CONCORD, N.H. — Governor Chris Sununu’s office distributed data May 22 purportedly showing New Hampshire’s approach to energy policy on his watch has benefited the state by keeping electricity prices relatively low.
But something was a bit off about the numbers.
Sununu, a Republican, boasted that his administration has helped consumers by not forcing a transition to clean energy sources.
“While other states have let politics drive policy, New Hampshire has always put the ratepayer’s bottom line first,” he said. “We’ve let markets, not government, drive innovation.”
Sununu said costs had increased much more over the past seven years in other New England states than they had in New Hampshire. He shared a chart showing electricity rates for residential customers had risen 70 percent more in Maine than in New Hampshire over the past seven years.
That figure was based on a methodology that compared data from just two months (January 2017 and February 2024), disregarded each state’s baseline, and directly compared raw price changes across state lines.
If the administration were to use that same methodology to parse newly released data for March 2024, it would conclude the electricity rate had risen 60 percent more in Maine than in New Hampshire over the past seven years, and it would present that figure in a bar chart alongside New Hampshire — the baseline — at 0 percent.
Here comes a reality check:
- The administration’s methodology didn’t calculate the percentage by which rates changed in each state. Had it done so, the difference between Maine and New Hampshire, for example, would not seem so extreme. Data from the US Energy Information Administration show Maine’s electricity rate rose 37.3 percent between January 2017 and March 2024, and New Hampshire’s rate rose 21.8 percent. That’s a difference of 15.6 percentage points.
- Maine’s electricity rate actually dipped below New Hampshire’s in March. It was also lower than New Hampshire’s back in January 2017. Maine’s rate per kilowatt hour rose from 16.20 cents to 22.25 cents in the relevant period, while New Hampshire’s rose from 18.42 cents to 22.43, per EIA data.
- The EIA’s monthly reports generate a very noisy dataset, meaning the state-by-state electricity rates fluctuate a lot. So it’s easy to make overly broad claims based on a limited number of data points. It’s also easy to overlook the dramatic fluctuations that roiled rates in 2022 and 2023.
When asked on Tuesday about the newly released data, New Hampshire Department of Energy Deputy Commissioner Christopher J. Ellms Jr. acknowledged that the numbers are noisy. He said it’s the long-term trendline that counts.
“Individual monthly data can move based on a variety of temporary variables,” he said. “The increased, prolonged, upward trend in pricing seen in other New England states at a greater rate is a direct correlation to bad energy policy.”
Ellms said that trendline is the key point Sununu highlighted in his May 22 statement. (which compared every New England state except Vermont).
“No matter how you look at the data, the trend of rate increases in the other states has outpaced New Hampshire,” he said. “That’s because bad policy delivers bad results.”
Although the statement quotes New Hampshire Senate President Jeb Bradley, a Republican, as saying New Hampshire’s approach is “unlike the policies of our neighboring states in the region,” it failed to mention Vermont.
Including the Green Mountain State would have painted a different picture: Vermont’s electricity rates have risen more slowly and remain lower than New Hampshire’s rates, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, the same source Sununu’s office cited for data on electricity rates in the other states.
Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Clean Energy New Hampshire, said Vermont has been aggressive in promoting renewable energy policies.
“If energy and climate goals were driving this trend, why is Vermont so affordable?” he said.
Consumer Advocate Donald M. Kreis said Vermont has pursued aggressive decarbonization policies but hasn’t restructured its electric utilities like other New England states.
“Vermont’s electric utilities are still vertically integrated monopolies, whereas in New Hampshire customers can buy electricity from competitive suppliers or community power aggregation programs,” Kreis said. “It would be interesting to figure out whether the EIA data suggests that one of those approaches is superior to the other. I haven’t done the necessary analysis.”
Sununu’s statement lists clean energy mandates in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut as policies that have been blamed for driving prices higher, and it presupposes that lower electricity rates in New Hampshire would be attributable to the state’s market-driven strategy.
“If anything is clear,” Energy Commissioner Jared Chicoine said, “it is that New England as a whole would benefit from adopting our approach.”
Officials didn’t just cherry-pick data by excluding Vermont. They also muddled data for the states they included by using a calculation that exaggerated differences between the states.
When asked how the percentages from Sununu’s statement were calculated, Ellms outlined an unusual methodology. He didn’t calculate the percentage by which each state’s rate increased. Instead, he calculated each state’s increase in terms of cents per kilowatt hour, then directly compared those price increases across state lines.
For example, residential electricity rates rose 5.28 cents in New Hampshire and 9.66 cents in Massachusetts during the relevant time frame, according to the EIA data Ellms cited. Based on those numbers alone, his methodology concluded the increase in Massachusetts was 83 percent more than the increase in New Hampshire.
But that methodology failed to account for differences in each state’s baseline. In New Hampshire, the 5.28-cent increase represented a rise of 28.6 percent. In Massachusetts, the 9.66-cent increase represented a rise of 49.3 percent.
That means electricity rates actually increased 20.7 percentage points more in Massachusetts than in New Hampshire.
Evans-Brown said state officials portrayed New Hampshire price trends as if they are meaningfully different from other New England states, but that’s an artifact of a cherry-picked timeframe.
“Comparing two points in time in this way just invites spurious conclusions,” he said, adding that New Hampshire is “right in the middle of the pack.”
Recent history suggests, however, that relatively low rates are far from inevitable in New Hampshire. There is a lot of volatility in the monthly EIA data, and New Hampshire’s rates aren’t always lower than its neighbors. In fact, New Hampshire had the highest rate of any New England state twice in 2023 and five times in 2022, according to EIA data.
Electric rates in New Hampshire skyrocketed in the summer of 2022, driven by the high cost of natural gas amid Russia’s war on Ukraine. New Hampshire had the highest rate in New England from August 2022 to January 2023, according to EIA data. As natural gas prices fell, the electricity rate in New Hampshire began to plummet.
Sununu blamed President Biden’s administration for high energy costs in 2022, citing Biden’s decision in 2021 to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Clean energy advocates contended the underlying problem is New England states are overly dependent on natural gas to produce electricity.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter. Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.