A new coalition called Massachusetts Power Forward is launching today with the goal of pushing the legislature towards clean energy solutions and away from more dependence on fracked gas:
The coalition, which includes more than 90 environmental organizations, community groups, small businesses and religious congregations, kicked off today with simultaneous press conferences in Peabody, Weymouth, Boston, Holyoke, Pittsfield, and Fall River. The coalition is advocating for clean energy across the Commonwealth and educating elected officials now evaluating several important energy bills. A major legislative hearing on energy is scheduled for September 29.
“This is not just about coal, but about a total clean energy economy. It’s time to fuel the local economy with local fuel,” said David Dionne of Westport. “We have tremendous renewable resources here; we need simply to access them. If we do it right down here by capturing solar and offshore wind in Southeast Mass, we win for everyone all over the state: they won’t need big new gas pipelines to power the grid. Even further out, people in Pennsylvania fighting the fracked gas fight can keep their land and water safe. Isn’t everyone these days a ‘local food’ fan? How about local power?”
The new coalition, Mass Power Forward, says over 90 groups have endorsed its platform, which calls for energy policy that:
1. Advances Massachusetts toward a safer and healthier economy powered by local, clean, renewable sources, maximizing energy efficiency, responsibly sited solar, wind on and off-shore and energy storage and keeping us on track to reduce our climate change pollution by no less than 80% by 2050;
2. Reduces our dependence on polluting energy sources such as coal, oil, gas and nuclear, and frees our power grid from imported fuels, volatile markets and dangerous power generation facilities;
3. Prioritizes neighborhoods, families and our public lands over utility monopolies and the polluting energy industry; and prohibits public subsidies for gas pipelines or other new fossil fuel infrastructure;
4. Modernizes our power grid and empowers everyday people to access locally generated power;
5. Assists workers and communities with retiring power plants to participate in the benefits of the green economy and clean energy transition.
Massachusetts Power Forward’s membership list already looks vastly stronger than the pathetic paid polluter front groups that have popped up in the last year as the oil & fracked gas industries try to convince legislators to subsidize new & expanded fracked gas pipelines.
Show your support for the coalition by giving it a like on Facebook and sharing the link with your friends, or tweet with the hashtag #MAPowerForward.
I love buying Massachusetts produce and dairy as much as anyone, but I’m well aware that MA farms are hopelessly insufficient to meet the dietary requirements of 6.7 million people. We would need tremendous investment and a huge increase in the number of acres under cultivation to come anywhere close.
Similarly while solar and wind are both beneficial technologies that will continue to produce a growing share of our energy, we are nowhere near being able to stop burning hydrocarbons and uranium. The inclusion of the phrase “responsibly sited” makes me think that we’ll never get there, at least in Massachusetts. Texas, despite its right-wing views, is far ahead of us in wind development, because they let people put wind farms wherever they want. Here its a decade-long ordeal to get approval for anything.
C’mon, if I could put a cow on my roof and have it give me milk all day, I totally would. And I would name it Bossie.
But I totally agree that our energy laws should be more friendly to solar & wind. The upcoming energy legislation will be a great time to do it!
Don’t think the administration actually advanced any legislation or changed any policies to support the concept. I could be wrong.
* ARRA included significant smart grid funds.
* In March 2009, the FERC released ” Smart Grid Policy — Proposed Policy Statement and Action Plan” for public comment.
* In April 2009, the NIST created and filled a position called National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability
* In May 2009 Commerce and Energy jointly announced increased funding for development of Smart Grid Standards and demonstration projects
* In January 2010 the NIST released its Interoperability Framework for the Smart Grid
* In Marcy 2011, the FERC issued Order 745 which, loosely speaking, required the grid operators to treat demand response as an equal resource
So yeah, you’re totally wrong on this. Obama pushed smart grid really hard as soon as he got to DC, using the Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and stimulus funding.
Smart grid is a bit nebulous, it’s true. It seems critical that standards are set for interoperability first and foremost, and that’s been happening. Industrial customers first, then large commercial customers. Now, as communication and data and user interfaces improve, we’ll see more trickle down to residential and small commercial.
… After a long string of the merely politically connected had run the DOE, when Obama took office in 2009 he placed as the DOE head an actual scientist, Steven Chu. When Chu stepped down in 2013 he appointed another actual scientist, Ernest Moniz. These were both brilliant choices as each had a great deal of administrative experience as well as scientific and technical acumen and were as important to the implementation of better energy policy as the presidents desire to do it.
Though I would have to say these efforts appear a bit light (appointed a coordinator)and I wonder if things like the the blackout of 2003 are still possible, which is the event that got me thinking about smart grids in the first
What also gets me wondering is this more recent event, which comes right up when you google “smart grid.” All the things mentioned have to be done, I just would have preferred this to be a 2010 initiative, not one at the end of his term.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/08/24/fact-sheet-president-obama-announces-new-actions-bring-renewable-energy
First I thought we be a little bit further along that this nickel and dime efforts. Secondly it seems that renewable and smart grid are getting mixed into the same bucket.
