Maine jury clears Avangrid’s 145-mile transmission line, reversing ballot vote that blocked project

Dive Brief:

• A Maine jury ruled Thursday that Avangrid had the right to build a 145-mile transmission line when state voters in 2021 approved a ballot measure that interrupted construction of the New England Clean Energy Connect, NECEC, project.
• The 9-0 decision in the Maine Business and Consumer Court in Portland turns aside the referendum and allows work to resume on the $1 billion project to deliver Canadian hydropower to the New England grid. Massachusetts ratepayers would be the primary beneficiaries and bear the costs.
• Backers of the project say the transmission line through western Maine will combat climate change by supplying up to 1,200 MW of hydropower, or enough electricity for about 1 million homes. Critics say it will damage woodlands along a portion of the route, but NECEC said the area has been logged for years.

Amy Boyd, vice president for climate and clean energy policy at the Acadia Center, said the transmission line is a “big deal” because hydropower-generated energy will help Massachusetts meet its 2030 climate goals. The state has set in law a 33% limit of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2025 and 50% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Sources of clean energy, such as hydropower from Quebec, are often distant from population centers and require transmission, she said in an interview Thursday. Costly legal battles with “too much drama” make it difficult to move forward on projects delivering clean energy, Boyd said.

“If there’s this much of a fight for all involved, it’s not going to be possible,” she said.

To read the full article from Utility Dive, click here.

Maine jury rules $1 billion clean energy transmission line from Canada to New England can proceed

Amy Boyd, a vice president at Acadia Center, a Maine clean energy advocacy nonprofit, described that amount of power as “freakin’ huge” for a single project. It could account for between 2 percent and 10 percent of New England’s energy consumption at any given moment, she said.

You can read the full article in the Boston Globe here.

Report: RGGI Could Do More than Reduce Emissions

A new report aims to make the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative more effective. The Acadia Center’s report finds since the RGGI’s creation in 2009, states like Connecticut have seen a 50% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. States in the program saw a 91% decrease in coal-generated electricity, and a more than 800% increase in solar and wind energy.

Amy Boyd, vice president of Climate and Clean Energy Policy at the Acadia Center, said RGGI could do better in some areas – by investing 40% to 50% of its proceeds in environmental justice in communities burdened by the harmful effects of emissions.

“And allow ‘EJ’ community members to participate in such decisions – and as I said, transparently track and report actual data that shows whether those investments are delivering the results that they’ve intended,” Boyd said.

Other recommendations include having additional air-quality monitoring for nitrogen oxides or ‘NOx.’ Bridgeport’s Harbor Station Plant ranked low on a list of ‘NOx’-emitting plants – despite emitting 969 tons into the air yearly. The EPA’s new Good Neighbor Plan aims to cut smog-forming NOx in a handful of states, including Connecticut.

12 states along the East Coast are part of RGGI, and the program provides an important framework for a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, Boyd noted.

“I think RGGI sets a really good example for a way that it can be done,” she said. “And I think that, even if the feds were to somehow put together such a program, I think RGGI could be a way that these 12 states can sort-of get a jump on implementing it.”

The RGGI states are in the midst of the third program review, with a series of public meetings being held to get feedback.

Click here to read the original article from Public News Service.

A greenhouse gas reduction program has improved air quality in Connecticut and New York

Connecticut and New York are among nine states that have benefited in health and finance from the Acadia Center’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Assessment (RGGI) is a cap-and-invest greenhouse gas reduction program. Twelve Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, including New York and Connecticut, have participated since 2009.

RGGI reduces carbon dioxide pollution from electricity plants in the region by placing a limit on emissions. Plant owners have to purchase carbon dioxide allowances from states at auction. States then use that money to invest in environmental programs.

Acadia Center’s director of Climate, Energy & Equity Analysis, Ben Butterworth, said RGGI has financially benefited the states that consistently follow it.

“Consistent RGGI states have achieved a 50% increase in GDP per capita since RGGI was launched in 2008,” Butterworth said. “This is 13% more growth than the rest of the country over the same time period.”

Despite some positive findings, the report also shows a disparity among the communities who benefit. Over a third of RGGI plants that have significant carbon dioxide emissions are located near high asthma communities.

“States could significantly improve quality of life in environmental justice communities by making targeted investments of revenue generated in RGGI auction to improve the quality of housing, lower energy burdens, improve air quality and reduce associated health risk,” Butterworth said.

Twelve Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states participate in the initiative, nine states are considered “consistent.”

To read the article on WSHU, click here.

A Maine jury will decide the fate of the embattled CMP transmission line

RGGI speeds declines in power plant emissions and spurs economic growth: Acadia report

Dive Brief:

• Economic growth and declines in carbon dioxide power plant emissions and retail electricity prices have been more significant in nine states that have consistently participated in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative than in other states, a clean energy research and advocacy group said Tuesday.
• The report by Acadia Center coincides with efforts by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R, to pull Virginia out of RGGI and legal challenges blocking Pennsylvania’s participation in the group of 12 Eastern states.
• Acadia Center also called on member states to reduce the RGGI reporting threshold for generators to 15 MW in communities with high rates of asthma as it says has been recommended by some environmental justice stakeholder groups.

Dive Insight:

Acadia Center says the nine states that are consistently active in RGGI are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia also are RGGI members.

With legal action pending, Pennsylvania is not participating in CO2 allowance releases, RGGI said. New Jersey withdrew in 2012, but returned in January 2020.

Participating states have established budget trading programs that limit CO2 emissions from power plants, issue CO2 allowances and participate in carbon dioxide allowance auctions.

