The Baker administration — and some in the legislature, are stalling and lagging behind the times on solar development. While they refuse to lift the cap on solar development, at the behest of utilities, projects are going unfinished.
Thomas Sweeney, chief operating officer of Clean Energy Collective, which builds community solar projects in Massachusetts, said he has 50 stalled projects in National Grid territory, including 20 in Western Massachusetts. Community solar projects involve putting solar panels in one location, like a landfill, then offering area businesses, residents and governments a chance to buy the credits generated by the project.
Sweeney said the timing of lifting the cap is important, because a federal tax credit for solar projects is set to expire at the end of 2016, and it can take solar developers a year to connect to the electric grid, which is required for the tax credit. So if new projects are not started by the end of 2015, they may not get the federal tax credit.
If the cap is not raised before the end of the year, Sweeney said, “We’re going to have a lot of difficulty determining whether we’re going to continue to invest in projects or whether to put them on hold.”via State cap stalls Massachusetts solar projects | masslive.com.
The Baker administration is stalling, hemming and hawing, thinking that it might be possible to lower the subsidies for solar – supposedly without disrupting development.
Well, it’s getting disrupted now. They’d better figure it out soon. I’m not against recalculating, necessarily: Perhaps there should be an adjustment of exactly how generous the incentives should be in order to get maximum bang for the buck.
But we need a hell of a lot of bang. A transition to a clean energy economy is an urgent priority for the state, maybe the most urgent. For the first time in history, renewables are actually viable. And we need them now:
- Scores of projects are stalled right now. These are jobs — not to mention the economic benefit to solar homeowners.
- A federal tax credit expires at the end of 2016
- The sooner we get there, the less dependent on fossil fuel infrastructure we will be. With more solar and wind energy on the market, everyone’s energy prices will be lower in the long term, since the marginal cost of sunshine and wind are near-zero.
- The punishing timeline of climate change necessitates a deploy, deploy deploy strategy. We can lead the nation or follow, but it’s the transition that the crisis requires of our entire economy.
I don’t understand the logic in holding all projects back in the short term, while they figure out a long term plan. That has more than a whiff of sheer obstruction and stalling. Whose side is the Baker administration on — homeowners, or the power companies?
In the meantime, 350Massachusetts is pushing folks to call their legislators to lift the cap:
Note that the following key legislators particularly need to hear from their constituents on this issue:
Representative Thomas Golden,
Representative Paul Brodeur,
Representative Brian Dempsey,
Representative Ted Speliotis,
Representative Tackey Chan,
Representative Thomas Petrolati
and Speaker DeLeo.
617-722-2000.
Peter Porcupine says
….for the Patrick administration to uphold the cap? What was the logic intitituting it?
SomervilleTom says
The cap was wrong during the Patrick administration and it’s wrong now.
Peter Porcupine says
…to the description of Baker as ‘stalling’ after 8 weeks when something that was wrong went uncriticized for 8 years.
centralmassdad says
Just because enforcing the cap is the policy of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, was implemented by them during their decade of complete control of the government, and will continue to be supported by them while they have complete (and veto-proof) majorities in the General Court, doesn’t mean that it isn’t somehow all the Republicans’ fault.
It is just unfair of you to try to cause reality intrude into the BMG bubble.
SomervilleTom says
There is a different model than the partisan exchange the two of you persist with.
I suggest that the price of NOT moving to alternative energy gets higher and higher as time goes on. Each year that each administration, regardless of party, does nothing costs society more and more — the urgency is monotonically increasing. If Charlie Baker does nothing about this and is replaced by a Democrat four years from now, and the Democrat does nothing, then the Democrat will be stalling. If Martha Coakley had been elected, and Martha Coakley had done the same, then Martha Coakley would be stalling.
The fact is that this needs to happen NOW. The date for the expiration of federal grants 2016. Like it or not, that date happens in the Baker, not Patrick administration.
The colossal failure of Massachusetts government has been its refusal to make, fund, and raise taxes to support policy decisions like this. The MBTA collapsed last winter because of that failure. We are now watching a similar scenario unfold with alternative energy.
And yet our Democratic Senate is offering a no-new-taxes budget. Our Democratic House will surely do the same. Our Republican governor is happy to oblige. The entire government, regardless of party, is in increasing denial about just how urgent and immediate these needs are.
I wish that we could stop arguing about whether it’s the “Republicans” fault or the “Democrats” fault and instead focus on solving these problems. We Democrats could have and should have fixed these problems, and we didn’t. We Democrats also lost the the corner office.
The reality that needs to intrude into the BMG bubble is that we are already behind the curve, as a direct result of eight years of Democratic stalling. We need to stop stalling.
Charley on the MTA says
and it is tedious. If you think that this site — editors or contributors — are uncritically supportive of the Democratic Party as represented in our elected officials … I just can’t help you, buddy. I don’t know what site you’ve been reading all this time.
As you are fully aware, elections are binary: Dem or GOP. Policy is not binary: Options are practically infinite. We’re talking about the latter here.
