Whether it succeeds or fails, the New England Governors’ proposal to subsidize fracked gas pipeline expansion through a public tariff is going to go down in history as “the gas tax that unites us.” Energy policy can be confusing, secretive, and abstract, but think of the New England Governors’ newest pipeline-financing proposal this way:
***
You’re living in a home with three-quarters of the rooms occupied. You want to take on more tenants, increased revenues sound nice for your family, but you’re a room or two away from running out of space. One of the bedrooms has been converted to storage. You’re still hanging onto stuff from your last house that you’d meant to get rid of—it’s a mess and might actually violate code—but cleaning up the junk just sounds like a hassle. You don’t really want to hire someone else to clean it up, either. What you really want is MORE space. What to do?
Suddenly, you’re approached by an out-of-town developer with a brilliant plan: raise the rents of everyone on your property so you can build a brand-spanking new house down the street. It’s not just your tenants, actually—you’d have to invest your own money, too, and take out a mortgage, and tell your teenager to stop worrying about college and start pitching in more—but it’ll give you the space you want. In conversation with your neighbors, you realize the same developer has sold them on the idea, too. Great—why don’t you all go in together?
You pitch the idea to your tenants, telling them they’ll get cheaper rent AFTER the new house is built. You guilt them into it (“come on, there’s a housing shortage in this community”), even though you know your neighbors, just, like you, are searching for tenants right now, still trying to fill rooms.
Your developer’s excited. He’s so grateful that he’s even offered to make you a loan himself. By the time you start talking up the plan to your family, the deal is already inked. Your aunt doesn’t think the idea is so great, she’s heard that the real estate market is in wild fluctuation these days, but what does she know anyway.
***
A public subsidy to build a fracked gas pipeline through conservation land and private property. That is literally the best plan New England states could come up with in the midst of the energy and economic crises we’re facing. And I’m not referring to a crisis of gas supply—our pipelines, perhaps 75% subscribed, are hardly full—but to the destabilization of our climate, to growing income inequality and the public health epidemics striking many of our neighborhoods. Let’s step back for a moment: this energy proposal is so offensive and so risky on so many levels that everyone from the Tea Party to the Democratic establishment to the Eco-Socialists to the disturbingly disenfranchised members of the general public should be outraged.
To rephrase that: you don’t even need to believe that the earth is warming to believe this is a bad idea.
First, the rate proposal itself is backwards. Why, as one consumer advocate recently opined, would we accept a Known significant cost for an Unknown potential reduction in rates down the line? The policymakers pushing for gas are doing so on the basis of cheaper bills for New England businesses, but this is far from certain, particularly when fluctuating gas prices and pressure for exports are in the mix. What we do know is that—even as the need for infrastructure expansion itself is being questioned—any rate benefits that might come down the line won’t be seen for years, while during the years leading up to the supposed golden era of affordable energy, we’ll foot the bill for the big bad build-out. Even if a net financial benefit were certain within five or ten years, we’d have to first accept, as a region, that an unprecedented regional public subsidy for private corporations is acceptable. As New England will have to appeal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to commence with its ratepayer robbery, the precedent and policy impact will affect the entire nation.
Second, we simply don’t need the massive infrastructure build-out, but attempts to point this out are being squashed by the big and the powerful. Black and Veatch, consultants hired by the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE), have noted that under a low-demand scenario, projects like the proposed Tennessee Gas Pipeline, which would run from Wright, New York through the Berkshires to Dracut in North-Central Massachusetts, with some amount of lateral offshoots into gosh-knows-where, are simply unnecessary. Even B&V’s projected need may be greater than the reality—we’re talking about static numbers for a fuel demand that changes not only by season, but over the course of a single day. So let’s talk about diversifying fuel choices, coordinating fuel markets and reducing demand, at least enough to ensure we are making sound financial decisions—something most of the New England Governors seem entirely unwilling to do.
