Heat pumps had their first major local test last weekend. Here’s how it went.

Jamie Foundas decided last month to finally get rid of oil heat in his 1960s-era Natick home and put in electric heat pumps. It’s the kind of heating system favored by Massachusetts as it pushes toward aggressive climate targets, and between the high cost of oil and hefty rebates for the new equipment, he figured it would save him money in the long run. But would it work? The manufacturer claimed it would, even in extreme cold. Then, late last week, as forecasts called for a pipe-bursting arctic blast, he said to himself: “OK, now prove it.”

He stood at his kitchen sink Saturday morning, with all of New England in a deep freeze, watching a thermometer that showed the temperature outside: 8 degrees below zero. Inside, it was 68, just where he’d set the thermostat. “I saw that and thought, ‘OK, it does do what it’s supposed to do.’ ”

Across the region, where thousands have already converted to heat pumps and millions more are expected to in coming decades, the weekend’s plunge into sub-zero cold represented a critical first test of a kind of heat still considered new and unproven by many homeowners.

Ben Butterworth, the director of climate, energy, and equity analysis at the clean energy advocacy organization Acadia Center, said he wasn’t surprised that heat pumps performed well. “After years of falsely being told that heat pumps weren’t suitable for extreme cold, I do think this moment was critical for instilling confidence in heat pump users,” he said. “Continued reliance on fossil fuels to heat our buildings is simply incompatible with the state’s climate targets.”

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My Turn: Paying too much for energy? We agree

On any given week, our email inboxes reflect the concerns of our constituents. For years, emails have poured in about COVID-19, education, climate change, infrastructure, and more. This winter, a top concern is the price of energy.

We share this concern and have been working together since we were elected to reform the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) and break down barriers to green energy.

We wrote about the utility sweetheart deals last session along with the President of the Acadia Center, a clean energy nonprofit with which we have partnered.

But even with this legislation, utilities would still be responsible for energy system planning, owning and operating grid infrastructure, and serving customers. Not only would conflicts of interest remain, so would planning silos between different utilities, which cause overspending, reduced reliability, and more pollution. There is also no incentive to consider equity and environmental justice concerns.

That’s why we’ve partnered again with the Acadia Center to file legislation to implement the RESPECT initiative. An Act reforming energy system planning for equity and climate transformation (SD.863 / HD.1696) is an ambitious proposal to overhaul energy system planning and reimagine the regulatory framework for utilities.

It shouldn’t break the bank to keep your lights on and your home at a reasonable temperature.

If you think you’ve been paying too much for energy, please know we’re channeling our energy toward an affordable and clean energy future for all.

State Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, represents the Hampshire, Franklin, Worcester District. State Rep. Natalie Blais, D-Deerfield, represents the 1st Franklin District.

Read more in the Greenfield Recorder here.

Hey Mass. residents, your monthly gas bill is about to go down

The state has some good news for people who heat their homes with gas, just as they prepare to turn up the thermostat ahead of the weekend’s expected cold snap.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities on Thursday ordered utilities to reduce the price of natural gas they provide to customers. As that rate drops, so will your monthly utility bill.

The department estimates that the average household in the state could see a 4-5% decrease in monthly bills for the period beginning Feb. 1, though the amount you pay depends in part on how much gas you use.

Though this reduction in gas prices will provide some relief to Massachusetts residents paying really high utility bills, Kyle Murray of the Acadia Center hopes it also serves as a reminder of the benefits of moving away from natural gas.

“We are still extremely vulnerable to the whims of a competitive market that we have little control over because we are overly reliant on natural gas for both electricity generation and home heating,” he said.

“Transitioning to a diverse fuel mix of local renewables paired with home electrification would allow Massachusetts to have greater control over energy costs and supply while also delivering well-paying local jobs.”

Read more here.

Massachusetts residents are feeling the crunch as utility prices soar

As utility bills spike across the commonwealth, we speak to Beth Chambers of Catholic Charities about how the price hikes are hitting low-income consumers. We also explore why costs are up and what energy consumers can do to conserve.

Here’s a helpful resource for Massachusetts residents that WBUR reporters Yasmin Amer and Miriam Wasser put together in November. It’s still relevant today.

This segment aired on January 24, 2023.

Power to the people: How activists are working to change New England’s grid operator from the inside

Last fall, in between meetings about how to stop coal trains destined for the region’s last coal–burning plant, a group of climate activists quietly turned their attention to another, perhaps less obvious, pursuit: Getting elected en masse to an arcane group affiliated with ISO-New England, the region’s power grid operator.

In late November, roughly 100 members of No Coal No Gas showed up at a meeting of the Consumer Liaison Group, successfully electing six members to its governing committee.

The short-term goal was to earn some level of access to ISO-New England—a famously opaque entity that plays a critical role in determining whether the region can meet its emission-reduction targets. The consumer group doesn’t have any real power to influence the grid, but it does have a guaranteed audience with ISO-New England four times a year.

“ISO is putting its thumb on the scale to choose fossil fuel fired resources in the name of reliability,” said Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy for Acadia Center, a clean-energy advocacy group. “The people’s interest in having climate goals met shouldn’t have to run at cross purposes to their interest in keeping the lights on. We can do both of these things at once.”

Read the full article here.

In Pennsylvania, heat pumps could be a climate change solution

Buildings are second only to transportation as sources for greenhouse gasses, according to Amy Boyd, vice president of Climate & Clean Energy Policy at the Acadia Center in Boston, which helps Northeastern states meet climate targets.