Based on experience: The Patrick administration brought us back into RGGI. They had a visionary Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs. The legislature passed the Green Communities Act in 2008. Say what you want about anything else, but the Patrick’s administration was *very* bold and generally very successful in the area of energy and environment.
The Baker administration’s E&E Secretary seems like a nice fellow, but he’s not a rock star like Ian Bowles. And through his actions on the gas pipeline and the solar cap, Baker does not seem to be making clean energy a particular priority. He’s got a long way to go. I am rooting for him to do the right thing.
Your framing of this as partisan spitballing is boring. The issue is too important for that.
centralmassdad says
that liberals and so-called “progressives” in Massachusetts suffer from an epistemic closure problem that is as great as any square-state residing, Hannity and O’Reilly watching “conservative.”
Look at the headline above– what is that besides partisan spitballing?
Sure it is a binary system, and that means you have to weigh many factors. And, based on all of that, you support the Democratic nominee for X. That is just another way of saying that you prioritize, as you must, and that there are other things more important than whatever nominally “Democratic Party” agenda item is ignored by your elected representatives. That, presumably, is why you guys spent all last summer and fall arguing to me that Awful Democratic Nominee X is better than any Republican, because Awful Democratic Nominee X would be more likely to listen, etc. And why you elect people who are willing to put Mr. Speaker DeLeo into the Commonwealth’s driver’s seat, apparently indefinitely.
That necessarily means that there are other things accomplished by the election of, and further entrenchment of, the existing legislature that apparently does not share your view that these caps should be removed. What are those things? I don’t know. But if this issue were really important to liberals, then they would make it important during the election cycle, rather than the middle of May in an off year.
But the above is an exercise in self-delusion: let’s pretend that reality is different than it is, and engage in a righteous round of tut-tutting a Republican, because it feels so good.
The reality is that climate change issues such as this aren’t really a big priority to elected Democrats in Massachusetts– particularly the power players. And that the response from the left will be some feeble criticism, and maybe a feeble primary challenge that goes nowhere. And then, in the general, the left will support their nominee regardless of whether the nominee makes climate change a priority, because other things are more important.
If the left actually thought that climate change was a priority, then then the calculus would be different– other things would not be more important. It would then be willing to work against a candidate, even a Democratic nominee in a general election, that does not prioritize this issue, even, , at the risk of having a Republican occupy an office for a term, in order to ensure that the next Democratic nominee has her priorities straight.
But that its not how things will go– because other things are more important to liberals.
jconway says
N/t
thebaker says
N/T
Charley on the MTA says
I don’t know what you’re expecting. Do you think I vote for Petrolati? For DeLeo? *I don’t live in their districts, my friend.* But perhaps someone who reads this site does. That’s why I write. Is this hard to understand?
We supported Berwick, at least partly because he was strong on climate issues. (Also appreciated Kayyem in that regard.) His wife was on the PUC. His son is in the clean energy business. He gets it. Welp, he didn’t get the nomination.
Martha Coakley said that she’d double the funding for the Clean Energy Center, and otherwise indicated she’d continue the Patrick administration’s strong record. Baker basically said he wouldn’t get in the way, but didn’t give a strong indication that climate was important to him. And in 2010 he said he wasn’t smart enough to know if humans were causing it – a true embarrassment. Was there no difference between the candidates? I think there was.
I understand that things other than climate are important to voters. *That’s why I write the effing posts.*
Charley on the MTA says
What’s your position on climate? You riff on how it doesn’t really matter to voters, how the left doesn’t even care, etc. Well, what about you?
You’re a dad. So am I. Do you think that your moderate politics gives you — and even more significantly, your kids — a get-out-of-jail-free card on the effects of global warming — an all-too-believable 4 degrees C, or even 6C? The collapse of food production? The flooding caused by ice sheet melt — which will certainly hit home in Massachusetts, as well as … everywhere else?
I pose this as a challenge to everyone who reads this site: If the ensuitng collapse of civil society isn’t the most important thing, the first priority, then what the hell is?
I understand there are things more immediate: Your school, your health, your job, your debt, your roads, your late bus and train … I know. But this is the whole freakin’ enchilada.
I’ve been a Johnny-One-Note on this for years. And I usually get all kinds of advice on messaging, how we’re just not doing it right. That’s because no one wants to deal with it. Not even me. But frankly I don’t care if I’m the guy to pick up the stinkiest piece of s#!+ and stick in people’s faces, saying “See! SEE! It’s HORRIBLE!” Someone’s got to do it. And I’m going to keep doing it until … well, probably forever.
I’m a Climate Dad. Are you?
centralmassdad says
It is a huge problem and a huge dilemma. I have also grown a little skeptical of the “we’re all going to die” scenarios, because most of them seem to me to be politically motivated efforts to “scare” people into action.
The real problem is that “clean energy” to the extent such a thing even exists, will never ramp up fast enough to replace carbon-based energy, because worldwide demand for energy is not only increasing but continually accelerating. Even as advances are made in efficiency, all those advances do is allow us to do more, and accelerate the demand further. Even now, China is getting new coal-fired power plants online as fast as they can build them.
