After passing a landmark climate law, officials now face the hard part: how to wean the state off of fossil fuels
Over the coming decades, the state’s largest utilities have plans to spend billions of dollars upgrading a vast network of aging pipes and mains that distribute natural gas, after billions they’ve already spent in recent years.
But much of those plans clash with a landmark bill that Governor Charlie Baker signed last month that requires the state to effectively eliminate its carbon emissions by 2050.
Some environmental advocates and lawmakers fear that continued investments in gas infrastructure could hinder the transition to renewable energy and leave ratepayers covering the costs of an obsolete energy system for decades. They support repairing leaky pipes and those that pose a danger to the public, but they’re pressing the utilities to spend far more on zero-emissions technologies.
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Environmental advocates have said they worry utilities are trying to steer the state toward solutions that would allow them to continue to retain control of the market. They questioned, for example, utilities’ suggestions that they could repurpose their system to distribute hydrogen, which is highly combustible, expensive, and far more likely to leak.
They’re also pressing ISO New England, which operates the regional power grid, to change its rules to make it easier for renewable energy sources, especially offshore wind, to compete with gas, which has been a favored source of energy because of its relatively low cost and reliability.
Without changes to the rules, it’s unlikely the state will meet its emissions obligations under the new climate law, they said.
“If offshore wind is given a chance to compete, it will save ratepayers billions of dollars,” said Deborah Donovan, a senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center in Boston. “We need the ISO to help us achieve the state’s goals.”
Read the full article in the Boston Globe here
New England Power Grid Operator Shelling out Millions on Salaries
The organization that oversees New England’s power grid — essentially the same role as the one blamed for Texas’s winter electricity woes — is being zapped by advocates for its executives’ sky-high salaries and a lack of transparency.
ISO New England CEO Gordon van Welie was the recipient of a total of $2,305,770 as of the last tax filing made public by the nonprofit, which was for 2019. Executive VP and COO Vamsi Chadalavada hauled in $1,746,314.
Another four employees made more than $800,000, and 38 people made more than $100,000 — including eight of the nonprofit’s board members. Various nonprofit-governance publications say it’s unusual for nonprofit board members to be paid, but not illegal.
A Delaware-organized nonprofit, ISO New England is funded largely by fees off the top of residents’ electricity bills, and brought in $194 million in 2019.
ISO NE, which says it takes just over a dollar a month from the average ratepayer in fees, defended its bigwigs’ pay.
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Progressive environmental advocates have their own issues with ISO NE, mainly around transparency and what they see as a slowness to embrace green energy.
“The board members are well compensated and there’s an opaqueness as to the way they operate,” Jeremy McDiarmid of the Northeast Clean Energy Council told the Herald.
He cited a lack of public access to some board meetings, and what he said was just a general lack of responsiveness to groups looking to engage with them. And, he said, the ISOs are essentially the gatekeepers for what energy is going to customers — so if people want it to be cleaner and greener — and locally produced — this is the place to start.
In that vein, Deborah Donovan of Acadia Center said she worries that the board has taken on a focus of “reliability — to the exclusion of everything else,” including the cost to consumers and the inclusion of green energy.
“We’re paying too much for the wrong thing,” she said.
Read the full article in the Boston Herald here
Does Aquidneck Island need more natural gas?
PROVIDENCE — Is the answer to a projected shortfall in natural gas supplies on Aquidneck Island a new facility that can tap into liquefied stores of the fossil fuel, or can a solution be found by tamping down usage, converting more customers to electric heat and putting an end to new gas connections?
The question is being raised in response to a proposal filed by National Grid with the state Public Utilities Commission that, if approved, would allow the utility to take the first steps in spending $54.5 million over the next three years on a project aimed at closing the potential gap in supplies and creating enough of a cushion to allow gas service to be expanded to even more customers on the island.
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“We look at the Aquidneck Island case as really being representative of this broader concern of whether it makes sense to keep building gas infrastructure,” said Hank Webster, Acadia’s Rhode Island director. “The community has expressed a preference that the infrastructure does not get built. But it seems like this filing is taking us in the opposite direction.”
Read the full article in The Providence Journal here.
Climate pact hinges on other states
BOSTON — Massachusetts is largely in the driver’s seat on a regional plan to reduce carbon emissions from cars and trucks, but the initiative, which could lead to higher gas prices, now hinges on the approval of lawmakers in two neighboring states.
