A Company Backed by This Mega Oligarch Helped Kill Clean Power in Maine

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s savage assault on Ukraine has shocked the world, galvanized global democracies, and sent fuel prices surging.

But months before Kremlin troops poured into the country, a company tied to one of the regime’s erstwhile elite allies fought and won a major battle in the Maine woods. And the outcome of that saga will have its own ramifications for the future of the world and its energy supply.

A mere 412,086 residents of the Pine Tree State—less than 38 percent of the eligible electorate—voted in the November referendum that decided the fate of the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) project. The scheme would have linked the Maine and Massachusetts electrical grids with 1200 megawatts of renewable hydroelectricity from Quebec. The 243,943 people who voted against construction of the 145-mile transmission line did so against the wishes not only of Gov. Janet Mills, but of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who tweeted just days before the plebiscite about the benefits the already-underway venture would deliver to the environment and the economy.

Despite receiving approval from multiple Maine agencies and from the Army Corps of Engineers, securing a presidential permit for cross-border infrastructure, and installing some 120 structures and completing much of the tree clearance, the NECEC lost on Election Day. And Calpine, owner of the state’s biggest power generator and the enormous natural gas plant in the town of Westbrook, won—as did one of the company’s largest shareholders, Access Industries and its owner Len Blavatnik.

Born in Soviet-controlled Odessa in 1978, Blavatnik emigrated to the United States with his family as a young man and completed his degree at Columbia University. He founded Access Industries in 1986, a few years before receiving his master’s in business administration at Harvard. Through a spokesman, his company declined to comment on Calpine’s activities in Maine.

Today, Blavatnik is known in the West for posing with celebrities in his capacity as head of Warner Music Group, and for his profuse philanthropy. His family name adorns institutions in the U.S., Britain, and Israel, and in 2017, Queen Elizabeth knighted him in recognition of his generosity.

But the mogul owes most of his estimated $33.4 billion fortune to his dealings in the old USSR., where he began dabbling in the 1990s, experts say.

“Len Blavatnik is one of the top oligarchs in Russia,” Dr. Anders Aslund, a former economic advisor to the Russian and Ukrainian governments, told The Daily Beast. “He just happens to be a U.S. citizen.”

According to Aslund, American citizenship has shielded Blavatnik from the sanctions that hit two of his biggest former business partners under legislation passed in 2018: Viktor Vekselberg, with whom Blavatnik once ran one of the biggest Russian oil concerns prior to a 2013 sale to state-owned Rosneft, and aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

Like other men who accrued vast fortunes by gaining control of Russian heavy industries, Blavatnik belongs to the uppermost stratum of the infamously corrupt country’s society, Aslund said. Such a privileged perch was only possible by way of tight ties to the Putin regime, according to Aslund, who published a book on the nation’s crony capitalist system in 2019.

“An oligarch essentially means you are at least a billionaire, and that you have very good relations with the Kremlin,” Aslund explained. “That is a precondition for success.”

Blavatnik has long denied being an oligarch. A Financial Times profile noted Blavatnik’s PR team stipulates to publications he not be referred to as such before granting interviews (the paper also cited Russian officials as saying Blavatnik was never personally a “regular visitor” to the Kremlin). But Aslund is far from alone in his assessment; the Free Russia Forum, founded by dissident chess champion Garry Kasparov, placed him on its “Putin’s List” of accomplices and enablers—and media outlets have declined his requests to stop applying the term.

In defense of its owner, Access Industries highlighted a statement in the FT piece by since-jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who praised Blavatnik’s charity and distinguished him from the crew surrounding Putin.

“At least university campuses get built,” Navalny told the publication in 2019. “As far as Russia and I are concerned, he’s not a political oligarch. He isn’t buying newspapers here, he isn’t intimidating journalists, he basically isn’t involved with Putin at all.”

However, Access Industries does hold a majority stake in one of Russia’s biggest TV and movie production companies, which has exclusive rights to air HBO’s library of content in the country. Earlier this year, the media giant revealed it would not be broadcasting HBO’s documentary on Navalny’s 2020 poisoning, which he and others have blamed on the Kremlin.

Access also asserted that “less than than 1 percent of Access’ investments are in any way Russian-related.”

However much the company has diversified his portfolio, Aslund asserted that Blavatnik’s main interest remains petrochemicals and fossil fuels. Between 2005 and 2007, Blavatnik’s company gained control of the Netherlands-based LyondellBasell and its massive Houston refinery. Corporate documents show that LyondellBasell has sold millions of dollars worth of gas each year since at least 2017.

