RGGI reforms could push states past EPA targets — report
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an emissions trading program in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, should adopt a number of reforms to set up its nine member states to go above and beyond the targets in U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a new report says.
The report, “Achieving Climate Commitments,” is the second in a status report on RGGI by the Acadia Center, a clean energy research group based in the Northeast.
Read full article from E&E News here.
Achieving Climate Commitments: Strengthening RGGI to Achieve State and Federal Requirements
BOSTON — Part II of Acadia Center’s status report on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Achieving Climate Commitments, describes reforms that northeast and mid-Atlantic States need to implement during the 2016 Program Review to achieve state and federal greenhouse gas reduction requirements, including:
- Aligning the emissions cap with states’ GHG reduction requirements and extending the cap to 2031.
- Adjusting for banked allowances to preserve RGGI’s effectiveness.
- Strengthening the Cost Containment Reserve to prevent inflation of the RGGI cap.
“RGGI continues to prove itself as an effective means of reducing carbon emissions and supporting economic growth. Now, northeast and mid-Atlantic states have an opportunity to build on RGGI’s success and lead the country by taking the steps necessary to meet state and federal climate requirements,” said Daniel L. Sosland, Acadia Center President.
Each of the RGGI states has committed to reducing emissions by approximately 40% across their economies by 2030, and eight of the nine participating states have established 2050 requirements for 80% reductions. By reducing emissions in the electric sector — and reducing emissions associated with electricity use in transportation and heating — RGGI will play a central role in achieving state requirements.
“RGGI is one of the most effective tools for states to reduce climate pollution,” said Peter Shattuck, Director of Acadia Center’s Clean Energy Initiative. “RGGI can and should play a central role in achieving commitments states have made to address climate change.”
Reforms to RGGI are also being considered in the context of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.
“As other states develop initial plans to meet the base requirements of the Clean Power Plan, RGGI states can be climate leaders and go above and beyond minimum federal requirements,” said Jordan Stutt, Policy Analyst at Acadia Center and lead author of the report.
The report builds on Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Status Report, Part I: Measuring Success which describes RGGI’s accomplishments since RGGI’s launch, including: 37% emissions reductions and a 3.6% decline in region-wide electricity prices. 16% more emissions reductions and 3.6% more economic growth than other states.
For more information on Part I of the RGGI Status Report, Measuring Success see: acadiacenter.org/document/measuring-rggi-success
For more information on Part II of the RGGI Status Report, Achieving Climate Commitments see: acadiacenter.org/document/rggi-achieving-climate-commitments
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Acadia Center is a non-profit, research, and advocacy organization committed to advancing the clean energy future. Acadia Center is at the forefront of efforts to build clean, low-carbon, and consumer friendly economies. Acadia Center provides accurate and reliable information and offers a real-world and comprehensive approach to problem solving through innovation and collaboration.
Public Supports Strengthening RGGI to Fight Climate Change
The next bit of good news is that—as outlined by our friends at the Acadia Center—there is much the RGGI states can do to strengthen the program so it continues to deliver benefits to our climate. RGGI works by requiring power producers in the region to buy carbon allowances at quarterly auctions or on the secondary market to cover each ton of carbon they emit, with the number of allowances declining each year. The states then use the auction revenue to support consumer programs, with the vast majority of the cash going toward energy efficiency; renewable energy; direct bill assistance; and other greenhouse gas abatement programs. As mentioned above, these investments have generated billions of dollars in regional benefits, and to keep these benefits flowing, the RGGI states must commit to further carbon pollution reductions after 2020, Acadia shows. As we’ve highlighted before, and Acadia further discusses, in addition to the cap trajectory, the RGGI states must also reform the cost containment reserve and how they treat unused, banked allowances in order to avoid undermining the climate integrity of the program.
Read the full blog post from NRDC here.
Pioneering Carbon-Cutting Program Turns 10: What Now, RGGI?
