Climate Advocate Training: How to advocate for a strong Act on Climate plan

Acadia Center’s Rhode Island Director and Senior Policy Advocate, Hank Webster, presented an advocacy training for over 160 climate activists, sharing tips on how to inject climate concerns into a plethora of state agency decisions. Joined on the panel by Dr. Carrie Gill from the state’s Office of Energy Resources and Professor Dawn King from Brown University, Webster provided a detailed look at key provisions of the 2021 Act on Climate law and encouraged attendees to engage in a wide variety of regulatory opportunities to demonstrate how climate action is required across all levels of government, from the Department of Transportation to the Building Code Commission. Webster also issued an open invite to all attendees join the ongoing Act on Climate Implementation group convened by Acadia Center last year to help guide the development of the 2022 Climate Action Plan. You can watch a recording of training here and view Acadia Center’s slides 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

ISO-NE Decision Will Hold Back Clean Energy Throughout the Region

Boston, MA. — If approved by its regulator, a decision made Thursday by New England’s power grid operator, ISO-NE, along with a majority of its stakeholders, will slow New England’s ability to meet state climate goals, exacerbate the climate pollution impacting our communities and our economy, and cost consumers extra money they can ill afford.

Yesterday afternoon, ISO-NE and a majority of its stakeholders, which are mostly energy companies, decided to push back by two more years the elimination of a major barrier to clean energy in the region. The Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR), which pays gas power plant generators extra on the ratepayer’s dime to stay in the market, was on its way out. But now ISO-NE is delaying implementation of an improved approach and keeping clean energy from competing fairly in the regional capacity market for two additional years.

According to Melissa Birchard, Senior Regulatory Attorney and Director for Power Grid Reform at Acadia Center, after originally proposing in May of 2021 to eliminate the harmful MOPR rule in 2023, ISO-NE changed its position at the 11^th hour. “ISO-NE has let the region down by choosing to cut clean energy out of the capacity market for two more years. This decision throws an unnecessary lifeline to gas generators that could otherwise be priced out of the market by cost-effective clean energy,” says Birchard. “Despite pushing for quicker market reforms in the recent New England Governors Energy Vision Statement process, the states appeared to back the delay. This is a disappointing failure of leadership,” said Birchard.

The New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE), which represents the states, recently announced they did not oppose the two-year delay. This position appeared to sway many previously opposed parties, contributing to majority support for the delay. Acadia Center and its partners, as well as renewable energy companies and a number of other stakeholders, strongly opposed the delay, which would keep in place barriers to clean energy participation in the ISO-NE capacity market until the 2025 auction, which commits resources for the period beginning in 2028.

“This outcome comes at a cost for New England’s climate goals and damages the communities that will suffer higher bills and more pollution in their neighborhoods,” said Acadia Center’s Birchard. “The region has waited too long already for these overdue market reforms.”

Acadia Center calls on the New England states to stand behind important climate and clean energy reforms and demand that ISO-NE increase its accountability to consumers and communities, to avoid these failures in the future.

 

Media Contacts:

Melissa Birchard
Clean Energy Program Director
mbirchard@acadiacenter.org
617-742-0054 x103

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Acadia Center is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization committed to advancing the clean energy future. Acadia Center advocates for an equitable clean energy future for Connecticut, tackling regulatory and legislative energy policy, transportation, energy efficiency, beneficial electrification, utility innovation, and renewable energy.

Lack of transparency feeds skepticism of Massachusetts’ clean heat commission

Massachusetts climate advocates are hopeful but not yet convinced that a first-in-the-nation state Commission on Clean Heat will result in adequate policies for transitioning buildings from fossil fuels.

Gov. Charlie Baker signed an executive order establishing the commission in September. In the months that followed, the administration shared little about the process of assembling the panel, declining even to identify its members until the group was sworn in and met for the first time on Jan. 12.

Following the commission’s first closed-door meeting, many advocates are left wary of the group’s makeup, transparency, and timeline.

