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

Regional Clean Energy Groups from Across the Nation: Congress Must Pass 100% Clean Electricity Standard to Benefit All

BOSTON, MA – Six of the nation’s best-known groups fighting climate change at the state and regional levels today asked Congress to quickly pass President Biden’s proposal for 100% clean electricity nationwide by 2035. Such a measure, the groups say, would dramatically build on proven local successes in using clean-energy mandates to create jobs, clean the air, and fight climate change.

As a candidate, Joe Biden pledged to quickly enact legislation mandating that all the nation’s electricity be carbon-pollution free by the year 2035. That legislative vote will likely come before Congress soon – sometime this spring.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders today, the regional leaders said such a policy was “vital” in the fight against global warming while rebuilding the US economy with environmental justice. Read the letter here.

The six signatory groups are active in 27 states whose populations, collectively, exceed 155 million people.

“Clean energy will benefit everyone in the country by improving public health, supporting employment and economic benefits, and addressing long-standing pollution burdens imposed on poorer communities that disproportionately have born the burden of energy pollution. Equity must be at the center of our clean energy future,” said Daniel Sosland, president of Acadia Center, one of the signatory groups. “Northeast states have made a commitment to clean energy and are moving to reap the benefits for all citizens.  It’s time the whole country benefited from this approach and takes the action needed to assist all in this transition to cleaner energy future.”

Groups signing today’s letter to Congress are:

• Acadia Center – Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York
• Chesapeake Climate Action Network – Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, D.C.
• Climate Solutions – Oregon, Washington
• Southern Alliance for Clean Energy – Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi
• Western Resource Advocates – Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
• Fresh Energy – Minnesota

Contact:
Daniel L. Sosland, 207-236-6470 x301
dsosland@acadiacenter.org

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Acadia Center is a regionally-focused, non-profit organization headquartered in Rockport, Maine, working to advance a clean energy future that benefits all.

 

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?

….

“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

A Clean Energy Future for Rhode Island

Acadia Center’s Goals in Rhode Island

Rhode Island offers a unique opportunity for clean energy action. With its small geographic size, high population density, and a single utility serving nearly all the state’s energy customers, Rhode Island is a model venue for the equitable, clean energy vision central to Acadia Center’s work. Known in history as the birthplace of the American industrial revolution, Rhode Island is poised, once again, to become a center for innovation and the birthplace of a clean energy revolution. Rhode Island is also particularly vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change given its 400 miles of shoreline and low-lying topography. Rhode Island has set a goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, but Acadia Center is pushing the state towards even more ambitious and meaningful targets through the Act on Climate 2021 bill (S. 78 / H. 5445), which aims for net-zero in 2050, and includes transparency, equity, and accountability provisions.

Landscape

Acadia Center played a significant role in some recent victories for clean energy in Rhode Island, including the following:

• 2017: Governor Raimondo announces a commitment to increase Rhode Island’s clean energy production 10-fold by 2020, moving from 100MW to 1000 MW.
• 2019: Regulators approve the 400MW Revolution Wind offshore wind contract.
• 2020: Rhode Island commits to generating 100% of its electricity from clean energy by 2030.

Yet Rhode Island still faces many hurdles to clean energy development, including some of the following:

• Low-income households and communities of color in Rhode Island are most affected by outdated systems, and climate-warming pollution, are often the last to benefit from solutions.
• Periodic efforts to terminate energy efficiency programs thwart additional progress.
• The state’s utility regulations do not appropriately weigh the health, economic, and environmental benefits of clean energy options against the risks of continued fossil fuel dependence.
• National Grid, the state’s monopoly utility, continues to push for natural gas expansion that is incompatible with the state meeting its current climate goals, much less the emissions reductions targets in line with the latest science.

Our Priority Issues

Acadia Center has built strong, lasting relationships with stakeholders throughout the Rhode Island climate community. Through these relationships and a holistic approach combining, data, advocacy and implementation, Acadia Center is well positioned to create change in Rhode Island.

