Rausch said. The utility, which funds the majority of the services provided by Energy Savers, always makes sure the group gets reimbursed, she said. “We’ve never been stuck with the bill.”
To be sure, Duke and advocates for low-income customers are still working out kinks in the bill-credit scheme. One challenge is waning funding for the two federal crisis assistance initiatives that are used to automatically enroll individuals in the Customer Assistance Program. Another hurdle is connecting the dots for recipients, who often don’t realize they’re getting the bill credit or that they’re getting referred to groups like Energy Savers.
Most of all, advocates are mindful that the Customer Assistance Program is in the middle of a three-year pilot phase, and they want to extend it one way or another — as a feature of Duke’s next three-year rate increase, as a condition of the merger of the company’s two North Carolina utilities, or as part of some other case before state regulators.
Boyd knows as well as advocates that the need for long-lasting energy savings is substantial. She’s now trying to get help for her 93-year-old Aunt Viola, whose electricity bill tops $400 a month.
“It’s only her in the house,“ Boyd said. “She could really use this program.”
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