Gov. Charlie Baker, the governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., signed a regional agreement in December that aims to substantially curb tailpipe emissions while drumming up revenue for projects to mitigate climate change and improve transportation infrastructure.
The Transportation and Climate Initiative won’t be put to a vote in Massachusetts, but it still must be ratified by Connecticut and Rhode Island in order to go forward.
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Former Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat who signed the climate pact, has left to serve as President Joe Biden’s commerce secretary. It’s not yet clear where her successor, Democratic Gov. Dan McKee, stands on the issue.
But Hank Webster, director of the Rhode Island chapter of the Acadia Center, said he expects the pact to be ratified. He noted the Legislature is in the process of approving a massive climate change bill, and he anticipates something will “emerge soon.”
Read the full article in the Gloucester Times here
Does Aquidneck Island need more natural gas?
PROVIDENCE — Is the answer to a projected shortfall in natural gas supplies on Aquidneck Island a new facility that can tap into liquefied stores of the fossil fuel, or can a solution be found by tamping down usage, converting more customers to electric heat and putting an end to new gas connections?
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“We look at the Aquidneck Island case as really being representative of this broader concern of whether it makes sense to keep building gas infrastructure,” said Hank Webster, Acadia’s Rhode Island director. “The community has expressed a preference that the infrastructure does not get built. But it seems like this filing is taking us in the opposite direction.”
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Acadia sees the island as the perfect place to begin changing the state’s heating sector, which accounts for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s in part because of location. The island sits at one of the endpoints of the pipeline network that sends gas around New England, and with only one connection to that system — a line running across the Sakonnet River into Portsmouth — it’s more vulnerable to problems than other areas of the state.
The organization is proposing a moratorium on new connections to the gas system on the island and then switching customers to electric heat pumps and implementing more efficiency measures.
Even its most expensive alternative — weatherizing nearly 5,000 homes at a cost of $48.6 million — would be cheaper than National Grid’s spending over just the next three years, according to Acadia’s analysis. The group’s cheapest option — switching about 3,000 gas customers to high-efficiency water heaters — is estimated at $9.2 million.
Webster says utility companies generally make more money by building infrastructure, so they’re more likely to put in more pipelines. Faced with rising pushback, they’re rushing to get approvals for new investments now, he argues.
“We believe that much of the infrastructure in this docket will become stranded assets in very short order,” he said.
Read the full article in the Providence Journal here
Letter to the editor: Natural gas expansion plans unnecessary, destructive
More natural gas is unnecessary in a state striving for full decarbonization and beneficial electrification of buildings and transportation. Mainers are just starting to get over their long-standing dependence on dirty heating oil and do not need to invest in new gas pipelines over solar, heat pumps, and storage that meet our state climate policies and reduce operating costs over time. The Press Herald’s March 5 editorial says, “Midcoast pipeline rejection shows that climate questions aren’t easy to answer.” We believe that they are.
Unlike renewables and heat pumps, “fossil” gas requires an extensive and dirty network of extraction, production, and transmission to deliver fuel to homes and businesses. This network comes with added risks like leaked methane, price fluctuations, worsening air quality and adverse health effects. Or Mainers can skip all of that and electrify now.
Paying for new pipelines is a bad deal for Mainers, who can save more money and reduce more emissions by bypassing gas for clean, efficient electric equipment. Acadia Center analysis shows that switching from oil to gas saves the average Maine family about 10 percent on energy bills, but whole-home electrification in the same home can save 25 percent or more. And while a gas home emits about as much greenhouse gas as an oil home, electrification can reduce emissions by 60 percent.
Maine’s energy, reliability and climate needs are better met by clean heating and stronger building codes rather than decades of expensive and carbon-intensive infrastructure and fuels.
To read this article in the Portland Press Herald, click here
Plan Needed to Handle Influx of Renewable Energy
The shift to reduced carbon power will increase demand for electricity just as the grid will be changing from centralized power to distributed smaller sources of renewable energy for offshore wind and even hydropower from Canada.
Proponents say it makes economic sense to keep power generation local. It creates jobs and keeps more money flowing in a state. A fact brought up the Rhode Island AFL-CIO when it endorsed a key climate bill advancing in the General Assembly.
