In the wake of a lengthy cold snap that caused natural gas prices to spike to their highest level ever across New England, Maine policymakers met this past week to dissect the resulting rise in electricity costs and broach potential solutions.

On Jan. 27, Massachusetts saw the highest natural gas price ever recorded since grid operator ISO-New England updated its pricing database in 2003, according to energy news outlet RTO Insider.

The impact on wholesale electricity prices was stark. That day prices on the New England grid soared to $441.8/MWh by one metric, compared with an average of $135.08/MWh in January 2025.

Cold snaps like those that recently gripped Maine cause natural gas prices to skyrocket and electricity prices along with them, said Philip Bartlett II, chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission. 

That’s because natural gas accounted for 55 percent of total electricity generation on the New England grid in 2025, according to ISO-New England, and is turned to when electricity demand is at its highest.

“The biggest challenge we’re facing right now is affordability,” Bartlett said at a Feb. 5 legislative forum hosted by nonprofit E2Tech in Augusta. “We’re seeing upward pressure on every component of the bill.”

Nationally, Maine saw the third-highest increase in average retail electricity prices between 2014 and 2024, The Maine Monitor previously reported. Average prices shot up 55 percent over the decade. Electricity prices climbed even higher at the end of last year and into the start of 2026.

Bartlett also tied rising costs to the aging transmission infrastructure that delivers electricity to Maine homes. Some parts of the grid are 50 to 70 years old, Bartlett said, and the costs to repair or replace them is racking up. 

A February report compiled by consultants with the Brattle Group for the Maine Department of Energy Resources went into greater detail, adding that Maine ratepayers are still paying $20 per month on average to repair electric infrastructure damaged by winter storms in 2024.

Those payments could end soon, according to Brattle Group economist Dean Murphy, though the threat of future storms will linger.

Like Bartlett, Murphy explained that the recent uptick in electricity rates is a symptom of high natural gas demand and minimal pipeline capacity across New England, which have caused gas prices to rise exponentially. 

The New England grid dispatches the cheapest resources first — wind, solar and nuclear — but relies on natural gas for periods of especially high electricity demand, such as during extreme cold.

“When those pipelines get full, and there’s a limited amount of capacity, prices tend to spike,” Murphy said at a Feb. 11 online presentation of the report. “We’ve seen that very dramatically in the last couple of weeks, when natural gas prices in New England got to, I believe, the highest level ever.”

Cornerstone energy policy consultant Jeremy Payne was blunt at the Augusta legislative forum about what he sees as impeding Maine from diversifying energy sources to lower electricity prices long term. 

It’s taking too long for generation projects such as wind or solar farms to get through initial state environmental review and ultimately connect to the New England grid, said Payne, who is the former long-time director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association. 

Moving forward, he added, Maine ought to bring in a third party reviewer to supplement the state’s work and speed up environmental permitting. Then it should find a way to incentivize developers to build energy projects where they’re most needed, he said.

Otherwise, Payne said, energy companies will leave the state.

“There are 49 other states competing for this investment capital, and, if we make it too hard, they’re just not going to look here anymore,” Payne said. “Ultimately, applicants need to be able to get ideally a yes. … But they’ll even take a no; they just want to get to an answer.”

Bartlett with the Public Utilities Commission was similarly direct about the approach he believes Maine should take to lower electricity prices. Maine needs to enhance the grid’s load flexibility — its ability to efficiently dispatch and conserve electricity during periods of high demand, he said, echoing the findings of the Brattle Group report.

“There’s a lot we need to do both in terms of replacing outdated assets but also modernizing the grid so that it can accommodate [electric vehicles] and other [power sources] that we want to put on the grid, and make it much more flexible.”

There are currently efforts underway to bring more renewable energy sources to Maine and broader New England. For example, the Public Utilities Commission has a proposal request out for renewable energy projects in northern Maine and an accompanying transmission line.

“Being overly reliant on natural gas when we have a pipeline constraint system is just not workable,” Bartlett said.

Adding more capacity to the grid to accommodate more renewable energy projects, however, would cost ratepayers more in the short term. The Public Utilities Commission is trying to find the balance between price and stability, Bartlett said.

“You can see a future where we can get a lot of these different pieces stabilized and improved, but the path to getting there becomes so much more complicated when people are really struggling to pay the bill,” Bartlett said.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.