Despite the usual Chicken Little critics’ warnings that RGGI would tank the region’s economy, the opposite has happened. As member states cut carbon pollution by 16 percent more than non-RGGI states, they saw economic growth that was 3.6 percent higher, according to a recent report by our colleagues at the Acadia Center. And while electricity prices in the rest of the country climbed by 7.2 percent, they dropped in the RGGI region by 3.4 percent. In other words, the RGGI states both cut emissions and grew their economies faster than other states, all while experiencing declining average electricity prices—and bills. That’s not an implosion. It’s a home run.
Read the full blog post from NRDC here.
Massachusetts just gave a huge boost to the offshore wind industry
In a recent statement, Peter Shattuck, Massachusetts director of the clean energy organization Acadia Center, hailed the legislation as a “huge step on the path to a clean energy future.” And DONG Energy’s General Manager of North America, Thomas Brostrøm, called the legislation a “landmark moment for Massachusetts’ clean energy future and a victory for the Commonwealth’s residents and businesses.”
Read the full article from the Washington Post here.
Connecticut lawmakers, officials slam electric line project costs
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was joined Friday by Connecticut’s Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz and Bill Dornbos, the state director of Acadia Center, in calling for action by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Blumenthal, Katz and Dornbos spoke during a briefing at the state’s Legislative Office Building.
[…]
Dornbos said that one reason for the high transmission costs is that the forecasting of future needs for electricity is overestimated.
“There is a 20 percent over-estimation of future demand,” he said.
Dornbos said the concerns being raised by he, Katz and Blumenthal shouldn’t be seen as an attempt to weaken the regional electric grid.
“While you may need transmission upgrades from time to time, that doesn’t mean that you should give the utilities a blank check on the scope of the construction costs,” Dornbos said.
Read the full article from the New Haven Register here.
Will RGGI Double Down on Carbon Cuts?
Peter Shattuck, who heads the Acadia Center Clean Energy Initiative, says raising the target to 5 percent and extending it for 10 years is necessary to reach the 2030 emissions standards set by the Clean Power Plan. “Anything short of doubling down will make it harder for states to achieve the reductions in climate pollution that we need to see,” he told Public News Service.
[…]
As Jordan Stutt, an Acadia Center policy analyst points out in a blog: “Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are procuring significant quantities of hydroelectricity and renewable energy through a joint procurement, and soon-to-be-enacted legislation in Massachusetts will require additional procurements of hydroelectricity, offshore wind, and other renewables equivalent to approximately 30 percent to 40 percent of the Commonwealth’s electric consumption. New Yorkhas committed to a 50 percent renewable energy supply by 2030, and Rhode Island recently adopted a 40 percent renewable energy requirement by 2035.”
Click here to read the full story from Environmental Leader.
A ‘transformational’ mandate: Greens hail Massachusetts offshore wind, renewables bill
Peter Shattuck, director of Acadia Center Massachusetts, sees the issue differently. He pointed to the “Regional Electric Reliability Options Study” by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, which concluded a reduction in natural gas supplies will not lead to peak winter demand period electric system “deficiencies” through 2030, under existing market conditions.
The Attorney General’s study concluded New England should opt for more energy efficiency and demand-side management, rather than building new gas pipelines, a finding gas supporters say ignored dozens of studies to the contrary. Environmentalists, meanwhile, say other industry-supported analyses failed to take into account the potential of electric demand reductions.
Whether new pipelines are needed or not, both Shattuck and UCS’s Rogers expect the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to rule against the DPU decision, barring utilities from using money from the rate base to invest in gas pipelines once again.
Click here to read the full article from Utility Dive.