Access Industries, in a joint maneuver with venture fund Energy Capital Partners and the Canadian federal pension system, acquired Calpine itself in a $17.1 billion deal in 2018. The largest natural gas and geothermal electricity producer in the nation, Calpine made headlines when plants failed in its home state of Texas in the 2021 winter blackout. Its stations in Corpus Christi and Hayward, California, also suffered explosions over the summer.

Calpine operates the natural gas-fired generation facility in Westbrook, Maine, that federal Energy Information Administration figures show is far and away the largest single power producer in the state, pumping out more than a million megawatt-hours in 2020.

Calpine did not address their ownership structure in a statement to The Daily Beast, and characterized itself as “only a minority participant” in the political push to defeat the hydropower corridor, an apparent allusion to other energy firms’ heavy investment in the effort. The company also noted that a handful of local conservation groups joined the fight against the NECEC.

“We’re pleased to support local voters and environmental leaders who felt the project was little more than greenwashing and a ‘bad deal for Maine that was flawed from the very beginning,’” said a corporate spokesman, noting the firm’s own commitments to emissions reduction.

But this ignores the leadership role Calpine played in the fierce and costly campaign to persuade first authorities, and then the public, to block the project.

It was Calpine, along with two smaller power producers, that unsuccessfully begged the Maine Public Utilities Commission in 2018 to block the plan to channel hydroelectricity in from Canada. It was Calpine that bankrolled two studies asserting the project would increase carbon emissions by depriving other areas of hydroelectricity and by undercutting local renewable energy development (power supplier Hydro-Quebec disputed the first conclusion, asserting a recent expansion would grant it capacity to serve all its customers).

And it was Calpine that appealed to the Department of Energy in early 2020, urging it to block the NECEC’s application to construct its conduit to Canada.

The company’s concerns were explicitly financial: it feared that the NECEC would flood the region with so much cheap electricity that its own assets would become unprofitable.

“We’re concerned about the long-term viability of our operations in Maine,” John Flumerfelt, Calpine’s director of government and regulatory affairs, told Maine Public Radio in 2019.

In December of that year, Flumerfelt became the principal officer of a new political action committee, Mainers for Local Power. Calpine co-founded the group with Vistra Corp., which owns a plant in Maine. The PAC’s treasurer was an attorney with a firm that also works for Calpine. To date, Calpine has dumped more than $3.2 million into the PAC; also backed by Vistra and Nextera Energy, the PAC bankrolled the signature-gathering effort to get the question to block the clean energy corridor on the ballot. (The other two energy firms did not respond to a request for comment.)

Flumerfelt was ubiquitous throughout the process, appearing at numerous public events, volunteering constant commentary to local news, and even drafting his own family members into the petitioning process.

Mainers for Local Power and another committee it financed inundated the airwaves and social media with advertisements attacking the project. Particularly devastating, local politicos said, were efforts casting the referendum as a way for voters to strike back at the unpopular distributor Central Maine Power, which owns much of the grid the NECEC would serve and shares a parent company with the entity behind the project.

Anti-NECEC politicians raged against “foreign governments” trying to influence the process, pointing out that Hydro-Quebec—which launched its own multi-million-dollar PR campaign—belongs to its eponymous province.

But Calpine’s ownership seems to have simply never come up. And the state’s dependence upon fossil fuel-fired plants would soon become devastatingly clear.

Just weeks after the vote, the Maine Public Utilities Commission announced residents would face a more than 80 percent hike in their electricity rates. The culprit, the agency said: the spiking price of natural gas, which currently provides roughly half of New England’s power.

“They set up this referendum to stop hydropower coming in, then a month later they jacked up the prices on natural gas that the hydro was going to displace from the grid,” raged State Sen. Trey Stewart, a fierce NECEC supporter. “The companies that won are now reaping serious benefits off the backs of Maine rate payers.”

A Republican, Stewart is an ardent advocate of expanding American natural gas production and a bitter critic of President Joe Biden’s opposition to pipeline construction. But even as he acknowledged the NECEC would not have come online until 2024, the legislator argued it could have guaranteed Mainers reliable low-cost electricity for decades to come.

In the meantime, benchmarks are fast approaching for ambitious emission reduction plans state governments in Maine and Massachusetts have passed. And experts warn Maine may have erased one of the best and easiest ways to reach their goals: replacing fossil fuel generation with hydropower.

“It makes it that much harder for New England to find a path for reaching its targets for decarbonization,” warned John Parsons, executive director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, who co-authored a study on the subject in 2020. “This was part of the cheapest, the best economical deal for customers.”

The irony is, the plan’s opponents included a number of local environmental activists—all of them “hoodwinked” by the fossil fuel industry, according to Stewart.

Jeff Marks, senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center—an anti-climate change think-tank—was less acerbic. The Acadia Center itself was ambivalent about the project, recognizing the need for the clean power it would provide, while insisting the utility firms behind it provide further public benefits if and when it came to fruition.

