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Excerpts from RESA’s press release regarding the recently released Massachusetts Attorney General’s report on retail electric competition in the state:

{***} “For years, we have been subjected to these types of reports touting problematic data used in a flawed methodology from consultants the AG’s office pays to substantiate their story to the public,” said Frank Caliva, national spokesperson for RESA. “What the report shows is an analysis of products, services and terms that are not comparable.”

For example, many retail energy suppliers provide value-added services that utilities do not, including:

• Renewable energy products;
• Long-term contracts with fixed prices;
• Bundled services; or
• REC credits that exceed RPS standards.

Additionally, the report does not take into consideration a number of significant factors, such as:

• The differing time periods over which utilities and suppliers purchase energy;
• Addressing utility-provided energy charges that are artificially low based on indirect cost recovery;
• The impact of the war in Ukraine on natural gas prices; and
• the lingering effects of unpaid electric bills by utility customers dating back to at least 2020 during the height of the pandemic.” {***}

The Massachusetts Attorney General report entitled “A Predatory and Broken Market: the January 2025 Update Analysis of the Individual Residential Electric Supply Market in Massachusetts” may be found here. 

From the MA AG Report’s Executive Summary:

Executive Summary – This January 2025 Update (“2025 Update”) follows the prior reports by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office (“AGO”) on the individual residential electric supply market in Massachusetts. This update provides an analysis of the actual rates charged by suppliers to residential consumers for the July 2023–June 2024 period. The updated analysis shows that Massachusetts consumers who relied on competitive suppliers for their electricity experienced $651.3 million in net losses in comparison to basic service rates since the AGO began reporting on this market in 2018, including net losses of $73.7 million in the July 2023–June 2024 period. Accordingly, in eight of the nine years evaluated by the AGO, competitive supply consumers experienced net losses.

This 2025 Update demonstrates that competitive electric supply rates are neither cost-effective nor equitable. Between July 2023 and June 2024, most competitive electric supply consumers paid more for their electricity compared to the basic service rate, with low-income residential consumers on competitive electric supply plans paying more than non-low-income consumers. As discussed in the 2024 Update, even during the unprecedented 2022–2023 winter season, when record-high basic service rates triggered by macroeconomic conditions presented an ideal opportunity for the individual residential electric supply market to provide consumers with savings, low-income consumers of individual suppliers continued to experience net losses. Further, to the extent that some individual suppliers provided temporary and modest relief to consumers during that unprecedented time of sky-high basic service rates, the AGO’s July 2023– June 2024 analysis demonstrates a swift return to business as usual, with the broken and predatory individual residential competitive supply market causing significant harm to consumers, and low-income consumers in particular.” {***}

RESA Press Release