A University of California, Davis study found installing a heat pump could cut carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming, around 38 to 53 percent from home heating.

“Eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions that are coming from our heat, particularly in the Northeast, is one of the biggest things that an individual consumer can do to fight climate change,” Boyd said.

Because it’s only moving heat around, not creating it, heat pumps are up to four times more efficient than a standard furnace. In the summer, they can reverse themselves, doubling as air conditioners. They rely on heat exchangers, clever pieces of technology that are behind refrigerators and freezers. On a modern heat pump, they can pluck heat out of even the coldest outdoor air.

“Even if it seems cold to your eye, if it’s any warmer than the vacuum of space, then there is heat out there to be moved,” Boyd said.

Right now, about 10 percent of homes in the U.S. use heat pumps. That number will have to go up if the country is going to meet its climate goals.

Top environmental issues facing RI lawmakers in 2023: Solar farm siting, curbing emissions

PROVIDENCE — How do you follow up on two legislative sessions that have been heralded as the best for policymaking on the environment in Rhode Island history?

With even more bills aimed at tackling climate change, protecting natural resources, reducing trash and expanding investments in renewable energy.

That’s what advocates with some of the state’s leading environmental groups want to see in the new session as it gets underway.

They say that state legislators can’t rest on their laurels after a pair of groundbreaking years in the General Assembly that began with passage in 2021 of the Act on Climate, the emissions-reduction law that’s designed to form the foundation for Rhode Island climate policy, and followed last year with, among a flurry of other bills, one that updates a key law for purchases of cleaner power and another aimed specifically at ramping up offshore wind development.

But if Rhode Island were to adopt a statewide ban, it would be the first in the nation, said Hank Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, one of the groups that proposed a moratorium on new gas hookups on Aquidneck Island. And he believes it may not even require legislation but could rather be done by the administration of Gov. Dan McKee.

“I think the Act on Climate anticipated this question,” Webster said, pointing to provisions in the law that he and others argue empowers state agencies to take action to rein in emissions.

The Acadia Center, a regional clean-energy group, and a host of other organizations including The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, are also focused on revamping energy efficiency programs. The state’s efforts to insulate homes, replace outdated appliances and take other steps to conserve energy have long been viewed as among the most effective in the nation, but observers say there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Read the full article here.

Climate change is making power outages more common

A powerful weather system is pummeling New England with rain and snow, leaving tens of thousands of New Englanders without power.

It’s something that could happen more frequently thanks to climate change, unless the region takes serious steps to prepare.

More than 18,000 people across Massachusetts — including more than half of the towns of Warwick, Ashby, Hubbardston, and New Salem — were experiencing outages Monday afternoon, according to the state’s Emergency Management Agency. Tens of thousands of customers are also experiencing outages in New Hampshire and Maine.

The disruptions come just one month after some 170,000 customers in New England lost power on Christmas Eve during a winter storm.

During storms, low temperatures can push up demand for fuel as people stay in their homes, while putting stress on power plants. But the even bigger problem is that they can cause disruptions at the neighborhood level, said Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy at the environmental nonprofit Acadia Center.

“Power interruptions are overwhelmingly caused by local disruptions like tree branches, ice, wind, or animals knocking out local distribution power lines,” she said.

New England clean energy goals slam into oil reality

New England power plants burned more oil for electricity on a single day during last month’s deep freeze than they have in four years, underscoring the gap between Northeastern states’ clean energy targets and the current resource mix in the region.

Oil resources supplied 29 percent of a six-state region’s power on Dec. 24 as temperatures hovered in the teens, natural gas supplies tightened and some generators failed to perform as expected. The amount of electricity generated by oil that day was higher than it had been since a weekslong polar vortex hit New England in January 2018, according to an E&E News review of annual reports from the regional grid operator on fuel use.

New England and New York are the only parts of the country that rely extensively on oil resources for backup power when other electricity supplies are expensive or in short supply. In both regions, oil is used sparingly throughout the year, having accounted for 0.2 percent of the total electric load in New England in 2021, according to ISO New England, the area’s nonprofit grid operator.

“It’s been years that this back and forth switching between fossil fuels has been going on, and it’s not improving,” Amy Boyd, vice president of climate and clean energy policy at Acadia Center, a New England-based environmental advocacy group, said in an email. “We need to instead come to a better solution.”

‘There’s a dam breaking:’ Cities and towns start to kick fossil fuels with new building code

Brookline and Watertown last week became the first communities in the state to adopt a new building code discouraging the use of fossil fuels in new buildings, and 22 more cities and towns have signaled they intend to take similar action, in what climate advocates say is the first large-scale test of Massachusetts’ willingness to wean itself from gas and oil.

The new code, finalized by the state Department of Energy Resources last month, adds new requirements to the current building codes in communities that choose to adopt it. It stops short of being an outright ban of fossil fuel heat, but by requiring stringent energy efficiency measures and add-ons like solar panels in buildings that plan to install gas line connections, it is likely to sharply curtail it.

Even some of the most staunch supporters of the electrification movement have some concerns about the new code. Kyle Murray, the Massachusetts program director for the clean energy advocacy group Acadia Center, said that some additional measures may be needed to ensure low income residents are not negatively impacted, though he noted that on the whole, things are moving in the right direction.

“Cities and towns are leading the way, and I think we’re going to see a sort of point where — I don’t want to use disaster metaphors — but there’s a dam breaking,” Murray said. “We’re going to see these cities and towns do it and then we’re going to see so many more cities and towns say, ‘Oh, yeah, we can do this too.’ ”

Read the full article here.