Acadia Report Outlines Benefits of Energy-Efficiency Programs

The Acadia Center recently completed an extensive research and analysis effort to better understand the benefits provided by state-level energy-efficiency programs in New England over the 2012-23 time period.

Collectively, these programs have delivered some $55 billion in benefits to households and businesses across the region, according to the research, providing $3.40 in benefits for every $1 invested.

Simultaneously, the programs play an instrumental role in creating and sustaining about 160,000 energy-efficiency industry jobs in the region and have reduced lifetime carbon emissions at levels equivalent to removing nearly 33 million gasoline-powered cars from the road for one year.

Each New England state operates and administers energy-efficiency programs that leverage surcharges on customer electricity and natural gas bills, combined with other funding sources, to deliver energy-efficiency and electrification improvements to customers, from households and businesses to municipalities.

While these programs have been operating for different lengths of time depending on the state, most programs in New England began operation in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Click on the links to view the benefits experienced by Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

To read the full article from ecoRI, click here.

Here’s how Mass. climate goals might be impacted by Trump’s attack on wind

In the first week of his second term, President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders, including several to do with the environment. One of them, related to wind, will impact Massachusetts’ future clean energy strategy.

As part of his so-called “America First Priorities,” Trump announced he will end leasing to wind farms, which he said “degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.”

With the Massachusetts Decarbonization Roadmap, the Commonwealth aims to ensure the state reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050 and achieves net-zero emissions.

Boston.com sat down with Kyle Murray, state program implementation director at Acadia Center, to hear his thoughts on what Trump’s policies mean for Massachusetts. Murray leads Massachusetts advocacy efforts for Acadia Center, a nonprofit working to cut carbon emissions in the Northeast by at least 50% by 2030.

Boston.com: What have our investments in wind looked like so far, and what’s planned for the future?

Murray: Currently, we don’t have a ton of offshore wind in the Commonwealth, it’s a relatively small part of Massachusetts’ energy mix. We’re currently only getting partial power from the Vineyard Wind project, which is still under construction but will eventually be an 800-megawatt offshore wind farm. But offshore wind was the centerpiece of our future clean energy strategy, and we were setting that up to be the dominant energy source for Massachusetts going forward. The state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan, the MA Decarbonization Roadmap, they all put offshore as the centerpiece of our strategy.

So what does Trump’s end to leasing for wind farms mean for our decarbonization efforts? 

It’s definitely an enormous setback, I’m not going to lie about that, but the good thing is it doesn’t completely eliminate our offshore wind ambitions. Projects under construction and in operation should still be safe, so Vineyard Wind will be fine. Additionally, projects that are permanent but not yet under construction, are currently safe. Massachusetts has around 2700 megawatts of offshore wind planned that fit into that designation, so all of that should also be safe. But beyond that, any future projects are very unlikely to move forward under the current scheme of things.

What kind of impact will that have on our climate goals more generally?

It’s going to make them significantly harder to hit. Like I said, offshore wind was the centerpiece of our strategy. With the 800 megawatts and potential additional 2700 megawatts, that’s still going to be a decent chunk of our energy, but it won’t be the large piece that it was expected to be. So I think Massachusetts needs to continue to pursue these existing projects and the authority it has on offshore wind, but I think we’ll also need to get a bit creative and double down on alternative non-emitting strategies: solar, hydro, battery storage, energy efficiency. These are all things we really need to start pursuing, because there’s no guarantee that we’re going to be able to get projects in the future. I’m hopeful, with a change in administration or if the administration changes their mind, but I think with an industry of that scale, when there’s uncertainty, it makes production very difficult.

Trump also pulled out of several international treaties and coalitions on climate change, including the Paris Agreement. Can you speak to what kind of impact that might have?

It’s frustrating to see as someone who works in this field, because the United States is not just ceding its status as a climate leader, but also as a climate technology leader. Climate technology is one of the top industries in the world currently, and it’s only growing. What Trump is doing is gifting leadership of that industry and all the money that’s going to come from it to countries like China. It’s incredibly frustrating that for ideological reasons, we are going to lose money on this.

Overall, what effect will these policies have on people’s energy costs?

