WE PROBABLY DON’T NEED to tell you: Gasoline prices are way up in Massachusetts, as in the rest of the country, as war between the US and Iran continues to disrupt critical global energy supplies.
How bad? Try a 50-cent increase in a month. Average regular gas prices in Massachusetts are now $3.97 per gallon, up sharply from $3.47 a month earlier – and $2.96 a year ago, according to AAA.
Retail heating oil prices have jumped $2 per gallon on average in the last year in Massachusetts, according to state data, resulting in an increase of more than $200 for the average home that heats with oil.
Energy affordability was already the top household concern in Massachusetts well before the US and Israel attacked Iran, outranking groceries, health care, and housing, according to a recent survey conducted this past winter from the Massachusetts Chambers Policy Network.
That consumer sentiment has driven Beacon Hill to scramble for ways to save residents money on their utility bills as Massachusetts faces some of the nation’s highest energy costs.
But now, as residents face even more of an energy crunch due to an armed conflict entirely out of Massachusetts’s control, Gov. Maura Healey faces predictable pressures of how to respond as she seeks reelection, since pain at the pump can signal broader inflation that ripples across the economy.
Healey’s three Republican gubernatorial challengers have all called on her to pause the state’s 24-cent-per-gallon gas tax as a way of providing consumers direct relief now. It’s something that Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has supported in his state.
On the other side, environmental advocates argue there is no better time to make the case for the large-scale switch to renewable energy sources and electric vehicles as a means of escaping the volatility of fossil fuel price spikes.
“American consumers have no control over the price of fossil fuels because the price is set, not here in the United States, but in the Strait of Hormuz, and the American consumer is relearning that issue,” US Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat of Massachusetts, said in an interview. “Once again, the answer is cheap, renewable energy moving to all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies, which aren’t dependent at all on the Persian Gulf, on the Strait of Hormuz.”
Kyle Murray, director of state program implementation in Massachusetts for the environmental nonprofit Acadia Center, said that the seemingly sudden collective lightbulb going off about the case for renewables to insulate us from fossil fuel volatility is like deja vu (with the caveat, he added, that this particular snag with the Strait of Hormuz could also choke off key shipping routes important for clean energy sources, too).
“I urge the governor to keep making that case that this is the affordability path forward: by pursuing renewables and energy efficiency,” Murray said.
Healey, though, hasn’t necessarily made that case and could face more pressure to articulate a clear approach, though there aren’t many good options for a governor of a state like Massachusetts to deal with the ramifications of an international conflict. She rejected the call to suspend the gas tax, which brings in roughly $600 million per year and is already an increasingly strained mechanism for funding transportation as fewer gallons of gasoline are bought thanks to electric vehicles.
And Healey has previously delayed more aggressive efforts to push cleaner heating fuels and EVs.
Healey spokesperson Jacqui Manning referred to the governor’s comments she made in an interview with WBZ-TV three weeks ago for insight into her approach to rising gas prices, in which she criticized Trump and touted her “all of the above” energy strategy.
“I just don’t think it’s going to get us very far right now in the overall picture,” Healey said about calls to suspend the gas tax. “The biggest thing is that this war has got to end, and the cost of oil needs to start going down instead of continuing to go up.”
