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.

Massachusetts DPU Approves Everett LNG Contracts

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities has approved agreements between Constellation Energy and the state’s investor-owned gas utilities to keep the Everett LNG import facility operating through May 2030. 

The Everett Marine Terminal (EMT) is the only facility in the state that can import and directly inject LNG into the gas network, but it has faced an uncertain future, with Constellation’s cost-of-service agreement with ISO-NE expiring at the end of this month. Constellation owns both Everett and the Mystic Generating Station, Everett’s anchor customer, which is set to retire at the same time. 

Joe LaRusso, senior advocate at the Acadia Center, said the DPU’s approval of the contracts is “potentially in conflict with Order 20-80,” particularly if the contract timelines are intended to align with Enbridge’s pipeline expansion effort. 

He said the reporting requirements should give the DPU ample information on the utilities’ gas demand trajectories, with the “open question” being whether the DPU allows the companies to reduce their reliance on Everett by securing additional pipeline capacity. 

To read the full article from RTO Insider, click here.

No new gas hookups on Aquidneck Island? Idea floated to curb need for Portsmouth LNG plant.

PORTSMOUTH – State energy regulators are in an unusual position as they consider whether to extend the life of what was supposed to be a temporary liquefied natural gas facility in Portsmouth that has attracted the ire of neighbors.

While the Energy Facility Siting Board heard evidence that there’s a need, at least for now, for the use of LNG to back up Rhode Island Energy’s natural gas system on Aquidneck Island, stakeholders in the approval proceedings also said they want to company to do everything it can to quickly make the plant obsolete.

A moratorium would also undoubtedly force change. The idea was first put forward in 2021 by the Conservation Law Foundation and the Acadia Center, environmental groups that argued a ban was justified after the passage of the Act on Climate, the state law that requires Rhode Island to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

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

EVs, heat pumps seen creating Northeast grid crunch

Electrifying New England’s transportation and heating sectors will lead to a potential 17 percent increase in power demand by 2033, the region’s grid operator said.

The upward trend is putting pressure on developers and regulators to accelerate new generation and transmission projects.

“Our current policies regarding energy efficiency and distributed generation — particularly solar — are already putting us on a different path for the future,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the environmental nonprofit Acadia Center, in a statement.

To read the full article from E&E News, click here.

Opinion: No, heat pumps won’t break CT’s grid

A recent CT Mirror op-ed presents a misleading picture of the impact that electric heat pumps will have on Connecticut’s electricity system.

Moving customers off fossil gas by electrifying homes and businesses with appliances such as heat pumps will be a key component of achieving Connecticut’s climate and clean energy requirements. While major investments in the grid will be necessary over the coming decades, we must move quickly to upgrade the grid while simultaneously installing heat pumps, moving to electric vehicles, and deploying other advanced clean energy technologies.

The claim that “[too] many heat pumps would bring grid failure” to Connecticut is a misleading message at a time when there is an urgent need to rapidly electrify our buildings. The grid must undoubtedly expand to facilitate the decarbonization we need across buildings, transportation, and other sectors of the economy. But there are many solutions that can make grid operations more flexible and mitigate the expected demand growth.

Battery storage and demand response, for example, can help reduce strain on the grid by shifting load to different times of the day to avoid peak periods and to match surplus, low-cost renewables. When paired with automated controls, distributed energy resources can provide flexible, behind-the-meter resources that meet customer demand while easing congestion and driving down costs. And grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) can better optimize the power flowing through transmission and distribution lines, avoiding the need for expensive upgrades.

Electric heat pumps are not just the “energy fad of the day.” They will be an essential component of the clean energy transition and are already bearing fruit. For example, in 2023, Maine exceeded its 100,000 heat pump deployment target two years early and created a new target of an additional 175,000 heat pumps by 2027. And that is in a state whose population is almost a third of Connecticut’s.

Although Connecticut is still in the process of updating its Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES), we can look to the results of recent decarbonization studies in other states to understand the critical role that rapid deployment of heat pumps plays in achieving ambitious climate targets.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan (CECP) for 2050 offers a helpful picture of the potential pathways that are available to Connecticut for meeting its emissions reduction goals. The CECP study modeled the “least-cost pathway to achieve net zero in 2050” and concluded that widespread electrification of buildings and transportation was the cheapest way to decarbonize the state’s economy.

The least-cost scenario calls for 80% of homes in Massachusetts to install a heat pump and for 97% of light-duty fleet to be electric by 2050. Despite significant anticipated electric load growth by 2050 — and the need for grid investments to support that electrification — this scenario was still found to be the most cost-effective path to achieving the state’s decarbonization goals. By electrifying buildings and transportation sectors, we can achieve the lowest cost solution to addressing climate change while also creating thousands of full-time jobs and delivering significant health benefits to Connecticut’s residents.

Biodiesel and renewable propane are not the answers to our energy challenges. Biofuels have widely varying lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions that are highly dependent on the feedstocks used to make them. The problem with biofuels as a building decarbonization solution is that the supply of climate-beneficial biofuels derived from waste feedstocks, like used cooking oil, is extremely limited. We’ll need that limited supply of beneficial waste-derived biofuels to decarbonize the most challenging industries to electrify, such as aviation and shipping.

Today, the majority of biofuels are made from energy crops like soy and corn that provide little to no climate benefit. Biodiesel derived from true waste products represents only a tiny sliver of overall biodiesel production. There is no way to scale waste-derived biofuels at anywhere near the levels necessary to function as a viable building decarbonization solution.

Moreover, the claim that “Conservation — not conversion — is the only proven method to lower emissions and costs” is misleading. Even if nothing changed in terms of the resources that provide electric power, heat pumps would help to reduce emissions. Because heat pumps move heat rather than generate heat, they are highly efficient and are more than three times as efficient as the best fossil gas units.

While the most cost-effective pathway to addressing climate change may drive increased electricity use, analysis from our grid operator, ISO-New England, highlights the critical role that energy efficiency and behind-the-meter solar will play in helping to mitigate this increase in electricity consumption. As such, both “conservation” and “conversion” will be necessary for supporting Connecticut’s energy transition.

Connecticut needs to rapidly electrify its buildings and transportation systems. By shifting away from the combustion of fossil fuels in our homes and businesses, we can unlock major financial and health benefits for families, businesses, and the grid overall. Delaying this transition is not an option.

Oliver Tully is Director, Utility Innovation and Accountability; and Jayson Velazquez is a Climate and Energy Justice Policy Associate at the Acadia Center.

To read the article from CT Mirror, click here.