LOVING Derrick Z. Jackson’s piece in the Globe today. Go click it and read the whole thing. He’s calling for a 2000MW purchase requirement for offshore wind — which through economies of scale will tip the whole balance into abundant, clean and cheap energy in the decades to come:
These two words should guide Beacon Hill on offshore wind:
Go big.
…. Factoring in economic and social benefits of a surging industry, top turbine supplier Siemens calculates that, by 2025, offshore wind will be cheaper in Germany than any major fuel source, except for onshore wind. Benefits could include more jobs, less carbon, and energy that is ultimately cheaper for society than nuclear or conventional sources.
That will be true here, too, if the Legislature and Baker go for 2,000 megawatts. A recent study by the University of Delaware’s Special Initiative on Offshore Wind found that that amount, the equivalent of four Cape Winds, would create a European-style pipeline of competitively priced projects that would bring the cost of electricity down to or below today’s electricity prices by 2030. That is without federal or state tax credits and renewable energy credits.
via Derrick Z. Jackson: All-in for offshore wind – The Boston Globe.
This is the difference between planning for the future, and reacting to the present. Energy prices — on the production and retail sides — are not permanent, but infrastructure kind of is. If we make an investment in gas infrastructure, as the Baker administration wants, we’ll have gas — for 20-30 years. If we make that leap into wind, we’ll have wind — thereby jumpstarting the whole industry, as has already happened in Europe. This would of course be much to our economic benefit — especially to New Bedford, which needs it the most.
We have a better alternative, and it’s long past time to simply take advantage of the thing that’s sitting right in front of us.
williamstowndem says
With Kinder Morgan running up the white flag, it’s clear we’ve finally entered the 21st Century. Yes, it’s probably too late to stop a lot of the damage caused by our energy policies to date, but we replay the 20th Century at our peril. Let Massachusetts show the country — including The Donald and The Koch Bros — how to build a renewables-based economy — and future: Go Big on wind and solar.
stomv says
Vermont’s requirements are tiny. New Hampshire tends to brings up the rear on forward-looking electrical change. Maine has tremendous on-shore wind potential still, so has an argument to avoid the off-shore investments.
But MA, CT, and RI are really in the same boat, and CT+RI = 2/3 MA by population, roughly. It would be nice if MA would go in for 1200 MW, CT for 650 MW, and RI for 150 MW or somesuch. The key is that the long term requirements cover the same length of time, even if they don’t get negotiated to exactly the same price.
maxdaddy says
Legislative action around energy should be about strategy. Wind is about tactics. It would be a strategy (or part of a strategy) if the legislature decides, for example, to increase the renewables portfolio standard (RPS) ratchet by more than its 1% annual increase: the RPS is agnostic about technology, it just has to be green.
A far more important decision for the legislature is strategic: what is the proper Massachusetts greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target? The 2050 target in the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) is an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. Is that the best we can do, or, even, must do? For example, there is the zero emissions/100% renewables strategy prominently associated with Mark Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford (see, e.g. http://thesolutionsproject.org/). There is a critique of the 100% renewables goal, but still a very aggressive emissions reduction strategy called “net zero” advocated by Armond Cohen, executive director of the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (see, e.g., his March, 2016 presentation at https://www.scribd.com/doc/306548818/3-29-16-Energy-Resources-Program-Expanding-Renewable-Energy-and-Maintaining-Grid-Reliability, pp. 100ff). Both of these contributions, and many others, reflect much new information as well as the Paris agreement just signed affirming global temperatures must not exceed 2C in the very near future and that 1.5C would afford a bigger margin of safety. The problem with the GWSA goal is that it is just plain dated, arrived at long before the UN’s most recent climate reports came out (IPCC5) and long before the Paris agreement debates happened and the Paris accord was concluded.
Even with these outer-boundary emissions targets, there is a crucial policy issue to which legislative attention is essential. Many defenders of aggressive renewables goals dispute that a 100% renewables strategy is possible by 2050 and perhaps ever, until energy storage technology fundamentally changes. If this argument is correct, the energy reliability is a critical concern, and acceptable sources of baseload over time need to be considered. Here again the legislature should insist this be a central planning consideration going forward, when managing the supply of renewables might become considerably more challenging. Most voters, after all, want to be sure, with a high level of probability, that their lights will go on as demanded. Wind, even big wind, is not baseload. The legislature should not make reliability decisions of its own. Since reliability may well be a moving target, the legislature should charge the appropriate MA administrative agencies with monitoring reliability over time (including the underlying economics thereof) and making decisions about the proper mix of baseload and renewables in the overall context of reliability.
If the legislature MUST have a renewables “platter,” another important question concerns hydro, and specifically the hydro anticipated to come from Canada, often known as boreal hydro. Most people think hydro is pretty green but a 2012 report available on the website of the Conservation Law Foundation, by the consulting firm Synapse, says otherwise, at least about boreal hydro. Massive flooding compromises natural CO2 uptake; the report suggests that in the first few years, for equivalent power, boreal hydro has the same emissions as a combined cycle gas plant; apparently indefinitely into the future, the emissions range from 1/3 to 2/3 of such a plant. See the Synapse report at http://www.clf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hydropower-GHG-Emissions-Feb.-14-2012.pdf. Particularly if one is entertaining a zero emissions or zero net emissions standard, such emissions from boreal hydro, just a few hundred miles away at most, seem the worst sort of three-card monte. Even if the legislature reaffirms its 80% reduction goal, how much boreal hydro can work in Massachusetts in the context of the massive electrification of our economy that will be required by 2050?
This electrification is the other matter the legislature really needs to absorb. We are just in the foothills of GHG emissions reduction; much of the reduction since 1990 would have happened doing business as usual, as the Supreme Judicial Court pointedly observed in its recent decision siding with CLF in its suit and DEP concerning GWSA compliance. Roughly 80% of MA emissions come, not from electricity production, but from vehicle emissions and space heating and cooling. State policy has barely made a dent here, in part because people are driving more than ever even though emissions per mile are going down, and also in part because we have an aging building stock which is hard to retrofit.
In addition, the legislature may want to be sure that, going forward, there is enough flexibility in the law going forward. Consider vehicle emissions. The general view is that, overall, even with conventional electricity sources, there is a net GHG emission reduction from electrifying vehicles even if emissions from electricity production increase. Under the recent SJC decision referred to above, is this outcome possible? If it is not, was that the legislature’s intention with the GWSA?
Finally, what of the plan from the secretary of EOEEA? Is it really a robust enough creature from a participation point of view, from an evidentiary point of view, etc. The changes contemplated to our energy system and many other systems are substantial. The legislature should make sure there are substantial opportunities to participate, to create a record, and to sue if one is aggrieved.
Energy will be a taproots of the state’s economics and politics for a long time to come. But we do not have a long time to get our environmental house in order. The state’s GHG emissions reduction goal needs re-examination. The role of hydro needs re-examination. The adequacy of our participation processes needs re-examination. And the adequacy of the resources our regulators have needs re-examination for what will be a changing environment over time. It is these four things the legislature should focus on in an energy bill. Let Big Wind be in the hands of its private sector advocates, and transparently reviewed by our state agencies, and not the subject of cloakroom deals.