Maine court finds part of referendum blocking transmission line to Massachusetts unconstitutional

An embattled transmission corridor considered critical to Massachusetts’ climate effort was given new life Tuesday, after a ruling by Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court seemingly brought it back from the dead.

The project, which would bring hydroelectric energy from Quebec, through the wilds of western Maine and into Massachusetts, is a key piece of how Massachusetts plans to convert its energy grid from fossil fuels to clean energy.

But a vote in Maine last year to block the project left the transmission line on life support, all but dooming a major piece of Massachusetts’ plan to rapidly clean its power grid and likely setting the state’s climate efforts back by years.

The ruling Tuesday is far from a full green light for the project. The judges found that part of the Nov. 2021 referendum was unconstitutional, sending the case back to a lower court to decide its future. It will be up to that court to decide whether enough of the project had been completed prior to the vote that stopping it now would be unconstitutional under Maine law.

But many clean energy advocates were heartened.

“Like everyone, we were waiting with bated breath to see what the court would say, and it wasn’t clear which direction they would go,” said Daniel Sosland, president of the clean energy advocacy group the Acadia Center.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

How to decarbonize your home, with help from the Inflation Reduction Act

Where to start?

To begin, consider getting a home energy audit — an assessment of your energy consumption. It’s free through the state’s Mass Save program and also covered by new federal tax incentives. Then seal and insulate your home to reduce the amount of energy it takes to heat and cool it, said Ben Butterworth, senior manager of climate and energy analysis at the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy organization.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

Electric vehicle incentives are getting a total makeover

Thinking of buying an electric car? Two huge new climate policies — the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last week, and a major bill that Governor Charlie Baker signed Aug. 11 — include subsidies intended to make them more affordable.

The federal bill includes tax credits of up to $7,500 for new electric or fuel-cell vehicles, extending the previously existing tax incentives. Some plug-in hybrids qualify, too.

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The new Massachusetts bill will increase rebates for new fully electric cars and fuel-cell cars from $2,500 to between $3,500 and $5,000 — the exact amount is yet to be determined — with an additional $1,500 rebate for low-income residents and an extra $1,000 for those who trade in an internal combustion vehicle.

But the state bill doesn’t include a timeline for implementing any of these changes. And it’s not clear how the new program will be paid for: The new climate bill sets up an Electric Vehicle Adoption Trust, but doesn’t actually fund it. (The money could come from a separate economic development bill, but the Legislature failed to complete it before the session ended last month, so the timing and outcome remain uncertain.)

For now, the old program is still open and funded until the middle of 2023, according to Kyle Murray, Massachusetts senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

RIPTA introduces new electric bus

PROVIDENCE – It runs quietly and has a green color scheme, but if there’s still any doubt about what powers the newest addition to the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s bus fleet, just look at the sign splashed across the side.

“I’m electric,” it declares. The million-dollar electric bus purchased with federal funds and unveiled Tuesday is set to go into operation before the end of the year on RIPTA’s busiest route, the R-Line, which runs from Cranston through downtown Providence and on into Pawtucket.

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The current investments in cleaner vehicles represent a good start, said Hank Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, a regional environmental group. “Some of these investments are going to take time to ramp up, but I think we’re doing a considerable amount in the near term,” he said. “The strategy of prioritizing routes that go through communities overburdened by pollution is a sound one.”

Read the full article in The Providence Journal here.

‘Electrify Arlington’ in step with new climate law

A new climate bill signed last week by Gov. Baker contains a provision aiming to change the carbon landscape in Massachusetts: 10 communities in the state can participate in a pilot program that bans the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major renovations.

“Ultimately, we need to stop building with fossil fuels, and the easiest way to decarbonize our buildings is for them not to be carbon-full from the beginning,” Amy Boyd, policy director of the clean-energy advocacy group Acadia Center, told The Globe. “The more we keep building with fossil fuels, the harder it’s going to be.”

Read the full article in your Arlington here. 