Many people, Marks believes, were persuaded by slick ads depicting the project as a threat to the state’s beloved forests. This even though the new transmission capacity would have largely run along existing power lines and would have removed a small fraction of the state’s overall tree cover.

“This is a state of 90 percent trees. This is a pretty tiny footprint in the forest of Maine,” Marks said. “The earth is burning, we’re having brutal heat waves, more drought, and extreme rainfall. We looked at this project purely from the standpoint of: ‘Does it provide a solution on climate change? Does it have potential to reduce carbon?’ And we kind of erred on the side of ‘yes.’”

For now, the NECEC is scheduled to argue to the state’s top court in May that the Maine constitution does not allow for a referendum to retroactively cancel an approved project. But a lower court denied a request for an injunction against the referendum’s results in December, halting the project’s progress.

Aslund has long warned about the influence of Blavatnik and other Russia-linked elites in American affairs, influence he asserted in a 2020 paper “can hardly be considered legitimate,” even if, as he himself noted, it “is both public and legal.” He told The Daily Beast that, with Moscow slaughtering civilians in its bid to subjugate Ukraine, his concerns have only intensified.

Meanwhile, in the months since the referendum, prospects for New England and other natural gas-dependent areas of the country have only grown more dire, given that one of the earth’s major fossil fuel-producing regions seems headed for years of market-wracking conflict.

“I think those problems in Eastern Europe are going to get worse before they get better, and so prices are only going to go up,” said Stewart, the Maine lawmaker. “I’m not as worried about power coming from Canada as I would be about oil coming from Russia. That’s a much less stable market, not just in terms of base-level concerns, but in terms of price volatility.”

Sure enough, on Tuesday, President Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and natural gas imports, which could wreak new havoc on energy prices across the country.

“And I think the Canadians are better partners,” Stewart added, noting the state’s economy, and especially that of his own district, is tightly intertwined with that of the nation’s neighbor and ally to the north.

Read the full article at the Daily Beast here.

Proposed Killingly power plant dealt another blow

It’s the end of the line for the proposed Killingly natural gas plant as far grid operator ISO-New England is concerned, at least for the immediate future.

Two rulings in the last two weeks, one by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the other by the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., paved the way for the ISO to complete its recent annual auction that determines future power sources for use by the New England grid.

The auction results will not include the Killingly facility, as they have for the last several auctions.

It’s unclear whether Killingly’s owners, NTE, have additional recourse to force the ISO to include the plant — and, if they do, whether they would use it. The company did not respond to requests for information.

Also unclear is whether after six years of planning, NTE might abandon the project. Without a guaranteed market for its power, investors could be disinclined to back the plant, though NTE has said in the past that the plant’s financing is in place.

Killingly had become a cause celebre for environmental advocates who argued the region needed more renewable not fossil fuel energy. The ISO has argued natural gas generation improves the grid’s reliability. But in winter, when gas is needed for heat and the grid operator has to turn to dirtier oil and coal generation, environmental advocates have argued the use of natural gas makes the grid less reliable. That is being underscored right now as fossil fuel prices soar due to the war being waged by Russia in Ukraine.

Advocates, along with Gov. Ned Lamont and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes, have also argued that more non-renewable energy on the grid is counterproductive in terms of slowing climate change and that it could cause the state to miss any number of greenhouse gas emissions goals, including the governor’s executive order for a carbon-free grid by 2040. The legislature failed to make that order into a law last session, but it’s been refiled for this session.

The most recent turn of events began on Nov. 4 when the ISO asked permission from FERC to remove Killingly from the February auction because NTE had missed required deadlines that would ensure its development.

On Jan. 3, 2022, FERC approved the ISO’s request, saying: “Based on a review of the record, including the confidential information provided by ISO-NE and NTE, we find that the relevant condition for termination … has been met.”

NTE disagreed, saying at the time: “We are very disappointed and do not agree with FERC’s decision. The Killingly Energy Center is important for grid reliability, and we will continue to work to be the bridge for the region’s carbon-free future.”

NTE asked for a re-hearing by FERC and took the matter to court, which resulted in a ruling just days before the annual auction on Feb. 7, 2022, that temporarily stayed FERC’s decision removing the plant from consideration.

Switch to electric buildings or miss climate goals, N.J. advocates say

New Jersey is falling behind neighboring states in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from homes and buildings — a trend that threatens the state’s goal of slashing global-warming pollution, according to a report by a nonprofit advocacy group.

