Lack of transparency feeds skepticism of Massachusetts’ clean heat commission

Massachusetts climate advocates are hopeful but not yet convinced that a first-in-the-nation state Commission on Clean Heat will result in adequate policies for transitioning buildings from fossil fuels.

Gov. Charlie Baker signed an executive order establishing the commission in September. In the months that followed, the administration shared little about the process of assembling the panel, declining even to identify its members until the group was sworn in and met for the first time on Jan. 12.

Following the commission’s first closed-door meeting, many advocates are left wary of the group’s makeup, transparency, and timeline.

“I remain hopeful that the commission will use its opportunity to address the climate crisis and push the commonwealth away from more reliance on fossil fuels in equitable ways,” said Amy Boyd, director of policy at the nonprofit Acadia Center. “But I think it may take a lot of work to get there.”

Building use of fossil fuels, for purposes such as heating and cooking, accounts for 27% of Massachusetts’ greenhouse gas emissions and poses a major challenge to the state’s attempts to slash emissions in half by 2030 and go carbon-neutral by 2050.

As part of this process, at the end of 2020, the Baker administration released a decarbonization roadmap outlining strategies for reaching this goal, including tighter building envelopes and widespread adoption of electric heat pumps. Among the goals detailed in the report is a target of retrofitting 100,000 homes with electric heat pumps each year, but a recent Boston Globe investigation found just 461 homes were converted in 2020.

The commission is tasked with helping translate the administration’s strategies into concrete policy ideas that will help accelerate this progress. The panel is expected to meet regularly for several months with the goal of submitting its recommendations to the administration by Nov. 30, shortly before Baker, who is not running for re-election, hands over the reins to a new, incoming governor.

Environmental advocates universally praised the goals of the commission and expressed sometimes precarious optimism that the group could have an important impact on emissions reductions.

“I am hopeful that they can get to work and that they can come up with some really path-breaking recommendations that lead to the decarbonization of that sector,” said Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Still, advocates are keeping a wary eye on the commission’s progress.

When Baker announced the formation of the commission, he promised a group that would have a “diversity of experience.” The 21 members revealed in January are drawn from a range of industries and backgrounds, including utilities, building, finance, real estate, housing, urban planning, energy, and technology.

However, some environmental advocates are not sure the promised diversity is there. One member is an expert on green building, another has experience retrofitting houses for greater energy efficiency, and another has long worked on clean energy policy, but these environmentally leaning members are far outnumbered by other interests, advocates worry.

“I’m disappointed to see that the sectors most represented on the commission are business and fossil fuels, rather than consumers, environmental justice communities, or building electrification experts,” Boyd said.

Other advocates expressed concern that a commission could produce great recommendations that just don’t go anywhere. Henry pointed to the Commission on the Future of Transportation, established by Baker in 2018.

The group’s December 2018 report included a range of policy suggestions, such as modernizing public transportation, considering congestion pricing, and upgrading the electric grid to support wider adoption of electric vehicles. At the same time, however, it skirted the question of how to pay for the initiatives outlined and didn’t include any mechanisms for driving action or holding policymakers accountable, Henry said. So this time around, she is hoping the clean heat commission will make questions of funding and implementation central to their work.

“Massachusetts has a long history of grandiose commissions that yield little in terms of actual policy progress,” Henry said. “I am really going to be looking at the quality of the recommendations and the actionability.”

Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, is also concerned about the commission’s commitment to laying out effective policy specifics. Chretien would like to see the group engage deeply with the public, sharing ideas, listening to feedback, and releasing a draft of its recommendations before its November deadline, so it can hear back from stakeholders before making its official report to the administration.

This kind of robust engagement, he said, will help create a plan with strong enough public backing to survive a change of leadership when a new governor takes office in January 2023.

“If they come out with something in November, and the governor-elect doesn’t like it, and there hasn’t been enough public comment, it will have been a wasted year,” Chretien said.

For some advocates, the commission’s timeline is dragging out an already lingering process at a time when the climate crisis is ever more urgent. Ben Hellerstein, state director of Environment Massachusetts, wondered why the state is just now convening the commission, nearly three years after it began working on the climate roadmap in 2019.

Hellerstein would like to see more action right away, rather than another 10 months of meetings and debates.

“We have the technologies to reduce energy waste and heat our buildings with clean electricity, and there are plenty of policy ideas out there,” Hellerstein said. “Studies and commissions are nice, but if we have to choose I’d rather spend less time confirming what we already know, and more time on the action that’s urgently needed.”

Read the full article in Energy News Network here.

What the new Mass Save rewrite means for you

This week, Massachusetts approved a major overhaul of the Mass Save program, the state’s leading energy efficiency program and best tool to help residents kick fossil fuels and lower their utility bills. The dense, 343-page order lays out a three-year plan for 2022 through the end of 2024, and it is full of rebates, interest-free loans, free efficiency upgrades, and other incentives aimed at making homes across the state more efficient and resilient.

With regional transportation pact in doubt, Vermont considers other policies

Climate advocates in Vermont are considering new strategies for reducing transportation emissions as the prospects fade for establishing a regional cap-and-invest program.

Vermont’s initial Climate Action Plan, released Dec. 1, leans significantly on the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative for meeting the state’s mandatory emission targets. The Northeast interstate initiative would require fuel suppliers to buy annual pollution allowances, which would shrink in supply each year while also generating revenue for clean transportation projects in participating states.

Weeks ahead of the Vermont plan’s release, however, the governors of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts announced that their states would not join the transportation program after all, dealing a blow that has left its future uncertain.

A group within Vermont’s climate council recently began discussions on other potential policies to reduce transportation emissions. They include adopting a statewide transportation fuel standard or joining a cap-and-invest program led by California and Quebec.

Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, adopted in 2020, set a legally binding requirement to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. At 40%, transportation emissions make up the biggest share of Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions, the nonprofit Energy Action Network found in an analysis of 2018 state data.

The 23-member Vermont Climate Council was created by the same legislation to develop a climate action plan to guide state policy. Among the recommendations in its first action plan was for the state to join the Transportation and Climate Initiative, known as TCI.

One of opponents’ biggest points of resistance to the initiative has been its impact on gasoline prices. Estimates vary, but the TCI website projected a 5-cent increase per gallon in 2023.

“To me, the high cost and price volatility of gasoline is an argument to transition off, not double down on it,” said Jared Duval, executive director of the Energy Action Network and a member of the Climate Council’s transportation group.

With electricity costs far lower than gasoline prices, electric vehicles could help drivers save money. That is, if they can afford the upfront cost — something the Transportation and Climate Initiative could be used to help them do.

Duval and the other group members recently issued a memo to launch discussions about two alternative strategies on transportation that could be incorporated into an amended state climate plan in June. One idea is to implement a transportation fuel standard. The other is to join the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-invest program led by California whose members also include Quebec, which shares a border with Vermont. (The other member is Nova Scotia.)