Ten cities and towns are poised to ban fossil fuels from new buildings

Major Win in Massachusetts with Clean Energy and Climate Bill

On July 21st, the Massachusetts House and Senate announced they had reached an agreement on a compromise climate change bill, released that bill unanimously from the committee of conference, and passed it in both branches. The sprawling 96-page bill touched upon practically every sector, including transportation, energy, and buildings. Governor Baker then sent the bill back to legislature with amendments, most of which were rejected, before ultimately signing the bill today. So now we’re just left with the question: “Uh, what’s actually in it?”

Acadia Center Priorities

As to be expected, the conference committee bill is a compromise bill between the separate climate bills passed by the two branches and contains significant elements from each proposal. Significant portions of Acadia Center priorities, including some listed below, were included in this legislation as well. The bill limits Mass Save from incentivizing fossil fuel equipment starting in 2025, aiming instead to promote electrification. It also requires the creation of a stakeholder Grid Modernization Advisory Council and adds a requirement for utilities to submit grid modernization plans to that Council. This language was based upon legislation which Acadia Center drafted in 2018. The conference committee legislation also allows regional solicitation for long-term contracts for offshore wind and transmission and creates a Clean Energy Transmission Working Group to do a full analysis of the barriers to major transmission upgrades. Acadia Center is specifically named as a member of that working group. The legislation also removes biomass from the Renewable Portfolio Standard, a concept for which Acadia Center has long advocated.

The Senate Proposal

From the Senate side, the compromise legislation increases rebates for ZEVs, adds an additional incentive for low-income customers, and requires new MBTA bus purchases to be ZEVs by 2030. It also aims to boost energy storage, fix some issues hindering the solar industry, and allows ten cities and towns to require fossil-fuel free new construction.

The House Proposal

The House climate bill primarily centered around offshore wind, and this final version reflects major elements of that as well. It aims to develop the offshore wind industry through infrastructure, investment, and job training. These sections also have a strong focus on economic inclusion and labor protections and fix issues with the procurement process, such as the conflict of interest stemming from utilities selecting winning bids.

Governor’s Amendments

In sending the bill back to the legislature, Governor Baker offered several pages of amendments, including $750 million in ARPA spending on clean energy. However, most of these were rejected. The legislature did accept a few, including the elimination of a price cap provision on offshore wind, something for which the Governor has long advocated.

What Isn’t In the Bill?

Unfortunately, as with most compromises, the final bill does not contain all that we hoped it would. It excludes a top environmental justice priority, which would increase air quality monitoring and require the state to establish baseline air quality for air pollution hotspots. It also does not include language which would have set up a successor to the state’s solar program or a provision to set electrification targets for the commuter rail system. Disappointingly, the final proposal also excludes significant swaths of dedicated funding that were present in the original versions, including funding for EVs, charging infrastructure, and clean energy.

Still, wide ranging climate improvements in nearly every sector is worth celebrating. The Governor, the legislature, and environmental activists deserve credit for delivering a strong climate bill and should take a well-deserved rest. Now let’s recharge and gear up for the climate bill for next session.

For more information:

Kyle Murray
Senior Policy Advocate-Massachusetts
kmurray@acadiacenter.org
617-742-0054, ext. 106

Baker signs major climate bill into law

Governor Charlie Baker signed a major climate bill into law on Thursday that will accelerate the clean energy transition in the state by boosting offshore wind and solar, and — in a first for Massachusetts — allowing some cities and towns to ban the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major renovations.

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“The economic development bill is fairly essential, as a lot of the climate programs need funding to work,” said Amy Boyd, policy director of the clean energy advocacy group Acadia Center.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here. 

R.I.’s New Heat Pump Program Offers Incentives to Install Energy-Efficient Systems

Hot or cold, Rhode Islanders can’t win when it comes to regulating their homes’ temperature.

The state registered its first heat wave of the year last month when temperatures exceeded 90 degrees for six consecutive days. Residents in the Providence area experienced the fourth-warmest July on record and the third driest, with less than half an inch of rain measured.