The analysis by the Acadia Center, commissioned by the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, calls on the state to step up efforts to transition buildings to electric power and to end heating homes with natural gas and other fossil fuels. Power to heat and cool buildings represents the second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emission in the state, behind vehicle emissions — accounting for about a quarter of the pollution responsible for climate change.

The report recommends a range of new policies and incentives to accelerate the replacement of gas-fired and oil-fueled furnaces with electric appliances. That includes using cold-climate heat pumps that can not only heat homes in negative temperatures, but also provide highly efficient air conditioning.

In a state where more than 75% of the public relies on natural gas to heat homes, the idea of converting homes to heat pumps is probably the most controversial aspect of the plan by Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration to transition to 100% clean energy by 2050.

The Senate approved a bill to prohibit state agencies from mandating electric heating systems earlier this year. The bill died when it failed to win approval in the Assembly at the end of the last legislative session in early January. Clean-energy advocates say there are no plans to mandate a conversion to electrified buildings.

Costs at issue

For the most part, criticism focuses on the cost of conversion to heat pumps, which work by gathering heat from one location and transferring it to another, rather than generating heat.

According to data based on conversions in other states in the Northeast, typical costs range from $4,000 to $7,000. Opponents, however, claim the actual costs are much higher, ranging as much as $20,000.

Proponents argued Tuesday that by electrifying buildings, consumers will see lower annual operating costs for a typical home in New Jersey equipped with an average level of weatherization.

The average home would save about $50 annually, even assuming very low gas prices, such as those from the winter of 2020-2021. By combining electric appliances with home weatherization measures, many homeowners in the state can reduce their energy bills by more than 50%, the report said.

“When combined with weatherization, New Jerseyans will save money and improve local health by electrifying their homes,’’ said Amy Boyd, director of policy at the Acadia Center. “New Jersey can follow the framework set by fellow Northeast states to successfully, quickly and affordably switch to an electric future.’’

For instance, Massachusetts offers incentives ranging from $4,000 to $10,000 to convert to cold-climate heat pumps, Boyd said. It also is important to target poorly insulated homes for such conversions, she said, noting they account for half of all greenhouse-gas emissions in the state.

Incentives needed

Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-Mercer) said if the state offers incentives that reduce upfront costs, consumers will be more willing to switch to an electric system, which otherwise costs more than a conventional gas or oil furnace.

The state’s Energy Master Plan recommends converting 22% of buildings to electric heat pumps by 2030, a target that proponents say is not aggressive enough to achieve the state’s clean-energy goal.

The state master plan also says New Jersey should convert 90% of residential and commercial buildings from natural gas to electric appliances by 2050.

“New Jersey needs to start developing the policies and incentives to advance building electrification in a way that benefits consumers, supports low- and moderate-income communities, and reduces harmful indoor emissions,’’ said Tom Gilbert, campaign director of ReThink New Jersey and New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

New Jersey ranks seventh among states in the nation with most premature deaths, with over 250 from outdoor air pollution directly related to combustion in buildings from gas, oil and propane, according to research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Read the full article at WHYY here.

New England takes a detour on grid reform; griping ensues

It was a shocker.

Katie Dykes, Connecticut’s commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, earlier this month got onboard with a two-year delay for a key component of her pet project — reforming the New England electric grid.

Definitely a shocker.

For nearly a decade, Dykes has railed against the operator of the grid, ISO-New England, and the way it purchases power, saying it hinders the build out of renewable energy, which comes from a source that is not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power. But after building regional momentum to change that dynamic, Dykes blinked.

Instead of ending a year from now, a key rule for acquiring future power for the grid will end three years from now, with agreement from Dykes.

Not that Dykes voted for the delay. But she didn’t vote against it either. “Not opposing” was the official disposition.

“It’s a long way from not opposing to supporting,” she explained several days after the decision.

But renewable energy advocates around the region are nothing short of appalled and point fingers straight at ISO-NE, which they say changed its mind at the very last minute and played an often-used trump card — that reliability of the grid would be at stake if the rule changed next year.

“As someone who has responsibility for meeting state policy goals and assuring that we’re doing so in an affordable, reliable way, I can’t just outright dismiss the ISO’s rationale for this preference, i.e., reliability,” Dykes said. “And that’s why we didn’t oppose.”

Francis Pullaro, executive director of RENEW Northeast, a group uniting renewable energy and environmental advocates, said the states were put in a difficult position.

“They don’t know what the ISO needs. They’re not looking at the system like the ISO is. I can be sympathetic to that. I have my own perspective,” he said. “No one’s going to call me if the system collapses, right? It’s a sensitive topic.”

Meet the MOPR

The rule in the cross-hairs is called the minimum offer price rule, universally referred to in the energy world as the MOPR.

