Is your air conditioning working? Thank a solar panel.

When the forecast calls for record-breaking temperatures, the kind that turn the weather app warnings deep red and push the limits of what a window unit air conditioner can do, those in the know brace themselves.

Extreme heat means extreme electricity demand, and that can lead to rolling blackouts or outages that leave thousands without electricity.

But even amid record high temperatures, that has not been the story this week.

But with thousands of small solar arrays distributed across the region,

“if one of these solar arrays goes down, it’ll be immaterial,” said Joe LaRusso, manager of the Clean Grid Initiative at the Acadia Center.

Beyond the solar that helped power the grid through the heat wave, traditional resources, such as natural gas and nuclear power, held up reliably.

A small amount of oil-fired electricity was also powering the grid — an increasingly rare occurrence as the region weans itself off the dirtiest sources. But because oil power plants can take longer to fire up, keeping some operating at a low level during a heat wave is a precautionary measure, LaRusso said, so they can quickly ramp up if something goes wrong at another power plant or demand suddenly spikes.

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

EV drivers could get a charge from proposed climate law

The Massachusetts Senate’s proposed climate law is packed with good news for current and future electric vehicle drivers.

The draft proposal would provide millions of dollars annually for rebates on EV purchases, legalize and promote lower-cost EV chargers mounted to utility poles, and make it easier to install chargers in many residential locations.

Environmental advocates welcomed the EV provisions in the bill; shifting almost 1 million drivers away from gas-powered vehicles by 2030 is a key part of the state’s plan to reduce carbon emissions. The transportation sector is responsible for 37 percent of emissions, the most of any sector in the state economy.

The bill is “another strong step forward … to comprehensively develop and implement a network of electric vehicle chargers and infrastructure that touches all parts of Massachusetts,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the nonprofit Acadia Center in Boston.

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

As Mass Save program approaches record $5 billion, qualms over who foots the bill

For Kyle Murray, an energy efficiency advisor to the state, the proposed $5 billion price tag for the next three-year Mass Save plan is both too much and not enough.

Mass Save, the utility company-run energy efficiency program central to Massachusetts’ ambitious climate goals, has helped the state become a top energy saver in the country — money well spent, Murray feels.

But it’s utility ratepayers primarily footing the bill, the same ones who have stared down sky-high electricity and gas increases in recent years.

“The (Mass Save) programs need to be ambitious, they need to probably go further, but we can’t continue to put that on ratepayers,” said Murray. “If we’re going to be a leader and continue to be ambitious, we need to find other ways of financing these programs that aren’t solely on the backs of ratepayers.”

Those concerns reflect sentiments from Murray, the Massachusetts program director for the Acadia Center who serves on the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, which helps design the Mass Save plan every three years.

“There’s a lot of ways the state could get creative to help deliver on its ambitions,” Murray said.

Creativity is desperately needed, he contends, especially when some talk about pushing the budget even higher to achieve greater climate outcomes, something he’s heard during the ongoing input process for the 2025-2027 plan.

Still, Murray hailed the benefits expected to be generated by the proposal: approximately $13.8 billion, about $3 billion more than the inflation equivalent from the 2022-2024 plan.

“I think it does show that our priorities match up with our ambitions,” Murray said. “We want to be a leader on climate in the Northeast and through the U.S., and we are a leader. These programs all have to be cost-effective, at least deliver a 1-to-1 return for the state. Not only that, we’re going well beyond. We’re expected to get over $13 billion in benefits.”

To read the full article from Mass Live, click here.

Planet-warming greenhouse gases rebounded in RI in 2021. Here’s what drove the increase.

PROVIDENCE – Greenhouse gas emissions in Rhode Island from things like tailpipe pollution and generation of electricity rebounded in 2021 after two years of reductions, according to an assessment released Monday by the Department of Environmental Management.

Modeling released late last year by the Acadia Center and the Rocky Mountain Institute, clean energy groups that have been working with the state, projected that Rhode Island would fall just short of the 2030 Act on Climate target. Their projections are based on a plan for continuing emissions cuts that was approved last year by the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council.

Gray told legislators in January that the modeling done by the Acadia Center and the Rocky Mountain Institute was “very preliminary” and that a more precise assessment would be conducted as part of a climate action strategy for the state due by the end of next year.

To read the full article from the Providence Journal, click here.

War of Words Heats Up Over Once-in-a-Century Energy Regulations

Utilities and regulators in Connecticut are wrestling over perhaps the biggest change in how electric rates are set in more than a century.

The debate pits United Illuminating and Eversource, the state’s largest utilities, against the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, or PURA, which is overseeing the changeover from a traditional cost of service model to performance-based regulation, or PBR.

