Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling work at Always On Energy Research, a nonprofit energy modeling firm.
Imagine your state’s lawmakers passed a bill requiring that roughly 4 percent of your groceries on every trip to the store had to be bananas. Worse, each one had to be grown in a local greenhouse for 177 times the price of an import. A $2 bunch would suddenly become a $354 budget-buster. That’s inconceivable, but it’s a useful analogy to describe what D.C. policymakers did by requiring that 4.3 percent of the city’s electricity come from local solar facilities in 2025.
That misguided effort began seven years ago when the city council required that 100 percent of the jurisdiction’s electricity derive from renewable energy by 2032. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the law would “solidify Washington, D.C.’s place as the national leader in the fight against climate change.” It established the most aggressive standard in the United States and doubled the required share of solar power generated within the city to 10 percent by 2041. Three years later, the council upped it to 15 percent.
Costs have predictably skyrocketed. Between 2019 and 2025, the price of electricity in D.C. rose by nearly 66 percent, more than double the 29 percent average national increase. Rates have even outpaced those in California, which has spent billions to harden its power system to prevent wildfires.
D.C. has no such excuse, and Bowser is finally getting worried. In a June letter to the council, she wrote that the solar mandates are adding $20 per month, or $240 per year, to every electricity bill. If left unchanged, they could hike the bill by as much as $40 per month, or $480 per year, by 2029. The mayor has since released an Energy Affordability Action Plan, which acknowledges that the district’s mandates are the most expensive in the nation. She has also proposed reducing the solar targets to help contain costs.
That’s a fine instinct but still flawed. The city’s mandates aren’t simply aggressive; they’re ill-suited to D.C. and misunderstand how energy works.
Renewable mandates aren’t satisfied by an electric company building and operating wind and solar facilities. A firm complies with the law by purchasing and using a renewable energy credit (REC). Each one is essentially a paper transfer that represents the “renewable” attributes of one unit, usually a megawatt-hour of electricity (MWh), generated by a renewable outfit. D.C. generates only 4 percent of its own electricity, mostly from solar. It purchases the rest from the regional grid, operated by PJM Interconnection, which uses a combination of coal, natural gas, nuclear and other sources to power homes. D.C. electric companies are then required to buy enough RECs — and special locally generated solar RECs — to meet the renewable mandates.
While normal RECs in D.C. cost $24.72 per MWh in 2025, solar RECs were on average $407.24 per MWh, according to a D.C. Public Service Commission report. The latter are pricey for two reasons. First: The city is an especially bad place to generate electricity from solar panels. D.C. is almost entirely developed, meaning there is little room for large utility-scale solar facilities. Second: Because the city’s mandate mostly excludes solar RECs generated outside the city, the credits are predominantly created by rooftop systems that are estimated to be two to three times as costly as ground-mounted utility-scale facilities.
It needn’t be that burdensome. In states such as Texas, which has more sun and land for large installations, solar RECs traded for $2.30 per MWh in the first half of 2025. If D.C. lawmakers had allowed these credits to satisfy the roughly 380,000 solar RECs retired for compliance that year, we estimate that customers would’ve saved $154 million, or about $437 each.
As our research has shown, in-state renewable mandates raise costs for everyone. It’d be sensible to scrap them altogether and let energy providers serve customers at the lowest cost. If that’s too ambitious for the mayor, a middle ground is there for the taking. Reduce the amount of expensive local solar credits that suppliers must buy or broaden eligibility so cheaper credits from elsewhere can satisfy the mandate.
Bowser’s term is ending soon, but there’s time enough to rectify the runaway costs she’s helped impose on ratepayers. Until then, monthly bills will continue to drive the district bananas.
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