Duval said the transportation fuel standard offers key benefits for Vermont. It would require fossil fuel suppliers to decarbonize, either by changing the fuels they sell or by purchasing credits to offset their emissions. As the memo notes, performance standards have been used in other sectors such as electricity, through which states including Vermont have pushed utilities to decarbonize their generation sources. Several states, including California, Oregon and Washington, have already adopted standards for transportation fuels.

A transportation fuel standard would also mirror the heating fuel standard recommended in Vermont’s Climate Action Plan. That recommendation has already led the state’s legislature to begin drafting a law to address Vermont’s other major emissions contributor: building heating fuels. It’s possible the building fuel standard could eventually be extended to cover the transportation sector.

The Western Climate Initiative may be more challenging to join, given that Vermont’s governor hasn’t supported the cap-and-invest program already on the table in the Northeast. Still, the Western initiative has one advantage over the Transportation and Climate Initiative simply by being up and running.

“I think the clean transportation standard makes a lot of sense,” said Jordan Stutt, carbon programs director at Acadia Center. “We’ve seen the low carbon fuel standard approach elsewhere.” He added that other states had been considering similar standards in addition to the Transportation and Climate Initiative, and if TCI does end up happening, the two policies would complement each other.

Stutt’s work has focused on advancing TCI. He said the program “is now a fully developed policy that states have in their back pocket. And while it’s still a possibility, it has a very uncertain future right now and states cannot afford to wait on that.” They need to invest in new clean transportation solutions now, he said.

As a reference point, the transportation group in Vermont has pointed to Oregon and Washington, both of which have implemented transportation fuel standards but whose leaders have opted not to join the Western Climate Initiative. Oregon in December implemented a new carbon cap for all fossil fuel emissions, which will likely eclipse the transportation standard the state already has.

Angus Duncan, former chair of Oregon’s Global Warming Commission and a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council, helped write the state’s climate strategy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals, adopted in 2007. The goals and policy recommendations have been important for the state to make progress on climate goals, he said, noting a 2019 New York Times analysis that found per capita emissions dropped in Portland more than 20% from 1990 to 2017. At the same time, total emissions rose nearly 25% in the same period.

“There’s bad news and good news,” he said, “but the bad news way outweighs the good news.” A fuel standard adopted by Oregon in 2015 “has not moved the pump price of gasoline very much at all,” he said. That’s a good thing in that it helps prove wrong warnings opponents initially gave that the standard would lead to a rise in gas prices. But it’s also a bad thing, he said, because without a steady, discernible increase in gas prices, people won’t be incentivized to switch to electric vehicles.

Duncan said that overall, Oregon’s fuel standards and other policies, including adopting California’s vehicle efficiency standard, put it on a track similar to the path it would have been on had it joined the Western Climate Initiative. Joining that pact could still help Oregon invest in more clean transportation solutions, he said, but it’s not likely to happen since it’s difficult to get state leaders on board with something that could mean surrendering Oregon’s policy initiatives to other states. Oregon is part of an interstate electricity planning body with the three other Northwest states, but while that body makes recommendations, it doesn’t require members’ compliance.

He said the new carbon cap in Oregon will eventually lead to an increase in gas prices. That could help incentivize drivers to start using electric vehicles, he said, but that shift will depend on the state and electric utilities also investing in electric vehicle incentives including public fast-charging stations, particularly in low-income areas where residents often can’t have a charger at home. At the same time, he said, vehicle manufacturers — which he noted small states like Oregon have no control over — need to make electric vehicles available at lower costs and with greater driving ranges so drivers can travel long distances.

If that happens, he said, “we can expect that EV penetration curve, which is relatively flat right now, to bend sharply upwards.”

“I’ve not fully given up hope [on TCI], and I feel like the Transportation and Climate Initiative … has been underway for well over a decade,” said Johanna Miller, energy and climate program director at the Vermont Natural Resources Council and a member of the transportation subgroup that released the new memo. “I’m an optimistic person, so I’m hopeful that it is not completely off the table, but I’m also pragmatic.”

She and others noted that while federal pandemic relief and infrastructure aid could help Vermont in the near term, the state needs a long-term strategy to reduce transportation emissions.

“Whether that’s a performance standard, like a clean transportation standard … or another cap-and-invest program like the Western Climate Initiative — I think they’re both promising and I think they warrant a lot more analysis, especially embedded in the Vermont context,” Miller said.

Read the full article at Energy News Network here.

Governor Mills Unveils Legislation To Improve Maine’s Electric Utilities, Enhance Accountability, and Protect Maine Ratepayers

Governor Janet Mills today unveiled legislation that significantly reforms and strengthens the State’s approach to the oversight and accountability of Maine’s electric utilities.

The Governor’s bill, An Act to Ensure Transmission and Distribution Utility Accountability (PDF), protects the interests of Maine ratepayers, improves the operation and service of Maine’s electric utilities, and increases oversight and accountability of them.

The legislation requires that the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) establish minimum standards of service that utilities must deliver for Maine ratepayers. The legislation also empowers the PUC with enhanced authority to crack down on utilities that do not meet these standards by imposing harsher penalties and, if necessary, even forcing the sale of the utility for inadequate service.

The bipartisan legislation, developed by the Governor’s Energy Office in conjunction with Maine’s new Public Advocate Bill Harwood, is sponsored by Senator Stacy Brenner (D-Cumberland) and co-sponsored by Senator Mark Lawrence (D-York), Senator Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook), Senator Eloise Vitelli (D-Sagadahoc), House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford), and Representative Nate Wadsworth (R-Hiram).

“Whether it’s poor customer service, billing problems, or extended power outages, the issues experienced by Maine people over the past several years have made clear that Maine doesn’t have the tools it needs to hold our utilities accountable. It’s time for that to change,” said Governor Janet Mills. “With this bill, we are shifting our approach to Maine’s electric utilities. We will empower the Maine Public Utilities Commission to design improved standards for service and finally give the Commission the tools it needs to ensure that utilities deliver on those standards or face new, harsh consequences. Maine people deserve nothing less than safe, reliable, and affordable service on a strong electric grid. My Administration will work with the Legislature, the Public Advocate, and the Public Utilities Commission to see that happen.”

“I applaud the Governor for her foresight in bringing forward this important legislation,” said Bill Harwood, Maine’s Public Advocate. “The bill strengthens electric utility regulation of Maine by filling in some glaring gaps in the statutes regulating Maine utilities. As Public Advocate, I welcome these new provisions and urge the Legislature to adopt them so that the OPA can use them to better serve and protect Maine ratepayers.”