“I remain hopeful that the commission will use its opportunity to address the climate crisis and push the commonwealth away from more reliance on fossil fuels in equitable ways,” said Amy Boyd, director of policy at the nonprofit Acadia Center. “But I think it may take a lot of work to get there.”

Building use of fossil fuels, for purposes such as heating and cooking, accounts for 27% of Massachusetts’ greenhouse gas emissions and poses a major challenge to the state’s attempts to slash emissions in half by 2030 and go carbon-neutral by 2050.

As part of this process, at the end of 2020, the Baker administration released a decarbonization roadmap outlining strategies for reaching this goal, including tighter building envelopes and widespread adoption of electric heat pumps. Among the goals detailed in the report is a target of retrofitting 100,000 homes with electric heat pumps each year, but a recent Boston Globe investigation found just 461 homes were converted in 2020.

The commission is tasked with helping translate the administration’s strategies into concrete policy ideas that will help accelerate this progress. The panel is expected to meet regularly for several months with the goal of submitting its recommendations to the administration by Nov. 30, shortly before Baker, who is not running for re-election, hands over the reins to a new, incoming governor.

Environmental advocates universally praised the goals of the commission and expressed sometimes precarious optimism that the group could have an important impact on emissions reductions.

“I am hopeful that they can get to work and that they can come up with some really path-breaking recommendations that lead to the decarbonization of that sector,” said Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Still, advocates are keeping a wary eye on the commission’s progress.

When Baker announced the formation of the commission, he promised a group that would have a “diversity of experience.” The 21 members revealed in January are drawn from a range of industries and backgrounds, including utilities, building, finance, real estate, housing, urban planning, energy, and technology.

However, some environmental advocates are not sure the promised diversity is there. One member is an expert on green building, another has experience retrofitting houses for greater energy efficiency, and another has long worked on clean energy policy, but these environmentally leaning members are far outnumbered by other interests, advocates worry.

“I’m disappointed to see that the sectors most represented on the commission are business and fossil fuels, rather than consumers, environmental justice communities, or building electrification experts,” Boyd said.

Other advocates expressed concern that a commission could produce great recommendations that just don’t go anywhere. Henry pointed to the Commission on the Future of Transportation, established by Baker in 2018.

The group’s December 2018 report included a range of policy suggestions, such as modernizing public transportation, considering congestion pricing, and upgrading the electric grid to support wider adoption of electric vehicles. At the same time, however, it skirted the question of how to pay for the initiatives outlined and didn’t include any mechanisms for driving action or holding policymakers accountable, Henry said. So this time around, she is hoping the clean heat commission will make questions of funding and implementation central to their work.

“Massachusetts has a long history of grandiose commissions that yield little in terms of actual policy progress,” Henry said. “I am really going to be looking at the quality of the recommendations and the actionability.”

Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, is also concerned about the commission’s commitment to laying out effective policy specifics. Chretien would like to see the group engage deeply with the public, sharing ideas, listening to feedback, and releasing a draft of its recommendations before its November deadline, so it can hear back from stakeholders before making its official report to the administration.

This kind of robust engagement, he said, will help create a plan with strong enough public backing to survive a change of leadership when a new governor takes office in January 2023.

“If they come out with something in November, and the governor-elect doesn’t like it, and there hasn’t been enough public comment, it will have been a wasted year,” Chretien said.

For some advocates, the commission’s timeline is dragging out an already lingering process at a time when the climate crisis is ever more urgent. Ben Hellerstein, state director of Environment Massachusetts, wondered why the state is just now convening the commission, nearly three years after it began working on the climate roadmap in 2019.

Hellerstein would like to see more action right away, rather than another 10 months of meetings and debates.

“We have the technologies to reduce energy waste and heat our buildings with clean electricity, and there are plenty of policy ideas out there,” Hellerstein said. “Studies and commissions are nice, but if we have to choose I’d rather spend less time confirming what we already know, and more time on the action that’s urgently needed.”

Read the full article in Energy News Network here.

Holding Public Utilities Accountable

Today Maine’s Governor Janet Mills announced the Utility Accountability Bill, the Governor’s initiative authorizing the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to set minimum service standards to ensure electricity consumers receive adequate service at just and reasonable rates. 