Energy Efficiency: Rhode Island has been a leader in energy efficiency; since 2011, the state has scored within the top 5 states in the nation in energy efficiency, according to the yearly reports by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEE). Acadia Center is proud of its role shaping the efficiency policies that led to this ranking and advancing the creation of a stakeholder energy efficiency council.  We will continue to offer guidance and input to Rhode Island’s Energy Efficiency and Resource Management Council and press for heating electrification incentives to be included in energy efficiency programs, which will also help transition buildings away from fossil fuels.
Clean Power: Support additional procurements of large-scale renewables and work to align the regional grid operator with climate goals.
Transportation: Build upon Acadia Center’s leadership in the Rhode Island Mobility Innovation Working Group to help build a strategy for clean transportation policy.
Climate Planning: Ensure Rhode Island meets its goal to reduce GHG emissions 80% by 2050 through intermediate and specific targets, and work to pass the Rhode Island Act on Climate 2021 bill.
Utility Innovation: Reform the utility business model to put climate and consumers first and make sure the Public Utility Commission holds the utility accountable when exploring non-pipeline alternatives.
No Natural Gas: In addition to the work to switch to clean power sources, we continue to educate stakeholders and consumers about the dangers of natural gas. We will intervene where necessary to encourage options beyond new pipelines.

Spotlight on Aquidneck Island

Rhode Islanders on Aquidneck Island (Newport, Portsmouth, and Middletown) had a recent brush with danger in January 2019, when an operational failure of National Grid’s natural gas pipelines to Aquidneck Island forced a gas shutoff that left about 7,000 people in Newport County without heat in sub-freezing temperatures and forced them to evacuate their homes in the middle of the night.  Since the gas accident, Acadia Center has been engaged in the community, pushing back against the utility’s narrative and proposed solutions set. Acadia Center presented information to the town councils demonstrating weatherization and heating electrification are viable and preferred alternatives to building more gas infrastructure. Following this engagement, two of the three towns on Aquidneck Island supported moratoriums on natural gas pipelines, including new gas connections, instead choosing what are known as “non-infrastructure solutions” to eliminate the need for additional natural gas capacity on the island and encourage replacing gas with electricity.

Although we collectively managed to get National Grid to commit to planning non-pipeline alternatives and studying gas reliability, Acadia Center will be tracking developments to ensure that the work is being done. We will continue evaluating the options put on the table and advocating for the best possible scenario, as the utility still has no financial incentive to stop pushing for new pipelines.

Contact us:

Hank Webster, Staff Attorney and Rhode Island Director
hwebster@acadiacenter.org

For Media Inquiries:

Nancy Benben, Director of Communications and External Engagement
nbenben@acadiacenter.org
617.742.0054 ext. 104

The Missing Piece of State Climate Goals: Public Utilities Reform

Acadia Center is shaping reforms to the statutory mandates that guide state agencies in order to enable those agencies to be stronger partners in meeting climate goals. By reforming directives, state agencies will be better positioned to address the climate crisis and to make decisions that work for all communities, both now and in the future.

States have committed to significant economy-wide cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But despite these goals, states have not explicitly empowered the agencies that impact carbon emissions – such as Public Utilities Commissions (PUC) and Departments of Transportation – to prioritize climate, equity, and environmental justice, in their decision-making. To achieve our climate goals, government agencies should be empowered to prioritize climate change impacts and mitigation in their decisions.

The decisions that PUCs and other state agencies make in 2021 will create the building, transportation, and energy infrastructure of 2030, 2050, and beyond. But because of outdated mandates, agencies are limited in their ability to make decisions in line with state climate goals. Public Utility Commissions, for example, which regulate the rates and investment decisions of electric and gas utilities, are legislatively mandated to reduce the costs of energy, ensure reliable gas and electric service, and guarantee utilities the opportunity to earn a profit. PUCs cannot regulate utilities in alignment with state climate targets or make decisions that value reducing greenhouse gases.

The result of outdated mandates is that PUCs often fail to treat clean energy resources on a level playing field as fossil fuels, furthering a dependence on energy sources that are exacerbating the climate crisis and leading PUCs to undervalue the future costs and climate impacts of energy investments that lean heavily on fossil fuels.

Other state agencies make many decisions with long-term climate ramifications, including establishing building codes, setting land use policy, and approving transportation projects such as new highways and road construction. Without taking long-term climate risks into consideration, these types of decisions could reinforce existing systems and products that rely on carbon emissions and fail to make the changes that will be necessary as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon economy.

By updating agency mandates, we can allow regulators and other policymakers to make decisions that support greenhouse gas reductions and consider climate change impacts. This would minimize long-term costs from climate change that now fall outside the scope of the core responsibilities of many state agencies.

To put these reforms into action, Acadia Center is working with other organizations, such as the Environmental Priorities Coalition in Maine, to support legislation for reforming PUC and state agency mandates in order to put climate and energy justice front and center and to ensure that all agencies are committed to helping states reach their emissions reduction targets.

