Today, the Patrick Administration reached a breakthrough settlement agreement in the proposed merger between NStar and Northeast Utilities, which, if approved, will create one of the country’s largest public utilities. The agreement is a big win for renewable energy, as it positions Massachusetts to finally unleash the power of Cape Wind, our region’s most promising new clean energy source, and to lead the rest of the country forward on offshore wind.
The settlement ensures that this powerful new utility will be in lockstep with Massachusetts’ nation-leading clean energy policies and propel the state forward instead of backwards in implementing them.
This is a significant advancement for Massachusetts and all of New England in a number of regards:
It removes the last major hurdle to building Cape Wind;
It ensures that the Commonwealth will continue to reap the cost savings and environmental benefits of the Massachusetts Green Communities Act;
It will help ensure that imported hydropower does not diminish other renewable energy deployment in Massachusetts and beyond;
It will reduce barriers to installation and operation of small, distributed renewable energy generating facilities in Massachusetts; and
It will freeze the merged utility’s rates for 4 years, will require transparent public review of NSTAR’s electric and gas rates before the rate freeze expires, and will deliver – upon approval of the merger – an immediate 50% credit to Massachusetts customers based on expected merger savings during the first 4 years following merger approval
We applaud the Administration for recognizing that a lot of ground needed to be made up in order for this merger to benefit the public and for covering that ground with thoughtful terms that benefit ratepayers and the environment both in the short and the long-term.
For the press release, as well as background materials on CLF’s long standing engagement on this issue, click here.
The answer appears to be: probably not any time soon. Today, CLF is releasing a ground-breaking new technical report regarding the greenhouse gas emissions of Canadian hydropower. The conclusions of the report show that large-scale hydropower, especially new reservoirs, is worse for the climate than Northern Pass’s developers are claiming, with substantial greenhouse gas emissions that are comparable to those of modern natural gas-fired power plants. The current Northern Pass proposal substitutes hydropower for natural gas in New England’s energy mix, meaning that the project won’t reduce emissions by much if any, especially in the near term.
Authored by Synapse Energy Economics, the technical report released today,Hydropower Greenhouse Gas Emissions: State of the Research, is an independent survey of the recent science regarding the greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower. The science is clear that the reservoirs behind hydropower dams emit greenhouse gases, relative to the forests and wetlands they flood (which often take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere). Overall, reservoirs in Québec emit more greenhouse gases over the course of their lives than renewables like wind, solar, and run of river hydropower.
A crucial finding of the report concerns new reservoirs. In the first several years after a reservoir is dammed, large amounts of newly inundated organic material decompose, emitting carbon dioxide that diffuses through the water into the atmosphere. As a result, a reservoir’s net emissions in its early years are very high – starting out even higher than emissions from a natural gas power plant per unit of power generated. This effect is evident in recent, rigorous analyses by several teams of scientists, based on data collected at Hydro-Québec’s Eastmain 1 reservoir in northern Québec. This reservoir is the very same project that Northeast Utilities’ CFO testified under oath last year would be the primary, if not exclusive, source of Northern Pass’s power. Even when their emissions are projected over their lifetimes, newly flooded Canadian reservoirs may emit nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gases emitted by natural gas power plants. By contrast, reservoirs emit only about 20% of the greenhouse gases emitted by typical coal-fired power plants.
This conclusion is the death knell for Northern Pass Transmission, LLC’s (NPT) claim that the current Northern Pass proposal would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 5 million tons. We explained the claim’s key flaw – the report on which it is based erroneously assumes that hydropower has no greenhouse gas emissions – back in August. In light of today’s report, CLF is calling on NPT and its partners NU, NSTAR, and PSNH to stop citing that erroneous number and to withdraw all marketing materials for the Northern Pass project that state or imply that Canadian hydropower has no or minimal greenhouse gas emissions. Hydro-Québec is building new hydropower projects that are intended to facilitate new exports to the northeastern United States. To the extent that the prospect of exports is driving the construction of new reservoirs, Northern Pass and projects like it will be responsible for those reservoirs’ emissions and also their other adverse environmental impacts. And if, as the developers’ analysis concluded, the power to be displaced by imports through Northern Pass is overwhelmingly from natural gas plants, the emissions from a succession of new reservoirs in Canada may replace – perhaps completely for a period of time – the emissions of displaced natural gas power. In that scenario, the Northern Pass project would do little – or even nothing – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at least in the near-term.
