With sweltering heat pushing temperatures into the 90s this week, Granite Staters are feeling the impact of summer weather the moment they step outside—and soon, when they open their mailboxes.
New Hampshire already has the sixth-highest electricity costs in the U.S., and rates are climbing even higher.
While some blame the state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for approving recent rate hikes, the real driver of New England’s high electric bills is the cost of generating power.
The underlying issue is geography. New Hampshire is situated in the middle of deep-blue, “green energy” New England.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the New Hampshire AARP have criticized the PUC’s decision to allow Eversource to raise its residential customer charge from just under $14 to nearly $20.
However, state House Science, Technology, and Energy Committee Chairman Michael Vose (R-Epping) notes that Eversource “has not had a rate increase for their poles, wires, substations, transformers, storm recovery, and vegetation management in over five years. They requested a substantial increase because storms have worsened and inflation has driven up the cost of hardware—not to mention labor.”
Blaming Eversource alone misses the bigger picture. Other utilities in New Hampshire—including Unitil, the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative—are also raising rates this week. These companies are facing the same regional conditions created by government energy policies.
Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH, also expressed concern over rising rates—but for different reasons.
“Our 10-year energy strategy states that we should be pursuing markets and market-based policies. A fixed customer charge is the polar opposite of that. It’s the simplest, most blunt tool for socializing the cost of the grid,” Evans-Brown said.
But the cost of the grid is already “socialized,” critics argue. Deep-blue states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York are imposing net-zero energy mandates—and New Hampshire is footing part of the bill.
Because New Hampshire’s electricity is supplied through the ISO-New England regional grid, policy decisions in neighboring states directly affect the cost of power locally. As a result, all six New England states rank in the top 10 for residential electricity prices.
According to the most recent U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, the national average residential electricity rate in May 2025 was 17.47 cents per kilowatt hour. In New England, the average was 29.24 cents, 67 percent higher.
While residents may blame “greedy” utility companies, many energy policy analysts and consumer advocates say the real culprits are NIMBY-style (Not In My Backyard) environmental policies that raise costs while aiming to address climate change.
For example, Kenny Stein, vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, notes, “New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts won’t allow new pipelines to be built—even though that would lower electricity costs. They also don’t want to see transmission lines, so New England can’t even access cheap hydropower from Canada.”
Natural gas pipeline constraints are particularly costly. On Tuesday afternoon, with Manchester temperatures nearing 100 degrees, more than 63 percent of the electricity on the grid was generated from natural gas.
Nationally, the average price of natural gas is around $3.37 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). But in New England, producers regularly pay triple that—or more. During a winter price spike in February, regional power generators paid about $14.62 per MMBtu, according to ISO-New England.
Proponents of renewable energy often cite high gas prices as a reason to abandon fossil fuels. But they rarely acknowledge that anti-pipeline policies are a major reason natural gas is so expensive in New England.
Green policies also impact electricity costs in other ways, said Paul Diego Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. Net-zero mandates drive up artificial demand for renewables like wind and solar. Wind remains expensive, and solar is unreliable, requiring continued investment in fossil fuel backup systems—especially during the nighttime hours when solar power disappears.
“So that basically dictates that you have to transition off natural gas, potentially even off nuclear, and get your energy from wind, solar, and battery,” Craney said. “That means you have to throw away the entire grid you have right now and create a new one. The current grid, which relies on natural gas and nuclear as baseload sources, has to be replaced with weather-dependent, low-density energy.”
Drew Cline, president of the New Hampshire-based Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, said free-market groups have been warning lawmakers for decades about the folly of imposing renewable energy mandates without ensuring reliability and affordability.
“People in New England need reliable energy not just in summer for air conditioning, but in winter, when heating is critical for homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals,” Cline said. “Unfortunately, legislators have also pressured suppliers to provide politically favored types of energy, regardless of cost.
“The combination of those two things—mandates and political interference—has made our energy cost problem worse. We’re trying to convince legislators around the region to prioritize reliability and affordability first. Those are the most important things for health, safety, and economic stability,” he added.
The good news? Politicians are starting to feel the heat—not just from the weather, but from voters. Craney notes that even in progressive Massachusetts, leaders like Gov. Maura Healey (D) have lost their appetite for imposing higher costs in the name of fighting climate change. Some climate mandates have already been delayed.
Still, the state’s legally binding “net zero by 2050” mandate remains intact.
“The other thing they could do is acknowledge that the 2050 mandate is unrealistic,” Craney said. “Push it out—make it 2075 or some other target. Even though 2050 sounds far off, there are a lot of costly thresholds we’re racing toward to meet that mandate.”
In May, Healey proposed a bill to eliminate or reduce charges on energy bills and reform energy procurement practices. WBUR reports she even supports exploring advanced nuclear technologies. But Craney believes the only real path to relief is rethinking the state’s climate mandates.
“Everyone kind of agrees that rates are up about 30 percent from last year,” Craney said.
A 2024 study by free-market think tanks across New England analyzed the cost of achieving net zero by 2050. It projected the price tag at $815 billion by 2054—roughly $2,000 per person per year across the region. Even if the estimate is off by half, that’s still $1,000 per year—with little measurable impact on global CO₂ levels.
“If you care about CO₂ emissions,” Craney said, “you shouldn’t be pushing net-zero mandates in New England. You should be focused on China and India.”