“I am proud to sponsor this legislation and commend the Governor for moving it forward. “The energy sector will play a key role in ensuring the State of Maine is able to meet our climate commitments as well as provide reliable service for Maine people,” said Senator Stacy Brenner. “To accomplish this, we must hold our utilities accountable, and this legislation takes crucial steps to give the Public Utilities Commission the regulatory tools they need.”

“We must take serious action now to ensure Maine’s electric utilities are accountable to Maine customers. This legislation is a bipartisan effort to address the current problems we’re facing and set minimum standards for performance of our utility providers,” said Senator Mark Lawrence. “This is a very bold effort by Governor Mills to hold utilities accountable. I’m pleased to work with the Governor, and other members of the EUT Committee, to move this legislation forward.”

“The interest of Maine’s ratepayers has always been my priority in the legislature and will continue to be my focus. This bill represents apolitical measures to provide the regulators the tools necessary to ensure our electric utilities are held to standards that Maine people expect and deserve in a market with limited or no competition between providers,” said Senator Trey Stewart. “I look forward to working with committee members on this measure as it moves forward and crafting an agreement that’s in the best interest of those we serve.”

“Maine has been leading the nation on climate action and investments in renewable energy that are making us less dependent on expensive, out-of-state fossil fuels,” said Senator Eloise Vitelli. “To make sure these efforts are as effective as possible, we must have a regulatory structure that ensures our utilities are answerable to Maine people, especially as we pursue beneficial electrification.”

“Mainers deserve reliable utility service. Unwarranted disconnections and billing errors should result in consequences for the companies who are delivering power to our homes and businesses,” said House Speaker Ryan Fecteau. “I am joining Governor Mills in introducing this legislation to ensure reliability by strengthening accountability.”

“Cost and reliability of electricity service are of paramount importance to Maine people,” said Representative Nate Wadsworth. “This legislation will ensure there are standards in place that allow the Public Utilities Commission to provide transparency and accountability in regulating our electric utilities.”

The legislation was also welcomed by energy and environmental organizations across Maine:

“Maine deserves and needs electric utilities that are leaders across a broad range of performance measures, including reliability, affordability, customer service, clean energy, modernizing the grid, and climate action. Unfortunately, that’s not what we have today,” said Pete Didisheim, Advocacy Director, Natural Resources Council of Maine. “We commend the Governor for proposing this bill, and we look forward to working with lawmakers on a version that requires utilities to perform, pay penalties, or be replaced.”

“If we’re going to transform buildings, transportation, and the electricity grid to better serve Maine’s energy consumers and respond to the climate crisis, we need to start with utility regulatory reforms that give the Public Utilities Commission the tools to regulate utilities with Maine people in mind,” said Jeff Marks, Maine Director of the Acadia Center. “Acadia Center commends Governor Janet Mills for taking these necessary steps to best leverage ratepayer dollars to ensure reliability and affordability while simultaneously planning across all state agencies for climate and equity benefits for all Mainers.”

“To achieve Maine’s climate objectives, we need our electric utilities to provide a modern, reliable and clean power grid,” said Phelps Turner, Senior Attorney with Conservation Law Foundation. “This bill is an important step toward ensuring that our utilities improve their performance and do their part in securing a clean energy future where more of our electricity comes from renewable resources and where more of our buildings and vehicles are powered by electricity.”

“Part of our mission at Maine Conservation Voters includes ‘holding politicians accountable’ to their words, actions, and votes to protect Maine’s environment and communities. We look forward to Maine’s Legislature championing that same sentiment for our state’s utilities with this legislation. To build a healthier, more equitable, and just clean energy future for all, we must ensure that the entities tasked with implementing this future are reliable and committed to the vision advanced by Maine’s Climate Action Plan,” said Kathleen Meil, Director of Policy and Partnerships at Maine Conservation Voters.

The legislation reforms Maine’s approach to its electric transmission and distribution utilities in five primary ways:

Requires New, Quarterly Service Reports and Imposes Harsher Penalties for Substandard Service

The legislation requires the Maine Public Utilities Commission to set minimum standards for safe, reasonable, and adequate service to Maine customers. It then requires the PUC to issue quarterly reports on whether a utility is meeting these minimum standards. These reports will address utility operations, customer service, such as billing, and initiatives to combat climate change, such as interconnecting to solar projects.

If these quarterly reports determine that a utility is consistently failing to meet this standard, then the legislation requires the PUC is to impose new, higher administrative penalties – up to $1 million or 10 percent of the utility’s annual revenue – to force the utility to improve service.

This new approach establishes an ongoing system of review by the PUC that is a transparent and an alternative accountability mechanism to traditional utility oversight.

Forced Divestiture to Protect Maine Ratepayers

The legislation also establishes a process under which the PUC determines whether an electric utility is unfit to provide safe, adequate, and reliable service at just and reasonable rates to Maine ratepayers. If the PUC determines that sale of the utility is necessary to protect the interests of ratepayers, it will then invite bids from qualified buyers and select the purchase proposal that provides the most benefits to customers in the form of better service and lower rates at a fair purchase price.

Additionally, the legislation stipulates that, in the event the PUC invites bids from qualified buyers, it must also consider a bid to create a consumer-owned, quasi-municipal corporation for the purpose of purchasing the utility. This creates a mechanism whereby the PUC could evaluate whether an investor-owned utility or a consumer owned utility is in the best interests of the State.

New, Periodic Financial Audits

The legislation provides for periodic audits for Maine’s distribution and transmission utilities to ensure that the utility’s cost of providing service are consistent with the estimates used to set rates. Whenever Maine’s utilities have gone more than five years without a rate case, the legislation requires the utility to make a filing with the PUC comparing its current actual expenses to the estimates used in previous rate cases. If the discrepancy is greater than 10 percent, the PUC may conduct a financial audit. This new mechanism allows the PUC to review the utility’s financial books and records outside of a traditional rate case.

Strengthening Whistleblower Protections

The legislation strengthens existing utility whistleblower provisions — which protect utility employees from retaliation or discrimination by the utility, such as termination of employment, if the employee testifies before the Legislature or provides information to the PUC regarding the utility’s operations — by:

1. expanding the protected individuals to include former utility employees, utility affiliates and utility contractors;
2. protecting disclosures to the Public Advocate;
3. narrowing the exemption from protection to only include providing false information, rather than the current exemption that includes providing any information that may harm the utility;
4. limiting the award of attorney’s fees to a prevailing employee or contractor if the employee or contractor is required to go to court to enforce the statute and removing from the law the provision requiring the employee to pay the utility for its attorney’s fees if the utility prevails;
5. prohibiting the utility from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with local unions in order to silence potential whistleblowers;
6. requiring the utility to notify its employees, affiliates and contractors of their rights under the whistleblower statute; and
7. authorizing the PUC to impose administrative penalties in the event a utility violates the statute.

These stronger protections will allow the PUC to respond actively to whistleblower cases.

