​Although some New England utilities offer modernized rates for special applications, like electric vehicles and battery storage, there is substantial room for improvement in time-varying residential pricing. This policy brief, the last in a series examining rate design issues across New England, looks more closely at time-varying rates offered by utilities in ...

Rural populations in India continually face great challenges when it comes to earning and maintaining a sustainable living. With up to 70% of rural Indians working in the agricultural sector, those challenges will only become more substantial as climate change creates greater impacts and economic uncertainty causes further distress. Solving these problems will re...

As the market for electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States continues to grow, states are beginning to pay more attention to the issues that arise. Although no one state agency has clear responsibility for it, utility commissions are taking their first steps toward determining how best to prepare for, accommodate and promote this transition. They are meetin...

Technology has evolved faster than utility-offered rate designs have, and consumer choice will continue to grow as advanced energy technologies -- from electric vehicles to battery storage -- and smart grid optionality become available. These changes should likewise prompt advances in electricity pricing, in order to send price signals that are consistent with gr...

​This policy brief dives deeper into rate design for low- and moderate-income (LMI) ratepayers in New England. As always, effective rate design is crucial to achieving regulatory and public policy goals, but achieving broad societal policy goals need not come at the cost of burdening economically vulnerable LMI ratepayers. To design rates at levels customers ...

Examining Four Approaches for India’s Power Distribution Sector to Become More Clean, Affordable and Reliable

​In a presentation at a Renewable Energy Vermont conference in Burlington, Joni Sliger discussed new considerations for efficiency in light of the all-fuels energy optimization needed to effectively reduce climate pollution....

Energy efficiency is key to reducing the size of the energy challenge, to accelerating the achievement of its solution, and to enhancing energy productivity, but old ideas that ignore the potential benefits of electrification and narrowly equate energy efficiency with efforts to reduce consumption of a single energy source — like electricity — need to evolve....

Maps showing the average monthly customer bill in each New England state (left) and rates per kilowatt-hour for large utilities throughout the region (right).   Household electricity bills vary significantly across the United States, but in no region do they vary as much as in New England. The average household in Massachusetts pays 34 percent more...

​RAP’s definition of beneficial electrification asserts that an electrified end use must satisfy at least one of the following conditions, without adversely affecting the other two: Saves consumers money over the long run; Enables better grid management; and Reduces negative environmental impacts. The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is growin...