Once a year, the ISO runs what’s called a forward capacity auction. It’s a low-price-wins auction to determine what generating resources will go into its Forward Capacity Market, the power it plans to have available three years in advance. It gives the ISO the security that power will be there, and it provides a commitment to potential new power sources so they can get financed and built.

The MOPR is a key component, setting the lowest price that a resource can offer in the forward capacity auction.

Mainly, the power projects want to recoup their construction costs. Many, if not most, renewable and clean energy resources have state-sponsored contracts and other sorts of subsidies, so part of those costs are already covered. But under the MOPR, they have to factor the entire cost into their bid, not just the uncovered portion.

Worries persist about storm response if Narragansett Electric sale goes through

PROVIDENCE — On the eve of a blizzard last month that would bring heavy snow and strong winds to southern New England, National Grid mobilized a force of 3,600 line and tree crew members and other field personnel in Rhode Island and Massachusetts who were ready to respond to outages across the region.

As it turned out, while the storm on Jan. 29 buried parts of Rhode Island under more than two feet of snow, the number of calls for downed lines was minimal and only a few dozen households in the state lost power.

But there was a measure of security in the sheer number of personnel the utility was able to call in to prepare for the storm. If anything had happened, 1,000 workers were on hand in Rhode Island and another 2,600 were spread across several locations in Massachusetts, ready to be deployed where they were needed.

It’s one small example of how Rhode Island benefits from being part of a larger area in the Northeast that is served by National Grid, a system that also includes parts of Massachusetts and New York.

Now, some experts worry that things could change if state regulators approve a $5.3-billion proposal to sell National Grid’s electric and natural gas business in Rhode Island, known as the Narragansett Electric Company, to PPL Corporation, of Pennsylvania.

To be sure, PPL is a big company serving 2.5 million customers, with more than a century of experience in providing energy to homes and businesses, but its other holdings are far from Rhode Island, in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

And more than one party arguing in the approval proceedings before the deputy administrator of the state Division of Public Utilities and Carriers has raised concerns that storm response in Rhode Island could suffer if the deal goes through.

“When you have a state — particularly the smallest state in the United States — having to rely on a utility that’s not contiguous, that can create operation problems and costs,” Gregory Booth, a consultant to the DPUC’s advocacy section, testified during a hearing that stretched over several days in December.

PPL says storm response could actually improve

Executives with PPL say just the opposite — that storm response could actually improve if the DPUC’s ruling, expected by Feb. 25, is to approve the transaction.

They argue that the distance between Rhode Island and the company’s current holdings would actually benefit the Ocean State in the event of a bad storm. That’s because the chances of a single weather system damaging electric systems in Rhode Island, and also in Pennsylvania or Kentucky, are slim.

If Rhode Island is expected to be hit hard, resources elsewhere in the PPL network would likely be available, the thinking goes. And that, company representatives contend, is actually a better situation than having one utility serving several states close to one another that could all be hammered by a storm at once.

Based on an analysis of federal weather data between 1995 and 2020, there’s only a 15-20% chance of a tropical storm in Pennsylvania or Kentucky also reaching Rhode Island, PPL says. But the likelihood of a storm in Massachusetts hitting Rhode Island too is 45-50%, according to written testimony from David Bonenberger, a PPL vice president who would head up the company’s operations in Rhode Island.

“So we feel that we’ll have more capability to provide resources to bring to bear in the event Rhode Island gets hit with severe damage,” he said in the hearing, adding that workers could be deployed to the state in advance if forecasters predict a severe storm.

Concerns over costs to ratepayers

But not everyone is convinced by PPL’s argument. The office of Attorney General Peter Neronha, which has raised a host of concerns about the sale, countered that bringing in crews from as far away as Kentucky — as opposed to Massachusetts — could cost ratepayers more money.

In his testimony, Bonenberger said the company doesn’t know how the deal would affect storm-response costs, the attorney general’s office pointed out in a filing following the hearing.

“Despite thousands of pages of document responses and days of testimony, Petitioners have not demonstrated that similar storm response performance will be achieved at the same or lesser cost as the status quo, and Petitioners have not made the bare minimum demonstration of no harm to the public in their capacity as ratepayers,” Neronha’s office wrote.

Experts working with the office have also said that ratepayers currently benefit from cost efficiencies in the way that National Grid keeps personnel and supplies at locations shared between Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Booth, the DPUC consultant, made a similar point in regard to transformers and other electrical equipment. Narragansett Electric has access to a larger fleet of backup supplies through National Grid affiliates in New York and Massachusetts than it would if it was on its own. And much of that equipment is tailored specifically to the National Grid system. To have the same level of coverage in the region under PPL would require additional investments, Booth argued.

Hank Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, a clean energy advocacy group that has raised other questions about the purchase, asked Booth about this at the hearing.