Improving the Ability of Utilities to Prepare for and Respond to the Impacts of Climate Change

The legislation requires transmission and distribution utilities to submit every two years to the PUC a 10-year plan for protecting the utility’s assets and operations from the expected impacts of climate change, the first time in Maine history a report of this manner would be required. The PUC will then review the plan and, with input from stakeholders, may order the utility to take necessary action to protect Maine ratepayers. This new process ensures that utilities are prepared as much as reasonably possible for worsening storms, flooding, fires, or other climate related catastrophes that may impact the utility’s assets, operations, and delivery of service to Maine people.

The legislation will be considered by the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities, and Technology Committee.

Read the full statement here.

With new Mass Save three-year plan, Massachusetts sharpens its best climate-fighting tool

In a move hailed as a sea change in the state’s climate fight, Massachusetts regulators approved a plan that would dramatically expand incentives for homeowners to invest in electric heat pumps as the state races to shift people off fossil fuels.

On Monday, the Department of Public Utilities approved a major rewriting of the state plan that provides energy efficiency incentives to consumers. Unlike previous versions of the Mass Save plan, the new one centers on curbing global warming by encouraging people to switch from oil or gas to electric heat or renewable sources, and also includes provisions to help make the transition more affordable to people in disadvantaged communities.

Among the $4 billion in new incentives is hundreds of millions of dollars for electric heat pumps, which, for the first time, will be available to gas customers looking to move off of fossil fuels.

The incentives are seen as critical to building momentum for the state’s quest to wean 1 million homes from fossil fuels by 2030, a massive undertaking that had languished because of high costs, anemic incentives, and, in some cases, active discouragement of homeowners looking to electrify their homes. In 2020, the state had converted just 461 homes.

“This is an ambitious, forward-looking plan,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, of the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Far from the historic reliance on upgrading and replacing light bulbs as a means of saving energy, he said, the new plan offers a path to transform buildings in the state in a meaningful way.

The state’s climate law mandates that greenhouse emissions be cut in half by 2030 and reduced to net-zero by 2050. The plan approved Monday is estimated to eliminate 848,713 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2030 — the equivalent of taking 184,578 passenger cars off the road for a year.

“This is an ambitious, forward-looking plan,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, of the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Far from the historic reliance on upgrading and replacing light bulbs as a means of saving energy, he said, the new plan offers a path to transform buildings in the state in a meaningful way.

The state’s climate law mandates that greenhouse emissions be cut in half by 2030 and reduced to net-zero by 2050. The plan approved Monday is estimated to eliminate 848,713 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2030 — the equivalent of taking 184,578 passenger cars off the road for a year.

An earlier draft of the plan submitted by Mass Save administrators in November called for all but eliminating rebates for fossil fuel heating systems and for creating a new performance incentive structure that would push the program to do more in specific arenas, such as electrifying homes and reaching out to environmental justice communities.

The new DPU order walks those steps back, mandating that the state retain some fossil fuel incentives, and altering the performance incentives in a way that Peterson said will make it less enticing for the companies behind Mass Save to help achieve climate and equity goals.

“There are a number of tools throughout the original draft plan that the DPU seems to have rejected or minimized or weakened or modified,” said Peterson. “I worry that will make it a very challenging landscape for the program administrators to accomplish the greenhouse gas requirements set by the secretary, and to do all the good they were going to do not just for climate but also to advance our equity goals and reach underserved populations.”

In a joint statement, the groups Clean Water Action, Conservation Law Foundation, and Community Labor United said they were disappointed that specific measures to help environmental justice communities had been watered down and made vague. “DPU’s actions today send a clear message that they fail to understand, let alone value, the interconnections between poverty, racial, and climate justice that are now a formal part of their public mandate,” the groups said in the statement.

The draft plan also rejected an offering from the municipal aggregator Cape Light Compact that would provide 250 low- and moderate-income homes with solar power, heat pumps, and battery storage for free. The DPU argued that incentives for solar power are not allowed under its statutes.

For many advocates, the reemergence of incentives for equipment run on fossil fuels in particular is hard to fathom. In doing so, the DPU cited a statutory requirement that the program offer all cost-effective energy efficiency options.

Amy Boyd, director of policy for the Acadia Center and a member of the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, said the DPU decision “will result in more fossil fuel installations than there would have otherwise been.”

“The DPU still feels that its mandate from the legislature is to prioritize these small potential emissions savings, nickel and diming between fossil fuels,” said Caitlin Peale Sloane, vice president for the Conservation Law Foundation’s Massachusetts office. “After 10 years of working on Mass Save, it’s clear to me that the system will not be changed by the agencies. It needs to be changed by the legislature.”

Senator Cindy Creem said that she and her colleagues will be considering just that. “If the statutes governing Mass Save are preventing it from becoming a program that is fully devoted to decarbonization, then it may be time for the Legislature to reconsider those statutes — and the role of utility companies in administering the program,” she said.

Senator Mike Barrett, who was the lead author of the state’s 2050 climate plan, also said that more legislative involvement was needed, while crediting the DPU with doing a “decent job refereeing the situation under the laws as they exist today.”

Ultimately, he said, the state needs more tools in its toolbox to help spur the shift off fossil fuels. “Mass Save cannot be the only tool we use to clean up emissions in the building sector, but it is a tool that needs to remain in the toolbox,” he said. “It’s just that we need to upgrade the instrument from time to time.”

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

McKee pledges federal funds to address climate change

In his State of the State address, Gov. Dan McKee pledged millions of dollars to “[step] up efforts to combat climate change.”

Those millions will come almost exclusively from the federal government.

The biggest ticket climate change initiative McKee is proposing is $95 million to prepare the Port of Davisville in Quonset and the South Quay Marine Terminal in East Providence to work on offshore wind construction. Administration officials say that money will come from the American Rescue Plan Act.

A new $37 million heat pump incentive program is also being paid for with ARPA funds. And the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will put $23 million towards construction of electric vehicle charging stations.

At a press conference Wednesday, McKee defended the decision not to use general revenue for climate initiatives, saying, “we’re going to spend what’s available and make it work to the best of our ability, leverage that as far as we can, and then let’s see where we end up.”

“A lot of these are infrastructure investments, so obviously that infrastructure is going to continue to live on,” commented Terry Gray, acting director of the Department of Environmental Management. “It’s not going to solve our climate problems. It’s not going to get us to full compliance with the Act on Climate. But it’s a huge step in the right direction.”

The Act on Climate requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 45% of 1990 levels by 2030, and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Gray also leads the state’s executive climate change coordinating council, which is charged with meeting those mandates. McKee’s budget would allocate $6 million to the EC4, which previously has operated without any dedicated funding or staff. That funding would come out of an energy efficiency incentive program. That’s a strategy environmental advocates question.