SOME of the fuel-diverse solutions to meet our power needs could include efficiency and conservation, distributed generation, responsibly-sited hydropower (there are multiple proposals, so we can still eschew the controversial Northern Pass), gas and electric market reforms (one runs on a 5-day/week system, the other runs on a 7-day week), and interim use of existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Let’s be clear: your gas supply is not at risk. Your local distribution company—whether it be National Grid or Berkshire Gas—has no problem getting your supply for gas heat. They buy their gas in a manner that ensures it, paying a premium for firm contracts. We’re talking about a principally electric sector issue and we have significant flexibility in the approaches we use. Even in the heat arena, we have options to expand gas and oil efficiency while cultivating creative solutions ranging from renewable thermal heat to a clean and ethically-sound waste-oil biodiesel plant in Greenfield, MA.
Third—and in many ways, this is the core problem at hand—the quiet, backdoor fixing of this proposal is a direct attack on democracy, and one that is directly disadvantageous to those with the least power to affect it. Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) has served as a careful watchdog to the process, recently filing a Freedom of Information Act request about communications between state agencies, utilities and the pipeline companies. The results of the FOIA have already been shocking—although some states, as well as NESCOE itself, are doing their best not to comply with the request. Communications have suggested that New England’s energy policy and corresponding ratepayer charges are being “formulated behind closed doors” because the “court of public opinion can be fickle and recalcitrant.” In a brief on the FOIA-ed documents, CLF notes that state administrations are taking cues and talking points directly from gas companies, and casting aside lower-burden, lower-build options without even looking into them. (On the topic of alternatives, please note a sign-on letter sent by over 100+ OTHER groups on June 24 to the NE Governors). The grid operator, ISO-NE, has literally called for an “overbuild” of infrastructure in private meetings. Is this what our elected officials, and those who work for them, mean by “energy security”?
These are some basic considerations of energy, economy and democracy one would hope any policymaker would consider before committing to charging New England ratepayers on their bill for years, or building an interstate pipeline across orchards in Deerfield, under the Nashua River in Groton and across many, many parcels private land. And speaking of pipelines in Massachusetts, anyone who wants your vote should note the many hundreds of activists rallying in towns across the route of the proposed Tennessee Gas project (see: No Fracked Gas in Mass or the conservation-awareness network, MassPlan), the numerous municipal resolutions against the project and the consistent advocacy by people from Pittsfield to Pepperell who often feel ignored by policies designed top-down from Beacon Hill.
One of New England’s Governors has finally “piped” up about the regional process, suggesting that massive infrastructure overbuild might be a bad idea. During a recent conference of utility commissioners, Vermont’s Governor Shumlin stated, “I’m not sure that we really know with the evolutions of technology and the local, distributed generation of power that we are not going to be paying for huge stranded costs if we build tons and tons of delivery.” Let’s hope that before we get too far down the line to turn back, his counterparts (as well as those running to replace them this September and November) choose a wiser path. Because even if you reroute the pipeline, you’re not going to be able to reroute the rage once it starts hitting all of New England residents on their utility bills.
(Joel Wool is an environmental advocate from Dorchester, MA, and staff at Clean Water Action).
SELECT MEDIA LINKS:
Boston Business Journal article on pipeline tariff
WBZ-TV clip on W. MA response to pipeline
New Hampshire Public Radio article (nice dialogue with utility commissioners and NH Gov’s office)
Hartford Courant: Emails Show States’ Tight Grip on Regional Power Projects
In reaction to what feels like a reversal of the the Governor’s priority for GReen communiteis and Clean Energy, and a betrayal of MA residents and our investment in conservation land, farms, orchards, wetlands, and private property, private & public landowners, as well as land trusts are planning a Rolling Relay from Richmond to Dracut, July 6-July 26, and a Rally at the State House on July 30th. For more information:
http://www.nofrackedgasinmass.org/events/
18 Towns have passed non-binding Resolutions against the pipeline being sited within their boundaries. Despite intimidating letters from Tennessee Gas/Kinder Morgan requesting permission to enter their property, and misrepresent the kind of actions they have “right” to perform, many landowners have refused. In response to resident complaints, the Town manager of Andover issued a Cease & Desist Letter demanding that TG/KM stop sending their workers to knock on people’s doors asking to go on their property, and to come before the Board of Selectmen.
