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Shaheen Joins Colleagues in Calling Out Trump Administration Policies Causing Rising Energy Costs in New England

(Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) joined Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Peter Welch (D-VT) Angus King (I-ME) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in sending a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin detailing how the Trump administration has increased energy costs for families and calling on the Trump administration to take immediate action that will actually support energy affordability in New England and across the country.

The Senators wrote, in part: “On Tuesday, you wrote an opinion piece in the Boston Globe about your thoughts on New England’s energy grid, attempting to diagnose the issue of rising energy prices in the region. Costs are too high and are only getting higher, but unfortunately, your op-ed failed to mention the immediate source of these rising prices: the actions of your Administration and Republicans in Congress. While energy demand surges, your policies are strangling America's cheapest and quickest-to-deploy sources of energy—solar and wind—by hiking costs, creating insurmountable permitting hurdles, and injecting uncertainty into the market. At the same time, the Trump administration is attempting to kill programs meant to lower energy bills. The end result is fewer affordable megawatts on the grid, higher electricity costs, and less support for struggling American families. If you want to solve the problem of energy costs in New England, we would direct you and your colleagues to immediately address these straightforward sources of uncertainty and increased costs created by the Trump administration.”

The Senators continued: “It would make economic sense for the gap between supply and demand to be filled by cheap, accessible solar and wind. Utility-scale solar and onshore wind are the cheapest sources of electricity on average to operate and quickest to build – even without subsidies. The victor of the energy race is clear through the results of the free market. In 2024 alone, wind, solar, and batteries accounted for 94 percent of all new electric generation capacity—with 50,000 megawatts of new solar power, 4,000 megawatts of new wind, and 11,000 megawatts of batteries added to the grid. Compare these with the 2,500 megawatts of natural gas and zero from coal added last year. But instead of continuing to meet surging power demand with the energy at our fingertips and allowing the free market to prosper, the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to stymie wind and solar.”

They concluded: “With ongoing misinformation and misdirection on energy costs in the press, it is important that we set the record straight on why families are finding it harder than ever to keep the lights on, stay cool in the summer, and stay warm in the winter. We urge you to stop making the energy cost crisis worse, end your attack on our energy grid, and instead support the solutions that could lower costs today – build cheap, deployable power, fund programs to help families afford energy bills, cut demand with energy efficiency, and end unfettered exports.”

The full text of the letter can be found HERE.

Shaheen leads legislative action in the U.S. Senate to support energy efficiency projects and energy-saving initiatives that help save Granite Staters money on their utility bills. Recently, Shaheen introduced the Energy Circuit Riders Act to help ensure communities in rural America can take advantage of cost savings from energy efficiency and clean energy projects. Shaheen secured $4 million in the Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for a new Energy Circuit Rider Pilot program. Last month, Shaheen pushed back on the Trump administration’s plans to scrap the Energy Star Program, which helps Americans save on energy costs.

Shaheen was a lead negotiator of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided an approximately $6 billion investment in energy efficiency, including funding for residential, municipal, industrial and federal entities to implement efficiency upgrades based upon her longstanding bipartisan legislation with former U.S. Senator Rob Portman.

 

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