August 2025

Key Takeaways

Brent closed at $66.59 per barrel last week, down 9.1% week-over-week. WTI fell 5.1% week-over-week to $63.88 per barrel. President Trump has been increasing pressure on Russia to end the war with Ukraine and recently announced secondary sanctions on India as a main importer of Russian oil. The NYMEX prompt month decreased $0.09/MMBtu week-over-week to $2.99/MMBtu. The rolling 12-month strip also decreased $0.09/MMBtu week-over-week to $3.69/MMBtu. Net storage injections totaled 7 Bcf for the week ending August 1. The NEPOOL 12-month electricity strip decreased by 0.67% week-over-week to $66.57/MWh. The 2026, 2027, and 2028 calendar strips all experienced small price drops.      


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THE OBBA vs. the IRA: Chrystalizing Energy Policy Changes

By Lakshya, Bharadwaj, Senior Energy Analyst

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law a budget reconciliation bill championed by Republicans and branded the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). While there is a long list of measures in the act that will have tangible and transformative impacts on public policy in the country, this blog will focus in solely on what this piece of legislation means for the energy landscape. In extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, the OBBBA commits to a higher federal....


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NEW ENGLAND LEGISLATIVE UPDATES | Balancing Renewable Goals with Energy Affordability

By Thea Aslanian, Energy Analyst


Across New England, state legislatures are rebalancing ambitious climate goals with rising concerns over energy affordability. Costs of living in the Northeast have risen 3% year-over-year as of June, with household energy costs rising almost 13%. In the first half of 2025, several states passed major reforms to their renewable energy programs, utility regulations, and energy departments. As the federal government sours on clean energy, New England state lawmakers are rethinking and restructuring previous energy programs with an emphasis on costs.


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Photo by: Ken Howard

Staff Pick | Andy Price

Abundance

By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson


To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough. Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains… Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to….Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel. (Excerpt from Amazon Book Review)

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