I am therefore in favor of maximizing every available non-carbon power source as quickly as possible. Where there is flowing water, there should be hydro-electric power. small and large scale nuclear power. Wind and solar, zoning restrictions and snail-darters be damned. And yes, remove that damned “cap” on solar based energy going back into the grid. I would be very much in favor of cutting as much regulatory red tape to get as many of these things going as quickly as possible.
Even then it probably won’t be anywhere near enough. For the most part, most of the spooky data, the collapse of Antarctic ice sheets and the like, seem to be totally locked in already, even if all carbon emissions were to immediately cease.
That leaves the hope of future engineering solutions, which don’t exist yet.
So, I guess I am rather pessimistic about the whole thing. We have built our sand castle in the flats, we can’t really move the sand castle without causing a great many of us to cease to exist, and the tide is rolling in, and there is little that we or King Canute himself can do about it.
Charley on the MTA says
Much of your assessment is correct, from everything I’ve read. Many effects are locked in, and we are due for an extremely bumpy ride (I hate these euphemisms) simply based on things that we cannot now reverse. But even *containing the scale of the disaster* will require heroic efforts. The question is not whether we are “screwed” –we are — but just how screwed. There’s a big difference between 2C and 4C — whether civilization-as-we-know-it survives.
I think you are unduly optimistic about nuclear — expensive, *really really* hard to permit, waste lasts forever — and unduly pessimistic about wind and solar. Solar growth has wildly outperformed expectations, and wind is doing well too. And Tesla’s batteries may change the renewables game as well. These are actually viable technologies now, and the more we deploy, the more viable future deployments become.
Time is of the essence, which is why I call on the Baker administration to make this a priority.
merrimackguy says
But here’s where I differ on solutions.
NG is better than oil or coal, so let’s use NG instead of oil or coal while we’re waiting for alternatives to develop.
If MA (via the PUC) doesn’t handle electric costs properly, costs may rise to the point where economic development is impacted, revenues are constrained and we can’t spend the money we need to.
Both of these points are of course subject to debate and the hard science (timeline to disaster) isn’t there. You wonder if there isn’t a place for the federal government in some of this to level the alternative energy field (as in, there’s no economic benefit to being a leader sometimes). So that the coal plants states don’t have a significant advantage.
SomervilleTom says
I agree with everything you said here.
It seems to me that one inescapable conclusion is that the onus is on today’s national GOP to dramatically change their posture about climate change. We have already lost at least a decade because our national government was paralyzed by GOP claims that AGW was a hoax.
The GOP now holds a majority in both the Senate and the House. The Democrats have done all in their power to begin addressing climate change, and the national GOP has done all in its power to block, derail, and sabotage those first baby-steps. I’m not trying to be overly partisan here, and at the same time this is an issue that the GOP has made both partisan and divisive.
The GOP must reverse its position on the reality of AGW, and must join the Democrats (and all thinking people) in seeking immediate ways to ameliorate AGW impacts that are already locked in and reduce our collective behavior that worsens AGW.
centralmassdad says
Solar and wind growth are great– but the problem is that they can’t scale up big enough or fast enough to do all that much.
That leaves bad options. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, because the energy industry necessarily deals with concentrated energy, which is dangerous stuff in whatever form. There will always be some harmful side effect.
If climate change really is an impending catastrophe, and I think it is, then simple triage means that the salmon in the river, and the existence of spent fuel in the future, must give way. Nukes are hard to permit because they are opposed by environmentalists.
Honestly, the environmentalist position on these sort of things always baffles me a bit. Climate change is an enormous, civilization-threatening crisis! But not serious enough to embrace existing non-carbon technology that we already don’t like. It is a little like asking to firemen, while your house is afire, to wait for the “good” water, because that stuff in their hoses is smelly and rusty. It seems like a mixed message, to say the least.
jconway says
It is significant less efficient than wind or solar, substantially more expensive, and is only profitable for private utilities after substantial public subsidy. I totally agree it’s an ideological canard to oppose it for environmental reasons, I would be for it if it wasn’t so much more expensive than alternative fuels that are cleaner and safer. But promoting it is just as ideological as opposing it.
jconway says
Bad when existing climate change is already producing extensive droughts. California is an interesting example of how these problems tend to get linked.
centralmassdad says
If carbon in the atmosphere is a crisis, then cut the damn red tape. If the risk of future spent fuel (which could be avoided entirely by changing the reactor type) outweighs the risk of carbon in the atmosphere, fine. Then the coal and oil fired power plants will just have to do for another few decades. But then its hard to say that climate change caused by man-made carbon emissions is THE biggest environmental threat extant.
jconway says
But I am not sure that is the only thing keeping VCs from investing in the startups working on the safer and cheaper reactors, which are not operational yet. But yeah, put everything on the table. I am saying that to state that nuclear and hydro are preferable to wind and solar is a fallacy, to state that all four should be on the table is accurate, but the latter two are easier to implement right now while the other two require substantial changes to how we use water or how we regulate nuclear energy, respectively. Nuclear is not the panacea you think it is, but it could be 20 years from now. Solar and Wind are ready to go, right now.
centralmassdad says
There is no panacea. Neither solar nor wind can get big enough soon enough. The only way that carbon emissions are going to slow or stop is if energy consumption declines overall. And that is almost entirely politically impossible, absent some major change in human nature.
