Rightwing attacks on our best solution to our energy crisis
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist
But have no fear, Gov. Dan McKee and MAGA asshats are here.
To address this dual-threat emergency — war and the climate
crisis, not gasoline prices — the underwater governor and the MAGA faction
within the General Assembly believe blowing up Rhode Island’s support for
renewable energy and retreating on the state’s climate initiatives are
solutions.
Elections certainly do have consequences. We’ll be paying
for them for generations.
House Minority Leader Rep. Michael Chippendale, MAGA-Foster,
recently introduced a package of legislation designed to
eliminate many of the state-mandated charges on utility bills that fund
renewable energy and climate programs. He denied the legislation was meant to
end renewable energy programs in Rhode Island, but it would essentially do just
that.
His five irresponsible bills would: require all changes to
the Renewable Energy Growth Program be approved by the General Assembly,
instead of the Public Utilities Commission (the corporate-friendly PUC
apparently isn’t corporate enough) or just eliminate the program altogether;
terminate the energy efficiency charge, which funds the program that allows
Rhode Island Energy to offer rebates, free weatherization services, and other
initiatives that help ratepayers use less energy; end the net metering program
used to finance solar arrays and prohibit any state subsidies for consumer heat
pump purchases; and place a five-year moratorium on the Renewable Energy Growth
and energy efficiency program charges.
This shortsighted “leader” with orange-glazed lips embraces fossil fuels and sits on the fence with fingers in his ears when it comes climate action. Don’t call him a climate denier, though. He says the term is a “political slur crafted by the radical left to shame anyone who questions whether the current policy approach to renewable energy is sound, practical, or affordable.”
“We acknowledge that climate change is occurring. Where we
differ is in what we believe is causing it, and — more importantly — what
solutions are realistic without bankrupting the people of Rhode Island,”
Chippendale wrote last year.
Too late; many lurking about the Statehouse are already
bankrupt.
Our relentless burning of fossil fuels for two and a half
centuries isn’t connected to global heating. MAGAs know more than climate
scientists. Their alternative facts trump common sense and junior-high science.
Chippendale’s solution to the emergency is to trash renewable energy and call nuclear power “clean.” I propose Rhode Island
build a nuclear reactor on Johnson Road in Foster and dump the facility’s
radioactive waste in Chippendale’s backyard.
The blame-it-on-volcanoes-climate-denier is a mouthpiece for
carbon-based rule. He’s hardly alone.
Like fellow nonprogressive Democrat McKee, West Warwick Rep. Patricia Serpa welcomes ignorance. She favors the withdrawals recommended by the governor and introduced by the House minority leader, saying it may not be a popular opinion but it is a practical one. It’s not.
She’s more concerned about Rhode Island Energy profits
than what low-wealth families pay for electricity. She fails to either
understand or care that war and the climate crisis burden the people she
pretends to be concerned about more than highly paid utility executives.
“Rhode Island Energy is a for-profit business. It’s not a
charity that exists for the benefit of distributing energy at little or no
cost,” Serpa spewed during a recent House Corporation Committee
hearing. “We can’t control everything. … They have products to buy, they have
gas lines to pay for, they have employees to pay for.”
They also have exorbitant profits to rake in.
The charges collected monthly on residents’ bills for
renewable energy and climate programs aren’t the reason electricity costs are
high.
Profit margins of investor-owned utilities, such as Rhode
Island Energy, increased last year, according to a recent analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute.
Investor-owned utilities kept as profit an average of 14.6 cents of every
dollar they collected from customers in 2025, up from 12.8 cents from 2021 to
2024.
In 2024, the average authorized return on equity for
regulated U.S. utilities was 9.7%, while the average of 34 major investment
firms’ long-term equity return forecasts for the broad U.S. market was 6.7%.
Even the highest individual forecast (8.3%) was lower than
the average authorized utility return on equity — a striking gap, because
utilities, with their regulated monopoly status and predictable earnings, are
lower-risk investments than the market as a whole, so their cost of equity
should be below the market average, not above it.
Despite its central role in the utility business model, the
share of electricity revenue that utilities retain as profit is rarely analyzed
or even discussed when higher electric and gas rates are requested.