The planned pipeline is many times larger than needed for our energy needs, and is designed mainly to ship fracked gas to the coast for global markets at our expense: money, health, toxified environment, property values, etc. Please read more, get informed, get active!
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/06/24/western-ma-residents-on-edge-over-natural-gas-pipeline-proposal/
It’s always easier to stop something from happening than it is to institute some kind of big change…. so I think one of the best and more pragmatic tools environmental activists have is preventing projects like these from happening.
Success not only means stopping these bad ideas, but it’s a further nudge toward the far better means of addressing climate change: conservation and green tech.
If the only way we can get the government to seriously invest in conservation and green tech is by being successful at the grassroots level locally, throughout the country, in stopping these kinds of countries… then I’ll take it.
So, I think the #1, #2 and #3 priority of any environmental activist has to be stopping Keystone XL, stopping projects like this, stopping carbon-emitting plants… and holding the line. The rest will follow — locally, regionally and beyond — because we won’t give the forces that be any other choice.
I don’t know where countries came from…
and it’s obvious that whoever wrote it knows quite a bit about the New England energy market systems.
However, “our pipelines, perhaps 75% subscribed, are hardly full” is really disingenuous. Our gas pipelines were entirely full during the Polar Vortex, roughly from January to March. So full that the price of electricity on the wholesale market went from about 6 cents to about 15 cents for 3 months. Your electric bill will go up substantially because of it. So full that we actually burned substantially more coal and substantially more oil to generate electricity this winter than we have any time in the past few years.
In the mean time, Mt. Tom closes soon. So does Brayton Point. So does Vermont Yankee. That’s over 2,000 MW of non-gas capacity closing down, resulting in even more pressure on the gas pipelines.
I’m not arguing in favor of this pipeline. I am suggesting that we need a substantial energy play in the next few years — either this gas pipeline, a major transmission project to bring in Hydro Quebec electricity, or a remarkably well coordinated and incredibly aggressive campaign of electric energy efficiency, gas energy efficiency, solar and wind powered generator construction. We’re talking about not one, not two, but four Cape Winds worth of nameplate capacity in the next few years.
It’s easy to say what we don’t want, and we don’t want a lot. We don’t want more fracked natural gas. We don’t want more transmission. We don’t want coal and oil. We don’t want higher electric bills. We don’t want the lights to flicker. All reasonable wants. What will we do between now and 2020 to ensure we get all of our wants though?
Always practical and relevant and smart you are. After years focused on anti poverty and economic justice work I’m just getting up to speed on the important carbon reduction efforts, in part because my neighbor Joel Wool and his organization Clean Water Action have done such a great job defining all of their work in the neighborhoods to climate change. In plain English in the direct self interest of ordinary people like me who are barely literate in 8th grade earth science.
I am terribly disappointed to read that our Governor has made another stupid decision…and I’m not surprised I guess. I can only add this issue to my indignation and anger over his heartless disregard of homeless families required to spend some time in places unfit for human habitation before getting shelter, and his incredible lack of leadership on tax reform.
My advice to everyone looking for positive policy change is to look to legislative leadership, who at least can get things done.
Thanks, Judy, for many years of hard work fighting for economic justice.
Governor Patrick still has an opportunity to make some good decisions, as do his staff and his successors. Hope he will act in our interest.
Among other things, legislators can do a lot by monitoring public expenditures, accountability to our legally mandated greenhouse gas emission reductions goals, advancing efficiency and clean energy, and keeping the dialogue as open as possible.
The governor is pushing legislation now to reduce the subsidies for solar and effectively end solar net metering, so apparently he would prefer to build out gas pipelines rather than increase solar production. Neither proposal seems to be based on a cost-benefit analysis for ratepayers or an open discussion, but is instead just giving the energy companies whatever they ask for.
Can you supply a source for this statement?
http://competitivesolar.org/ has some analysis of the bill and how it is a direct reduction in solar subsidies. The governor supports this bill and is pushing for it to be passed.
