Today (Wednesday) the Massachusetts House of Representatives will vote on H. 4198 An Act relative to competitively priced electricity in the Commonwealth. As a whole, H. 4198, which passed the MA Senate in April, has great potential to keep Massachusetts on track to be a national leader on clean and renewable energy. In particular the bill has provisions that will expand access to solar energy; including the net metering provisions that would allow more Massachusetts residents, businesses and local governments to be fairly compensated for selling electricity back to the grid. This program has contributed to an over 24-fold increase in installed solar in Massachusetts in just 4 years.
Unfortunately House leadership – in particular Chairman John Keenan (D-Salem) – has added a provision (section 42) that would provide massive and unacceptable incentives to fossil fuel generators (full text of the bill can be found here (warning, PDF – section 42 starts at the beginning of page 23).
Section 42 requires Utility companies to enter into long term contracts 15+ with new generators opening on the site of closed coal or oil fired power plants. This provision would put electricity consumers on the hook for natural gas – whatever the price – for the next few decades. This provision on it’s own is incredible – natural gas is notoriously volatile in price, and could get worse, particularly if “major environmental issues emerge with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,””. In case you are wondering if there are any environmental concerns with fracking, see here, here and here for a small sampling. There is no comprehensible reason, other than wanting to give ratepayer dollars to fossil fuel plant operators, to require long term contracts for fossil fuels.
Furthermore, these contracts are to be approved after an unreasonably short review period, ensuring insufficient oversight, and do not specify a fixed cost for the power to be supplied.
Finally, the provisions in section 42 lack specific criteria for satisfactory environmental remediation of the site before a new plant is put into operation.
Fortunately, Representative Lori Ehrlich (Marblehead) has proposed an amendment (#34) that would significantly amend this section by requiring a set maximum price for the long term contracts and improving the environmental safe guards in the site remediation process. Unfortunately, I fear that this could yet again be an example of House leadership ignoring the rank and file – with whom I have had many conversations – who may not want to support a provision that would leave their constituents on the hook for outrageous contracts that are nothing more than sweetheart deals for the fossil fuel industry.
I do hope that Rep. Ehrlich’s amendment is allowed to see the light of day and given a full roll call vote tomorrow. If that is the case, I will be sure to update this entry with the full vote count so you can contact your representative.
In sum, I do hope that the House passes H 4198 today, if not, investment in renewable energy will likely plummet in Massachusetts, but I hope members of the house are given a chance, and ultimately do reject, electricity customers being on the hook for excessive long term contracts to purchase fossil fuels.
For your reference, here is a link to the state house news service piece, re’printed’ on the Marblehead Wicked local site.
Ben Wright
Environment Massachusetts
This bill is very near and dear to my heart, as well as my wallet – I sell solar power systems, and I had to talk several customers down after they heard from National Grid that they were approaching the net metering limit. That amendment is awful – I’d hate to have to take the good with the bad, but there’s not a lot of time to mobilize a response!
There’s the immediate issue of grid supply reliability, and encouraging the replacement of high reliability power generation is a good thing, IMHO. I’ve worked on both commercial wind and PV projects which by definition are low net capacity (<30%.) Responsible legislators and the DPU must be mindful of the system's overall 24/7 reliability.
I live in a downtown high rise condo. I vote reliability over sustainability.
Like, that’s just your opinion man.
1. We don’t need new supply in New England, not for a while (as is New York, our neighbor from whom we could buy energy or capacity). We’ve got plenty now, even with the retirements planned over the next 5-10 years. Paying for more increases cost without improving reliability.
1a. In fact, thanks to energy efficiency programs and behind-the-meter production (solar and combined-heat-and-power), forecasts show load *falling* between now and 2050, much like the MWRA’s water usage has fallen since the mid 1970s despite more customers.
2. There are transmission projects underway in Northern New England which will help get substantially more renewables out of Maine and Canada — non-polluting energy and capacity, likely at a lower cost.
3. PV is not necessarily <30% capacity, nor is wind. Each balancing authority (ISONE in our case) determines the capacity credit. I've seen PV well north of 30, not because it has a capacity that high, but because its capacity is reliably high *when load is high*. Off the top of my head, I have no idea what they are in ISONE. I'd add that hydro can have a capacity credit ranging from single digits to 100%.
4. The legislation calls for the sites to be cleaned up by the new developer, but the sites already have to be cleaned up. Back in vertically integrated time, the owners were collecting ratepayer money for decommissioning. Once we went to divestion of ownership, that burden went to the new owners. We don't need to bail them out of that burden — they already own that responsibility.
5. There's no assurance from 42 as linked above that the price paid for the energy will be the lowest price and, if they're fossil, there's no other benefit either.