Simply put, the most likely outcome from all these policies is higher energy costs. Renewables are helping to provide much-needed cost relief for residents, and so these actions by the Trump administration are big complications. Additionally, even though it sounds counterintuitive, the “drill baby drill” attitude on oil and gas actually won’t do anything to bring prices down. If you look at what oil and gas producers are saying, they don’t want to produce any more, they don’t want to drill anymore, they’re good on that. The United States, under the Biden administration, was already producing record highs for oil and gas, and what the oil and gas producers want is not to drill more, but for people to use more of their fuel. I guess you could say the Trump administration is also delivering on that front by attempting to repeal things like energy efficiency policies that save you money. Basically the end result of all of this will likely be you and I being forced to use more energy at higher costs with more money coming out of our wallets.

How is Acadia Center looking at the next four years? Are you mostly thinking about ways to pivot efforts or is there action that can be taken against Trump’s policies?

I think a little bit of both. We’re trying to focus our areas on where we can be most effective. We do a lot at the state and the regional level, but we’re also trying to identify those pressure points federally, where we can be most effective. We saw during the first Trump administration that they can actually be susceptible to public pressure on certain issues; they reversed course on a number of things. That’s why I say these are the executive orders that are in place right now. I don’t know what a year from will look like, or what three years from now will look like, because they might reverse course on some of these things if there’s a huge public outcry.

Similarly, how would you advise other people, especially ones who are particularly concerned about climate change, to think about the next four years?

These actions definitely are a huge disappointment, and they’re going to make meeting our climate goals very difficult. My advice to people is don’t be silent and don’t give up hope. Every little bit of greenhouse gas reduction that we can do is a little bit climate change that is mitigated. Maybe that storm that was going to flood a city actually gets diverted, and it doesn’t happen. Every little bit we can do matters. And your voice matters. I think it’s also important to understand that there are a lot more people who care about this stuff and are in favor than are against it. You are in the majority here, people who care about climate are in the majority.

To read the full article from Boston.com, click here.

Trump’s order blocking wind power could risk Maine clean energy plans

Hours into his new term, President Donald Trump hit the pause button on American wind power development, fulfilling a commitment he made after railing against wind energy on the campaign trail.

The move may hobble Maine’s plan to meet ambitious clean electricity targets.

Kyle Murray, with clean energy and climate nonprofit Acadia Center, said Trump’s order will allow permitted wind projects in Massachusetts and elsewhere to move ahead.

But if the administration maintains an anti-wind stance, it will likely challenge Maine’s plans, Murray added. And while he believes wind power is still viable, interrupting development may require New England states to redouble efforts in other areas to expand clean energy and lower greenhouse gas pollution, he said.

“We also need to focus on solar, energy efficiency, those types of things that can really help us meet our climate goals as well,” Murray said.

The Maine Governor’s Energy Office said it is reviewing Trump’s executive orders, but it will be years before the planned floating research array is ready to apply for federal permits.

To read the full article from Maine Public, click here.

White Paper – Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports

The United States is the world’s leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China’s stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.

In an ideal scenario, the international community would align around a shared vision of gas production and consumption to facilitate the transition from coal to renewable energy. Instead, the U.S. LNG industry’s plans for rapid growth are increasingly disconnected from international partners and global gas demand, which is expected to peak as early as 2030. With U.S. LNG exports poised to double by 2028, further gas infrastructure expansion could lock in long-term global dependency at a time when energy systems must evolve. To foster a sustainable and secure energy future, U.S. energy policies must stabilize domestic demand for LNG, improve methane tracking and reduction, pursue comprehensive energy partnerships, invest in renewable energy projects, and develop a long-term strategy for LNG supply.

The switch to renewable energy may provide a more direct pathway to reducing New England’s dependence on LNG imports. A 2020 analysis by the New England-based nonprofit Acadia Center determined that current legislation and plans for renewable energy deployment in New England would reduce the region’s reliance on natural gas for electricity generation from 45 percent in 2020 to 10 percent by 2030.[208] Switching to renewable energy would lower New England’s gas demand enough to eliminate the region’s need for LNG imports

To read the full white paper from the American Security Project, click here.

Trump signed a slew of executive orders on Day 1. What are they, and how might they affect New England?