It is a little more complicated to show that it effectively ends solar net metering. By imposing a minimum charge, it means that you can’t get the benefits of net metering spread out over more than one billing cycle. Given our latitude, a solar system in MA produces about 3/4 of its power in the summer. Sizing a system so that you will still have a positive electric bill in the summer means sizing it to produce about 1/3 of your total electricity throughout the year. But if you size it that small, then you will rarely be overproducing electricity, so there is little benefit to having net metering.
Go to PV Watts v. 1.0, click on Massachusetts, then click on Boston (or Worcester). Run the default settings, then click on hourly output. Take the output and drop it in excel. Then use sumif to calculate the output per month, and calculate the percentage. I did just that, and here’s what I get:
Jan 7%
Feb 8%
Mar 9%
Apr 9%
May 10%
Jun 9%
Jul 10%
Aug 10%
Sep 9%
Oct 9%
Nov 6%
Dec 6%
Every single month generates between 6% and 10% of the annual total. With due respect, if you have that incorrect a fundamental understanding of the production of electricity from PV in MA, why would anyone think that the rest of your post is correct?
I should be more clear. When I said summer, I really meant the summer half of the year. And those calculations assume that your array is never covered in snow. My experience with solar panels is that every time it snows more than about 3 inches, they are buried under the snow for about 3-7 days. Additionally, if your roof does not point straight south, then you lose winter production faster than you lose summer production (play with the calculator a bit and you will see this). Also, most people do not have a 45 degree roof, and a more typical 30-35 degree roof will lose more production in the winter than in the summer. Unless you go up to your roof to wipe the snow off of your panels and you have a directly south facing 45 degree roof, winter production is on average likely to be about 40-50% of summer production before accounting for snow. With perfectly reasonable assumptions in PVwatts, you easily get a peak month production that is 2-2.5 times the minimum month production, and that is without factoring in snow, which eliminates about 10-20% of winter production (15-30 days) in a typical year. All together, these factors mean that you generate about 65-75% of solar energy in the summer half of the year, depending on actual weather and how long your panels are covered in snow.
So if you size a solar system so that it will not produce a negative bill in its peak production month and assume roughly equal electrical consumption each month, the system will only produce about 1/3 of the power that the household uses. Additionally, your average power production in your peak production month has to be lower than your average consumption, so you do not get much benefit from net metering.
Idealized? Sure, to the extent that they’re facing south and at latitude pitch (not 45). Still, most folks think of summer as 3 months, not 6, and even if we include 6 months, you’re not getting to 3/4 of production.
You exaggerated. Just call it what it is. And even using your “math” of 3/4 of the production in 1/2 the year, we can still size the system to generate well more than 1/2 of the energy that the household uses.
I’m not arguing for or against net metering or any particular proposal, just calling you out for pulling numbers from thin air (often called: experience, anecdote, or guesstimate). I’m using actual numbers produced by NREL. If you want to propose specific other numbers, feel free. Want the house to face 170 instead of 180? 20 degree panels instead of latitude? Define summer as 6 months instead of 3? That’s fine — but what numbers and model do you propose so we can confirm that your numbers are legit? Because, right now, I’m inclined to put more faith in the National Renewable Energy Laborator than the jkw. jkw obviously has some experience, but NREL does too, frankly.
I appreciate the reply and link.
Currently, I’m producing way more PV electricity than my house is using. At the end of my current billing period, I’ll have a credit (in dollars) on my bill and zero due. What is the proposed change? I didn’t see detail (or just didn’t understand it) in the link you posted.
One of the proposed changes is to have a minimum contribution each month. That is what the legislation says, but it isn’t entirely clear what they mean. The most straightforward interpretation is that they will calculate your bill as they do now, and then compare it to the minimum. Whichever is higher is your bill for the month. Which means that even if you overproduce electricity in a month, you will be charged the minimum amount. This would make it impossible to carry over your excess production credits to a future month, because you would no longer get a negative bill.
The full bill is at https://malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H4185
The relevant portion is:
“Not entirely clear”, or at least not in a language I know.
I currently get a delivery charge each month (six bucks and change) but the credit covers that and then some. Will look into this more.
Here’s another link talking about this issue
The legislation is basically a deal between big solar and the utilities, leaving out the community groups and enviros. It does some good things, lifting the cap that would really kill the growth of solar, but some of the other elements are very problematic, particularly for the little guy.