With 73% of the state’s housing stock built before 1980, Rhode Island residents are more likely to feel the heat, and spend more on heating or cooling their homes.

But Rhode Islanders looking forward to the colder months to beat the heat will still be sweating — Rhode Island Energy, formerly National Grid, announced last month ratepayers would be paying more for electricity and natural gas this winter.

Resident customers will pay an average of $52 more a month as the utility doubles its summertime rates for the winter, from 7.8 cents per kilowatt-hour to 17.8 cents starting in October.

The utility cited the rising cost of natural gas worldwide and increased demand for it in Europe and Asia as the reason for raising prices. The final rate is subject to approval by state regulators before it goes into effect.

Ratepayers regardless will feel that pinch; 54% of homes in Rhode Island are heated by natural gas. Another 32% rely on home heating oil, and they won’t be getting a reprieve from high prices either. The average price of home heating oil in New England has hovered around $5 a gallon for much of the summer, a time when prices are typically half that.

Relief may be on the way.

Gov. Dan McKee has rolled out the state’s new High-Efficiency Heat Pump Program (HHPP), allocating $25 million from American Rescue Plan Act money to spur the installation of heat pumps and provide funds for workforce development in the HVAC sector.

“Shifting our thermal sector to electric heat and away from fossil fuels is critical in our fight against climate change,” McKee said in a press release. “Furthermore, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will help lower pollution-induced health impacts, especially for those living in communities with high asthma rates.”

The program allocates $11.2 million for residential incentives, applicable to any homeowners who heat their home with natural gas, propane, or heating oil, according to the latest draft of the program from the Office of Energy Resources (OER). Under the proposal, homeowners would be eligible for a $1,250 incentive for every ton of cooling and heating capacity of the equipment used.

Another $7.2 million would go toward “enhanced incentives” targeting low-income and disadvantaged communities, while $5.2 million would go for community incentives, available to small businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations. The program also allocates $1.3 million for workforce development.

The governor has pledged 40% of the funds will go toward the state’s disadvantaged communities, as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Heat pumps are energy efficient,” Hank Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, said. “They are at least three times more efficient than even natural gas furnaces, and many more times that for oil and propane.”

A fossil fuel heating system running on propane, natural gas or heating oil must heat something else and then transfer that heat in the building, losing a lot of potential energy in the process.

But heat pumps can both heat and cool a home using only electricity. They operate similarly to air-conditioners: removing the warm air from a home in summer and adding warm air in winter.

“It’s much more efficient because it’s moving heat as opposed to generating it,” Webster said.

Heat pump installation will be key to meeting the emission reduction goals of the Act on Climate law. Combined, residential, commercial, and industrial heating make up the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions statewide at 35.4%, according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s latest inventory.

Heat pumps are about as close to zero emissions as most major appliances get. Instead of running on fossil fuels, they run on a building’s electrical supply, meaning the only emissions result from the way the building’s electricity is generated. For advocates, heat pumps are renewable grid ready.

The Acadia Center estimates a home switching from heating oil to a heat pump reduces the equivalent emissions from taking a dozen cars off the road for one year. A home can reduce its emissions by 58 tons over the lifespan of the equipment.

Only 8% of Rhode Island homes run on electric heat. Meanwhile states such as Maine, with even colder winters than here in southern New England, have installed more than 46,000 heat pumps since 2013, and state officials have pledged to install another 100,000 by 2025.

But adoption here in Rhode Island remains slow. A 2020 study commissioned by National Grid showed that 60% of residents surveyed said they had no prior knowledge of central heat pump systems. Another 64% said they had little to no prior knowledge of ductless heat pump systems.

McKee’s new heat pump program lists consumer education as one of its key goals but allocated no specific amount of money for outreach initiatives. The money for outreach will be expected to come from the three categories of incentives or workforce development funds.

