EXCLUSIVE: Local Green Energy Mandates Drive More Than Half Of Renewable Costs In New Jersey, Pennsylvania And DC

Rules forcing utilities to buy energy credits from in-state producers account for more than half the cost of energy mandates in three East Coast jurisdictions.

The requirements made up 51 percent of New Jersey’s mandate costs, 52 percent of Pennsylvania’s and about 57 percent of Washington, D.C.’s in the latest reporting years, according to a report from Always On Energy Research shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It would be difficult to conceive of a more punitive and expensive policy for electricity,” Isaac Orr, the group’s vice president of research and a co-author of the report, told the DCNF. “The way that it’s been executed has been incredibly inflationary for electricity prices.”

Utilities buy the credits to comply with the mandates, but “it all gets passed through to customers,” Orr said.

Each credit represents one megawatt-hour of electricity from a qualifying source, and utilities meet the mandates by buying and retiring enough credits to cover a set share of their sales, Orr explained.

The mandates added nearly $775 per electricity customer in Washington, D.C., about $298 in New Jersey and $227 in Maryland in the latest years analyzed, the report found.

Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said in a statement to the DCNF that it did not “have anything to add,” and the Justice Department declined to comment.

The Maryland Public Service Commission said in a statement to the DCNF that it had not had the opportunity to review the report and “would refrain from making any speculative comments.”

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission did not immediately provide a comment on the record. The offices of Democratic D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Republican West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources did not immediately respond to requests for comment.