But is the grid ready? That’s the question New England governors asked ISO New England, the operator of the regional grid, in October when they demanded better planning to ensure “reliability and resiliency” in the power system to meet the changes in electricity use and handle the influx of renewable energy.
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National Grid is installing 278 fast-charging ports across Rhode Island. The massive utility is also conducting a three-year study, called SmartCharge Rhode Island, of hundreds of current EV owners to understand charging habits and determine if incentives can prompt EV owners to help manage the grid by charging during off-peak hours.
Hank Webster, Rhode Island director and staff attorney for the Acadia Center, agrees with the strategy.
“The key to integrating EV charging into the grid in the near- and long-term is to incentivize off-peak charging to the fullest extent possible,” he said.
This strategy includes the use of battery storage and getting drivers to establish new habits such as charging at home when demand for power is low. So far, the pilot programs in Rhode Island and other state have shown that pricing incentives for charging during off-peak hours are working.
National Grid and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation are testing the concept of battery storage to supplant power from the grid during peak hours with a charging station plus battery-storage systems at park-and-ride lots in Warwick and Hopkinton.
“So by having battery storage that absorb excess energy at low-demand times and discharge it during high-demand times, we can better utilize all of that great clean, renewable energy and avoid calling upon unnecessary fossil power generation,” Webster said.
To read the full article in EcoRI News, click here
North Carolina environmental groups file petition to join other states in combating climate change
In 2019, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality released its Clean Energy Plan, which vows to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power generating plants by 70 percent from 2005 levels and to make the state carbon neutral by 2050.
And now comes a petition from two North Carolina environmental groups that asks the state to join a regional partnership to combat climate change by forcing electrical power plants to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount specified in the DEQ’s Clean Energy Plan.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed the petition with the N.C. Emergency Management Commission Jan. 11 on behalf of Clean Air Carolina and the North Carolina Coastal Federation.
“With climate change already harming North Carolina, and science telling us we are running out of time to reduce our heat-trapping gas emissions, now is the time to take action,” Gudrun Thompson, a senior attorney at the SELC, said in a statement announcing the petition.
“Whether we act now or delay determines our future as well as the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren,” Thompson said. “This petition outlines a cost-effective solution that is proven to work and ready to go to protect North Carolina’s economy, environment and people.”
If the Environmental Management Commission agrees, North Carolina would join at least 11 other states, from Maine to Virginia, in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, commonly known as RGGI.
What is RGGI?
The RGGI initiative was approved in 2005 and started fully operating in 2009, Thompson said. A 10-year review in 2019 by the Acadia Center, a nonprofit environmental group, found that:
- Carbon dioxide emissions from RGGI power plants fell by 47 percent, outpacing the rest of the country by 90 percent.
- Electricity prices in RGGI states fell by 5.7 percent, while prices increased in the rest of the country by 8.6 percent.
- Gross domestic product of the RGGI states grew by 47 percent, outpacing growth in the rest of the country by 31 percent.
To read the full article in the North Carolina Health News, click here
Opinion: Developing floating offshore wind can help protect Maine’s seafaring culture, marine environment
The January 11 op-ed published here by Jack Merrill of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association was critical of offshore wind in Maine. As environmental, clean energy, and community advocates, we are responding with some additional perspective.
In November, Gov. Mills proposed the selection of a yet-to-be-determined 16-square mile area located some 20 to 40 miles off the coast to test and research floating offshore wind technology. Developed in close coordination with Maine’s fishing industry and other critical stakeholders to study potential economic and environmental impacts, the goal of the research turbines is to help Mainers understand how we could benefit from the ample wind resources offshore.
As part of that effort, Gov. Mills also recently proposed a 10-year moratorium on any new wind development in state waters up to three miles off the coast, keeping the focus on projects in federal waters, a ways from Maine’s coast.
As Mainers supportive of further research on the potential economic and environmental benefits of offshore wind, as well as supporters of a vibrant and long-lasting fishing and lobstering industry in Maine, we are responding to Mr. Merrill’s assertions with additional facts. Our response is focused on the two main pillars of Mr. Merrill’s opposition: the potential environmental impacts of floating offshore wind development and the potential cultural and economic benefits.
Climate change is the most serious threat to Maine’s economy and environment and harnessing offshore wind is critical to addressing it and protecting our state for generations to come. By harnessing the wind power from a very small fraction of the Gulf of Maine, we can power Maine’s economy and enable the clean electrification of heating and transportation.