Importance and Implications of Massachusetts’ Clean Energy Bill
With just a few hours to go in the legislative session, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that will significantly reduce carbon pollution, reshape the regional power system, and foster new technologies that will play a large role in meeting future energy needs. The main provisions of An Act to Promote Energy Diversity (H4568) center on providing long term contracts for offshore wind, hydroelectricity, and other forms of renewable energy. These contracts will enable financing to cover the construction costs of grid-scale clean energy sources and electric transmission to connect the new projects to demand centers. The final bill meshed a streamlined proposal from the House and more ambitious and comprehensive package from the Senate to include contracting and a number of complementary pieces, most notably support for energy storage.
Offshore Wind
The core of the bill requires utilities to solicit long term contracts for 1600 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind. The procurement is the largest ever in the United States (or the hemisphere for that matter) for offshore wind, launching a brand new industry that the Department of Energy estimates could support 54,000 jobs and $200 billion in economic activity by 2030. Some of these jobs are already starting to materialize, with the arrival last weekend of a purpose-built construction vessel for Rhode Island’s Block Island Wind Farm.
With relatively shallow water close to major population centers, the Eastern Seaboard is prime location for offshore wind, and steady wind speeds allow offshore wind farms to operate at high frequencies (38%-52% capacity factors according to DOE). Once fully online and operating 45% of the time (midpoint of DOE range), the new offshore wind will produce about 6.31TWh of energy, or approximately the output of the soon-to-close Pilgrim Nuclear power plant.
Hydroelectricity and Other Renewables
The other main piece of the bill requires solicitations for 9.45 terawatt hours of hydroelectricity and other energy sources eligible for Massachusetts’ Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). The solicitation builds on an existing collaboration with Connecticut and Rhode Island that has led developers to put forward a diverse array of proposals for onshore wind, hydroelectricity, solar, energy storage, and pairing of multiple resources. Opening procurements up to diverse clean energy resources was a key priority for business, health, consumer and environmental organizations collaborating to provide input on the legislation through the Alliance for Clean Energy Solutions, an effort Acadia Center co-led with the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Broadening procurements beyond hydroelectricity alone allows for innovative approaches and forces competition that will bring costs down. Pairing of resources also helps ensure optimal use of new transmission lines needed to connect hydroelectricity from Canada, wind from Northern New England and Upstate New York, and grid-scale solar from areas where land is available.
The combined impacts of the clean energy procurements are profound. The wind farms would total more than three times the capacity of the long-stalled Cape Wind project (which was excluded from participation), and the procurement for hydro and other renewables will likely lead to an additional (~1000MW) transmission line designed for the first time to access low carbon energy, and potentially a number of smaller projects. If the new energy supplies displace natural gas, they will avoid 7.9 million tons of carbon pollution, bringing electric sector emissions down 56% from 2012 levels and helping Massachusetts make progress toward the deeper 80% reduction across the entire economy required by 2050.
Massachusetts’ legislation and joint effort with RI and CT also signify a deeper shift in planning for the region’s energy future. Significant progress has been made towards advancing energy efficiency and other customer-sited resources like rooftop solar, but over time New England will need to bring online significant additional quantities of grid-scale renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuel power plants. Additionally, there will be increased demand for clean electricity as electric vehicles replace gasoline-powered cars and heat pumps replace oil and gas for heating.
New England has previously explored steps needed to enable large quantities of grid-scale renewables (up to 12,000MW of wind and hydroelectricity in a 2010 analysis for New England’s Governors), and the Massachusetts legislation is likely to build momentum for reforms. One clear step is to plan transmission for renewables, but this planning must be paired with reforms to improve transparency and reduce high costs of the current model that encourages over-building transmission for reliability when smaller scale, clean, and less expensive alternatives exist
Energy Storage
Another promising approach for enhancing clean energy and improving the operation of the grid is to deploy energy storage. Energy storage will facilitate integration of variable resources like wind and solar, providing power when the breezes die down or clouds roll in. Storage also can avoid the need to build expensive grid infrastructure that is only needed a few hours of the year to meet peak demand. As described in another Acadia Center blog, storage provides the equivalent of warehouses for the world’s largest supply chain (the power grid), which currently works on an overpriced instantaneous delivery model. The legislation recognizes the breakthrough potential of energy storage, and directs the Department of Energy Resources to set 2020 utility procurement targets for storage, building on leadership the Baker Administration has already shown through the Energy Storage Initiative. If Massachusetts’ procurement is of similar scale to California’s successful program, utilities would need to contract for 330MW of storage, which would both help rationalize the grid and provide a boost to an industry with enormous potential and promising storage technologies being developed in the Commonwealth.
