Open Letter to Gov. Baker: Renewable energy alternatives to the gas pipeline
We call on you to support Attorney General Maura Healey’s planned evaluation of all energy sources — including efficiency, demand response, and renewables — by their availability, cost, benefit, and capacity to achieve Massachusetts climate goals by 2030. The study will be completed by October 2015. Thus, we request that, with the attorney general, you call for the Department of Public Utilities to rigorously study the natural gas capacity needs in the light of other energy sources, demand response and efficiency, before making decisions and approvals of any contracts on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Northeast Energy Direct project through Massachusetts.
At the same time, net metering caps on municipal and large PV solar installations for many interested customers have halted as many as 170 solar installations from going forward in the state. Further, disinformation about the unfair impact of net metering on non-solar customers is being used to oppose raising net metering caps. There are many compelling reasons for you to support raising the net metering caps and enlarging the 2025 goal for renewables in Massachusetts. Among these reasons are the following:
1. A 2015 review by the Frontier Group of 11 analyses of the impact of net metering for solar installations found that solar owners “generally deliver greater benefits to the grid and society than they receive through net metering.” Contrary to critics of net metering who allege that it subsidizes solar homeowners, net metering is a system for compensating solar owners for the financial, health, and environmental benefits they provide for the grid and society.
2. Large public housing agencies, such as those in Boston and Springfield, which house thousands of people, are poised to meet electricity needs through a solar lease program, as the St. Paul, Minnesota, housing agency has done. However, the current net metering cap has stymied this opportunity for major solar installations and correlated annual savings for cash-strapped housing agencies in Massachusetts.
3. Climate change is the defining issue of our times: Among the most alarming statistics is the five-fold increase in the rate of natural disasters between 1970 and 2010. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in collaboration with MIT and other research institutions, recently released a report on the national savings in human health, crops, forests, infrastructure, coastal cities, and shellfish from slowing climate change and limiting global temperature increases to 2 degrees Centigrade by the century’s end. These savings reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars for the country, according to the EPA report. Our state would proportionately benefit from these savings by bold action to offset climate change.
4. Natural gas contributes to climate change through leaks during drilling, transport, storage, and when combusted. Its major ingredient, methane, is 100 times more powerful then carbon dioxide as a global warming gas; thus leaks of methane through the life cycle of natural gas pose a significant risk to climate change.
5. Finally, Jon Wellinghof, former commissioner of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) wrote recently in the Washington Post on behalf of his state of Virginia’s energy path: “Based on current energy trends, Virginia’s utility bills will go up if the state chooses not to cut pollution through renewable energy and energy efficiency, as forecast by PJM, the operator of the largest electricity market in the world.”
The price of natural gas, while cheap now, will rise to meet world market prices given the current build-out of export terminals on the east coast, he adds. “The only path lies in building the capacity for free fuel — sunlight and wind — and making the electricity system far more efficient so less energy is wasted.” We urge you, Gov. Baker, to frame a bold, pragmatic response to the future energy needs and climate goals of Massachusetts that, as the former FERC Commissioner argues for Virginia, builds capacity for free fuel — sunlight and wind — and prioritizes efficiency in the electricity system.