The report makes another critical point about a different kind of displacement that could occur with Northern Pass. According to a recent study, stepping up Hydro-Québec’s exports to the United States may actually decrease its exports to other provinces in Canada, where the need for fossil fuel-fired power then increases, resulting in additional emissions. Those emissions may cancel out any reductions from displaced power in the United States. This effect is a potential blind spot that needs to be considered and analyzed as part of the public review of any new imports.
To CLF, the report suggests that new imports could be part of the region’s climate strategy if imports:
displace dirty power, like project sponsor PSNH’s uneconomic, subsidized power plants, to achieve a meaningful net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without increasing the use of fossil fuel-fired power plants in Canada;
support – rather than undermine – local renewable projects and energy efficiency efforts in New England; and
have minimal impacts on the environment and communities on both sides of the border.
When shopping for a new car, it helps to know its fuel economy and how that stacks up with other models. What if you could have the same information when buying a new home? The Vermont Legislature is currently considering two bills, H-497 & S-143, which require sellers of buildings to provide information about a building’s efficiency. Sellers calculate a building’s efficiency using a free online tool approved by the Department of Public Service (Department). Buyers can then know a building’s energy rating. The rating is presented as a single number that compares that building with other similar buildings. In addition, a buyer could access other information such as the building’s total energy consumption, its square footage, energy intensity and annual energy costs.
This bill continues Vermont’s tradition of leading the nation in setting effective energy efficiency policies. It lets buyers know important energy use information before they make a big investment. The additional step of helping more customers improve their building’s heating efficiency is still needed. Vermont’s cold winters and old building stock makes bolstering buildings’ thermal efficiency low-hanging fruit.
While Vermont leads the way on electric efficiency, it still has a ways to go on improving heating efficiency. In 2012, Efficiency Vermont (EVT), Vermont’s efficiency utility, used 81% of its budget for electric efficiency resources and only 8% for heating efficiency. The divergence can be traced in part to funding sources. Electrical efficiency investments are funded from a savings charge on electric bills. Heating programs currently have limited funding available and rely mostly on proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and participation in the regional grid’s capacity market. To bolster heating efficiency programs, S-143 directs the Department to study additional mechanisms for funding these programs. Vermont’s 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan has recognized the need for new funding sources for weatherization improvements in light of the fact that current policies will leave the State far short of reaching its goal of weatherizing 80,000 homes by 2020.
In Massachusetts, a system similar to the funding model for electric efficiency is being considered. H.3897 would establish a comprehensive thermal efficiency program funded by a 2.5 cents per gallon savings charge on heating oil. Funds will be used to provide incentives for upgrading older inefficient oil heating systems, weatherizing, and helping low-income communities heat their homes in winter. Since 59% of Vermonters heat with oil, and savings programs are already available for gas users – which has limited availability in Vermont – it only makes sense for Vermont to expand the savings available for customers who rely on oil.
While some opposition from fuel dealers exists, given that heating oil prices are at an all-time high, there is a good opportunity now for fuel dealers to partner with customers to keep their houses warm, save energy, reduce pollution and grow jobs. Information about a building’s energy use is a good first step, but Vermonters need more to keep more warmth inside and more money in their pockets.
Protest at Salem Harbor Power Plant. Courtesy of Robert Visser / Greenpeace.