Oliver Tully, director of utility innovation and accountability at the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy group, claimed in an interview with CT Examiner that the evidence from other states does not support the idea that reducing the rate of return would impede companies from raising capital to invest in the grid.

“The interest paid may be higher and the share price may go down in situations like that, but access to capital has not been an issue,” Tully said. “A lower share price has not automatically increased costs for clients.”

Tully mentioned the example of Hawaii, where PBR framework adoption led to regulatory certainty and Fitch upgrading the state’s credit rating.

To read the full article from CT Examiner, click here.

States, renewable energy groups press FERC to approve ISO-NE long-range transmission process

ISO-NE and its stakeholders have developed planned reforms to the grid operator’s transmission process in two stages. Under the first stage approved by FERC in February 2022, ISO-NE will perform state-requested, scenario-based and forward-looking transmission analyses.

ISO-NE and its stakeholders can build on the proposal to meet the requirements of FERC’s new transmission planning and cost allocation rules, according to joint comments filed by the Acadia Center, Conservation Law Foundation, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sustainable FERC Project, Sierra Club and Union of Concerned Scientists.

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

New England’s largest fossil fuel electric plant is shutting down

The Mystic Generating Station in Everett is set to shut down Friday.

As New England’s largest fossil fuel-powered electric plant, its closure represents a significant shift in energy production for the region.

Joseph LaRusso, a senior advocate and manager of the clean grid initiative at the Acadia Center, says shuttering the plant shows the era of burning fossil fuels for electricity may have peaked, at least in New England.

“Not very many gas plants are going to be built in the future, right? It’s going to be wind, solar, hydro, battery storage and so on,” he said. “So its closure is significant.”

To read the full article from wbur, click here.

Massachusetts to recharge solar programs for low-income residents with $156M federal grant

A $156 million federal grant is expected to fund a transformative investment in residential solar for low-income households in Massachusetts, advocates and officials say.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All program awarded Massachusetts the money for its plans to provide zero-interest loans, financial subsidies, and technical assistance to solar projects benefiting low-income households and public housing facilities. The state’s proposal was largely designed to take advantage of existing programs and resources to maximize the impact of federal funding.

Massachusetts’ proposal is structured around initiatives in three program areas: small residential buildings, multi-family housing, and community solar. The programs will be administered by a coalition of agencies including the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Boston Housing Authority, and MassHousing.

“They got a really strong coalition of major players involved,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director for climate nonprofit the Acadia Center. “While it’s disappointing that we did not get the full award, I cannot stress enough how much this money is going to be a game-changer for getting solar to low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

To read the full article from Energy News Network, click here.

Pay what you can for electricity and gas? Why RI advocates are pushing for such a plan

PROVIDENCE – Advocates are again calling on the General Assembly to pass legislation that would allow low-income Rhode Islanders to pay only what they can afford for their utility bills.

What’s also new is support from green energy advocates, who say that high electric rates are an impediment to people switching from fossil fuel-burning furnaces to cleaner electric heat pumps.

Emily Koo, Rhode Island program director for the Acadia Center, said that transitioning buildings away from fossil fuels is key to reducing planet-warming greenhouse gases associated with buildings, which account for about a third of total emissions in the state.

Without addressing the building sector, she said, Rhode Island won’t reach net-zero emissions by 2050 as required by the Act on Climate, a state law enacted three years ago.

She also said any concerns that lower rates might encourage people to use more energy could be addressed by capping the annual benefit or limiting lower rates to typical energy usage.

“Progress on both affordability and decarbonization must be made simultaneously and with haste,” she said in written testimony.

The Conservation Law Foundation supports a PIPP for similar reasons, as does the City of Providence’s Department of Sustainability.

State regulators with the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers and the Public Utilities Commission raised no objections to the legislation.

Members of the Rhode Island Business Coalition, including the East Greenwich and Greater Newport chambers of commerce, are opposed because of the prospect that the program would shift costs to other ratepayers and increase their bills.

To read the full article from the Providence Journal, click here.

Virginia is out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is officially over. At least for now. Gov. Glenn Youngkin pulled us from the partnership Dec. 31, and the program did not appear in the state budget passed earlier this month.

Democrats were largely in favor of the plan. It funded multiple local programs. Locally, Charlottesville and Albemarle County received nearly $650,000 to address flooding and nearly $10 million for housing projects. In the first 10 years of its existence, the initial nine states that joined RGGI decreased their carbon emissions from power plants by nearly half, according to a study by the environmental advocacy group Acadia Center. Virginia appeared to be on that trajectory, dropping its emissions by 16.8% in two years, according to a lawsuit filed by conservation groups suing to force Virginia back into the RGGI partnership.

To read the full article from Charlottesville Tomorrow, click here.