Trickle up says
forever. Here in the real world, I mean.
Whereas the renewables have been deploying like crazy, really a lot quicker than i wold have thought possible.
stomv says
Says who? Seriously, what makes you think that? This 2011 study determined that we could save money relative to status quo by retiring 100% of coal and 25% of nuclear by 2050. Since then, nuclear costs have gone up, solar costs have come down, and 111(d) have made new coal plants impossible. That is, since the study’s publication, it’s gotten easier to phase fossil fuels out of the US grid, not harder.
So, in all seriousness: who says solar and wind can’t scale up fast enough to matter?
centralmassdad says
I just don’t think that that is even remotely realistic because it defies economic reality. There is no industry that has ever expanded that quickly. Electrification itself took 60 years and even that took huge heapings of government subsidy. Software might be the only exception, because it, by definition, scales way the hell better than, say, building Tesla Model Ss.
There are capacity issues that aren’t covered by those cost estimates. By capacity, I mean capacity to produce PV systems or wind turbines. Both of these are growing like crazy, which is nice, but they have to grow faster than overall energy demand in order to close the market share gap. Energy demand grows awfully fast, and will grow faster in non-recession times.
Take the turbines, which are popping up more and more:
Say, Mr. wind turbine factory, how many turbines can you produce in a week?
Answer: 10
Well, I want 50 next week.
Answer: OK, I will have to hire a lot of people and train them to do that.
And the week after that I want 500.
Answer: OK, I will have to build a new factory.
And the week after that I want 5000.
Answer: OK, we are going to have to train engineers capable of building all of the factories to do that, and we will have to pay them like kings to make sure we get enough.
In order to ramp up production that fast, you will have to REALLY reward anyone with the skills to make the stuff you need. Which means those favorable cost estimates go out the window.
I don’t see any way around that phenomenon in the real world. And you’re talking about replacing fossil fuel energy production outright, and replacing decades old and multi-trillion dollar infrastructure investment along the way.
At some point, the rate of growth is going to slow, even under the best possible scenario for wind and solar. They won’t be anywhere near enough anywhere near soon enough.
Christopher says
…and we can easily find the money to do this by cutting off the subsidy spigot on the dirty sources.
stomv says
that every exponential curve is really the first part of an S curve. Using squiggles,
is the first part of
Where we disagree is where on the S curve wind and PV are right now. In 2014, 50 GW of new wind capacity was installed worldwide. In 2013, 37 GW of PV was installed worldwide. Let’s round up for 2015 and say 100 GW combined.
Now, here’s where we start using really rough estimates. The USA is roughly 1/4 of GDP, so lets say we’ve got 1/4 of the electricity. The USA has roughly 1000 GW of generating capacity — 50% gas, 30% coal, 15% nuclear, 5% other.
We need 2 MW of wind to replace 1 MW of coal or gas. We need 3 MW of wind to replace 1 MW of nuclear. This is because capacity factors of the generators vary. Wind has about twice the capacity factor of PV. So, let’s replace all of our coal with wind and PV. 300 GW coal requires 600 GW wind or 1200 GW PV. Since we’ve got a 50/50 blend, that’s 900 GW combined. 9 years of the world’s output, focused entirely in tUSA, with no growth in the industry at all. We just cut out electric sector carbon emissions by roughly 70% though, because coal has twice the CO2 emissions than gas and we didn’t change our gas capacity.
But we’re 1/4 of the world by rough estimate, so we’d need 4 times more to replace all the coal. Thing is, there’s not 300 GW of coal times 4; there’s 1700 GW of coal as of 2011, and that number has increased (though it seems to have leveled off very recently; don’t know if that trend will continue). Let’s call it 2100 GW for easier math. That means that, based on the current production capability of wind and solar factories, we’re looking at 9×7 = 63 years just to replace the coal with PV/wind. Never mind that the nuclear units are being retired, and we haven’t gone after gas, and we’re going to have demand increase in Africa and Asia, and we haven’t yet electrified our vehicles.
So, that’s the bad news. But remember! We assumed no ability to build more PV/wind in 2025 than we have in 2015. In the past 10 years, if we assume linear growth instead of exponential, wind has been able to install 4 GW more each year than the year prior. Surely we can grow linearly. For PV it’s faster (in part because installation scales far more easily) — in each of the past four years, we’ve installed 10 GW more than the year prior. If we keep that linear growth, we replace all of the coal worldwide in just 14 years rather than 63. And that’s not exponential growth — that’s linear. If we had the resources to expand our capacity of factories by 14 GW last year, surely those same resources could build in additional 14 GW of new factories again this year.
This is all very back of the envelope, with really simplistic assumptions. Life won’t play out this way. Still, I disagree with cmd — for me, it’s really an open question to how much renewable energy can be installed between now and 2030. It’s not obvious that we’ll grow our RE capabilities quickly enough — but it’s not obvious that we won’t either.
stomv says
I blurred my math!