This week the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and HealthLink secured an Order from the US District Court in Massachusetts requiring Salem Harbor power plant owner Dominion to shut down all four units at the 60-year-old coal-fired power plant by 2014. In bringing a clear end to the prolonged decline of Salem Harbor Station, this settlement ushers in a new era of clean air, clean water and clean energy for the community of Salem, MA, and for New England as a whole.
The court’s order is based on a settlement with Dominion to avoid CLF’s 2010 lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Air Act from going to trial. The terms of the settlement, which can be found here, ensure that:
Units 1 and 2 at the plant must retire (indeed are retired) by December 31, 2011; Unit 3 by June 2014;
Dominion may not repower the retired coal-burning units, even if a buyer for the power was to come forward;
Neither Dominion, nor any successor, may use coal as fuel for generating electricity on that site in the future;
Dominion must fund projects of at least $275,000 to reduce air pollution in Salem and surrounding municipalities that have been impacted by the plant’s emissions.
The settlement, and the legal actions which led to it, provide a template to force plant shutdowns as changing market conditions, public health concerns and cleaner energy alternatives push the nation’s fleet of old, polluting dinosaurs to the brink. What makes this outcome unique is that, as part of its advocacy strategy, CLF filed a successful protest at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington DC which effectively prevented Dominion from collecting above market costs for operating this aging and inefficient power plant. This first-ever ruling by FERC is in stark contrast to coal power plant retirements in other areas of the country which were brought about by agreements to pay (i.e., compensate) plant owners for shutting down their plants. In the case of Salem Harbor Station, retirement resulted from legal action to deny the plant’s owner compensation and cost-recovery by ratepayers.
A little background: Most of the nation’s coal-burning fleet, were designed, constructed and began operation in the 1950’s and 60’s. More than 60% of them have been operating for 40 years or more, meaning that they are now beyond their useful design lives. This is the case for all of New England’s remaining plants, which generally were built more than 50 years ago. In addition to the excess pollution and inordinate adverse impact these plants impose to public health and the environment, they are finding it difficult to compete with newer, cleaner and more efficient power producing technology. In the market, the day of reckoning has arrived. New England’s coal-fired power plants are losing their shirts. They are rarely asked to run by ISO-New England, the operator of our regional electricity system, because their power is more costly (i.e., out-of-market) than the region’s cleaner and more efficient power generating fleet.
So why don’t they all retire? Unfortunately, there are several factors that can, in many instances, complicate matters. For Salem Harbor Station: system reliability (i.e., keeping the lights on). Because these plants were built so long ago, and unfortunately in close proximity to population centers where demand for power is greatest, the system was designed assuming that electricity is being generated at these locations. Thus, removing electricity generation from these sites can create reliability risks at times of peak electricity consumption. This was the case for Salem Harbor. Try as we might (including NStar’s recent $400 million transmission upgrade in the North Shore), when ISO-NE modeled worst case conditions, it still found that Salem Harbor was needed for reliability and consequently required ratepayers to pay to maintain Salem Harbor, even though its power was far more expensive to produce than more modern plants. To break this logjam, CLF filed a protest at FERC claiming that ratepayers were getting bilked (in legalese: paying rates that were unjust and unreasonable) and that a small investment to develop a reliability alternative for the plant would save the ratepayers money and would safeguard public health.
FERC agreed — at least with the money part (as FERC is a financial, not environmental regulatory agency). Its December 2010 order granting CLF’s protest compelled ISO-NE and the region’s electricity market participants to expedite the process for developing reliability alternatives for Salem Harbor’s expensive power (in utility parlance, to replace its “reliability function”). Shortly thereafter, ISO-NE crafted a new plan that will keep the lights on at reasonable cost to customers, while also creating a more flexible, reliable grid.