> I would have to say these efforts appear a bit light (appointed a coordinator)
I work in the biz. There’s tons of “there” there — but it’s hard to cite rules, standards, meetings, etc. It’s easy to cite figureheads.
> I wonder if things like the the blackout of 2003 are still possible
They are. Less likley to be caused by the same reason, as it’s easier to fix last week’s problem than it is next week’s problem, but yes, cascading blackouts are still very possible. Smart grids aren’t designed to eliminate problems like them anyway.
> First I thought we be a little bit further along that this nickel and dime efforts. Secondly it seems that renewable and smart grid are getting mixed into the same bucket.
Progress is slow, caused by an awful lot of things, ranging from federal incentives to regulatory lag and uncertainty to fracking. As for renewables and smart grid being mixed, the reason is this: the smart grid can shift demand so that it more closely aligns wtih the non-dispatchable output of renewables like wind and solar. The more that demand can be shifted, the more intermittent renewables can be brought on the grid cheaply.
There are certainly limits to how much of our energy needs we can get from renewables, but those limits are (rapidly) moving targets and depend a great deal on discretionary choices about economics and land use.
Surveying the scene to day, one can say that we have barely picked the low-hanging fruit in terms of both supply (renewables) and demand (efficiency).
Even the more expensive stuff is probably cheaper than climate change, so if the political end of things can get a comprehensive carbon cap in place those choices will become instantly cost effective.
But even without that there is plenty of room for growth.
We need a deep dive on weatherization and a strong legislative commitment to wind, a removal of barriers to solar power, as well as SOME imports of hydropower (but not ones that totally bulldoze the White Mountains). That would dramatically transform our energy landscape. There’s some more information on the power forward site: mapowerforward.com about a legislative proposal.
for the immediate closing of all fossil and nuclear power stations. You’re knocking down your own strawman on that one.
> Texas, despite its right-wing views, is far ahead of us in wind development, because they let people put wind farms wherever they want.
No, that’s not why. Texas is far ahead of New England because the quality of wind in North Texas and West Texas is far greater than New England. For the same wind turbine, you get a heck of a lot more electricity in Texas as you do in New England. Texas also spent $7 billion to build sufficient transmission to get the wind from windy places to populous places. You can bet that if New England spent money building transmission lines from Northern Maine to Boston/Providence/Hartford, there’d be a heck of a lot more wind built in Maine.
Now, it’s true, there are plenty of other factors. Siting is harder in New England, land is far more expensive, labor is more expensive, even getting the parts to the site is more expensive. Nevertheless, the suggestion that “Texas … is far ahead of us in wind development because they let people put wind farms wherever they want” is wrong enough on enough different levels to be considered flat out wrong.
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/80m_wind/USwind300dpe4-11.jpg
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/offshore_wind/US-offshore-windmap-90-dpi600.jpg
But we have been extremely reluctant to develop them.
I realize there is more cost involved, but I think my statement is substantially accurate, given our experience. I don’t see any of the Texas political elite fighting to stop wind projects by hook or by crook, as they do here.
I never said it wasn’t a long term goal. I questioned our commitment to make the investments necessary to meet that goal. The original post says”by 2050″, but if it takes us over a decade to consider each wind farm, we’ll never make it.
> I don’t see any of the Texas political elite fighting to stop wind projects by hook or by crook, as they do here.
That’s true, but the 5000th MW of wind developed in Texas is cheaper than the 1st MW of wind developed in MA, even if there are no costs associated with permitting, land costs, or any other site related cost.
The on-shore wind in Texas is just plain better than Massachusetts, and substanitally so. It’s not just Texas either. It’s the entire band from Eastern Montana to Minnesota on the north end, down to Eastern New Mexico to Texas on the south end. All of those states, regardless of their politics, the pull of their political elite, or subsidies, have far more wind installed than Southern New England. Look at your own map.
To compare on-shore development with off-shore development is nuts. Off-shore development hasn’t happened for a long list of reasons; Cape Cod NIMBYs are a relatively small part of the reason why.
They’ve made large investments in off-shore wind and have higher labor costs than we do. The also have a government that’s very supportive in wind development and has made it a priority.
Our cost structures are substantially better than Denmark’s — that is, the cost of electricity generated by coal, nuclear, and natural gas is far less than Denmark’s — so the relative cost of wind in the US is higher.
But you keep changing the comparison in order to prop up an initial claim that doesn’t hold water. Texas has more wind power than Southern New England because their wind is far better for generating electricity. That the pro-energy and extreme pro-property rights laws make it easier on developers is a tiny benefit in comparison to wind that generates 150% to 200% more electricity per turbine per year.