Natural Gas
The legislation includes important provisions to repair natural gas leaks but did not include language prohibiting the unprecedented proposal to require electric ratepayers to subsidize new gas pipelines. The legality of this risky and unnecessary approach will now be decided in the courts, with the fate of the controversial Access Northeast project hanging in the balance.
Additional Provisions
Additional provisions of the bill include commercial clean energy financing through tax assessments (CPACE) establishment of a nuclear decommissioning advisory council, net metering for small (under 2MW) hydroelectric facilities, expanded eligibility for fuel cells and waste-to-energy under the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard.
In all, the legislation represents a major commitment to clean energy and reducing carbon pollution. The procurements set in motion by the bill will decarbonize Massachusetts’ electric sector and accelerate the transformation of the regional energy system. At the same time the bill provides vital support for two new technologies — offshore wind and energy storage — that will put the Commonwealth at the forefront of industries that will power the energy future.
New Hampshire Approves Energy Efficiency Targets
CONCORD, N.H. — Yesterday, New Hampshire took an historic step towards reducing energy costs for its citizens. The Public Utilities Commission approved the Settlement Agreement between utilities and other stakeholders, including Acadia Center, outlining an Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) for the state. For the first time, specific savings targets have been set at a state level, and a long-term goal of attaining all cost effective energy efficiency has been approved.
Until now, New Hampshire has been the only state in the region without statewide targets. While the state’s CORE efficiency programs, run by the utilities, have been successful in reducing energy use, the state has missed out on millions of dollars in energy savings, which more robust programs could have delivered. As the Commission itself states in the order, “The EERS is a significant step toward addressing the business community’s concerns about remaining competitive in today’s economy.”
For the first three-year period, the EERS sets targets of 0.8% for electric and 0.7% for gas in 2018; an additional 1% for electric and 0.75% for gas in 2019; and an additional 1.3% for electric and 0.8% for gas in 2020. The three years of efficiency will provide cumulative savings of 3.1% of electric sales and 2.25% of gas sales, relative to the baseline year of 2014, by the end of 2020.
It also expands the role of the state Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy Board, with additional funding and the support of outside experts, to serve in an advisory role in the design, implementation, and evaluation of efficiency programs. Such stakeholder boards have been effective in other states in establishing a more efficient and less adversarial process, improving program design and delivery, and increasing stakeholder buy-in.
“We applaud the Commission for recognizing the extensive analysis and collaboration undertaken by the diverse group of utilities, environmental groups, business groups, low-income advocates, and others over the past year to come up with a plan to steer New Hampshire toward a more efficient energy future” said Ellen Hawes, Senior Policy Analyst with Acadia Center. The establishment of an EERS reflects that energy efficiency has a wide range of benefits for customers, including lowering utility bills, improving public health and comfort, offering more customer control over energy use, creating new jobs, and reducing pollution.
Acadia Center congratulates the Commission for this important step.
Contact:
Ellen Hawes, Senior Analyst, Energy Systems and Carbon Markets
802-649-1140, ehawes@acadiacenter.org
Jamie Howland, Director, Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Initiative
860-246-7121, x201, jhowland@acadiacenter.org
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Acadia Center is a non-profit, research, and advocacy organization committed to advancing the clean energy future. Acadia Center is at the forefront of efforts to build clean, low-carbon, and consumer-friendly economies. Acadia Center provides accurate and reliable information and offers a comprehensive, real-world approach to problem solving through innovation and collaboration.