If the state is going to transform buildings, transportation, and the electricity grid to better serve Maine’s energy consumers and respond to the climate crisis, it needs to start with utility regulatory reforms that give the PUC the tools to regulate utilities with Maine people in mind. Acadia Center commends Governor Mills for taking these necessary steps to best leverage ratepayer dollars to ensure reliability and affordability while simultaneously planning across all state agencies for climate and equity benefits for all Mainers.  

If our electric utilities fail consistently on any of the standards, they will face financial penalties. By establishing a “report card” on utilities’ performance, with repercussions for poor performance, we expect to see demonstrable improvements on reliability, bill accuracy, storm recovery, and renewable interconnection issues, all problems that have plagued Central Maine Power (CMP) and placed them dead last on national utility customer satisfaction lists. In addition to its audit, climate adaptation, and whistleblower provisions, the bill provides more direction on options available if utilities are not fit to serve Maine’s consumers. 

Further, Maine’s investor-owned utilities have a monopoly franchise, and often charge ratepayers at returns that far exceed interest rates while building bigger projects that may not benefit energy consumers accordingly. While Acadia Center thinks utility regulatory reform can go further to relieve energy burdens on underserved and overburdened consumers, the Governor’s bill is a good first step in holding CMP and Versant Power accountable for their performance on affordability and reliability.

Acadia Center supports the Governor’s utility regulation bill and urges the Governor and Legislature to make deeper reforms to ensure utilities serve energy consumers in the transition to a clean energy economy – what we call RESPECT (Reforming Energy System Planning for Equity and Climate Transformation). These two significant reforms in utility planning will overcome the dysfunctions caused by siloed decision-making, unbalanced utility incentives, and the current market indifference to climate and equity: 

1. Conduct “all-in” energy system planning that considers supply and demand-side resources; customers’ energy, capacity, and thermal needs; and climate requirements and environmental justice impacts for all fuels across the state.
2. Create a statewide planning entity that can look for solutions beyond utility boundaries and across fuels, leaving traditional utilities free to focus their efforts on business development in alignment with climate and equity mandates.
   

RESPECT proposes a modernized framework for how utilities make investments and decisions, so that we can build the energy systems necessary at the speed required to address the climate crisis. RESPECT addresses three problems with current planning and regulatory oversight: (1) planning is siloed between electric and gas utilities, which causes overspending, reduced reliability and resilience, and more climate pollution; (2) current planning processes ignore equity and environmental justice; and (3) utilities will not plan against their financial interests, even with performance incentives. 

Until these reforms are in place, we believe the Governor’s bill is a powerful opening shot to create greater accountability of transmission and distribution utilities to Maine ratepayers and resolve performance issues that are not improving under current law and regulation. 

 

For more information:

Jeff Marks
Maine Director & Senior Policy Advocate
jmarks@acadiacenter.org
Mobile: 207-956-1970 

What the new Mass Save rewrite means for you

This week, Massachusetts approved a major overhaul of the Mass Save program, the state’s leading energy efficiency program and best tool to help residents kick fossil fuels and lower their utility bills. The dense, 343-page order lays out a three-year plan for 2022 through the end of 2024, and it is full of rebates, interest-free loans, free efficiency upgrades, and other incentives aimed at making homes across the state more efficient and resilient.

With regional transportation pact in doubt, Vermont considers other policies

Climate advocates in Vermont are considering new strategies for reducing transportation emissions as the prospects fade for establishing a regional cap-and-invest program.

Vermont’s initial Climate Action Plan, released Dec. 1, leans significantly on the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative for meeting the state’s mandatory emission targets. The Northeast interstate initiative would require fuel suppliers to buy annual pollution allowances, which would shrink in supply each year while also generating revenue for clean transportation projects in participating states.

Weeks ahead of the Vermont plan’s release, however, the governors of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts announced that their states would not join the transportation program after all, dealing a blow that has left its future uncertain.

A group within Vermont’s climate council recently began discussions on other potential policies to reduce transportation emissions. They include adopting a statewide transportation fuel standard or joining a cap-and-invest program led by California and Quebec.

Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, adopted in 2020, set a legally binding requirement to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. At 40%, transportation emissions make up the biggest share of Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions, the nonprofit Energy Action Network found in an analysis of 2018 state data.

The 23-member Vermont Climate Council was created by the same legislation to develop a climate action plan to guide state policy. Among the recommendations in its first action plan was for the state to join the Transportation and Climate Initiative, known as TCI.

One of opponents’ biggest points of resistance to the initiative has been its impact on gasoline prices. Estimates vary, but the TCI website projected a 5-cent increase per gallon in 2023.

“To me, the high cost and price volatility of gasoline is an argument to transition off, not double down on it,” said Jared Duval, executive director of the Energy Action Network and a member of the Climate Council’s transportation group.

With electricity costs far lower than gasoline prices, electric vehicles could help drivers save money. That is, if they can afford the upfront cost — something the Transportation and Climate Initiative could be used to help them do.

Duval and the other group members recently issued a memo to launch discussions about two alternative strategies on transportation that could be incorporated into an amended state climate plan in June. One idea is to implement a transportation fuel standard. The other is to join the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-invest program led by California whose members also include Quebec, which shares a border with Vermont. (The other member is Nova Scotia.)

Duval said the transportation fuel standard offers key benefits for Vermont. It would require fossil fuel suppliers to decarbonize, either by changing the fuels they sell or by purchasing credits to offset their emissions. As the memo notes, performance standards have been used in other sectors such as electricity, through which states including Vermont have pushed utilities to decarbonize their generation sources. Several states, including California, Oregon and Washington, have already adopted standards for transportation fuels.

A transportation fuel standard would also mirror the heating fuel standard recommended in Vermont’s Climate Action Plan. That recommendation has already led the state’s legislature to begin drafting a law to address Vermont’s other major emissions contributor: building heating fuels. It’s possible the building fuel standard could eventually be extended to cover the transportation sector.

The Western Climate Initiative may be more challenging to join, given that Vermont’s governor hasn’t supported the cap-and-invest program already on the table in the Northeast. Still, the Western initiative has one advantage over the Transportation and Climate Initiative simply by being up and running.

“I think the clean transportation standard makes a lot of sense,” said Jordan Stutt, carbon programs director at Acadia Center. “We’ve seen the low carbon fuel standard approach elsewhere.” He added that other states had been considering similar standards in addition to the Transportation and Climate Initiative, and if TCI does end up happening, the two policies would complement each other.

Stutt’s work has focused on advancing TCI. He said the program “is now a fully developed policy that states have in their back pocket. And while it’s still a possibility, it has a very uncertain future right now and states cannot afford to wait on that.” They need to invest in new clean transportation solutions now, he said.

As a reference point, the transportation group in Vermont has pointed to Oregon and Washington, both of which have implemented transportation fuel standards but whose leaders have opted not to join the Western Climate Initiative. Oregon in December implemented a new carbon cap for all fossil fuel emissions, which will likely eclipse the transportation standard the state already has.

Angus Duncan, former chair of Oregon’s Global Warming Commission and a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council, helped write the state’s climate strategy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals, adopted in 2007. The goals and policy recommendations have been important for the state to make progress on climate goals, he said, noting a 2019 New York Times analysis that found per capita emissions dropped in Portland more than 20% from 1990 to 2017. At the same time, total emissions rose nearly 25% in the same period.

“There’s bad news and good news,” he said, “but the bad news way outweighs the good news.” A fuel standard adopted by Oregon in 2015 “has not moved the pump price of gasoline very much at all,” he said. That’s a good thing in that it helps prove wrong warnings opponents initially gave that the standard would lead to a rise in gas prices. But it’s also a bad thing, he said, because without a steady, discernible increase in gas prices, people won’t be incentivized to switch to electric vehicles.