“We can’t solve the climate crisis by robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Hank Webster, director of Acadia Center in Rhode Island. “We need to do it all and it needs to be supplemental investments, not scoops.”

Webster named several priorities that were not included in the budget announcement, including that the state resurrect its electric vehicle incentive program, and invest in solar energy and battery storage. He also noted that McKee has pledged significant investment in affordable housing, and said the administration should require that housing be energy efficient and heated with electric heat pumps.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” said Priscilla De La Cruz, director of government affairs for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.

But she said, “it’s promising and exciting all around to see the focus around climate. And I think it also really aligns with where Rhode Islanders are. We know that the vast majority of Rhode Islanders do support the state taking action on climate change.”

De La Cruz, who also leads the Environmental Council of Rhode Island and Climate Jobs RI, said that environmental advocates are eager to see the complete budget proposal.

“In a nutshell, [I’m] encouraged by this step. But we’re definitely looking for details and to see if it’s enough to get us where we need to go in terms of putting us on that path to meeting the Act on Climate goals.”

McKee is also proposing a bond that would include $16 million for the Municipal Resilience Program, $5 million clean energy loans for small businesses, and $3 million for forest conservation programs.

And he announced that his administration plans to use federal ARPA funds to speed up work on over a hundred road and bridge construction projects, by an average of four years.

Read the full article at The Public’s Radio here.

Questions remain about proposed sale of Narragansett Electric to Pennsylvania corporation

PROVIDENCE — A couple of months ago, PPL Corporation, the Pennsylvania company that wants to buy National Grid’s electric and gas operations in Rhode Island, released an update to an internally produced climate assessment, which outlined the steps it’s taking to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its holdings by 2050.

“The transition to a clean energy future offers us an opportunity to rethink how energy is produced, stored, delivered and used,” CEO Vincent Sorgi said when the report, titled “Energy Forward,” was released in November.

Not long afterward, at a hearing before Rhode Island regulators on the proposed $5.3-billion purchase of what’s known as the Narragansett Electric Company, PPL’s would-be president of operations in the Ocean State was asked about the climate report.

“I haven’t studied it,” David J. Bonenberger, currently a PPL vice president, said.

The answer surprised Hank Webster, an environmental advocate who put the question to Bonenberger during hearings in December before the state Division of Public Utilities and Carriers. Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, expected the company’s top executives to not only be familiar with what appears to be a major companywide initiative but also to detail how the goals to reduce emissions would be met in Rhode Island.

Here’s what to expect: Gov. Dan McKee set to give first state of the state address Tuesday night

After all, Gov. Dan McKee signed into law in 2021 Rhode Island’s landmark initiative to slash carbon pollution over the next generation. Under the Act on Climate, which sets out a net-zero goal by 2050, greenhouse gas reductions are mandatory and enforceable in Rhode Island for the first time.

So there’s a lot of interest on the part of environmental groups such as the Acadia Center and the Green Energy Consumers Alliance in what PPL, an Allentown-based utility that serves customers in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia, is planning to do to green Rhode Island’s electric and gas systems.

“Climate change is a priority here in the Ocean State and we cannot let it fall off track with the transfer from National Grid to PPL,” Webster said in an email. “PPL knew climate change would be a focus of these hearings, so it was surprising key executives testified they were only vaguely familiar with their own decarbonization report.”

Could the transaction cost ratepayers?

Decarbonization isn’t the only matter that has raised questions about PPL’s bid to buy Narragansett Electric, the dominant electric supplier in Rhode Island and the state’s only distributor of natural gas.

The office of Attorney General Peter Neronha submitted filings from experts who say there’s a risk that Narragansett Electric’s 780,000 customers in Rhode Island could face rate increases to pay for the costs of transferring the utilities to PPL. They say that the financial information provided by PPL as part of the docket is inadequate and unconvincing.

And there are also concerns within the state agency that has approval authority over the transaction.

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While one employee at the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, deputy administrator John Spirito, is acting as hearing officer in the case and a final decision will be signed off on by Linda George, administrator of the agency, members of the division’s advocacy section and their consultants say that PPL has failed to prove the benefits of the transaction. They estimate the costs that could fall on ratepayers to be in the millions of dollars.

On the eve of the hearings last month, PPL released a list of 17 commitments in response to written testimony filed by the Attorney General’s Office, the division and other intervenors. They ranged from issuing a report on meeting the goals of the Act on Climate within a year of the transaction closing to staffing up its natural gas procurement team with experienced people.

But the list has done little to assuage the concerns. On the first day of hearings, state Rep. David Morales asked the division to delay a decision on the transaction, arguing that PPL hadn’t demonstrated how Rhode Islanders would be protected from potential rate hikes.

“Clearly, this transfer of our utility system in its current form is not in the best interests of the public,” the Providence Democrat said.

With post-hearing memos due next week, the division’s advocacy section, which is tasked with representing the interests of ratepayers, is still recommending denial of the application jointly filed by PPL and National Grid, spokesman Thomas Kogut said.

The position of the Attorney General’s Office hasn’t shifted either.

“We remain significantly concerned about this matter,” spokeswoman Kristy dosReis said.

Environmentalists looking for detailed steps on reducing emissions

When Webster cross-examined Bonenberger, he specifically asked about reducing the carbon footprint of Narragansett Electric’s natural gas system, which is primarily used for heating. The Energy Forward report released by PPL has a lot to say about reducing emissions from electric generation, but not so much about gas.

Here in Rhode Island, there’s been a growing interest in shrinking the carbon footprint of the heating sector by ramping up the installation of electric heat pumps and exploring the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen. The focus has been on Aquidneck Island, which experienced a gas outage a few years ago and where National Grid has put forward a solution to a projected shortfall in supplies.

In his answer, Bonenberger didn’t get into specifics. He pointed more generally to the commitment to come up with a plan in response to the Act on Climate if the sale is approved. Doing anything earlier on reducing emissions associated with gas service or other areas within the Rhode Island utility system would be presumptuous, he said.

“We’re not a company that looks to put out headlines with no concrete plan to back up those headlines,” he said.

As far as PPL’s overall support for cutting emissions, CEO Sorgi said there’s no question where the company stands.

“We are absolutely committed to helping the state get to their decarbonization goals,” he testified. “I can tell you that right now.”

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But Webster says PPL should have filed detailed plans on reducing emissions in Rhode Island months ago.

“Comparatively, National Grid has developed several potential decarbonization pathways, even building a geothermal heating network project in Massachusetts that could serve as a model for changes they implement to Rhode Island,” he wrote. “There’s a demonstrable gap in experience and the Division needs to make PPL work very quickly to close it.”

Kai Salem, policy coordinator with the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, was also left wanting more.

“We would want to see measurable, enforceable commitments that we could count on before deciding whether this is in the public interest,” Salem said in an interview.