The new plan calls for simple and relatively inexpensive electric transmission line upgrades that will meet the area’s reliability needs without Salem Harbor Station and allow for the deployment of newer and cleaner energy resources like energy efficiency, conservation and renewables such as wind and solar. As soon as the plan was approved in May of 2011, the die was cast and Salem Harbor’s retirement became imminent. To its credit, the very next day Dominion announced that the plant would be shut down. As we all know, corporation’s make decisions based primarily on economics; once FERC denied them the above-market rates they had been collecting for years to maintain the plant, Dominion was compelled to retire the plant. Couple that with the prospect of major expenditures for pollution upgrades that would result from CLF and Healthlink’s lawsuit, there was only one rational outcome. Good-bye Salem Harbor station. Next up (or should I say, down): Mt. Tom, Brayton Point, both of which are uneconomic and facing the end of the road.
As I said in a joint press statement with Healthlink (found here), “This outcome sends a signal to coal plant operators everywhere that they cannot avoid costs through noncompliance with the Clean Air Act. These obsolete plants that either have decided not to invest in technology upgrades or are retrofitting at ratepayers’ expense are doomed: they are staring down the barrel of cheaper and cleaner alternatives to their dirty power and public and regulatory pressure to safeguard human health. When these plants can no longer get away with breaking the law as a way to stave off economic collapse, I predict we will see a wave of shutdowns across the country.”
The history of Salem Harbor Station is both long and tortured (recall then-Governor Romney standing at the gates of the plant in 2003 and saying that the plant was killing people). Despite its bleak financials and unjustifiable damage to public health and the environment, Salem Harbor Station continued to operate and pollute for a decade or more beyond when it should have succumbed to age and obsolescence.
Shanna Cleveland, staff attorney at CLF said, “The Court’s Order coupled with our successful FERC protest have finally put an end to a half century of toxic and lethal air pollution from Salem Harbor Station. The very factors that have been propping the power plant up for years beyond its useful life – cheap coal, lax environmental oversight, and overdue reliability planning – have been pulled out from under it.”
From left: Barbara Kates-Garnick, Carl Horstmann, Tommy Beaudreau, and Sue Reid. Credit: Meg Colclough.
Earlier today my colleague Sue Reid, VP & Director of CLF Massachusetts, joined state and federal officials to announce the latest milestone for obtaining plentiful and clean renewable wind energy from the Outer Continental Shelf offshore of Massachusetts. Specifically, they initiated the process for developers to begin leasing and site assessment, and for data gathering and public input, to facilitate off shore wind deployment in an area approximately 12 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 13 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket. (The federal press release can be found here.) The “Call Area” as it is termed, was identified following consultation with ocean users, such as fishermen and other stakeholders, through an intergovernmental renewable energy task force led by Massachusetts officials.
Today’s announcement follows President Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he expressed the compelling need to develop alternative sources of energy. CLF agrees: the environmental imperative and ongoing energy transformation replacing obsolete uneconomic fossil fuel power plants requires deployment of the full range of available renewable energy resources. Because offshore wind is strong and persistent, it is among our most robust emissions-free renewable energy sources. We also support the laudable efforts of the Commonwealth and federal government, who share jurisdiction over marine resources, to join initiatives to expand our clean energy resources with efforts to engage in thoughtful ocean planning, both of which have been major themes in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has been a leader in both coastal marine spatial planning and in offshore wind deployment. Those experiences are now being replicated by other states and the federal government – something CLF welcomes.
In speaking alongside Tommy P. Beaudreau, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director, and Barbara Kates-Garnick, Massachusetts Under Secretary of Energy, on the steps of the Wind Technology Testing Center, Sue said:
“One might think it’s unusual for environmental advocates to be championing efforts to develop energy resources; after all, CLF led the charge successfully fighting off all oil and gas drilling in New England waters. That’s because we recognize that, while we need to pursue a portfolio of clean energy alternatives, there is NO other resource that has the sheer magnitude of clean energy potential as offshore wind. Offshore wind holds promise for displacing many gigawatts of fossil fuel-fired generation, keeping the lights on and homes and businesses thriving while we shut down old, dirty, inefficient coal and oil-fired plants.”