Between 2008, when RGGI was launched, and 2021 CO2 from power plants has declined nearly 50% in the nine states, which Acadia Center said is 10% more than in 40 states that have not “consistently had a price” on greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, economic growth per capita increased 50% in the nine states, or 13% more than the rest of the country, according to the report. And retail electricity prices in RGGI states have fallen 3.2% compared to a 7.7% increase in prices elsewhere in the U.S., the report says.

Economic growth is the result of many factors, such as a trained workforce, taxes, transportation, a mix of industries and other state characteristics. Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy at Acadia Center, said in an interview that a drop in CO2 emissions and economic growth correlate, but the report does “not try to prove causation.”

Critics say RGGI’s model isn’t cheap. An executive order Youngkin signed in January 2022 to re-evaluate Virginia’s participation in RGGI and begin the regulatory process to end participation is based on information “that points to higher costs for residential and industrial ratepayers,” the governor said.

Because of the “captive nature” of ratepayers, the ability of power generators to pass costs onto consumers and the requirement in Virginia that RGGI proceeds be dedicated to grants programs, participation in RGGI is a direct carbon tax on all households and businesses, Youngkin said.

Pennsylvania businesses, too, question cost advantages cited by RGGI. Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, which represents 10,000 member businesses, said in testimony to state lawmakers in March 2022 that with environmental policy, “markets are, broadly speaking, more effective than command-and-control approaches to regulation.”

Dynamics are at play in the RGGI design “that are producing compliance costs that are beyond equitable,” he said.

Unlike other Pennsylvania air quality programs that prohibit credits traded by third parties except in limited cases, third parties such as investors, funds and institutions that do not have direct compliance obligations under RGGI are “welcome to participate” in auctions, he said.

Futures market activity also has increased significantly, he said. And exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and 501(c)3 organizations “have acquired and held RGGI allowance by the millions, further pushing prices upward,” Sunday said.

Leveraging the RGGI market construct for financial gain or using it to offset emissions from sources other than power plants “are beyond the goals of RGGI as it was originally constituted,” he said.

The two large states have an outsized role in reducing emissions. In 2021, Virginia accounted for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions among RGGI states, Acadia Center said. If Pennsylvania participated in the program last year as planned the two states combined would have accounted for nearly 57% of total greenhouse gas emissions in RGGI, Acadia Center said.

Read the original article from Utility Dive here.

With the future of natural gas in RI on the line, what to do with the aging infrastructure?

WARWICK — In past years, state utilities regulators have approved, as a matter of course, the annual replacement of as much as 70 miles of aging natural gas mains made of outdated materials that are prone to leaking.

But times have changed. With the adoption two years ago of a sweeping state law to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the Public Utilities Commission is rethinking every aspect of the state’s energy regime, including how Rhode Islanders heat their homes and businesses.

And because one possibility on the table is the eventual abandonment of the underground network of pipes that delivers natural gas around the state, the PUC is now questioning how much is worth sinking into Rhode Island Energy’s replacement program and what the impacts of continued spending are for the utility’s 273,000 gas customers.

Advocates with the Acadia Center and the Conservation Law Foundation called for an investment in electric heat pumps to shore up the island’s heating system rather than increasing dependence on gas, which is delivered by a single pipeline across the Sakonnet River. The state Energy Facility Siting Board turned down that petition a year and a half ago, but wouldn’t rule out a moratorium on new gas connections on the island in the future.

Read the full article in the Providence Journal here.

A ‘way too persistent’ man will get his own electric car charging station. Other Bostonians may not be so lucky.

Connecticut needs a plan — and a definition — for ‘clean hydrogen,’ stakeholders say

Hoping to tap into the billions of dollars in federal incentives coming available for renewable energy projects, Connecticut is preparing to lay out a strategic plan for developing a hydrogen economy.

A bill approved last week by the House Energy and Technology Committee charges the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection with developing a hydrogen strategic plan that encourages the use of hydrogen produced from renewable energy, and prioritizes its use in the sectors of the economy that are hardest to electrify.

The department would also have to write regulations defining “clean hydrogen,” a process that will likely generate considerable debate.

The legislation is based on recommendations from the Connecticut Hydrogen Task Force, which was established by law last year and led by the Connecticut Green Bank. A January report from the task force concluded that Connecticut is well-positioned to pursue the production and use of clean hydrogen as a fuel or energy source.

Environmental advocates had objected to a portion of the legislation that would have granted tax exemptions to projects related to clean hydrogen. The committee subsequently removed that language.

“It was a very broadly defined exemption for anything touching the hydrogen economy,” said Ben Butterworth, director of climate, energy and equity analysis for the Acadia Center. “You would end up incentivizing technologies that aren’t in line with the task force recommendations, like hydrogen passenger vehicles and hydrogen boilers for homes.”

You can read the full article from Energy News Network here.

With new commissioners, Healey aims to reshape an agency seen as critical to climate reforms

They could seem the most bureaucratic of appointments, just a few of several that Governor Maura Healey has made since settling into office. But her administration is casting her two climate-friendly nominees to help lead the Department of Public Utilities as a first step toward overhauling a critical agency that she has lambasted as ineffectual and too cozy with natural gas interests.

The new appointments — Jamie Van Nostrand, a law professor and clean energy advocate from West Virginia, and Staci Rubin, a Boston-based environmental justice specialist at the Conservation Law Foundation — starkly contrast with the commissioners they replace.

People familiar with the department’s inner workings said the new commissioners will have exceptional power to quickly change the department’s priorities, in part because they effectively act as judges atop a bureaucracy organized by the principles of the judicial system.

“It’s like a court,” said Amy Boyd, vice president of Climate & Clean Energy Policy at the Acadia Center, which advocates for clean energy. “They can choose how to sequence their docket, and the commissioners decide what takes priority.”

You can read the complete article from The Boston Globe here.