President Donald Trump began his promised flurry of executive action on Day 1. With his first batch of memoranda and orders, Trump repealed dozens of former president Joe Biden’s actions, withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accords, put a temporary freeze on new federal regulations, and commanded federal law enforcement to end all cases and investigations of any Trump supporters, among other actions.

He said during his inauguration speech that the US will, “drill, baby, drill,” a phrase first used in 2008 to mean increasing domestic oil production.

Kyle Murray, director of the State Program Implementation at the Acadia Center, a clean energy research nonprofit in Boston, said that Trump’s plan to cut off new federal leases for wind energy will have a big impact on Massachusetts’ plans to reach net zero.

“The inability to secure those leases will make things incredibly difficult for the Commonwealth to meet its clean energy goals in the long term,” Murray said.

The president has repeatedly and falsely blamed the offshore wind industry for whale deaths and said during his inauguration speech that his administration would “end the ‘Green New Deal,’” referring to policies to accelerate the energy transition.

Still, Murray said that Massachusetts can respond to the slow-down in offshore wind development by ramping up solar development and accelerating the state’s energy efficiency goals.

“Offshore wind, while it was the centerpiece of our strategy, is not the only source of clean energy,” Murray said.

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

In reliably-blue Massachusetts, leaders and advocates prepare to fight Trump on transgender rights, climate efforts

Hours after returning to the presidency, President Trump began signing a suite of executive orders Monday aimed at fulfilling campaign promises and jolting US policy rightward on issues from the economy to the environment.

“The inflation crisis was caused by lots of overspending and escalating energy prices,” Trump said at his swearing-in ceremony, adding, “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth — and we are going to use it.”

“We are not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said.

Kyle Murray, the director of the state program implementation at the Acadia Center, a clean energy research nonprofit in Boston, said Trump’s plan to not issue federal leases for wind energy will have a big impact on Massachusetts’ plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“The inability to secure those leases will make things incredibly difficult for the Commonwealth to meet its clean energy goals in the long term,” Murray said.

Still, Murray said that Massachusetts can respond to the slowdown in offshore wind development by ramping up solar development and accelerating the state’s energy efficiency goals.

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

Beyond infrastructure: Building a supportive community and policy environment

Introduction to the Energy is About to Shift report

A recent report by Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Acadia Center examines the critical role community engagement will play in the build out of new, clean generation and transmission to meet New England’s 2050 decarbonization goals. This blog is the second in a two-part series, focusing on how to build a supportive, community focused environment for the region’s energy transition. The first blog focused on the clean energy needs of New England’s future grid. To learn more, read the full report, and attend our webinar coming up soon on January 16!

New England’s energy system must undergo an immense transformation to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals. Across the region, most states have adopted targets to reach 80 to 100% emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2050, economy-wide. For this to happen, the region will need to shift away from aging, polluting, unabated fossil fuel infrastructure toward a cleaner, efficient, and electrified grid. This transformation is going to reshape the region’s landscape and require a myriad of communities to host clean energy infrastructure. These communities are at the center of the region’s energy transformation.

For New England to build out its infrastructure at the speed and scale needed to unlock an energy transition, it will take buy-in, acceptance, and trust from the communities that will host these clean energy resources. This will require proactive and meaningful community engagement of the region’s 1,300+ cities and towns, as well as numerous business districts, regional organizing networks, community organizations, and residents so that they can be active participants with a voice in the unfolding transition. This is for good reason, as the stakes in siting, permitting, and grid planning have important repercussions in how land use is prioritized, where clean air is enjoyed, who pays for infrastructure, and how other benefits and burdens are distributed. A community-centered decarbonized grid requires developing a system for engagement designed for the urgency of the climate crisis that values community access and standing in meaningful ways, including by offering communities the tools needed to provide input, express preferences, and participate.

The barriers to community-centered deployment

To date, New England’s track record on community engagement has been lackluster – with a trail of failed projects and lawsuits to show for it. This challenge transcends engagement practices at the individual project level; there are a variety of community-based barriers to energy infrastructure deployment at play. These barriers include policy, process, and institutional capacity challenges; land availability and competing uses of land; and community attitudes toward clean energy deployment. The sections below overview lessons and opportunities for each of these broader challenges, informed by six case studies on various clean energy projects around the region that exemplify project successes, challenges, and failures. To holistically address these challenges, the region’s policies and processes for siting, permitting, and community engagement must be improved and strengthened to unlock a clean energy transition. For more in-depth case studies and recommendations, see our full report.