When asked about the exchanges regarding the Act on Climate during the hearings, a PPL spokesman said the company is refraining at this time from commenting on the proceedings outside of oral testimony and written filings.

Concerns over clean energy programs

There are also questions about economies of scale and whether Rhode Island would suffer if it’s removed from the National Grid network that also operates electric and gas utilities in Massachusetts and New York, and in which services are shared throughout the three states.

For example, before the deal with PPL was struck, National Grid had filed documents with regulators outlining plans to modernize the electric grid with the aid of smart meters to track consumption and report data to better manage the delivery of power. The move would have been made in conjunction with New York and Massachusetts. The expectation was that Rhode Island would have seen savings by doing it at the same time as the larger states.

When asked about this at the hearings, Sorgi said his company already has experience in implementing smart grid technology in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

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“When we look at the estimates for what [National] Grid was planning on deploying there, we can match or exceed the cost estimates for that because we’ve done it and we have the expertise,” he said.

But PPL has not made a formal commitment on what the costs could be. The company says it would provide estimates within a year of the transaction closing.

And while it’s true that PPL is considered an industry leader when it comes to the use of smart meters, its programs have not always gone smoothly.

It first rolled out new meters in Pennsylvania two decades ago, but some of the devices failed to provide all the information required by regulators and the company had to replace them, securing permission to do so in 2015. The company’s smart meter proposal in Kentucky was initially rejected by regulators in 2018, who weren’t convinced of the benefits, before a new plan was approved last year.

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Energy efficiency is another area of uncertainty surrounding PPL’s experience. The states where National Grid operates rank high in terms of their policy efforts in conserving energy: Massachusetts is second in the nation, Rhode Island fourth and New York fifth on the most recent scorecard from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. But the states where PPL is active are lower: Pennsylvania is 19th, Virginia 25th and Kentucky 33rd.

PPL says the differences are a function of what regulators in individual states want.

“It’s just different priorities in different jurisdictions,” Bonenberger testified. “We have a track record of meeting all the requirements in any jurisdiction we operate in.”

A decision with big implications for Rhode Islanders

As the hearings wrapped up, Spirito, the division hearing officer, wondered aloud if the standards set by opponents to the sale could be met only by National Grid with its decades of experience in Rhode Island. Some appear to want the company to be forced to continue operating in the state, he said.

He asked the parties involved to address the issue in their post-hearing briefs, which are due Tuesday. Spirito has set a date of Feb. 25 for a decision on the sale.

Under state law, for the application to win approval, PPL must prove that “the facilities for furnishing service to the public will not thereby be diminished” and that the transaction is “consistent with the public interest.” It’s a standard that leaves room for debate.

“The evidence in this record makes it abundantly clear that PPL’s ownership is consistent with the public interest and will not harm the general public,” Jerry Petros, a lawyer for the company, said in the hearings.

Petros pointed specifically to the state’s climate goals, saying that PPL is uniquely positioned to help meet them, through its experience with advanced meters and grid-management tools.

“This is truly a unique opportunity for Rhode Island,” he said.

While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given its approval to the deal, opponents in Rhode Island, including staff with the division, say the risks of the transaction outweigh the potential benefits. That’s not only when it comes to cutting emissions, but also in regard to basic nuts and bolts of utility service, like securing reliable, reasonably priced gas supplies in New England, a market where demand is perpetually high and one in which PPL has no experience.

No matter what happens with the sale, the impacts will be far-reaching. No previous utility case of this magnitude has come up for approval in Rhode Island within our lifetimes, according to Christy Hetherington, chief legal counsel for the division who helped argue the case for the advocacy section.

“The Advocacy Section cannot emphasize enough how this transaction stands to impact all facets of these systems — the reliability of gas and electric delivery to our homes and the costs of these services, costs that will directly impact the rates that the average citizens will have to pay to keep the lights on or to keep warm in the winter,” she said in the hearings.

Read the full article at The Providence Journal here.

As electric rates rise, gas-fired power emerges as both scapegoat and savior

WESTBROOK — In a building bigger than a football field, one of two 185-ton natural gas-fired turbines inside the Westbrook Energy Center is ramping up on a cloudy December afternoon.

A day earlier, the region’s electric grid operator in Massachusetts told the energy trading desk at Calpine Corp. in Houston to start the plant at 2 p.m. the following day and run until midnight.

Calpine is obligated every day to offer up to 550 megawatts of capacity from this plant to a wholesale energy bidding process run by regional grid operator ISO New England. That’s enough electricity to meet the needs of 550,000 homes.

These “day-ahead” bids are meant to assure that on each following day, the region will have enough generating capacity every second of every hour, regardless of weather or demand.

Westbrook doesn’t get selected every day. But when it does, it’s not hyperbole to say the plant is helping to keep the lights on in New England.

Despite its essential role, natural gas is under fire. In mid-November, the Maine Public Utilities Commission directly blamed high wholesale natural gas prices for the more than 80 percent jump in “standard offer” electric supply rates that most Central Maine Power and Versant Power home customers are starting to see in their bills this month.

Even more ominous, ISO New England warned in early December that limited gas pipeline capacity and liquified natural gas deliveries could put the region’s electricity supply in a “precarious position” if there’s an extended cold snap between now and spring.

So as winter deepens, natural gas is a study in contradictions. It seems to be simultaneously keeping the lights on, raising electric bills and contributing to the risk of rolling blackouts.

It’s a confusing set of circumstances for Mainers to pick apart.

Policymakers in Maine and the rest of New England are pushing an urgent transition to renewable energy to fight climate change, largely by encouraging solar and wind power. But despite the growth of renewables, natural gas plants such as the one in Westbrook will still make up half of the region’s generating capacity in 2022.

A look back at ISO New England data on that cloudy December day highlights the enduring role of natural gas. Fifty percent of the 20,913 megawatts of available capacity in the region was gas-fired. Thirty percent came from nuclear power and 6 percent from hydroelectric stations. Other renewables made up just 15 percent, mostly from wind farms.

Even in Maine, where the bulk of the state’s generating capacity is made up of hydro, wind and biomass, natural gas plays an outsize role. Gas plants generated 70 percent of the standard offer supply that the PUC approved for residential customers in CMP’s service area for a period in 2020 and 2021.

But last Tuesday, when morning temperatures in Maine plunged to zero or below, the limitations of gas were on full display.

With gas in short supply or very expensive, oil became the “marginal fuel” on the grid, meaning it was being dispatched to generate the next megawatt of needed power. Gas generation dropped to 42 percent of the fuel mix while oil shot up 16 percent. On this cold day, it was oil that was keeping the lights on.

Maine’s largest power plant, 610-megawatt Wyman Station in Yarmouth, was pressed into service. Wyman rarely runs, but as dawn broke Tuesday, a plume of smoke rose from its 421-foot stack into the frigid air over Casco Bay.

