Making Clean Energy Decisions in New England

Client: Community Action Works

Authors: Bryndis Woods, PhD, Sachin Peddada, Eliandro Tavares, Elisabeth Seliga, and Myisha Majumder

April 2022

On behalf of Community Action Works, AEC staff developed a report that identifies and examines six on-going clean energy and energy justice advocacy campaigns in New England. AEC profiles and assesses each campaign to determine which decision makers possess the authority to act on the advocates’ goals. These six campaigns include opposition to the proposed peaker plant in Peabody, MA; continued operation of New England’s last coal-fired power plant in Bow, New Hampshire; three existing peaker plants in Berkshire County, MA; a proposed gas-fired power plant in Killingly, CT; a proposed gas pipeline between Longmeadow and Springfield, MA; and an approved electric substation in East Boston awaiting construction. In addition to profiling each project, the report clarifies the key role the Independent System Operator of New England (ISO-NE), governors, and state legislatures play in developing New England’s energy mix.

Across all six campaigns, we find that advocates have more opportunities to pursue their goals while a project is still in its proposal phase; it becomes more challenging to shut down an energy project once it is operational. In addition, we recommend changes at ISO-NE that have the potential to render many polluting New England energy projects less competitive.

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Press Release

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Visualizations of Racial Inequity

Client: Renew New England
Authors: AEC Staff

August 2020

On behalf of the Renew New England coalition, AEC used publicly available data to produce visualizations of racial disparities. 

There are three sets of data graphics:

1) The first set shows disparities in rates of incarceration, average income, COVID-19 cases, and unemployment across as many as five racial categories: Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx and white. This data is presented for each of the New England states and the U.S.

2) The second set shows Black/white disparities across as many as 23 measures (e.g. homelessness, infant mortality, educational attainment). This data is presented for Massachusetts and the total U.S.

3) Black/white unemployment for all U.S. states and the U.S. average. 

The data demonstrate that racial inequalities are pervasive across common measures of well-being like employment, incarceration, poverty status and educational attainment. These inequalities are consistent across New England and the rest of the United States. For example, across the United States today, a Black individual is 6.4 times more likely than a white individual to be incarcerated, 2.4 times more likely to have a positive COVID-19 test, and 2.2 times more likely to be unemployed.

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Link to Downloadable Images

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New England Housing Costs: Rent as a Share of Income

Authors: Bryndis Woods, Liz Stanton, PhD and Eliandro Tavares

March 2020

Researcher Bryndis Woods, Senior Economist Liz Stanton, PhD and Assistant Researcher Eliandro Tavares prepared a presentation that assesses housing costs as a share of income across the New England states. We find that, across New England, lower-income households bear a greater rent burden than higher-income households. Between 2011 and 2017, some households’ rent as a share of income has risen, as a result of falling incomes and/or rising rents that can lead to displacement.

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