Policy, process, and capacity challenges

In New England, there is generally a division of siting responsibilities, where smaller-scale generation resources are subject to local government approvals while larger projects and other infrastructure (e.g., substations or transmission and distribution lines) are subject to state-level approvals. Where siting decisions are made at the local level, restrictive permitting and zoning regulations have the potential to slow clean energy development. Local officials, zoning boards, and town councils, when confronted with siting and permitting a new technology, may understandably lack in-house technical capacity, including the funding, staff, and resources needed to fully consider how a project may fit into their communities.

In turn, localities may enact bans, moratoria, or other regulations that effectively limit the ability for communities to develop clean energy. While some moratoria are temporary, allowing cities and towns to update their codes to accommodate the new land use, others are indefinite to effectively prohibit project development. Approval and permitting processes can be time intensive and add great complexity for responsibly developed and well-sited projects, even if those processes are intended to filter out projects evoking legitimate local concern. Finally, a project in compliance with necessary permitting and regulatory requirements may not receive the necessary permits due to shifting regulatory goal posts or local leadership changes.

Where the state has authority over siting decisions, concerns may arise over a lack of opportunity for meaningful community engagement, lengthy and cumbersome review processes, and under-resourced state agencies. However, if well-designed, state siting policies can effectively balance state and local authority to meet state goals and ensure local engagement, as exemplified by recent legislation passed in Massachusetts. The new law consolidates multi-jurisdictional reviews of clean energy projects into a single permit, enhances community reviews to ensure engagement and participation (including via intervenor compensation), and improves transparency via an online clean energy infrastructure dashboard.

Options and opportunities:

Policies and programs to site and permit projects in a timely manner while incorporating meaningful community engagement opportunities include:

• Enacting statewide permitting reforms for clean energy and grid infrastructure that balance urgency and clear, consistent non-discretionary standards with early and robust community engagement.

• Improving siting and permitting processes by creating avenues to expedite approvals, streamline appeals, and increase coordination across state agencies, and between state agencies and local governments.

• Increasing government capacity by hiring staff with technical expertise at permitting entities, providing financial resources for technical consultants, and establishing state-local liaisons to improve coordination and assistance.

• Providing technical support to local governments through financial incentives, educational workshops to local governments, and robust informational resources for community members.

Land use and siting challenges

Where land may theoretically be well-suited for clean energy deployment, project-specific considerations may limit a potential site’s practical feasibility, effectively reducing the amount of land suitable for development. Many factors go into siting a single energy facility. On top of the resource capacity to power energy generation projects (i.e., suitable solar or wind resources), a potential site must also have proximity to transmission or distribution lines, the appropriate landscape and subsurface characteristics, and a large enough parcel size or the ability to aggregate multiple parcels. Even if a site is deemed suitable, it still may face challenges like high land prices, local zoning regulations, landowners uninterested in selling or leasing their land, or opposition from community groups. For transmission projects, developers must secure rights-of-way from all landowners along the proposed route, spanning multiple jurisdictional entities with their own regulations.

Conflicting tensions around how land is used, and the conversion of land from one use type to another, create additional friction around clean energy development. Land is a finite resource, and competing land use interests, such as agriculture, conservation, industry, and urban development further restrict the availability of sites for clean energy infrastructure. In New England, concerns around conversion of agricultural and forested land are particularly prevalent.

Options and opportunities:

Policy and programmatic solutions for addressing land use challenges of clean energy projects include:

• Integrating clean energy into land use planning to provide opportunities for self-determination, align development with the long-term goals of the community, and reflect the tradeoffs of siting energy resources.

• Prioritizing low-impact development and account for cumulative impacts through incentives and state review processes.

• Balancing farmland and wildlife protections with energy deployment by providing developers with best management practices to minimize impacts to wildlife and agricultural lands, or through the adoption of mitigation hierarchies.

