Five years ago, Massachusetts officials hired the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a leading global energy firm, to help navigate a complicated problem quickly coming to the fore: how the state’s ambitious climate commitments would impact its electrical grid.
The expected growth in intermittent energy sources like solar and wind and rising demand for electricity for transportation and heating threatened to strain the state’s ability to deliver power reliably.
So the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a quasi-public state agency, set out to find innovative approaches to improve the electric distribution system.
The agency inked a $379,000 deal with EPRI in 2021 to host three workshops with the utilities, state officials, and other stakeholders, and submit a white paper to the agency outlining barriers and opportunities for meeting the climate targets. Samantha Gilman, a spokesperson for EPRI, confirmed that the organization submitted the required white paper to MassCEC in 2023 — and was paid the full amount of money for the work.
That report identified between $27 billion and $46 billion in investments that need to be made through 2050 in electric system infrastructure upgrades alone to connect more solar power, meet increased demand, respond to shifting electric generation patterns, and maintain overall reliability.
And it noted that the utilities were falling short of the average annual spending required to boost the distribution system by up to $800 million per year to modernize their vast network of substations, circuits, transformers, and other pieces of infrastructure.
Yet the study has not been publicly released. It’s one of at least three the state has commissioned but delayed or shelved on how it will reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and adapt to the impacts of a warming world.
More Context
- A climate chief in an era of Trump and energy affordability: Does Melissa Hoffer still get a say? (June 2026)
Published by MassINC