Rhode Island Clean Energy Guide

Rhode Island is a small, natural-gas-heavy grid whose clean energy story is almost entirely about offshore wind. It was the first state to hang a commercial offshore turbine in the water and the first to legislate a 100% renewable standard — but in-state generation still runs roughly 84% on natural gas. The 704 MW Revolution Wind project, live since March 2026, is the hinge on which the whole transition turns.

Don't mistake the policy leadership for a clean grid. Solar in the Ocean State is real but fragmented, no single farm tops about 41 MW, battery storage is barely off the starting line, and the offshore pipeline beyond Revolution Wind thinned badly in late 2025. This is a state carried by one big offshore bet, a nation-leading mandate on paper, and some of the highest retail power prices in the country pushing back against every incentive.

A Nation-Leading Mandate on a Gas-Heavy Grid

Rhode Island's policy ambition runs well ahead of its physical grid. In July 2022, Governor Dan McKee signed legislation (2022-H 7277A / 2022-S 2274Aaa) requiring 100% of the state's electricity to be offset by renewable energy by 2033 — described at signing as the most aggressive Renewable Energy Standard of any U.S. state. The targets step up annually: roughly +6% in 2025, +7% in 2026 and 2027, climbing to +9.5% by 2032 before hitting 100%. That standard sits on top of the 2021 Act on Climate, which mandates economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050 with binding interim targets (45% below 1990 levels by 2030, 80% below by 2040).

The gap between mandate and reality is the story. For the 12 months ending March 2026, natural gas supplied roughly 84% of in-state generation — one of the most gas-dependent grids in the country — while low-carbon sources contributed only about 14% (solar around 10.4%, wind 1.8%, biofuels 1.7%). Rhode Island is small: net generation of about 9.78 TWh ranks 46th nationally, net summer capacity of 2,322 MW ranks 49th, and the state imports a large share of the power it actually consumes. The 100%-by-2033 target leans heavily on offshore wind and renewable energy certificates, not on decarbonizing the gas plants inside its own borders.

Net Metering, Incentives, and the Price Backlash

High power prices color every incentive debate here. At 24.15 cents/kWh, Rhode Island has the fourth-highest average retail electricity price in the nation, and that number is a recurring cudgel in energy politics. Standard net metering credits generation up to 125% of on-site consumption, with virtual net metering up to 10 MW per site, but for projects on or after April 15, 2023, the renewable net-metering credit was cut 20% and capped under a statewide 275 MW program limit. Customers pick either net metering or the Renewable Energy Growth (REG) program — which pays 15-to-20-year fixed production-based tariffs — not both.

In 2025, legislators leaned into the price backlash with bills to place a moratorium on new net-metering contracts and repeal the REG program outright, and Governor McKee signed a net-metering bill (HB-5580) into law on June 27, 2025. On the incentive side, the state's Renewable Energy Fund offers residential solar grants of $0.65/watt up to $5,000 (plus a $2,000 solar-plus-storage adder) and commercial grants from $0.70/watt, layered on top of the federal Investment Tax Credit (30%) and Direct Pay for tax-exempt entities. Notably, Rhode Island has no state renewable-energy tax credit described by its Office of Energy Resources.

A Storage Target With Almost Nothing Behind It Yet

The 2024 Energy Storage System Act (S.2499 / H.7811), signed by Governor McKee on June 26, 2024, set a 600 MW storage target by December 31, 2033, with interim rungs of 90 MW by 2026 and 195 MW by 2028 — making Rhode Island the 11th state with a storage policy target. The problem is the starting point: the state's first and essentially only utility-scale battery is a 3 MW / 9 MWh Agilitas system in Pascoag that came online in 2022. Getting from single-digit megawatts to 600 MW in under a decade is a standing-start sprint, and the PUC-run interconnection and tariff framework meant to enable it only concluded its stakeholder process in May 2025.

The Offshore Wind Bet: Revolution Wind and Block Island

Everything material in Rhode Island's clean energy portfolio traces back to two offshore projects. Revolution Wind — 704 MW across 65 Siemens Gamesa 11 MW turbines, sited in federal waters about 15 nautical miles southeast of the coast and interconnecting at Quonset in North Kingstown — is the flagship. Developed by Orsted and Skyborn Renewables (Eversource sold its 50% stake to Global Infrastructure Partners in early 2024), it began delivering power to the New England grid on March 13, 2026, and was roughly 93% complete, with full 704 MW output expected in the second half of 2026. Of that capacity, 400 MW is allocated to Rhode Island and 304 MW to Connecticut, at a contract price of 9.8 cents/kWh across an investment of about $1.5 billion.

Revolution Wind also became a proxy fight for the national politics of offshore wind. A federal stop-work order in August 2025 halted construction before a court injunction lifted it in September 2025 — a reminder that in this market, the biggest siting risk isn't a town council but Washington.