Costs are a big barrier to heat pump adoption, hence state incentives for consumers. Equipment needs and installation costs can vary, making gauging average costs difficult.

Changing an existing home to a ductless mini-split heat pump could cost on average up to $15,582 on its own, according to the 2020 National Grid study.

“The high cost of heat pump installation also presents a major barrier to adoption, with the average customers noting they were ‘not very likely’ to install a heat pump with incentives,” wrote the study’s authors.

They continued, “The willingness to pay study revealed that incentives of at least $3,600 per system are needed to drive the average consumer to be likely to install a heat pump, with many scenarios requiring significantly higher incentives.”

Current incentives are distributed by OER from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) proceeds, and Rhode Island Energy from energy-efficiency funds.

OER committed $2.75 million to its heat pump incentive program in April 2020. From March 2021 to December 2021, the incentives from OER helped 450 customers convert from fossil fuel systems to heat pumps.

On the utility-side incentives, Rhode Island Energy has awarded $3.1 million in rebates to customers who installed a total of nearly 4,000 central and mini-split heat pump systems.

This year’s RGGI proposal filed with the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission would allocate $1.5 million to heat pump incentives.

But with such a high upfront cost — much of the existing incentives in place function as rebates or zero interest loans — the current program leaves the state’s low-income and disadvantaged communities behind, much of whom already suffer from higher temperatures thanks to the urban heat-island effect and lesser amounts of tree canopy shade.

Forty percent of the funds from the new incentive program will go toward communities in census tracts designated as disadvantaged communities (DAC) by the U.S. Department of Energy. Forty census tracts in Rhode Island are designated as DACs, primarily clustered in the urban core. It includes 20 tracts in Providence, 10 in Pawtucket, four in Central Falls, two in Cranston, and two in East Providence.

As proposed, the new incentives could cover between 50% and 100% of the total cost, including equipment, installation, and other necessary upgrades.

A 100% incentive will be automatically available to low-income residents enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, Rhode Island Works, public assistance, or if they are a discounted rate customer to the utility.

Residents who live in a disadvantaged community are eligible for a 50% incentive.

OER said it expects the new program to go online sometime in winter 2023, with the final allocations for each incentive subject to change. Until the end of the month, the department is soliciting public comment and feedback on the program as drafted.

Read the full article in ecoRI news here.

Massachusetts is getting hotter. Our electricity system is not prepared.

In July, as a heat wave bore down on the Boston area, warnings landed in the inboxes of National Grid and Eversource electricity customers: Demand was expected to be high, each company warned, and making a small change to conserve energy at home could help avoid outages.

But still, outages happened, from Acton to West Roxbury, Newton to Chelsea, silencing the reassuring whir of air conditioners. Another bout of intense heat is due this week that will test the power grid yet again, raising the question of how the energy system will respond as extreme temperatures become more frequent and intense due to climate change.

The networks of wires and substations that bring electricity to homes and businesses are already stressed as housing density increases, experts say, and many parts of them will likely need upgrading or expanding in a future when demand could double or even triple as the state relies ever more on clean electricity to replace fossil fuel power.

“These outages can occur during the worst possible time, in sizzling temperature conditions, because the substations are not necessarily expanded upon over time to keep pace with pockets of electric demand in various communities,” said Richard Levitan, president of Levitan and Associates, an energy management consulting firm. “A failure for a day or for hours when it’s 100 degrees is potentially devastating.”

On social media during the July heat wave, some of the unlucky and unhappy customers mused the outages were akin to problems in Texas, where the energy grid’s failure to keep up with demand had catastrophic consequences. But the energy grid here, operated by ISO-New England, has not had failures such as in Texas, and had plenty of surplus capacity each day of the heat wave, even as demand rose with increased use of air conditioners.

What happened, instead, were failures in the distribution system — the substations, transformers, and wires that bring electricity from power lines into neighborhoods and homes. These localized networks are affected by the demands of a specific street or area— eased in some places, perhaps, by the presence of solar panels on homes or intensified by the demands of big users such as apartment buildings with air conditioners and fast-chargers for electric vehicles.