We assumed 100 GW of combined PV and wind, but then I reverted right back to 50. Ugh! Redoing the last two paragraphs…
So, that’s the bad news. But remember! We assumed no ability to build more PV/wind in 2025 than we have in 2015. In the past 10 years, if we assume linear growth instead of exponential, wind has been able to install 4 GW more each year than the year prior. Surely we can grow linearly. For PV it’s faster (in part because installation scales far more easily) — in each of the past four years, we’ve installed 10 GW more than the year prior. If we keep that linear growth, we replace all of the coal worldwide in just 24 years rather than 63. And that’s not exponential growth — that’s linear. If we had the resources to expand our capacity of factories by 14 GW last year, surely those same resources could build in additional 14 GW of new factories again this year.
This is all very back of the envelope, with really simplistic assumptions. Life won’t play out this way. Still, I disagree with cmd — for me, it’s really an open question to how much renewable energy can be installed between now and 2040. It’s not obvious that we’ll grow our RE capabilities quickly enough — but it’s not obvious that we won’t either.
SomervilleTom says
Building on this commentary, I think it’s important to observe a basic engineering fact of life — it is generally much easier to improve an emerging technology than a mature one.
Most of the “easy” fixes and improvements have already been done in a mature technology. As a mature technology enters the long tail of its decline into obsolescence, improvements are expensive to make because they are hard, and difficult to justify because they are less and less likely to generate new revenue. This is why mature technologies ultimately die. Few companies are investing in higher-density floppy disks today.
The situation is entirely reversed for emerging technologies. The entire focus, during launch and initial roll-out, is to get SOMETHING out the door at some sort of reasonable price. An aspect of that process is a very long laundry-list of clearly identified shortcomings, problems that have easy fixes that nobody has time for, and obvious optimizations that are still out-of-scope during a technology launch.
Alternative energy technologies are still in their “emerging” phase. Fossil fueled energy sources are quite far into their maturity tails. Given an arbitrary amount to invest in new development, that lump sum is likely to buy far more technical “gain” in alternative energy than conventional.
The “low-hanging fruit” in areas of generation capacity and CO2 reduction is far more likely to come from AE investment than anywhere else (excluding conservation, where the most immediate gains can still be made).
centralmassdad says
nm
Charley on the MTA says
David Roberts at Vox addresses this exact issue. Doesn’t sugar-coat things at all.
jconway says
Sorry CMD, I never understood how electing center right Republicans somehow solves the problem of center right Democrats, how electing Republicans locally somehow moves the Democrats to the left. If anything, a lot of legislators are moving right because they feel that’s what the electorate said by electing Baker and voting against modest revenue proposals tax indexing and bottle deposits.
Granted, Patrick was more conservative and pro-business than we expected in many areas (particularly casinos), and the legislature rolled over on DeLeo. But, again, electing better Democrats and creating the infrastructure to hold them accountable is a long term project that is impeded by electing Republicans. In some districts-Micelis’ for instance, a true moderate Relublican should be backed against a conservative Democrat. You and I could probably cobble together a list of 10 or 20 seats like that, but it wouldn’t be enough to change the culture. It’ll come from the left taking out DeLeo directly.
centralmassdad says
Because you always, always, always support them in the end. It doesn’t matter how right-wing the MA Democrat is, if he is under threat by a Republican, even a Republican to his left, he will trot out some extremist Republican in Alabama who did something offensive, and liberals will gasp and get meekly into line.
How do you suppose that the Republicans have moved so far to the right, so fast? Because they have a major constituency that decided that it would be preferable to have an actively hostile occupant of a political office than it is to have one who pretends to be friendly, but is actually hostile. So, in short order they actively sought the defeat, either in the primary OR the general, of candidates they deemed “RINOs,” lost some elections as a result, but in less than a generation have moved their entire party WAY to the right.
The tea party was successful because they decided that policies were more important than party, and were more than willing to be disloyal to establishment Republicans to achieve their goals.
Here, the greatest sin for anyone is to fail to support a Democrat. Even after the last election, when you guys foolishly nominated a police-state right winger, and lost the election to a libertarian Republican, the first impulse was to find Democrats who failed to adequately support your lousy candidate in order to punish them. Your party is always more important than anything else, and so you get Coakley and DeLeo.
centralmassdad says
Of course thats the first thing I think as I hit “submit” there
jconway says
Name an example where this has been done? On this site? Has anyone here defended DeLeo a) ever and b) by linking his Republican opponents to Ted Cruz? Hear dem crickets?
Lastly, it’s not like the Weld folks have anything but love for DeLeo. From Bradley Jones, ostensibly the Gladstone to his Disraeli, nothing but effuse praise
Source
So yeah, Jones and DeLeo are on the same fucking page with no new revenue and no plans to fix the T, our ailing infrastructure, affordable housing, inequity in education, or sustainable communities. Remember that next time a piece of the Big Dig falls or god forbid a commuter rail derails, that voting for MA Republicans only helps folks like DeLeo, since he basically is one.
jconway says
David wrote about it. I wrote about it.