On Saturday morning, another near-zero day with gusty winds, Wyman Station was running again. ISO-New England showed oil contributing 19 percent of generating capacity, with natural gas down to 32 percent.

And therein lies the paradoxical role of gas power and its impact on what Mainers will pay for electricity in the 2020s.

New England is racing to phase out fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas – and their climate-changing emissions. Experts call it decarbonization. But the energy sources that will replace them, largely solar and wind, can’t produce power 24/7.

So until economical, long-duration energy storage is developed and sited, existing gas-fired plants such as the Westbrook Energy Center will be needed to some degree.

Contributing to that need is the reality that always-on options such as Canadian hydro and nuclear power face opposition for a variety of reasons. Exhibit A is the proposed 1,200 megawatts of capacity from Quebec over the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line.

Mainers voted to kill the project in November, in part because of allegations from critics that the line also could carry fossil fuel power. Construction has stopped, and the case is now before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Calpine, incidentally, helped fund the opposition campaign. It did so because NECEC’s power was expected to be less expensive than gas, which meant Westbrook would be dispatched less often by the grid operator.

FUTURE UNCERTAIN FOR GAS

How much gas plants will be needed, and for how long, is unclear and being hotly debated. Two studies done in 2020 show the difference of opinion.

A study commissioned by Calpine concluded that, while gas plants will run fewer hours in the future, they’ll still be essential players for decades. Their main role will be to provide reliability and firm capacity, the ability to start on demand and run as long as required.

Firm capacity will be even more crucial in the years ahead as the region moves to electrify its economy, using renewable energy to run cars and heat buildings. The trend is expected to shift periods of peak electric use from summer to winter, a season when heating demand is high and solar energy is at its low point.

“We think that through 2050, you’ll have to have gas in the resource mix,” said Seth Berend, vice president of power trading at Calpine.

But environmental activists say the imperative of slowing climate change means natural gas must be phased out much sooner.

A study by Acadia Center, a regional environmental group, suggests that gas generating capacity could be cut from nearly half to 10 percent by 2030. To get there, New England will need strategies that include greatly increasing the amount of clean energy generation and storage, as well as more so-called distributed energy resources such as small solar projects built close to where power is needed. The group also calls for halting any investment in new gas infrastructure.

“You can achieve the same goal at a lower cost and with lower impacts,” said Melissa Birchard, the group’s senior regulatory attorney.

One thing is beyond dispute: Natural gas is subject to wild price swings. When that happens, Maine electric rates will go along for the ride.

The past two years illustrate the point. In 2021, standard offer electric rates hit a very low 6.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. This year, they’re above 11 cents.

What happened? Experts blame an unusual confluence of global events last fall.

The pandemic and extreme weather disrupted fossil fuel production in the United States. European tensions with Russia limited gas imports, raising wholesale prices. High prices created incentives for record exports of liquified natural gas, fuel that could have been burned in the United States.

These and other disruptions were occurring  just as the Maine PUC was requesting bids for standard offer electricity supply for 2022, in a region with a pipeline system that struggles to keep up with demand during the coldest days. On those days, wholesale gas prices can skyrocket.

“This is why the standard offer rate went up,” said Drew Landry, Maine’s deputy public advocate. “The standard offer suppliers had to build into their calculations the risk that, sometime in January or February, they may have to pay an extreme price. The alternative to paying that price is the lights going out.”

There’s an adage in the utility industry: Most people only think about electricity when they get their monthly bill or if they flip the light switch and nothing happens. For 2022, at least, higher monthly bills will be the price Mainers pay to avoid the second consequence.

In two short decades, natural gas has gone from savior to scapegoat in New England. Its promise as a cleaner-burning fuel has been eclipsed by alarm over the climate-changing contribution of methane, the largest component in natural gas.

In 2000, the region’s generation mix was dominated by nuclear power, oil and coal. Natural gas contributed 15 percent. The nation’s gas pipeline system actually ended in Lewiston.

But public opposition to nuclear power solidified after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979. A failed effort to build a second reactor at Seabrook, New Hampshire, led its owner to declare bankruptcy in 1988. In 1997, Maine Yankee in Wiscasset shut down, too expensive to repair and maintain. At the same time, pressure was  mounting to close highly polluting oil and coal plants.

Where would New England’s electricity come from in the 21st century?

By chance, new gas deposits were discovered in western Canada, off Nova Scotia and in Pennsylvania and New York. Natural gas was hailed as a “bridge” fuel, a source to move America past dirty coal and oil on the way to a renewable-energy future.

Soon, new high-pressure pipelines were being developed – two of them that bisect Maine and went into service in 1999: Portland Natural Gas Transmission System and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline. Complementing the supply was a new liquified natural gas import terminal in Saint John, New Brunswick, completed in 2009.

Developers began building power plants near these lines to take advantage of the new supply and the region’s newly deregulated wholesale electricity market. Among the first was the Calpine plant in Westbrook, completed in 2001.

The Westbrook plant was part of a new generation using combined-cycle technology, in which waste heat in the gas turbine exhaust is recovered and sent to the steam turbine, greatly increasing efficiency and reducing airborne emissions.

RELIABLE POWER AT A PRICE

On that cloudy December afternoon, two operators were sitting in the plant’s control room. Monitoring 19 computer screens, the men were confirming that pumps, feed water and other systems were engaged as they prepared to put half the plant’s output on line.

“We never know what we’re going to run tomorrow until we get our day-ahead awards,” said Holly Bragdon, the plant’s manager.

Water must be heated to 2,000 degrees to start the steam turbine, Bragdon explained. Because the plant ran the day before, the system was still hot enough for power to ramp up in one hour. A cold start could take four hours. But newer plants can respond even quicker, illustrating the as-needed, balancing act for gas in a growing mix of intermittent renewable generators.

As the plant came to life, Bragdon received an email from Berend’s team at Calpine’s power trading desk in Houston. It said ISO New England wanted the plant to shut down that night but start both turbines the next day, two hours apart.

Calpine is paid – through ratepayer charges – to offer the plant’s full output every day or face financial penalties. This is how the lights stay on in New England.

But even without Canadian hydro, the plant isn’t needed as much as it used to be.

Federal energy data show that Westbrook ran at 79 percent capacity in 2002. Today, it’s closer to 20 percent. One reason is the once-cheap offshore gas from Nova Scotia has petered out over 20 years. Another is that wind and solar are filling in more hours as their capacities increase.

But solar panels don’t work in the evening or at night. Land-based wind turbines are sluggish on most summer days. Massive offshore wind farms and long-duration storage could change things, but not right away. For instance, the region’s largest battery storage project is scheduled to come on line in Gorham in 2024, rated at 175 megawatts of capacity for two hours.

“There’s still a big need for gas at certain hours,” Berend said.