“Would a helpful analogy be that the National Grid family of companies are like, say, a Ford dealership and potentially the PPL companies are like a Chevy dealership, so in terms of stocking the inventory for the parts for their respective systems, there would be a change by separating out Narragansett and putting it into a new system?” Webster asked.

“Well, at a high level that’s probably a reasonable analogy, but transformers are so very specific voltage-wise, capacity-wise, winding-wise that it’s even much more different than a Chevy and a Ford,” Booth responded.

Mutual assistance pacts would help

In response to questions this week, representatives of PPL and National Grid said the companies are taking steps to ensure a smooth transition. They plan to enter into a mutual assistance agreement that would give each other access to field crews and backup equipment, including transformers, in times of need. Existing agreements with other industry groups would also roll over.

Additionally, PPL would manage storm response from a control center in Lincoln that is currently used as a backup to National Grid’s primary facility for the region in Northborough, Massachusetts.

During the regulatory proceedings, lawyers for PPL have largely dismissed the criticism, saying that opponents to the transaction are essentially arguing that no other utility can take over from National Grid unless it has the same reach into Massachusetts and New York.

“It may be likely that incumbency provides National Grid with some advantages in certain areas over the short term,” they said in a filing after the hearing. “But it is just as likely that an experienced and successful utility operator like PPL will find other ways to produce value, reduce costs, and more efficiently operate Narragansett.”

Read the full article at The Providence Journal here.

Power for the People: 1/26/22: The Regional Electrical Grid

Melissa Birchard, Acadia Center’s Senior Regulatory Attorney joins producer and host Steve Kahl of the podcast “Power for the People” for an engaging conversation about regional clean energy resources. Listen here.

Transit Equity Day event calls for fairness in public transportation

The Transit Equity Day event in Providence, delayed one week because of a snowstorm, was held in coordination with 40 other events across the the United States and timed to take place on the birthday of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. In Providence, the event was geared around a call for a Rosa Parks commemorative bus shelter, to commend RIPTA and its drivers for getting Rhode Islanders to their destinations during the pandemic, and to urge state leaders to work harder to achieve transportation equity for all residents.

RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority) is the public-private entity that oversees Rhode Island’s public transportation system. RIPTA is currently working on implementing the state’s first Transit Master Plan and using that as a guide for improving transit equity.

Two issues not mentioned at the Transit Equity Day event were the plan to make all rides on RIPTA buses free and the plan to get rid of Providence’s central bus hub in Kennedy Plaza in favor of a new central hub on Dorrance Street.

Uprise RI asked RIPTA CEO Scott Avedesian, who attended the Transit Equity Day event, if, given his and RIPTA’s commitment to equity, he would schedule hearings on the downtown Providence bus hub that were in person, not just virtually on computers. After all, many who use the bus do not have access to computers. Avedesian told UpriseRI that the first three meetings, already scheduled, would be held remotely and made a weak commitment to having at least one meeting in person after that, if COVID permits.

Well over 80 people attended the Transit Equity Day event, including members of the Rhode Island Transit Riders Alliance, George Wiley Center, the Kennedy Plaza Coalition, NAACP Providence Branch, the BLM RI PAC, the RI Bicycle Coalition, Climate-Justice-Rhode Island, the Providence Streets Coalition, and Grow Smart RI. Around 50 students from Providence’s Charette High School marched across the city to attend.

What is transit equity? Event co-organizer Liza Burkin, a coordinator for the Providence Streets Coalition, defined it as “acknowledging the racist past of transportation planning and fighting every day for a more inclusive and just mobility future.”

In a press release, Harrison Tuttle, executive director of the Black Lives Matter RI PAC, called on elected officials to “continue to prioritize investment in our public transit for communities of color. This will result in more job opportunities and access to future endeavors for generations to come.”

“Transit Equity Day is a day to call for action in our everyday lives to promote transit equity,” said Rhode Island Transit Rider Rochelle Lee. “A day to connect the voices of those who endure hardship and the inequities of racial segregation.”

Jim Vincent, President of the NAACP Providence Branch reminded everyone of Rosa Parks and her special place in the history of civil rights and transit equity.

“Rosa Parks was the branch secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP. It was the NAACP in Alabama that decided that Rosa was going to test the 14th Amendment in terms of equal protection,” said Vincent. “So Rosa Parks who was fired, and had death threats to her dying day in Detroit, where she had to flee to, is an American hero.”

Parks made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man.

“A lot of people point to that moment as the start of the civil rights movement,” noted Vincent.

“Rosa Parks fought for the BIPOC community,” said Terri Wright, life-long bus rider and member of Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). “And this is why we have freedom and rights when we ride.” Wright defined sustainable communities as those that “begin with transit equality, quality housing, and public health.”