The pressure on those local networks is a problem that will only become more urgent, experts said.

“You have to start with the basic infrastructure question: are we building infrastructure fast enough and forward-looking enough to anticipate what our future is going to look like, and is it being built in a way that addresses extreme weather?” said Jeff Dennis, general counsel at Advanced Energy Economy, an industry group, and a former director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s division of policy development.

At National Grid, Carol Sedewitz, vice president of electric asset management and engineering, said the company’s equipment is designed for the hottest temperatures that Massachusetts has seen in recent years, even 100 degrees. But it is only designed to withstand that heat for short periods and risks failing when cooler weather doesn’t come quickly.

“Your substation equipment depends on that,” she said.

Now that heat waves are often lasting longer, and nighttime temperatures are staying higher than they used to, Sedewitz said, rethinking how certain equipment can be expected to perform is a must, as is redesigning it for more extreme weather, such as heavy precipitation, high winds, drought, and more intense heat waves.

Craig Hallstrom, president of electric operations for Eversource, said outages in his company’s service area during the heat wave were the result of overheating equipment, which caused some joints and cables to fail.

“A lot of the failures were in the underground system, where there isn’t a lot of air flow, and the lines tend to hold their heat,” he said.

As Eversource and National Grid, which are responsible for delivering the lion’s share of electricity in the state, plan for the future, they’re looking at upgrading to transformers that can carry a greater load.

Doubling of demand for electricity does not necessarily mean a need to double the amount of infrastructure, experts said, because newer equipment would likely be able to handle higher demand. But there will need to be some new substations and transformers — and those can come with controversy.

In East Boston, for instance, Eversource is trying to build a new substation, but the choice of location next to a playground alongside the Chelsea Creek has led to strong resistance among community advocates, who fear the regular flooding at that location could spark a fire. They also note that environmental justice communities have historically borne the brunt of industrial infrastructure, and that siting decisions now can either help remedy past harms or make them worse.

As the utilities try to find locations for new substations, they’re also developing a new kind of distribution system.

Right now, for the most part, electricity travels in one direction: from a power source — such as a gas-fired fossil fuel power plant, or, increasingly, from renewables like solar and wind — to a building. But that’s changing.

With the growth of solar energy on rooftops, more businesses and homeowners are generating the power they need. In the future, experts say, such installations will increasingly be able to send excess solar electricity back into the grid, but that requires new advanced metering equipment and new market rules to allow energy to go in both directions.

Developments in battery technology will also affect the shape of the grid and neighborhood networks.

“In the future, most of us will have some level of a large battery at home,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, whether that’s an electric vehicle or something like a Tesla Powerwall, that can store energy generated by solar panels and then use it as backup power. There are even scenarios where the car battery in a new electric vehicle could send power back to the home.

Policy experts, the state Department of Public Utilities, and the utilities are considering how to modernize the grid so that in the near future, customers could be incentivized to charge their vehicles at times of low demand, and then use the battery of their cars to help power their homes during a heat wave, decreasing the strain on local networks.

“Electric cars and buses, along with solar and storage, can even give energy back to the grid when there’s an unexpectedly hot or cold day,” said Melissa Birchard, director of clean energy and grid reform at Acadia Center, a nonprofit advocating for clean energy.

A fully charged Ford F-150 Lightning can provide enough electricity for an entire house for up to 10 days, according to Ford. And last summer, an electric school bus in Beverly was used to provide more than 50 hours of energy back to the electricity grid.

Electric school buses, which are used for just a few hours each day during the school year, and even less during the summer, are just one of the new technologies that offer promise in that regard, said Birchard.

Dennis, of Advanced Energy Economy, said it’s all about rethinking the tools that are available. “You really need to make demand much more flexible, and really make it a grid resource,” he said. “If we’re going to have large fleets of electric vehicles with batteries in them, let’s make those things a grid resource.”

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.