Duncan said that overall, Oregon’s fuel standards and other policies, including adopting California’s vehicle efficiency standard, put it on a track similar to the path it would have been on had it joined the Western Climate Initiative. Joining that pact could still help Oregon invest in more clean transportation solutions, he said, but it’s not likely to happen since it’s difficult to get state leaders on board with something that could mean surrendering Oregon’s policy initiatives to other states. Oregon is part of an interstate electricity planning body with the three other Northwest states, but while that body makes recommendations, it doesn’t require members’ compliance.

He said the new carbon cap in Oregon will eventually lead to an increase in gas prices. That could help incentivize drivers to start using electric vehicles, he said, but that shift will depend on the state and electric utilities also investing in electric vehicle incentives including public fast-charging stations, particularly in low-income areas where residents often can’t have a charger at home. At the same time, he said, vehicle manufacturers — which he noted small states like Oregon have no control over — need to make electric vehicles available at lower costs and with greater driving ranges so drivers can travel long distances.

If that happens, he said, “we can expect that EV penetration curve, which is relatively flat right now, to bend sharply upwards.”

“I’ve not fully given up hope [on TCI], and I feel like the Transportation and Climate Initiative … has been underway for well over a decade,” said Johanna Miller, energy and climate program director at the Vermont Natural Resources Council and a member of the transportation subgroup that released the new memo. “I’m an optimistic person, so I’m hopeful that it is not completely off the table, but I’m also pragmatic.”

She and others noted that while federal pandemic relief and infrastructure aid could help Vermont in the near term, the state needs a long-term strategy to reduce transportation emissions.

“Whether that’s a performance standard, like a clean transportation standard … or another cap-and-invest program like the Western Climate Initiative — I think they’re both promising and I think they warrant a lot more analysis, especially embedded in the Vermont context,” Miller said.

Read the full article at Energy News Network here.

Governor Mills Unveils Legislation To Improve Maine’s Electric Utilities, Enhance Accountability, and Protect Maine Ratepayers

Governor Janet Mills today unveiled legislation that significantly reforms and strengthens the State’s approach to the oversight and accountability of Maine’s electric utilities.

The Governor’s bill, An Act to Ensure Transmission and Distribution Utility Accountability (PDF), protects the interests of Maine ratepayers, improves the operation and service of Maine’s electric utilities, and increases oversight and accountability of them.

The legislation requires that the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) establish minimum standards of service that utilities must deliver for Maine ratepayers. The legislation also empowers the PUC with enhanced authority to crack down on utilities that do not meet these standards by imposing harsher penalties and, if necessary, even forcing the sale of the utility for inadequate service.

The bipartisan legislation, developed by the Governor’s Energy Office in conjunction with Maine’s new Public Advocate Bill Harwood, is sponsored by Senator Stacy Brenner (D-Cumberland) and co-sponsored by Senator Mark Lawrence (D-York), Senator Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook), Senator Eloise Vitelli (D-Sagadahoc), House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford), and Representative Nate Wadsworth (R-Hiram).

“Whether it’s poor customer service, billing problems, or extended power outages, the issues experienced by Maine people over the past several years have made clear that Maine doesn’t have the tools it needs to hold our utilities accountable. It’s time for that to change,” said Governor Janet Mills. “With this bill, we are shifting our approach to Maine’s electric utilities. We will empower the Maine Public Utilities Commission to design improved standards for service and finally give the Commission the tools it needs to ensure that utilities deliver on those standards or face new, harsh consequences. Maine people deserve nothing less than safe, reliable, and affordable service on a strong electric grid. My Administration will work with the Legislature, the Public Advocate, and the Public Utilities Commission to see that happen.”

“I applaud the Governor for her foresight in bringing forward this important legislation,” said Bill Harwood, Maine’s Public Advocate. “The bill strengthens electric utility regulation of Maine by filling in some glaring gaps in the statutes regulating Maine utilities. As Public Advocate, I welcome these new provisions and urge the Legislature to adopt them so that the OPA can use them to better serve and protect Maine ratepayers.”

“I am proud to sponsor this legislation and commend the Governor for moving it forward. “The energy sector will play a key role in ensuring the State of Maine is able to meet our climate commitments as well as provide reliable service for Maine people,” said Senator Stacy Brenner. “To accomplish this, we must hold our utilities accountable, and this legislation takes crucial steps to give the Public Utilities Commission the regulatory tools they need.”

