Building to 2050: Clean energy infrastructure to power New England’s communities

A new report by Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Acadia Center examines the critical role community engagement will play in the build out of new, clean generation and transmission to meet New England’s 2050 decarbonization goals. This blog is the first of a two-part series, focusing on the clean energy infrastructure needs of New England’s future grid. The second blog will examine how to build a supportive, community-focused environment for the region’s energy transition. To learn more, read the full report or attend our webinar.

New England has set itself apart as a region committed to climate action. Today, that commitment to spur clean energy development and combat climate change is reflected in the laws and policies of most New England states, which generally target 80 to 100% emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2050, economy-wide.

To dramatically reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieve these climate targets, the region’s energy systems are now entering a pivotal phase of transformation. The shift from aging, polluting fossil fuel infrastructure toward a cleaner, efficient, and electrified future is underway, gathering momentum that will reshape the region’s energy landscape. For this progress to succeed, policymakers, developers, and communities must collaborate closely to ensure a rapid, responsible, and inclusive transition. Meeting increased electricity demand while achieving decarbonization goals will require substantial clean infrastructure deployment that meaningfully reflects community priorities and input every step of the way – including to promote solutions that will help keep the scale of the build-out more manageable, such as energy efficiency and grid-enhancing technologies.

A clean grid is central to New England’s decarbonization

An increasingly decarbonized grid – the network connecting power generation, transmission lines, and local utility wires to homes and businesses – is at the center of New England’s journey to address climate change and will be the primary means by which the region reduces emissions. The report includes a comprehensive review of five key studies outlining cost-effective, electrification-focused pathways to decarbonizing New England’s grid and energy systems. The scenarios analyzed reveal rapidly increasing electricity demand in the region, with peak demand shifting from summer to winter by the 2030s. By 2050, peak demand in New England is modeled to double on average from roughly 27 gigawatts (GW) to 55 GW, driven primarily by the electrification of vehicles and proliferation of heat pumps.

In response, over the next 25 years, New England states will likely need to more than triple electric generation capacity in the region by adding over 100 GW of clean energy resources, while expanding the grid with 18 GW of new interregional transmission.

Additional pressures complicate the transition, including a rise in conflicts around proposed renewable projects, inadequate community engagement, and limited land availability, among other challenges. New England will need to address these barriers and make significant investments over the next two decades to right-size the grid, make it less carbon intensive, and make it more reliable and resilient.

This investment in clean energy resources is essential to meeting the region’s rapidly rising electricity demand. In our newly published report, The Energy Is About to Shift, Acadia Center and CATF describe and analyze the many components of this unfolding transition for New England, aiming to better understand the implications of the transition on infrastructure siting and community engagement. This includes a quantitative literature review of electrification-focused, cost-effective 2050 decarbonization pathways from five prominent recent studies.

The review finds the region will have to significantly increase clean energy deployment – by an order of magnitude – between now and 2050 to keep pace with growing peak demand and annual load, driven by electrification of heating and transportation (see Table 1, below).

Takeaways and lessons learned

A survey of the electrification-focused scenarios within the five studies shows significant increases are needed in renewable generation, transmission, and energy storage for New England to decarbonize its grid.

• Significant additional clean capacity is needed: As shown in Table 1, multiple deep decarbonization studies project a substantial increase in clean energy generation capacity by 2050 to support a highly electrified future. Total installed capacity in the region is expected to increase by nearly 3.4x between today and 2050 to 145 GW.

Table 1: 2020 vs. 2050 Summary of Key Energy System Changes in New England Based on 5-Study Electrification-focused Decarbonization Pathway Literature Review

• Offshore wind and solar will be critical to the resource mix: Solar and offshore wind dominate generation capacity in 2050, representing on average 39% and 28% of modeled capacity, respectively. Solar is anticipated to have the highest installed capacity of all resources (51 GW), and most of it (71%) is projected by models to be utility-scale (though reality may see a greater tilt toward distributed solar adoption). By that time, 36 GW of offshore wind capacity is projected to drive the lion’s share (49%) of annual generation due to its high capacity factor.

• Significant inter- and intraregional transmission expansion is crucial:  Proactively planned and optimized buildout of transmission capacity will be key to minimizing costs and maximizing resiliency, enabling integration of more clean energy and balancing variable and clean dispatchable generation across a broader region. Across the five studies, transmission expansion between New England and Canada is expected to increase by 3.5 GW on average, or 110%, by 2050. In one of the prominent studies examined, even more transmission capacity expansion is modeled, both within New England (12.0 GW to 35.3 GW) and between New England and New York (2.0 GW to 12.2 GW) by 2050.

• The region can get more out of what is already built: given the magnitude of the potential build-out, the region can and should focus first on upgrading existing infrastructure wherever possible, such as by rebuilding and upgrading transmission and distribution lines in existing rights of way (ROW), bringing offshore wind transmission onshore at decommissioned fossil fuel plant connection points, and by deploying technologies like high performance conductors and other grid-enhancing technologies (GETs).
• A diverse portfolio of clean energy resources – supply and demand – is the key: New England will need to deploy a diverse portfolio of clean energy resources, including both supply- and demand-side solutions, to support resource adequacy, affordability, grid flexibility, stability, and resilience. This portfolio should include utility-scale and distributed solar, offshore and onshore wind, battery storage, existing nuclear capacity, transmission expansion, advanced transmission technologies, and emerging clean firm, dispatchable generation technologies. On the demand side, energy efficiency, demand response, and aggregated resources will become increasingly important as competitive grid resources that can be deployed to shift the entire demand curve down and shape demand during peak periods, including via aggregations of electric vehicles or electric hot water heaters. A varied energy mix will help mitigate land-use impacts and allow the region to lean into different resources during different times of year (e.g., offshore wind in winter, solar in summer), preventing overbuild.

• Some combustion resources will remain on the system: All studies found some lingering reliance on fuel combustion (e.g., natural gas, green hydrogen, biomethane) in 2050 to support grid reliability and resource adequacy while minimizing system cost. Continuing need for firm and dispatchable resources highlights an opportunity to plan for and integrate clean firm technologies that can substitute fossil combustion and help the region fully zero-out its electric sector emissions.

Picking up the pace 

The region has roughly two decades to procure and build the clean energy infrastructure additions needed by 2050. This is a huge physical transition for the region’s energy system, which must rapidly shift from fossil fuels to clean, reliable energy. In order to meet annual deployment needs, up to 5 GW of new clean capacity must be sited, permitted, interconnected, and commissioned every year for the next twenty years, and interregional transmission capacity must simultaneously increase by a factor of four.

Building out this infrastructure will be transformative, especially for the increasing number of communities across the region hosting clean energy projects. The next blog in this series will discuss how we go beyond infrastructure to build a supportive community-focused environment for the region’s energy transition.

To learn more about New England’s clean energy infrastructure of the future, we invite you to attend our first of two webinars, register here.  

To read our full report, “The Energy is About to Shift: Pathways to a Community-Centered, Resilient, and Decarbonized Grid,” download a copy here.

For more information on the studies examined for this report:

Table 4: Overview of Five Economy-Wide Decarbonization Studies and Selected Scenarios of Focus for Literature Review