6. With legislative requirement, the companies procuring the energy have little leverage to ensure a good deal. This runs the risk of extremely overpriced electricity, with no steam vent to make sure that ratepayers don't get abused.
7. This directly undermines the market system used to create electricity in Massachusetts and, because of economically ordered dispatch in ISONE, could result in all sorts of strange behavior, ranging from nothing being built because the plants can't guarantee a number of MWh sold per year to those units being dispatched with 85% uptime despite their costs being higher than other units with lower dispatch time.
Bottom line: reliability is good. Let the professionals ensure reliability, not the legislators. The pros have been doing this for some time, and I sure haven't noticed rolling brownouts in New England caused by a lack of capacity, have you? This bill would have you pay an awful lot for no discernible improvement in reliability.
P.S. I analyze stuff like this for a living, across the country and sometimes internationally. This is not the kind of bill I'd have expected in Massachusetts, which has created remarkably forward-thinking electricity policies over the past decade.
BTW — regarding (3) above, I just noticed in the New York 2011 Gold Book that “The above capability values for wind generation projects reflect expected values of 10% of nameplate for summer capability and 30% of nameplate for winter capability and for solar generation projects reflect expected values of 65% of nameplate for summer capability and 16% of nameplate for winter capability”
Since NY is summer constrained AND since a number of fossil units have lower summertime capacity ratings, that NYISO is allocating 65% of PV capacity from nameplate really undermines the bostonshepherd comment of <30%. The fact is, this stuff is complicated and making assumptions about resource planning without the facts is problematic. It's why neither BMG nor the Mass Lege should do resource adequacy planning for ISONE.
Agreed? I mean every time there is a deal in Washington like this the left wing comes out swinging blaming Oil/Coal being in bed with the Republican Congress and the 1%ers… well here’s a case where MA Democrats are doing the same thing. So, will the Occupy Wall St gang be heading to Salem?
Boston shepherd. Apologies for the brevity, typing from the chamber watching the house debate but…
The main issue is in ‘requiring’ long term contracts and the ‘fast track’ process this section creates. Do we need base load generation for the foreseeable future? Sure, of course. Is a site of a former coal plant a good plant to do it? Most likely.
But should we remove certain critical ratepayer protections and hitch our lot to natural gas, regardless of its price over the next 15+ years? I say no. That is not the right way to do this.
Note that *most likely* above should be *maybe*. Can’t figure out how to edit comments from my phone.
My boss and I are waiting on the edge of our seats – we need the net-metering provisions!
Net metering passed. As did section 42, modified.
I love my job, and this will let me keep doing it – great news!
post it when you got it!
Source: http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/187/House/H04198/Amendment/House/34/Text
Thanks johnt.
Note that the word “execute” was replaced with “consider” in the first sentence, thereby changing it from required to not. It also requires a new (iv) for decommissioning, and a much clearer list of potential mitigation details, including GHG emissions, criteria pollutants, etc.
It’s no longer binding, which means that the elec companies will make an economic decision, just as they would have otherwise. Still, it’s strange. After all, it’s extremely difficult to calculate just what emissions are avoided with the construction of a gas plant at this location, and if the construction of the gas plant ensures that a wind plant won’t be built later because if the grid only has the economics for 500MW and it’s taken up by a gas plant then the wind plant isn’t built…
This isn’t to say that I’m against repowering oil or coal stations to become gas stations. It occurs to me that Salem Harbor would be a wonderful repowering project — you build a gas plant, use the steam for a local central steam district [thereby creating a CHP plant, resulting in savings of fuel oil and natural gas for heating *and* electric for cooling], and put it “on site” because the coal site is far larger than a gas site need be, so you could do a little redevelopment with a hotel, outdoor shopping, restaurants, and office space right on the water. The net result could include
* cheaper electricity
* cleaner air and water both locally, regionally, and globally
* cheaper heating and cooling for local businesses (and possibly homes)
* more local property tax dollars
* more jobs
* more tourism for Salem
* smart growth
This is all from 10,000 feet though. I have no idea if they could build the plant economically, if there’s enough natural gas capacity nearby, if Salem is even interested, etc.
Keenan stuck to his guns on “execute” and Rep. Ehrlich’s amendment was changed on the floor (I only have a hard copy with handwritten text marking the final changes, or else I’d post). In fact, Rep. Ehrlich voted against the bill because of this.
but here is a link to it.
Too bad he forced the issue on executing the contracts, but I’m still happy we got the increase to net metering. Di net metering go up to 3%, or is it even higher? I thought I saw 5% somewhere in the bill, but not bing a lawyer, it’s a tough read.