Progress is already underway in the Northeast. In Massachusetts, Bill S.9, the major climate bill that is back on Gov. Baker’s desk after his initial veto in January, adds greenhouse gas reductions and equity as core responsibilities for the Department of Public Utilities.

In Maine, state representatives will soon introduce a bill that Acadia Center spearheaded to add climate and equity responsibilities to the PUC’s mandate and to task other state agencies to align their decision-making with the state’s climate laws.

And in Connecticut, Acadia Center has put together a factsheet describing opportunities to reform the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) and other state agencies, including amending the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act and modifying PURA’s statutory mandate directly.

Winter 2021 in Massachusetts – All Climate, All the Time

As the sun set on the last days of 2020, Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) published two key documents – the MA 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap report (plus its 6 technical appendices), which evaluated 8 different pathways towards more than 85% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 2050, and the Interim Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2030, (“CECP”), which detailed the actions and policies that the Commonwealth proposed to employ to cut economy-wide GHG emissions by 45% from 1990 levels by 2030.  Acadia Center has been hard at work reviewing the 2050 Roadmap, including determining what the “end dates” may be for the use of fossil fuels in Massachusetts, and is leading a coalition in writing comments on the CECP.

Less than a week after EEA released these long-awaited documents, the Massachusetts climate bill – legislation that Acadia Center and its partners had supported through the Senate, House, and conference committee process throughout 2020 – emerged from committee and passed both bodies in the waning hours of the 2019-2020 legislative session. The bill (S.2995) called for a net zero stretch code, 50% cuts in GHGs by 2030, reforms to the enabling statute of the Department of Public Utilities, and requirements that the energy efficiency plans achieve a GHG reductions goal and include the value of GHG reductions in cost-effectiveness calculations – three reforms at the heart of Acadia Center’s Next Generation Energy Efficiency strategy.

Governor Baker vetoed the bill on January 14^th, citing, among other reasons, the expense of a net zero stretch code and a $6B incremental cost to achieve 50% emissions reductions by 2030, instead of the 45% planned for in the administration’s CECP.

Acadia Center debunked the Governor’s primary cited reasons for his initial veto in two blog posts. One demonstrated that a net zero stretch code is both a key provision of the administration’s own Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2030 and an attainable threshold that many builders in Massachusetts are already meeting at little additional cost. The other concluded that the $6B price tag cited by Governor Baker as the additional cost of achieving S.2995’s requirement of 50% cuts in emissions by 2030, versus 45% in the Clean Energy and Climate Plan was likely off by orders of magnitude, based on the 2050 Roadmap.

The timing of the veto as one legislative session ended and another began made it impossible for the legislature to override the Governor’s veto.  With the overwhelming support for the landmark bill, House and Senate leadership refiled an identical bill, S.9, which passed on January 28^th with veto-proof margins. As one of the co-chairs of the Alliance for Clean Energy Solutions (ACES), Acadia Center brought together over twenty clean energy businesses and advocacy organizations to sign on to a letter urging Governor Baker to sign the bill and empower Massachusetts to address the climate crisis – as well as another letter thanking legislative leadership for quickly passing S.9.

Governor Baker’s second veto took the form of an amended version the bill, S.13.  As of this publication, the legislature is still considering whether to adopt the proposed changes or override the veto directly. Acadia Center has been engaged in conversations with legislative leadership about positive changes requested by the Governor that strengthen environmental justice provisions and stringency of the base building code, and encouraging the legislature to reject other changes, such as making the “floor” levels for 2030 and 2040 interim greenhouse gas emissions limits into “ceilings” and preventing future administrations’ abilities to reduce greenhouse gas pollution faster.

Why Acadia Center wants to see the Climate Bill become law:

As written, S.9 will put into law the commitments made by the Baker Administration’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2030 and beyond, setting Massachusetts on a path to reach net-zero emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. It represents a sea change in Massachusetts’ approach to climate change. While current law enables climate targets to be seen simply as an aspirational goal that feels good, this legislation would require the state to make a real commitment and plan to reach net zero by 2050. It also:

• Includes vitally important provisions ensuring that front line communities and low-wage workers will benefit from the Commonwealth’s transition to a low-carbon economy;
• Gives the Department of Public Utility (DPU) the authority it needs to consider equity and climate in its decisions;
• Requires interim targets and all sectors of the economy to strive towards emissions reductions;
• Puts in place real protections for environmental justice communities; and
• Makes the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) a true tool to add significant renewable power on the system.

These are just a few of the benefits, and why Acadia Center is advocating so strongly for this bill.

Image credit: Office of Governor Baker on Flickr