I definitely agree we need to think carefully about our next steps! Yes, we have huge shifts with three power plants (to be honest, it could be as many as four, depending on how the Pilgrim plant scenario resolves” shutting down in a very short amount of time.
You are right to call the phrase you did into question. The “perhaps 75% subscribed” should probably have read “were, according to some sources, 75%-85% utilized” which is not the same thing. Re: the burning more coal and oil this winter, one comment I do want to make is that ISO-NE, the grid operator, has essentially forced power generators to burn more oil and justified doing so (they rejected one alternate, “fuel-neutral” winter reliability program, which would utilize LNG on an interim basis for 1-2 years, which other transmission such as the Algonquin Incremental came online, and justified this rejection by saying this would send false market signals, i.e. that they want, and believe, we should send the market consistent signals that more gas is needed to the extent that the overbuild is needed).
My question is: what would you have New England do? How do we make up the 2,000 MW+ of capacity? The New England RPS policies result in an increase of about 500 MW of wind a year (figure .3 CF), and of course 500 MW wind gets a capacity credit of 175 MW. RPS policy will get you about 500 MW 2014-2016. MA’s SREC-II is worth another 1000 MW or so, but at a capacity credit of 40% (?!), that’s only another 400MW.
Where would you find the other 1100 MW in accredited capacity in the next three years? I ask you, joelwool, from one interested and knowledgeable person to another: what should ISO-NE do? The governors? The legislators? The regulators? The FERC? The NERC? What resources should we deploy to maintain reliability going forward, and what policies will result in those resources being built?
A few ideas are here:
1. Begin a public and transparent energy planning process, more akin to what New York has done. ACTUALLY DO analysis for clean / lower-impact energy solutions and STOP intentionally squashing efforts, including by state employees or consultants, to study these options.
2. For ISO-NE, accurately value efficiency and distributed generation when evaluating reliability of the grid.
3. Geo-target efficiency programs to regions of the state where capacity is going offline (this is actually that has been considered for MA).
4. Yes, do solicit the cleaner hydro import projects, but take into account the environmental and climate impact of these projects (including their construction/siting) when deciding what is clean and which projects are preferable.
5. Yes, continue a number of the policies to advance wind — I think we’re almost over the hump on the off-shore pieces. Finally!
6. I think both in terms of resiliency and community benefits, we need to really reconsider the role utilities play. What policies can we advance to accelerate community energy generation, solar, anaerobic digestion, etc.
those are some off-the-cuff thoughts….
my fear is that while those will all be productive, they won’t be timely. Some may show up now (valuing EE and DG appropriately) but most of your suggestions will start showing measurable benefits closer to 2020. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t pursue those, but what to do in the mean time?
I’ve come to think that the real green way forward for New England is to not allow any new combined cycle gas turbines. We won’t see any new coal or nuclear. This would result in lots of new peaker plants, sometimes used at too high a rate. It’s inefficient in the short term, both on a financial and CO2 basis. BUT it would drive up the clearing price of electricity, allowing for far more renewables and EE (both elec and heating) to come online — driving CO2 and costs back down. New England would have to spend lots of money on transmission, but just think — transmission expenses result in a hell of a lot more jobs (and property taxes) in New England than money spent on coal or natural gas fuel does.
It’d be a real tough pill to swallow over the next 5 years or so, but once we made it over the hump we’d find that we’d have cleaner, inexpensive power with a better local economic bang for our buck then we do now.
P.S. NY has done some great things, but NYSERDA’s progress toward NY’s RPS is lagging and NY doesn’t seem to have plans to push RPS past their 2015 goal (a goal they’ll reach in perhaps 2017 or 2018).
We will always have to manage methane, natural gas, because biological processes, human gut biological processes produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. We should be thinking in terms of methane management rather than PR concepts like “bridge fuel.”
The choices we make about energy infrastructure now will be with us for 30, 50, 100 years and more. They need to be well thought out, flexible, and resilient. If we do one thing like expand our gas pipelines, we will probably not do another like significantly reduce our consumption of natural gas/methane.
Just saying.