In 2022, when the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission
unanimously approved one of the largest electric rate hikes in decades, none
from the troika of McKee, Chippendale, and Serpa attended the meeting. No
objections prior, only faux concern afterward.
The 47% electric rate hike increased monthly household
bills, on average, by nearly $51.
After the historic rate hike was approved, Serpa promised “to ensure that Rhode Islanders are getting
the best price possible for their utilities. As Chair of the House Oversight
Committee, I, along with Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, am committed to hold
Rhode Island Energy accountable for the promises made when they purchased the
utility from National Grid.”
She also promised that if reelected “to make affordable
energy a priority in the next legislative session by continuing to closely
watch RI Energy and carefully reviewing all legislation that impacts rates.”
Three-plus years later, she defends Rhode Island Energy
profiteering and assails programs designed to wean us off fossil fuels and
mitigate the climate crisis. Utility CEOs have the right to be paid handsomely,
so ratepayers pay more to have their health and environment degraded.
Two years after the PUC jacked up electricity rates,
Chippendale found time to chime in, with his usual nonsense and lies.
Electricity costs over the past 12 years have risen 46% for
residents and 24% for local businesses, and for that he blames renewable energy
and climate initiatives.
“Electric Vehicle sales have stalled and have peaked at 1%
across the nation. GM, Ford and Tesla are cancelling plans for new production
facilities across North America,” he wrote in a February 2024 essay a high school English
teacher would have made him rewrite. “Wind projects across our region are being
cancelled due to the ever-rising high cost of the power they are slated to
provide — not to mention the negative impacts already observed in early
installations with Rhode Island’s wildlife and the ocean’s ecology.”
The five Block Island Wind Farm turbines so ruined the
marine ecosystem that anglers pay charter boat captains to take them fishing
around the offshore bogeymen.
Ocean ecology is rapidly changing because of
anthropogenic climate change, primarily caused by the absorption of 90% of
excess planetary heat and roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. These factors are causing a rise in marine water
temperatures, acidification, and reduced oxygen, which disrupt food webs,
bleach corals, stress shellfish, force species migration, and fundamentally
alter marine habitats.
When a fossil fuel power plant was proposed for the woods of
Burrillville, Chippendale didn’t express any concern about the impact on Rhode
Island wildlife or ecology.
As for the state’s Act on Climate law and renewable energy
mandates, he offers this head-shaking assessment:
“It is not good conservation policy to harm our environment
with impractical and costly mandates. We need to rewrite the Act Climate or we
WILL bankrupt Rhode Islanders by forcing them to electrify every aspect of
their lives — at one of the most expensive economic times to do so.”
Was Chippendale in “Idiocracy.”
In my humble opinion, gutting imperfect policy that is
designed to address the climate crisis will cause much more harm to the
environment, which we share with a decreasing amount of nonhuman life. The
natural world isn’t ours. Also, if you don’t believe the policies in place are
working well, offer better solutions. Build rather than destroy.
The programs McKee, Chippendale, and Serpa want nuked
represent some of the best mechanisms Rhode Island has to take control of its
energy future and keep near- and long-term system costs manageable. They aren’t
perfect, but that’s largely because special interests and MAGA ignorance have
to be appeased.
If you’re concerned the Ocean State is alone in giving up,
don’t fret. Let us hold New York’s rapidly warming beer.
Kathy Hochul, the Empire State’s governor, wants to delay
the implementation of that state’s 2019 climate law, which calls for gradually
decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by certain deadlines.
“We need more time,” Hochul wrote in an opinion piece recently published in The Empire Report.
“So much has radically changed since the Climate Act was enacted, necessitating
common-sense adjustments.”
Like McKee, Hochul is running for reelection.
Protecting the status quo and putting the breaks on climate
initiatives won’t prepare humankind for the future or address the climate
emergency. We’re already dangerously behind.
Note: A once-in-a-4,433-year heat wave invaded
the western United States last month. The heat wave set or tied March record
highs in at least 480 locations, stretching from New Mexico to southern Oregon.
California broke the record for the hottest winter day ever recorded in the
United States: 109 degrees March 19 in eastern Coachella Valley.
Frank Carini can be reached at frank@ecori.org. His
opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.