“What does climate and energy have to do with transit equity, which is what we’re here to talk about today?” asked Mal Skowron, transportation policy and program coordinator at Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “The fact is that all of the causes of our climate crisis are the same causes of the transit inequity that we have seen for the last 50 or 60 years and continue to see today.”

“Rhode Island has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the inequities that have for decades overburdened communities with harmful air pollution and a lack of mobility options,” said Hank Webster, the Acadia Center’s Rhode Island director. “Policymakers have a clear choice: prioritize transit-oriented development connected to a robust, multimodal, sustainable public transportation network that supports access to good jobs, educational opportunities, and vital healthcare services, or…continue to focus investment on the polluting, inequitable, car-centric status quo.”

“Charette focuses on urban planning and historic preservation,” said Angel Garcia, a senior at Charette High School, “Charette depends on RIPTA. On a monthly basis students are given a WAVE card that helps us to get to school, go to and from school, work, sports, extracurriculars.”

Nick DeCristofaro, president and business agent for the Rhode Island Amalgamated Transit Union, said that transit equity includes fair pay and good contracts for RIPTA workers.

“I’d like to join you in highlighting the need for transit equity and what we can do to achieve the transit services that our residents deserve,” said Representative Carlos Tobon (Democrat, District 58, Pawtucket), who chairs the House Finance subcommittee on transportation and the environment. Tobon noted that represents Pawtucket, “where transportation is highly utilized. I firmly support the efforts to instill transit equity by improving transit.”

Senator Meghan Kallman (Democrat, District 15, Pawtucket) And fellow Pawtucket Representative Leonela Felix (Democrat, District 61, Pawtucket) have bills in the Senate and House to make RIPTA free to all riders. UrpriseRI asked Representative Tobon if he supported these bills given his position on the House Finance Committee and his support or transit equity. Tobon replied that as a “numbers person” he would need assurances that such a plan would be feasible before he supported it.

Greg Nardine, RIPTA’s Chief of Strategic Advancement, spoke of specific programs and plans to make RIPTA more equitable, including the implementation of RIPTA’s Wave Card, new routes, and the full electrification of RIPTA’s R-Line, it’s most used rout.

Patricia Raub of the Rhode Island Transit Riders ended the speaking program by calling for the completion of a new, Rosa Parks commemorative bus shelter on Smith Street in front of the Department of Administration and across the street from the State House, where the event was held.

See video footage of the event and read the full article at Uprise RI here.

In a significant step to reduce emissions, state officials propose new building codes to promote energy efficiency

In a move that could have a significant impact on the state’s ability to make drastic cuts to its carbon emissions, state officials on Tuesday released a much-anticipated proposal for new building codes that would require new homes and offices to be far more energy efficient.

The controversial proposal, which also calls for sweeping changes to existing building codes, would require developers to use more energy efficient construction materials; install solar panels wherever possible; and among a range of other measures, wire new homes, offices, and other buildings with the necessary cables to enable them to use heat pumps and appliances that don’t use fossil fuels.

But some said the proposal doesn’t go far enough to end the use of oil and natural gas in future construction projects, as developers, in some cases, would still be allowed to install the necessary pipes and other infrastructure so their buildings could continue to use fossil fuels.

“The proposed updates to the state’s building codes seek to strike an important balance between energy efficiency in residential and commercial building construction, and continued housing production across the commonwealth, as the state works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Troy Wall, a spokesman for the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

State lawmakers and environmental advocates welcomed the proposal, which was required by the state’s landmark climate law that took effect last year and mandates that the state cut its emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by the end of the decade and effectively eliminate them by 2050. But they hoped regulators would make changes to the proposal before the law requires it to be enacted by the end of the year.

“There’s real progress here, and yet I’m disappointed,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat and one of the climate bill’s lead negotiators. “What is missing is significant. This proposal gives permission to put new natural gas infrastructure into the ground, when we know those assets will have to be abandoned to meet our climate goals.”

He added: “The Baker administration has kicked the proverbial can down the road, and I don’t know how long we can wait. This is a new lease on life for natural gas assets.”

Representatives for developers, who worry that any new building requirements could hike the costs of construction, said they would evaluate the state’s proposal carefully.

“There is no doubt that the proposed update will have an impact on development across the state,” said Tamara Small, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, a lobbyist for developers and building owners. “We look forward to working with the administration and other stakeholders to ensure any negative impacts on economic development and housing are mitigated to ensure a practical achievement of the state’s climate goals.”

With about one-quarter of the state’s emissions coming from its buildings, Patrick Woodcock, commissioner of the state Department of Energy Resources, estimated that the new building codes would reduce emissions by at least 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year in 2030 and save up to $21 billion in construction and operating costs for new buildings.