Don’t pretend like we are part of the machine here, we certainly aren’t. It’s an uphill but worthy battle.
SomervilleTom says
I certainly took a lot of flak here about my refusal to support Martha Coakley. I don’t have time to chase the references, but I remember being rather forcefully spanked by, for example, fenway49 (among others). Both christopher and judy_meredith were clear about their hostility to my lack of support for Ms. Coakley.
CMD may perhaps overstate his case, but I fear he is more right than wrong about our tendency to insist on party “loyalty”.
jconway says
Fairly certainly I defended you both for not voting for her, and I strongly agree with you and CMD that she was not the right face for the party, particularly as far too many people gave her a pass on civil liberties issues which we are supposed to care about. I just don’t buy CMDs thesis that Baker or more Republicans would provide the necessary balance against conservadems to bring about progressive change. I think on the margins they can, and I definitely would’ve supported Sears for Rep had I lived in Jim Miceli’s district. But those choices are few and far between, mainly because the GOP doesn’t want to wage that strategy.
centralmassdad says
in favor of a sitting moderate Republican, in a general election by a fairly comfortable margin in a Republican “wave” year. And the best you can get in state government are these? That suggests to me that the problem is not the electorate, but rather the local Democratic Party.
With the glaring exception of the casino thing, I thought Gov. Patrick was a pretty good governor, who made a pretty significant effort to address a variety of long-term issues for the Commonwealth, but was prevented from succeeding by the Democratic legislature. I probably liked him for many of the reasons the left was disappointed– he was more pragmatic than ideologically liberal.
So I see no particular value in loyalty to, and the maintenance of a Democratic majority in the legislature, when that majority has been there for decades, as has accomplished little that I enthusiastically support, and much that I actively oppose.
jconway says
Like I said, contribute to Progressive Mass. There is an active movement to be a pressure group from the left, with primaries, to move the party forward on these issues. If the choice is between an authentic conservadem and a moderate Republican, by all means pick the Republican. But that choice is very limited, mainly since the MA GOP is perfectly ok with the conservadems as I’ve already argued. Rob Eno endorsed Miceli over the perfectly electabl centrist Sears.
I already linked to the speech where ostensibly Republican House leader Bradly Jones was making love to DeLeo via microphone. You think the system is just the fault of one party rule, I argue the GOP Governors like using conservadems as boogeymen to win over independents but end up working with them just fine. Remember Weld fighting Bulger only to start singing Irish tunes and giving him a sweet golden parachute? I do, and I’m pretty young.
Sears got next to no backing in a winnable race from the grassroots of his own state’s party, I have long been unconvinced that the GOP is remotely interested in taking back the legislature anytime soon. I am convinced that Progressive Mass is making that a solid goal. I might add it’s a non partisan group unaffiliated with the Democratic party-green, UIP, even GOP-as long as you are left of center on the issues we care about, you got our support and attention. We need a better legislature and they are the only group in either party trying to fix it, Rosenberg the only leader on the hill committed to the structural reform the legislature needs. I hope we aren’t talking past each other here.
merrimackguy says
Miceli is personally known by a huge number in the district and over exceeds voter expectations when it comes to constituent service. I know staunch Republicans that voted for him because he helped them on an issue. He has been there for decades. Sears is a grouchy borderline kook. I think he’s okay, but he’s mostly driven by a personal hatred for Miceli. This race is not winnable for the R’s as long as Miceli is upright. Also Eno is now a nobody in MA Republican circles.
Christopher says
…but hostility is overstating it a bit.
centralmassdad says
I still have bruises from last summer. There was hostility for sure, but from posters other than you.
jconway says
And Peter, and even Ernie (when s/he’s on his meds…). Beats an echo chamber, I do worry we are repeating an argument we’ve had many times before and are hijacking a thread about solar power efficiency. Suffice to say, it’s a glass half full and half empty problem. We both see a corrupt conservative Democratic machine on Beacon Hill blocking needed progress and have different solutions to the problem.
A coordinated campaign against the bums would be a site to see, something I’ve talked to Ed Lyons about as well, but I just don’t see the enthusiasm on the part of the broader MA GOP for an effort that would actually put it in power. Much easier for Bradley Jones to be the Bob Michel or Jerry Ford to DeLeo’s Tip O’Neil than actually try and take power. And like the Lib Dems joining the Tories to defeat New Labour in 2010, this coordination might result in the progressives losing their shirts in the end.
centralmassdad says
The last campaign was enough to convince me that the primary goal of the liberals here is to maintain the power of the Democratic Party, period, the end. Not as a means to an end, but as the end. That’s why the liberal rebellion against the nomination was stillborn. That’s why the few who tried to make an issue of the absurd corruption set forth in the Probation Department were dismissed as cranks and shushed.
“We controlled the government completely for 10 years, and de facto for another decade before that, and our biggest accomplishments in 20 damn years are (i) enacting the Heritage Foundation health care law; and (ii) corporate casinos. But oh, no, we can’t risk 24 months of Republican control– even if it produces a long term re-alignment to our advantage– because eek! Who knows what they might do? Maybe they would undo our wonderful achievements.”