There will be some environmental impacts from floating offshore wind arrays, but they will pale in comparison to the impacts of climate change, and by studying the potential impacts of offshore wind we can avoid, minimize and mitigate them.
The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. If we don’t do something to combat warming waters, the environmental conditions in the Gulf of Maine will never be the same. The current fish and other species in the Gulf of Maine are present in large part because of the temperature of the water. As it warms, species that rely on colder water will be forced to move out, and those tolerant of warmer water will inevitably move in.
Since the 1980s, warming waters in the Gulf have actually improved conditions for Maine’s lobsters, helping make the fishery one of the most valuable in the nation. But as temperatures rise it will become simply too warm for lobsters to survive. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute predicts a 62% drop in the Gulf’s lobster population by 2050. Temperatures are also expected to become less suitable for other Maine fishery species, including cod, flounder and pollock, as well as shrimp, clams, oysters, and scallops. The impacts of these shifts on Maine’s lobstering and fishing workforce may be seismic.
Maine’s famous Atlantic Puffins, the only breeding colonies in the lower 48, may have to move further north to follow the fish they feed on.
Traditionally southern species like Black Sea Bass and Red Hake will likely take advantage of the warmer water and move in, permanently changing the species mix. We must address the challenge of warming waters by taking action on climate change if we want to protect Maine’s fishing and tourism industries. Thousands of people come to Maine in the spring and early summer to see puffins nesting on islands off the coast. Pelagic bird watching is certainly a unique and notable aspect of Maine’s economy.
As with most human activities, floating offshore wind will undoubtedly have environmental impacts and we need to study those impacts to better understand how to avoid or minimize them. Millions of birds migrate over the Gulf of Maine, and many more patrol the offshore waters looking for food.
How can we best site and operate turbines to avoid impacts to birds?
How can we control ship traffic associated with offshore wind to avoid vessel strikes with marine life?
How can we better understand and mitigate impacts to the benthic environment?
These questions and many more can only be answered with data and experience – data and experience that can be provided by building a small number of turbines for research purposes, as proposed by the Mills Administration.
Floating offshore wind has the potential to provide reliable, Gulf of Maine-based jobs for years to come.
There is no greater threat to Maine’s lobster industry and lobstermen than climate change, even with rapid shifts to renewable energy, it may be too late to stop the changing Gulf of Maine. We’ll need both wind and solar to turn the tide on climate change – these resources complement each other, and we cannot mitigate climate change with just one or the other.
Farming the winds of the Gulf of Maine is a way to protect the hard-working culture of coastal Maine and to ensure that there is reliable and good-paying work to be had off our coast and in our coastal communities. Offshore wind may sound like a new story in our state’s history, but it may actually be an opportunity to continue the hard-working culture that Maine is famous for.
The time is now for clean, renewable energy, and solar alone will not meet our demands or stop the climate from changing. Developing floating offshore wind in Maine can help protect both Maine’s seafaring culture and our marine environment.
Respectfully,
Acadia Center
Environment Maine
Ironworkers Local #7
Maine Audubon
Maine Conservation Voters
Natural Resources Council of Maine
New England for Offshore Wind
Sierra Club Maine
To read the full opinion piece in the Penobscot Bay Pilot, click here
A shocker in the plan to finally update residential solar rates: no complaints
Connecticut is on the verge of changing one of the key financial underpinnings for residential solar electric systems, and, for the first time in more than a decade, it appears no one is complaining.
The change is in how solar owners are compensated for the excess power their systems produce at certain times. The rates for how that is calculated and structured will be altered, but in exchange, systems will be allowed more flexibility to accommodate future larger electricity needs.
Solar systems obviously don’t make any power at night – but during the day, they often make a lot more power than the house they’re sitting on needs. For the most part, that power is sold back to the grid.
How a homeowner is paid for the power it sends to the grid has been a flashpoint for years. The battle has been between the utilities and just about everyone else.
On Jan. 20, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority released a draft plan for a new way to handle that compensation. It is open for comment until Feb. 2. Unlike previous ideas floated over the last several years, it has elicited initial reactions that are a head-snapping 180 degrees from what all parties have come to expect.
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Amy McLean, Connecticut director of the advocacy group Acadia Center said she was “pleasantly surprised. It will be a better part of the solution going forward.”
Read the full article in The CT Mirror here
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