In an online presentation, Woodcock said new technology and lower fuel costs would save property owners money over the long term. He said it was important for the state to focus first on new construction. He estimated that 27 percent of the buildings that will exist in 2050 haven’t been built yet.

“We need to move forward with integrating the most cost-effective climate solutions into new construction today,” he said.

He added there would be “spillover effects” from the focus on new construction, as it would allow for the training of contractors to perform similar work on existing properties when they are eventually remodeled. It’s unclear if and when the state might require existing buildings to reduce their emissions.

The state’s proposal would update the so-called “stretch” energy code that dates back to the passage of the 2008 Green Communities Act, which provided a range of incentives for communities to require energy efficient development. The vast majority of the state’s towns and cities have adopted the stretch code, so named because it has requirements that extend beyond the state’s base building code.

The proposal would also create a new, more ambitious “specialized” stretch code that aims to have all new buildings either emit no greenhouse gases or have the ability to offset their emissions by producing renewable energy. It would also promote the construction of so-called passive housing, which requires little energy to heat or cool.

Participation in the new stretch code would be voluntary, but state officials said those that take part would be eligible for some $600 million in energy efficiency incentives over the next decade.

The proposed codes provide a legal path for communities to accelerate their efforts to reduce emissions, as some have seen their past efforts stymied. In 2020, for example, Attorney General Maura Healey rejected a bylaw passed by Brookline residents that banned the installation of oil and gas pipes in new and substantially renovated buildings, which would have been the first such prohibition in Massachusetts.

“The proposed changes to the stretch code could be a game-changer for the trajectory of these emissions, and how both residential and commercial new construction happens going forward,” said Cammy Peterson, director of clean energy at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

But she worried the proposal was overly reliant on the market.

“Without more stringent performance standards or requirements, builders and owners may still be reluctant to switch away from fossil fuels,” Peterson said.

Kyle Murray, a senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center, an environmental advocacy group in Boston, said he was happy the state’s proposal focuses on reducing emissions in low-rise residential buildings as much as larger commercial buildings.

But he called the decision to allow new buildings to continue to use fossil fuels “puzzling.”

“This represents that opportunity to have a gold standard code in place in the commonwealth,” he said. “I would hate for us to miss that opportunity.”

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.

Rhode Island PUC Approves Rate Increases to Fund Energy Programs

WARWICK, R.I. — Residents can expect to see a modest bump in their utility bills this year to support energy-efficiency programs. The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) recently approved new rates for National Grid’s energy-efficiency programs (EEP).

National Grid estimates residential electric customers who use an average of 500 kilowatt-hours a month will have an increase of 57 cents on their monthly bills allocated specifically for EEP. Gas customers using 702 therms — a therm is a unit of gas measurement — can expect to see an additional charge of $32.28 spread across the next 11 months.

EEPs in Rhode Island are funded by a line item on utility bills called “Systems Benefit Charges.” It funds programs such as free home energy audits, incentives for energy-efficient upgrades, help paying heating bills, and net metering. Local governments, state departments and educational institutions can apply for grants to fund renewable energy projects.

The total budget approved to be collected from ratepayers’ bills is $109 million from electric customers and $36.9 million from gas customers. It is a significant departure from National Grid’s original proposal of $122 million for electric programs. PUC spokesperson Thomas Kogut said there were “significant adjustments on the electric side.”

Some say the amount allocated for EEP programs is not enough.

“Energy efficiency is the single best tool we have to fight climate change and protect against wildly volatile fossil fuel prices,” said Hank Webster, state director of the Acadia Center, a nonprofit headquartered in Maine.

A 2020 market potential study of the state’s energy-efficiency programs commissioned by the Rhode Island Energy Efficiency & Resource Management Council found that to reach the maximum benefit for its programs, expenditures for electric and gas would have to be $200 million and $90 million, respectively.

“We have a lot of work to do to align programs to improve the programs for low- and moderate-income households that have high energy burdens and often deal with inadequate insulation, obsolete fossil fuel equipment, and other serious health hazards,” Webster said.

The three-member PUC indicated at its Jan. 25th meeting that it had heard much from stakeholders about equity in the programs.

“Energy efficiency and renewable energy and other programs all create opportunities for customers to become energy suppliers and benefit from providing energy supply to the utility,” commissioner Abigail Anthony said. “Customers who stand to gain the most are those who own property and can invest in [the programs.] Some of the inequitable outcomes from energy efficiency and all programs stem from decades of policies that prevented people from owning property and building wealth.”

Read the full article in ecoRI News here.

A decision made behind closed doors may set clean energy back by two years