“We must take serious action now to ensure Maine’s electric utilities are accountable to Maine customers. This legislation is a bipartisan effort to address the current problems we’re facing and set minimum standards for performance of our utility providers,” said Senator Mark Lawrence. “This is a very bold effort by Governor Mills to hold utilities accountable. I’m pleased to work with the Governor, and other members of the EUT Committee, to move this legislation forward.”

“The interest of Maine’s ratepayers has always been my priority in the legislature and will continue to be my focus. This bill represents apolitical measures to provide the regulators the tools necessary to ensure our electric utilities are held to standards that Maine people expect and deserve in a market with limited or no competition between providers,” said Senator Trey Stewart. “I look forward to working with committee members on this measure as it moves forward and crafting an agreement that’s in the best interest of those we serve.”

“Maine has been leading the nation on climate action and investments in renewable energy that are making us less dependent on expensive, out-of-state fossil fuels,” said Senator Eloise Vitelli. “To make sure these efforts are as effective as possible, we must have a regulatory structure that ensures our utilities are answerable to Maine people, especially as we pursue beneficial electrification.”

“Mainers deserve reliable utility service. Unwarranted disconnections and billing errors should result in consequences for the companies who are delivering power to our homes and businesses,” said House Speaker Ryan Fecteau. “I am joining Governor Mills in introducing this legislation to ensure reliability by strengthening accountability.”

“Cost and reliability of electricity service are of paramount importance to Maine people,” said Representative Nate Wadsworth. “This legislation will ensure there are standards in place that allow the Public Utilities Commission to provide transparency and accountability in regulating our electric utilities.”

The legislation was also welcomed by energy and environmental organizations across Maine:

“Maine deserves and needs electric utilities that are leaders across a broad range of performance measures, including reliability, affordability, customer service, clean energy, modernizing the grid, and climate action. Unfortunately, that’s not what we have today,” said Pete Didisheim, Advocacy Director, Natural Resources Council of Maine. “We commend the Governor for proposing this bill, and we look forward to working with lawmakers on a version that requires utilities to perform, pay penalties, or be replaced.”

“If we’re going to transform buildings, transportation, and the electricity grid to better serve Maine’s energy consumers and respond to the climate crisis, we need to start with utility regulatory reforms that give the Public Utilities Commission the tools to regulate utilities with Maine people in mind,” said Jeff Marks, Maine Director of the Acadia Center. “Acadia Center commends Governor Janet Mills for taking these necessary steps to best leverage ratepayer dollars to ensure reliability and affordability while simultaneously planning across all state agencies for climate and equity benefits for all Mainers.”

“To achieve Maine’s climate objectives, we need our electric utilities to provide a modern, reliable and clean power grid,” said Phelps Turner, Senior Attorney with Conservation Law Foundation. “This bill is an important step toward ensuring that our utilities improve their performance and do their part in securing a clean energy future where more of our electricity comes from renewable resources and where more of our buildings and vehicles are powered by electricity.”

“Part of our mission at Maine Conservation Voters includes ‘holding politicians accountable’ to their words, actions, and votes to protect Maine’s environment and communities. We look forward to Maine’s Legislature championing that same sentiment for our state’s utilities with this legislation. To build a healthier, more equitable, and just clean energy future for all, we must ensure that the entities tasked with implementing this future are reliable and committed to the vision advanced by Maine’s Climate Action Plan,” said Kathleen Meil, Director of Policy and Partnerships at Maine Conservation Voters.

The legislation reforms Maine’s approach to its electric transmission and distribution utilities in five primary ways:

Requires New, Quarterly Service Reports and Imposes Harsher Penalties for Substandard Service

The legislation requires the Maine Public Utilities Commission to set minimum standards for safe, reasonable, and adequate service to Maine customers. It then requires the PUC to issue quarterly reports on whether a utility is meeting these minimum standards. These reports will address utility operations, customer service, such as billing, and initiatives to combat climate change, such as interconnecting to solar projects.