She also underscored how important this work is. She said:
“While most local eyes are trained on a different Tommy, out in Indianapolis for a certain small-stakes football game, we’re thrilled that this Tommy, the new quarterback of the Obama Administration’s offshore renewable energy team, is in Massachusetts, focused on moving the clean energy ball rapidly down the field here, in concert with the Patrick Administration and a host of other stakeholders. This is a battle that we must win. Success is our only option.”
Sue is right – milestones like this help us to realize the potential for a new clean energy future—one that is being fostered in Massachusetts through some of the strongest state renewable energy policies in the nation. Our challenge is to advance from salutary policies to new renewable energy deployment that benefits Massachusetts with jobs, economic activity, cleaner air and a healthier environment. Today’s development was one step on a path just begun.
The triple bottom line has become both a catch phrase and, increasingly, a realistic goal for everyone from investors to activists and urban developers. But in Massachusetts, aging MBTA trains and infrastructure coupled with proposed fare hikes and service cuts stand in the way of achieving the triple-bottom-line promise of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD).
TOD projects are generally comprised of mixed-use or mixed-income developments that are situated within a half-mile of a mass transit station. They provide residents with easy access to the places they want to go (jobs, doctors, movie theaters, etc.) and place businesses within reach of employees and consumers along the mass transit system.
One of the advantages of TOD projects is their potential to achieve triple-bottom-line returns, providing economic, environmental, and community benefits simultaneously. By encouraging people to use mass transit and rely less on automobiles, TOD projects help to reduce both noxious auto emissions and climate-altering greenhouse gases. In fact, people in highly walkable neighborhoods drive nearly 40% fewer miles than their counterparts in the least walkable neighborhoods, which can reduce traffic-related emissions by as much as 2,000 grams of CO2 per person per day. Furthermore, the increased walking (at least 10 minutes daily on average) reduces the risk of obesity, regardless of age, income, or gender.
So TOD opens up new opportunities for growth without requiring the costly, carbon-intensive infrastructure needed for cars, and contributes to healthful, walkable neighborhoods that attract both businesses and residents. Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, there’s a hitch. TOD projects rely on the assumption that the transit system is capable of supporting them. Here in Massachusetts, proposed MBTA fare increases and service cuts, as well as our aging transportation infrastructure, may prevent TOD projects from delivering on their promise. This is a bad thing for Massachusetts residents, for our economy, and for our environment.
The MBTA is old. After putting off badly needed maintenance on the Red Line for several years, an entire section has been shut down on weekends for emergency repairs, cutting off access for parts of Cambridge, Somerville, and beyond. And faced with a $161 million budget deficit, the T is now considering drastic fare increases and draconian service cuts, including potential elimination of over 100 bus routes as well as weekend service on the commuter rail and some subway lines.
The MBTA’s proposed fare increases and service cuts are unacceptable for MBTA riders and could prove disastrous for TOD projects, past, present, and future. Discouraging people from taking public transportation—either by eliminating MBTA service or making that service prohibitively expensive for riders—undermines the triple-bottom line goals of TOD. It may sound obvious, but TOD requires a healthy, functioning, financially accessible transit system to realize its full potential.
CLF is asking the state legislature and the governor to find a comprehensive solution to the MBTA’s funding problems, not just a band-aid for the coming year’s operating budget. And CLF Ventures is committed to finding triple-bottom-line solutions, like TOD, where profitable developments can also yield environmental and community benefits. Without continued investments in our transportation infrastructure in Massachusetts and a comprehensive solution to the T’s funding problems, TOD could become a triple-bottom loss for the economy, the environment, and for MBTA riders.
Controversy surrounding the proposed Juniper Ridge Landfill expansion and the state’s recent acquisition of the Dolby landfill have elevated the debate on proper management of Maine’s solid waste and reawakened the ire that Mainers feel toward policies that create incentives for the importation of out-of-state waste and the disposal of waste that could be reused or recycled.