The older story is Block Island Wind Farm: 30 MW across five 6 MW turbines about 3.8 miles offshore, operating since December 2016. Originally built by Deepwater Wind (acquired by Orsted in 2018), it was the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States, powers up to roughly 17,000 homes, and ended Block Island's reliance on diesel generation. It's small, but it put Rhode Island first — and it validated the U.S. offshore supply chain that Revolution Wind now scales up.

Solar: Real, Fragmented, and Capped by Small Parcels

In-state solar is the largest low-carbon source on the grid, but it's built from small pieces. The state hosts roughly 440 MW across about 74 operating solar farms, and no single in-state array exceeds about 41 MW. The largest is Robin Hollow Solar (41 MW, with storage) off I-95 in West Greenwich, online since December 2023. Close behind are the Dry Bridge / Brown University array (40 MW, North Kingstown, tied to Brown's clean-energy procurement) and the North Smithfield solar farm on Iron Mine Hill Road — 38.4 MW on a 420-acre site developed by Green Development, the state's most active in-state renewables developer, projected to power about 8,740 homes. The Office of Energy Resources tallies a broader clean-energy portfolio of 1,402 MW (778 MW solar including behind-the-meter, 430 MW offshore wind, 148 MW onshore wind, plus landfill gas and small hydro), but the utility-scale solar reality is many modest farms, not a handful of giants.

Siting and Local Opposition: A Town-by-Town Solar Fight

On paper, the state Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) — a three-member panel (the PUC chair, the DEM director, and the Associate Director of Administration for Planning) established under R.I. Gen. Laws Sec. 42-98-1 — is the single licensing authority for major energy facilities, consolidating permits that towns or state agencies would otherwise issue. In practice, most utility-scale solar is permitted at the municipal level, through local zoning boards and town councils. That's why the real solar market is shaped less by the EFSB than by a patchwork of local ordinances and moratoria.

The fights are concentrated and, for a state this size, surprisingly organized — almost entirely over ground-mounted solar and forest clearing. Exeter amended its zoning to impose a moratorium blocking new utility-scale solar in residential areas. Johnston saw an attempted moratorium fail for lack of a second, then a reintroduced solar proposal reignite resident opposition. Cranston residents fought a commercial-scale project for years on ecosystem grounds, and Burrillville and Foster passed ordinances restricting how much natural vegetation a developer may clear. The 2023 solar-siting law (H5853 / S0684) — the state's first statewide framework — responded by steering projects to preferred, previously-disturbed sites (rooftops, parking lots, closed landfills, brownfields) and making projects in "core forests" of 250 acres or more ineligible for state incentives.

Offshore wind, by contrast, faces little in-state grassroots opposition — its resistance comes from the federal level, as the Revolution Wind stop-work order showed. And a new front is opening on storage: a proposed 208 MW lithium iron phosphate battery facility on Callahan Road at Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown would be the state's largest BESS by far, with construction targeted for around 2026 and completion by summer 2029. For the running tally of who's fighting what and where, see our Rhode Island opposition tracker.

Demand and Outlook: Electrification, Not Data Centers

Unlike the PJM states chasing hyperscale data-center load, Rhode Island's demand growth is driven mainly by electrification of heating and transportation. Data centers are not a major factor in this small market. ISO New England forecasts New England electricity consumption rising about 11% by 2034; for Rhode Island specifically, ISO-NE projects transportation and heating electrification to add roughly 68 MW to summer peak in 2025 and about 956 MW by 2034, with heat-pump adoption pushing winter peaks up by thousands of megawatts regionally. EV registrations in the state grew 48.8% (roughly 4,300 to 6,400 vehicles) per the 2024 Clean Energy Industry Report, and the clean-energy sector now supports 14,976 jobs — up 3.2% year over year, outpacing the state's 1.9% overall job growth.

The supply-side picture got harder in November 2025, when Rhode Island Energy ended contract negotiations with SouthCoast Wind — a planned roughly 200 MW purchase — amid federal permitting uncertainty. That leaves the state with no binding offshore-wind procurement target beyond Revolution Wind, precisely as national policy turns hostile: OBBBA's phase-out of clean-energy tax credits and a federal administration openly skeptical of offshore wind both raise the cost and risk of the next project. Rhode Island's rising winter loads still need to be met, and if offshore wind stalls, the fallback is more of the natural gas that already dominates the grid.

The honest read: Rhode Island has the boldest renewable mandate in the country and, in Revolution Wind, one of the East Coast's most consequential offshore projects finally delivering electrons. But it has thin storage, a fragmented small-scale solar base hemmed in by town-level opposition, no offshore pipeline behind its flagship, and the nation's fourth-highest power prices fueling a political backlash against the very incentives meant to close the gap. The 2033 target is real; whether the projects to hit it get built is now largely a federal question.

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