The problem is, gas in New England is more costly than in other parts of the country. At certain hours of peak winter demand, prices can spike. That’s because the system that brings gas into the region from the south is barely big enough to handle demand from both power plants and the thousands of homes and businesses that have converted from oil to gas since 2000. For perspective, the Sappi paper mill in Skowhegan, which made the switch in 2014, uses enough gas each year to offset up to 4.2 million gallons of industrial-grade oil.

Seeking to lower wholesale prices in New England, industry groups tried for years to expand the gas supply network. Many Maine political leaders were on board with that goal in 2012, when former Gov. Paul LePage and Republicans controlled state government. They wanted Maine electric customers to help subsidize new gas lines in New England, arguing that the cost reduction in power would be worth it. That plan failed to advance, in part because residents and politicians in Massachusetts opposed a major new pipeline, Kinder-Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct.

Opposition has only hardened since then. Critics have even renamed the fuel, calling it “fossil gas” or “fracked gas,” slang name for the hydrofracturing technology used to extract gas from bedrock formations. Even the idea of extending distribution lines can be met with community resistance, as Summit Natural Gas discovered last year after announcing plans to expand in the midcoast. In March, the company withdrew efforts to build a $90 million pipeline to Rockland.

Based on the deepening opposition, it’s widely assumed that no new gas pipeline infrastructure will be built in the region, according to Matt Kakley, a spokesman for ISO New England. That could make plants such as Westbrook even more valuable to ensure grid reliability during the region’s transition to renewables.

“We see them as important in the short term or even the medium term,” Kakley said. “Down the road it might be storage, but right now, natural gas is playing that role.”

Read the full article at the Portland Press Herald here.

Massachusetts Proposed Three-Year Energy Efficiency Plan Would Deliver Record-Setting Benefits For a Modern Energy Economy

Massachusetts is on the verge of having another nation-leading Three-Year Energy Efficiency Plan, this time specifically aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reaching environmental justice communities. Thanks to the requirements of the Climate Act of 2021 and the efforts of the Energy Efficiency Advisory Council (EEAC), on which Acadia Center is a voting member representing the environmental community, the proposed plan introduces new elements to energy efficiency planning in the Commonwealth that will deliver record-setting ratepayer benefits and drive meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reduction to help meet our state’s climate targets.

The proposed plans call for a $3.94 billion investment in energy efficiency, which will provide around $13 billion in ratepayer benefits, the highest levels in New England. The Climate Act of 2021 set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirement for the plans for the first time ever. The expected reductions that this plan offers (845,916 metric tons of CO2e) will exceed the target set by the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs (845,000 metric tons of CO2e).

To meet these targets, the program administrators (PAs) set the social cost of carbon at $393 per ton and the discount rate at 1%, treating the future impacts of climate change as more significant than in prior plans. These figures were appropriately set to “account for the intergenerational nature of climate change,” based upon a study commissioned by the PAs. Under the Climate Act of 2021, the D.P.U. must prioritize equity and greenhouse gas emissions reduction in its decisions. Utilizing these values provides a way in which the D.P.U. can appropriately value the health of future generations in compliance with its expanded mandate.

Following more than a year of work with the Equity Working Group subcommittee of the EEAC, the Three-Year Plan includes an innovative commitment to closely monitoring participation, expenditures, savings, and benefits in 38 environmental justice communities around the state. The EEAC also got the PAs to agree to link a piece of their bonus (or performance incentive) to the amount of ratepayer benefits they generate from these 38 communities and how well they meet their electrification targets.  These performance incentives can induce PAs into behavior they would not normally prioritize and to align with the Commonwealth’s policy choices. A different approach to give the PAs a bonus based on how well they served renters in the last Three-Year Plan was rejected by the D.P.U., but Acadia Center is confident that this essential proposal will survive scrutiny.

Acadia Center is participating in the dockets (D.P.U. 21-120 through 21-129) as full intervenors, actively appearing in evidentiary hearings and submitting both Initial and Reply Briefs. Acadia Center believes these groundbreaking plans are well within the authority for the D.P.U. to approve.

The D.P.U. is set to make its decision on this plan in late January. The plan represents an unprecedented opportunity to provide benefits to ratepayers, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and critical advances in equity and electrification. Acadia Center urges the D.P.U. to approve these groundbreaking plans as they are.

Pressing for Environmental and Climate Justice for a Just Transition as we celebrate MLK Day

This week we remember the foremost civil rights leader, Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King Jr., and the giant strides of the civil rights movement in cementing justice and equity into the fabric of our society. The impact of the movement was not limited to social justice, it informed the tenets of environmental justice, and it is shaping clean energy solutions and policies for a just transition.

When institutions and agencies fail to build in equity, justice, and the plight of disadvantaged communities, the failure in policies is glaring. Historically, this has been the course of environmental injustice in the United States. From the siting of power plants and waste facilities, the concentration of industries and factories, and housing discrimination, policies that segregate and primarily benefit affluent white communities are still hampering progress on environmental and climate justice alike. This disproportionate burden of environmental pollution and harm suffered by mostly people of color through unjust policies and practices is environmental racism.

The absence of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) lens as we transition to clean energy and meet climate goals could lead to a repeated pattern that compounds environmental racism, leaving black and brown communities behind from thriving in a clean environment and a safe climate. Equity and justice in the energy and climate landscape is a consideration of high energy burden people in low-income communities and communities of color experience; policy forums with more representation and voices from the most impacted communities of environmental and climate inactions; specific programs catered to renters for housing retrofits as well as the enactment of legislatures that meets their needs. From building decarbonization and electrification to public transportation to diversity and representation in policy forums, policies and laws that cater to all must be put in place for a truly just transition.

Across the country, states, municipalities, and agencies are incorporating equity and justice into their climate policies and action plans.  Our goal at Acadia Center is to ensure that agencies, policymakers, and public officials at all levels are held accountable to the enacted climate goals, and provide research and solutions that address climate inequities and pitfalls to climate inactions and injustice. This was why we advocated that the third program review of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) centers equity by prioritizing the needs of environmental justice communities. In Maine, Acadia Center is keeping tabs on the LD1682 implementation process as the state progresses on defining “environmental justice”, “environmental justice populations”, “frontline communities” in the context of Maine. We are providing equity-centered solutions to connect regulatory silos and help regulators and the grid provide services to consumers while prioritizing equity and environmental justice through Reforming Energy System Planning for Equity and Climate Transformation (RESPECT).

Our efforts stem from the understanding that climate solutions are most impactful when guided by the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. The success in tackling emissions and creating a future that relies on clean energy depends on a transition that is well planned to lift and benefit all communities, regardless of race, class, and ethnicity. As we celebrate the legacy of Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions today, we are reminded of our commitment to environmental justice and a clean and safe carbon-neutral economy that benefits all people.