The General Assembly and Governor Dan McKee have set Net Zero by 2050 as Rhode Island’s energy policy. The 2021 Act on Climate law also includes interim emission mandates along the way to 2050:

10% below 1990 levels by 2020
45% below 1990 levels by 2030
80% below 1990 levels by 2040
Net-zero emissions by 2050

The way our elected officials plan to (try to) get there is to make everything in the state – transportation, heating, manufacturing, businesses, medical: all activity – currently powered by fossil fuel convert to electric so that they can be powered by purportedly zero emission, i.e., renewable, sources. Important to note here that this would represent an enormous increase in demand on the electric grid.

The Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, with yours truly doing the search/click/read/save, set about to learn whether the state had conducted any analyses as to 1.) technological feasibility and 2.) cost.

As outlined in the Center’s major new report, “Freezing in the Dark: The Staggering Costs & Risks of RI’s Green Energy Policies”, we learned that the state had done no such diligence.

~ Can renewables generate sufficient energy to power all of the state’s activity? Unknown.

~ How long would it take to build out renewable generating capacity and the electric grid to get to net zero? Unknown.

~ Oh, hey, you can’t add an intermittent energy source (e.g., wind, solar) to an electric grid in any significant quantity without also installing a massive hazmat site … er, industrial battery facility, or “BESS” (“Bess”! good ol’ innocuous “Bess”; definitely not a danger to the environment and the neighborhood). What would be the ramp-up time to install a BESS? Unknown.

~ Most importantly, what would be the cost to Rhode Island ratepayers to set up and maintain all of this? Unknown.

In fact, it turns out that Rhode Island Energy, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission and ISO New England have all raised many tactful but pointed red flags about the state’s proposed energy policy. In testimony to the General Assembly and publicly in the news; in testimony to the General Assembly; and in a report, respectively, these entities have repeatedly pointed to the costs and high hurdles of making intermittent energy sources the primary/only source of energy on the state’s grid, as well as electrifying everything.

Governor McKee and the General Assembly disregarded those warnings and all of the unknowns and inexplicably plowed ahead. Net Zero or Bust!

The featured image is a snapshot of what Rhode Island ratepayers have paid in “renewable energy program costs” for 2014 – 2023. The figure in the snapshot for 2023 is $229,216,596. But in an in-depth report in February, WPRI’s Target Twelve team has an even higher number: they put the total paid in 2023 by Rhode Island ratepayers for “clean-energy programs” at $335.5 million. (Gosh, why have our electric bills been rising?)

Inasmuch as renewable energy is very expensive (but not clean), that annual figure will rise sharply if the state tries to continue down the net zero path. “Tries”, because absent a real world plan with the requisite feasibility and cost analyses to get there, they won’t. A “plan” to jump out of an airplane mid-flight and hope someone makes a parachute in time is … the antithesis of a plan.

The Center’s report makes two recommendations.

There are two immediate steps that Rhode Island lawmakers can take to signal to the public they understand the grave issues associated with Rhode Island’s current alternative energy strategy; steps that other blue states have similarly taken; and steps that would provide the space necessary for green or other alternative sources of energy to become reliable and market ready.

1. Delay all green energy milestones. Push back by at least 20 years all of Rhode Island’s “Net Zero” energy milestone dates to allow time for alternative strategies to be more thoroughly evaluated.

2. Immediately repeal RI’s Electric Vehicle mandate; a mandate which would place an insurmountable additional burden on our region’s electric grid. Related, also withdraw from the CARB (California Air Resources Board) coalition. In light of the federal government’s repeal of funding for the requisite EV charging infrastructure, as well as subsidies for EV purchases, it is clear that our state cannot go this path alone.

Both are eminently reasonable courses, given what is known but especially what is unknown about Rhode Island’s current energy policy.