If these quarterly reports determine that a utility is consistently failing to meet this standard, then the legislation requires the PUC is to impose new, higher administrative penalties – up to $1 million or 10 percent of the utility’s annual revenue – to force the utility to improve service.

This new approach establishes an ongoing system of review by the PUC that is a transparent and an alternative accountability mechanism to traditional utility oversight.

Forced Divestiture to Protect Maine Ratepayers

The legislation also establishes a process under which the PUC determines whether an electric utility is unfit to provide safe, adequate, and reliable service at just and reasonable rates to Maine ratepayers. If the PUC determines that sale of the utility is necessary to protect the interests of ratepayers, it will then invite bids from qualified buyers and select the purchase proposal that provides the most benefits to customers in the form of better service and lower rates at a fair purchase price.

Additionally, the legislation stipulates that, in the event the PUC invites bids from qualified buyers, it must also consider a bid to create a consumer-owned, quasi-municipal corporation for the purpose of purchasing the utility. This creates a mechanism whereby the PUC could evaluate whether an investor-owned utility or a consumer owned utility is in the best interests of the State.

New, Periodic Financial Audits

The legislation provides for periodic audits for Maine’s distribution and transmission utilities to ensure that the utility’s cost of providing service are consistent with the estimates used to set rates. Whenever Maine’s utilities have gone more than five years without a rate case, the legislation requires the utility to make a filing with the PUC comparing its current actual expenses to the estimates used in previous rate cases. If the discrepancy is greater than 10 percent, the PUC may conduct a financial audit. This new mechanism allows the PUC to review the utility’s financial books and records outside of a traditional rate case.

Strengthening Whistleblower Protections

The legislation strengthens existing utility whistleblower provisions — which protect utility employees from retaliation or discrimination by the utility, such as termination of employment, if the employee testifies before the Legislature or provides information to the PUC regarding the utility’s operations — by:

1. expanding the protected individuals to include former utility employees, utility affiliates and utility contractors;
2. protecting disclosures to the Public Advocate;
3. narrowing the exemption from protection to only include providing false information, rather than the current exemption that includes providing any information that may harm the utility;
4. limiting the award of attorney’s fees to a prevailing employee or contractor if the employee or contractor is required to go to court to enforce the statute and removing from the law the provision requiring the employee to pay the utility for its attorney’s fees if the utility prevails;
5. prohibiting the utility from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with local unions in order to silence potential whistleblowers;
6. requiring the utility to notify its employees, affiliates and contractors of their rights under the whistleblower statute; and
7. authorizing the PUC to impose administrative penalties in the event a utility violates the statute.

These stronger protections will allow the PUC to respond actively to whistleblower cases.

Improving the Ability of Utilities to Prepare for and Respond to the Impacts of Climate Change

The legislation requires transmission and distribution utilities to submit every two years to the PUC a 10-year plan for protecting the utility’s assets and operations from the expected impacts of climate change, the first time in Maine history a report of this manner would be required. The PUC will then review the plan and, with input from stakeholders, may order the utility to take necessary action to protect Maine ratepayers. This new process ensures that utilities are prepared as much as reasonably possible for worsening storms, flooding, fires, or other climate related catastrophes that may impact the utility’s assets, operations, and delivery of service to Maine people.

The legislation will be considered by the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities, and Technology Committee.

Read the full statement here.

With new Mass Save three-year plan, Massachusetts sharpens its best climate-fighting tool

In a move hailed as a sea change in the state’s climate fight, Massachusetts regulators approved a plan that would dramatically expand incentives for homeowners to invest in electric heat pumps as the state races to shift people off fossil fuels.

On Monday, the Department of Public Utilities approved a major rewriting of the state plan that provides energy efficiency incentives to consumers. Unlike previous versions of the Mass Save plan, the new one centers on curbing global warming by encouraging people to switch from oil or gas to electric heat or renewable sources, and also includes provisions to help make the transition more affordable to people in disadvantaged communities.

Among the $4 billion in new incentives is hundreds of millions of dollars for electric heat pumps, which, for the first time, will be available to gas customers looking to move off of fossil fuels.