Social barriers and historical impacts

Clean energy infrastructure is bound to have some impacts, both positive and negative, on a community; but failures to communicate these impacts and procedurally address community concerns can exacerbate tensions.  Furthermore, community opposition to a project can galvanize longer-term community attitudes and even build local level organizing networks that may engage on future nearby siting matters, potentially in an unconstructive posture. Failure to address community concerns is both an acute challenge for individual projects and a chronic challenge the region must find systematic ways to address.

Lack of information, misinformation, and poor engagement practices on behalf of developers can further increase opposition from communities. A 2022 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 30% of opposition to renewable energy projects in the United States stemmed from a lack of procedural equity, meaning the process of community engagement, such as the community’s ability to influence project outcomes, was inadequate.

A failure to diversify the region’s energy mix has perpetuated its reliance on fossil fuels and contributed to chronic fuel shortages, high electricity rates, and risk of winter energy shortfalls, contributing to distrust of energy projects generally. Decades of investment in fossil fuels resulted in heavily polluting infrastructure with real impacts on the health and well-being of communities, especially marginalized and disadvantaged communities. This legacy has created baseline sentiments of public and community-group distrust in institutions like ISO-NE, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and transmission owners, and some project proponents. These sentiments of distrust can be difficult to repair and can make future developments additionally challenging.

Options and opportunities:

Ways to rectify past procedural equity issues and galvanize more community support for projects include:

• Facilitating proactive developer communication and engagement with communities that convey positive and negative impacts of proposed infrastructure development, as well as opportunities to mitigate impacts.

• Delivering meaningful benefits for communities through a community-led process that not only informs the structure of community benefits program but also incorporates community input into the design of the project itself.

• Modifying permitting standards and processes to account for cumulative impacts of projects to limit further burden on communities that have historically housed energy or other industrial infrastructure.

A community-centered energy transition

In New England, “the energy is about to shift” has a dual meaning: the region’s physical energy systems must rapidly shift from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy, and the region’s policies and processes for siting, permitting, and community engagement must also shift to be improved and strengthened commensurate with the task ahead. For all the infrastructure build-out that must occur to unlock New England’s energy transition, none of it will be possible at scale and on time without genuine buy-in, acceptance, and trust from the people whose communities will host the many clean energy resources that must be sited and constructed.

Heat pumps are designed to operate when it’s still cold out. Really cold out.

Two years ago, the mercury dipped well below zero, significantly colder than this week. The Globe reached out to heat pump owners to see how their systems fared in the bitter cold in February 2023. Here’s what we found.

Greenhouse gases produced by heating buildings, including homes, account for about a third of Massachusetts’ climate-warming emissions.

Ben Butterworth, the director of climate, energy, and equity analysis at the clean energy advocacy organization Acadia Center, said he wasn’t surprised that heat pumps performed well. “After years of falsely being told that heat pumps weren’t suitable for extreme cold, I do think this moment was critical for instilling confidence in heat pump users,” he said. “Continued reliance on fossil fuels to heat our buildings is simply incompatible with the state’s climate targets.”

To read the full article from the Boston Globe, click here.

FERC Sides with New England Developers on Interconnection Complaint

New England transmission owners no longer can require interconnection customers to pay operations and maintenance (O&M) costs for required system upgrades.

Joe LaRusso, manager of the Clean Grid Program at the Acadia Center, wrote on social media that “FERC has broomed away a significant obstacle to interconnection that was unique to New England.”

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

More heat pumps and help for renters: What’s in the new Mass Save plan

In a new plan, leaders of Mass Save pledged big changes to the statewide program that provides rebates to residents to make their homes and businesses more energy efficient.

Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, a climate advocacy and research group, called the plan “innovative.”

“The plan includes record-breaking numbers all around that will keep Massachusetts a leader in progress on climate,” he wrote in an email.

Murray added it would help many residents — including renters and those with lower incomes — save money and reduce their homes’ climate footprints.

While the Healey administration is not expecting Mass Save alone to shoulder the 2030 goal, it did ask the utilities to estimate what it would cost to cut 2.2 million metric tons, or half the total state goal, by 2027.

The answer: at least $16.3 billion.

Murray of the Acadia Center said that’s too much to put on the backs of ratepayers.

“We have likely hit close to the maximum output of the current funding model,” he said in an email. “It is of the utmost importance that the Commonwealth make finding outside funding for the programs a top priority.”

To read the full article from wbur, click here.