And all this in a state that, freed of the political manipulation of the local party machine, elected Senator Warren.
I am unimpressed with the Democratic achievements. I would welcome Republican control of the Commonwealth– even, especially even– batshit crazy Republican control– because it would be very fleeting, and would do a great deal toward establishing an actual left-center government that governs for the people, rather than in order to make phoney baloney jobs for someones brother in law.
Christy Mihos’ television ad was right– but it should have depicted the left wing of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
Did I lose a great deal of respect for Massachusetts liberals during the last cycle? You’re damn right I did.
jconway says
Coakley came in third at the grassroots nominated convention, with the majority of primary voters voting for one of her two opponents, and with rather lackluster support from the majority of BMGers throughout the race. Many of us warned about the dangers of nominating her to another post from day 1, and I think half of us were entirely unimpressed by her. You do the Berwick team a discredit, they got him on the ballot and he overperformed the polls on primary day. He was a lackluster candidate who had terrible messaging strategy, but the activists working on his behalf went to bat for him.
Have you been to Progressive Mass? It’s strapped for cash and volunteers, if you want a better Democratic party, I highly encourage you to donate your time or money. I’ve donated my time as best i can from Chicago, on coordinated email campaigns and money bombs to fight for the good guys.
Not every Democrat is silent. Jon Hecht certainly fought the good fight and was willing to endure the Speaker’s wrath, has your boy Charlie Baker done anything to block the power of the Speaker?
Has he backed Stan Rosenberg’s bold and sensible rules change which has the support of most of the State Senate?
You may not realize it, but there is hope on our side of the aisle and folks are starting to realize we need to work district by district to get the change we want. Feel free to join Progressive Mass in this great fight. We can build the Democratic Party we deserve, but only if we step off the sidelines and start doing rather than whining.
centralmassdad says
The most powerful political figure in the state are the speaker and senate president. The only people who can change that are the members of the legislature. Any time any governor tries to block the power of these, the rest of the legislature suddenly remembers urgent business they must attend to under their bed.
The governor in this state is really a sidewhow, which is why a few years of Gov. Baker really is no big deal. I would trade a half dozen terms of Gov. Baker for a way to break and destroy the machine that runs the legislature.
jconway says
Which is why I encourage you to support Progressive Mass, Jon Hecht, and Stan Rosenberg as they try and clean up our legislature.
centralmassdad says
Are you also jamesconway? Is that just you on a different device?
SomervilleTom says
I’m not sure why, but it’s been asked and confirmed elsewhere here.
centralmassdad says
🙂
jconway says
Second thread hijacked by confusion over this minor change, maybe I should revert back? Why doesn’t porcupine/peter porcupine get this level of scrutiny 😉 ?
The TLDR version is I never really hid my first name to begin with, but this makes it easier for offsite friends who post here to know who I am and also for potential employers to connect the blogger with the applicant, ‘oh you’re that jconway, we like your stuff!’ was a great thing to hear on a recent phone interview, and this should make it easier…in theory
centralmassdad says
I thought it was you; just seemed like posts were coming from both at the same time, so I was suddenly unsure. I never noticed that porcupine switches back and forth. Now that will annoy me and give me something other than Massachusetts Democrats to grouse about.
jconway says
I changed it back, but added my full name to the account along with biographical information, should solve my dilemma of identity if anyone needs to confirm I’m me 😉
Christopher says
Hence you will see christopher while reading the comment thread and Christopher in the list of comments on the right margin.
centralmassdad says
if I thought that the agenda of Progressive Mass is: we will work to defeat Candidate X (Miceli, DeLeo, etc.) either in a primary or in the general, even if the result is victory to a Republican.
As long as it is: we will make a valiant but underfunded effort in the primary, but we pledge to support the Democratic nominee in November, then the donation isn’t worthwhile. “Sitting out the general” isn’t sufficient; they must actively work against the targeted incumbents.
And it really only needs to happen a handful of times before suddenly the input of the left wing is suddenly much valued by the surviving candidates.
They have 144 of 160 seats. You don’t think they could afford the loss of some to prove a point? That’s an awful lot of political capital, and it seems a shame that all it is spent on is casinos, bashing public sector unions, and screwing over the T (while blaming it on the governor).
I just don’t see anything there that is worth protecting. At all.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t share the sentiment of your last sentence. I agree with the rest of your comment, and hence my uprate.
I would like to see an organization comprised of others who join me in feeling our loyalty and effort should be directed towards realizing our shared vision and reflecting our core values.
For me, this is distinctly opposed to perpetuating the numerical supremacy of those who share our increasingly irrelevant party affiliation and who actively betray our vision and values in their day-to-day governance.
I think Progressive Mass is worth protecting. I wholeheartedly agree that its stated fealty to the Massachusetts Democratic Party should end.
jconway says
Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts may be the Peoples Front of Judea Front to our Judean People’s Front, but they are separate organizations.