The incentives are seen as critical to building momentum for the state’s quest to wean 1 million homes from fossil fuels by 2030, a massive undertaking that had languished because of high costs, anemic incentives, and, in some cases, active discouragement of homeowners looking to electrify their homes. In 2020, the state had converted just 461 homes.

“This is an ambitious, forward-looking plan,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, of the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Far from the historic reliance on upgrading and replacing light bulbs as a means of saving energy, he said, the new plan offers a path to transform buildings in the state in a meaningful way.

The state’s climate law mandates that greenhouse emissions be cut in half by 2030 and reduced to net-zero by 2050. The plan approved Monday is estimated to eliminate 848,713 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2030 — the equivalent of taking 184,578 passenger cars off the road for a year.

“This is an ambitious, forward-looking plan,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, of the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Far from the historic reliance on upgrading and replacing light bulbs as a means of saving energy, he said, the new plan offers a path to transform buildings in the state in a meaningful way.

The state’s climate law mandates that greenhouse emissions be cut in half by 2030 and reduced to net-zero by 2050. The plan approved Monday is estimated to eliminate 848,713 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2030 — the equivalent of taking 184,578 passenger cars off the road for a year.

An earlier draft of the plan submitted by Mass Save administrators in November called for all but eliminating rebates for fossil fuel heating systems and for creating a new performance incentive structure that would push the program to do more in specific arenas, such as electrifying homes and reaching out to environmental justice communities.

The new DPU order walks those steps back, mandating that the state retain some fossil fuel incentives, and altering the performance incentives in a way that Peterson said will make it less enticing for the companies behind Mass Save to help achieve climate and equity goals.

“There are a number of tools throughout the original draft plan that the DPU seems to have rejected or minimized or weakened or modified,” said Peterson. “I worry that will make it a very challenging landscape for the program administrators to accomplish the greenhouse gas requirements set by the secretary, and to do all the good they were going to do not just for climate but also to advance our equity goals and reach underserved populations.”

In a joint statement, the groups Clean Water Action, Conservation Law Foundation, and Community Labor United said they were disappointed that specific measures to help environmental justice communities had been watered down and made vague. “DPU’s actions today send a clear message that they fail to understand, let alone value, the interconnections between poverty, racial, and climate justice that are now a formal part of their public mandate,” the groups said in the statement.

The draft plan also rejected an offering from the municipal aggregator Cape Light Compact that would provide 250 low- and moderate-income homes with solar power, heat pumps, and battery storage for free. The DPU argued that incentives for solar power are not allowed under its statutes.

For many advocates, the reemergence of incentives for equipment run on fossil fuels in particular is hard to fathom. In doing so, the DPU cited a statutory requirement that the program offer all cost-effective energy efficiency options.

Amy Boyd, director of policy for the Acadia Center and a member of the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Council, said the DPU decision “will result in more fossil fuel installations than there would have otherwise been.”

“The DPU still feels that its mandate from the legislature is to prioritize these small potential emissions savings, nickel and diming between fossil fuels,” said Caitlin Peale Sloane, vice president for the Conservation Law Foundation’s Massachusetts office. “After 10 years of working on Mass Save, it’s clear to me that the system will not be changed by the agencies. It needs to be changed by the legislature.”

Senator Cindy Creem said that she and her colleagues will be considering just that. “If the statutes governing Mass Save are preventing it from becoming a program that is fully devoted to decarbonization, then it may be time for the Legislature to reconsider those statutes — and the role of utility companies in administering the program,” she said.

Senator Mike Barrett, who was the lead author of the state’s 2050 climate plan, also said that more legislative involvement was needed, while crediting the DPU with doing a “decent job refereeing the situation under the laws as they exist today.”

Ultimately, he said, the state needs more tools in its toolbox to help spur the shift off fossil fuels. “Mass Save cannot be the only tool we use to clean up emissions in the building sector, but it is a tool that needs to remain in the toolbox,” he said. “It’s just that we need to upgrade the instrument from time to time.”

Read the full article in The Boston Globe here.