The mission statement makes it quite clear:
centralmassdad says
Other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?!
jconway says
This is why it’s frustrating, perhaps it needs to publicize this more. But the scorecards give any potential donor the ability to score their own representatives and see if they align with their stated progressive values.
There was also a big money bomb for Hecht and the other progressive reps that stood against DeLeo on term limits. It doesn’t have the money or infrastructure to mount primary challenges in every single district, but there is definitely talk of targeting a few. Even the Speaker himself. But we need folks to step up. I also wouldn’t mind coordinating with UIP since they now have ballot access and are largely aligned with progressives. Perhaps cross endorsing a few of them in races against a GOP or DINO incumbent, and maybe getting them to back our primary challengers into the general if they fall short would be a good strategy. This is the kind of out of box coalitions and thinking that needs to happen, but it’s part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Charley on the MTA says
to replace Miceli (eg) with a Tea Partier and then beat the Tea Partier with a lib-to-mod Democrat.
Long term thinking people. lol
fredrichlariccia says
who is Vice – Chair of the Utilities Committee. He is checking it out and will get back to me on it.
I told him I support lifting the cap and I’ll keep BMG posted.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Founder, P.O.W.E.R. (Progressives Organizing Wakefield to Elect Reformers)
Christopher says
Someone has to build and install the solar panels and provided the means for getting energy so generated into homes, businesses, etc. Rather than blocking it they should be tripping over themselves to get in on the action, resulting I’d imagine in a handsome payday.
stomv says
There’s lots of rationale for a cap, and most states with net metering have one. Distributed energy generation at the residential level is a radical change in policy and engineering relative to a generation ago. Utilities move slowly. They must have extremely high reliability, and every change in policy, procedure, and rates is litigated, sometimes over the span of multiple dockets over the course of years. The rationale for a cap was: “this is a new thing. We don’t know how much participation we’ll see. Because it’s new, we’re not entirely sure how the physical distribution grid, the wholesale power market, the billing systems, the overall cost of service, and the lost revenue will pencil out. So let’s not do too much too fast.”
Having a cap was a rational, small-c-conservative policy that I think makes a bunch of sense. Raising the cap once it’s determined that the system is sufficiently robust also makes a bunch of sense in my opinion.
Charley on the MTA says
Is this system sufficiently robust, or do the utils have a point? They are complaining, which could be for legitimate technical reasons or simply to obstruct or slow-roll so that they don’t have to make the inevitable adjustments.
stomv says
I haven’t seen the data, read the analysis, waded through the discovery, or heard testimony for the utilities in Massachusetts, so I don’t know for sure.
What I do know is that other states have more PV per customer, per kWh sold, per kW of peak load, etc., and they’re doing just fine. I also know that MA has been building up the PV over years, not months. It seems to me that the utility has had time to (a) identify specific problems associated with the amount of DG PV on the system now, and (b) propose solutions, including costs, to fix those problems. If they haven’t done (a) and (b) with specificity yet, then they’re not acting in the public interest — and that is indeed a problem.
thebaker says
Someone on this blog wrote a very thoughtful thread on her experience having solar panels installed on her home in MA. She went over the pros and cons of leasing versus owning, and costs and rebates. It was very well written and I somehow lost track of it.
Does anyone remember who wrote it and perhaps maybe provide a link? It was written a couple years ago.
jconway says
My immediate recall of that excellent post is probably proof I’ve been around this site for far too long, but Lynne’s post was quite instructive regarding this.
merrimackguy says
Awesome. awesome post.
One thing she doesn’t mention however is that a big con to leasing is if you want to sell your home. While the leases are assumable, you have to bank on the next owner wanting to pick up the lease, so that makes the selling more difficult.
Charley on the MTA says
since it’s very specific, relevant to this discussion, and good to have things front-and-center.
merrimackguy says
It sits on your roof and doesn’t take up any additional space.
Electricity costs are constantly going up.
Government gives you a tax credit to reduce the payback period.
Seems like a no brainer. I wonder how many people have to have the panels installed for it to start to make a dent on usage?
thebaker says
I needed to double check on this part …
Thanks again jconway, you saved me hours of searching.
SomervilleTom says
For a variety of reasons, solar hasn’t made sense for our Somerville two-family yet (maybe eventually).
As an aside, I wanted to note that we’ve made a very noticeable reduction in our electricity consumption by replacing ALL our incandescent lights with LEDs or CFLs (we much prefer the LEDs). In our bathroom, for example, our 8-lamp light bars now consume a total of 64W, compared to the 480W originally consumed (8 60W vanity bulbs).
kirth says
A trip to Costco will reveal just how much cheaper LEDs are than just a year ago. I’ve started replacing CFLs and the few remaining incandescents in our house with LEDs. The last old-style bulbs we had were some floods on a dimmer switch (CFLs just don’t dim well) and those small-base flame-shaped ones in the dining ceiling fixture. The LEDs are much brighter than the filament bulbs were, and they dim as smoothly.
Charley on the MTA says
Much better light than CFLs, no warm up time, even more efficient. A terrific technology.