Gov. Paul LePage, members of our Legislature and relevant state agencies should seize this opportunity to analyze where the solid waste policies of the past 30 years have left us and define a proper direction to take from here.
Never before has Maine been in a better position to positively influence the policies, practices and players associated with waste management. Consider these circumstances:
The two largest landfills in the state, Juniper Ridge and Crossroads, are currently seeking approvals from the state to expand their operations. A waste-to-energy facility in Biddeford is undertaking a major relicensing bid and the waste-to-energy plant in Orrington is renegotiating contracts with its supplier towns.
State government oversight of waste management is shifting from the State Planning Office to the Department of Environmental Protection. Waste-to-energy facilities are pushing legislation to re-designate them as renewable energy resources equivalent to hydropower and biomass plants. Add to all of this the fact that the state is now responsible for the operation and maintenance of another landfill in East Millinocket at a cost of at least $250,000 a year and has remaining obligations to help close numerous unsecured municipal dumps, and you have the makings of a solid waste perfect storm with no long-term plan to address it.
In the recent past, Maine has allowed events, such as the financial demise of two paper mills, to drive the direction of its solid waste policy. The negative consequences of these haphazard “policies of the moment” are many. A disproportionate amount of out-of-state waste continues to be disposed of in Maine landfills at below market costs and with no benefit accruing to Maine residents. Indeed, in 2009 we imported almost 600,000 tons of municipal solid waste, a substantial portion of which was construction and demolition debris that Massachusetts prohibits from its landfills and that cannot be legally burned in New Hampshire.
Our annual recycling rate has been stuck at just 38 percent for a decade in spite of a statewide goal of 50 percent. Nearly 40 percent of our in-state waste ends up in a landfill, even though by law land disposal is the solid waste option of last resort. Garbage trucks loaded with Maine waste drive past a Maine waste-to-energy plant to landfill their waste, while that same waste-to-energy plant is forced to import waste from out of state and buy woodchips to keep its burners fired.
We cannot afford to rush to solutions and perpetuate these flawed approaches. The confluence of events today affords the state the opportunity to immediately assess the value, role and future management of our state-owned landfills and the manner in which they interact with recycling, waste processing and waste-to-energy facilities.
The first steps in the right direction would be to deny Juniper Ridge a public benefit determination and refrain from acting on legislation to expand the Crossroads landfill until and unless the assessment identifies appropriate public roles for them in the overall state waste management regime.
Such an assessment is critical to producing policies that motivate individual and market behavior that will reduce waste disposal costs for taxpayers and retool the solid waste machine to render an efficient and effective system that reduces the amount of waste that we generate, maximizes the beneficial reuse of our waste to create compost, road surfacing and other products, increases our rate of recycling, turns waste into energy and that results in landfilled waste only after we have squeezed as much value out of that waste as we can.
Now is the time to act, not re-act.
A copy of this article was originally published in the Bangor Daily News on January 30, 2012.
Outlook with your head in the sand? Pretty dark, even when the future around you is bright. (photo credit: flickr/tropical.pete)
In a public hearing tomorrow, a legislative committee of the New Hampshire House will take up a proposal – House Bill 1238 – to force Public Service of New Hampshire’s dirty, costly power plants to confront the realities of the electric marketplace. The bill would require PSNH to sell (“divest”) its plants by the end of next year. Tomorrow’s hearing on House Bill 1238 is scheduled for 8:30 am in Representatives Hall under the dome of the New Hampshire State House, on North Main Street in Concord.
The debate is long overdue and comes at a critical time. Over the last several years, New England’s restructured electric market has overwhelmingly turned away from uneconomic facilities like PSNH’s coal and oil-fired power plants and toward less-polluting alternatives, especially natural gas. For most New England customers, this technology transition has resulted in lower electric bills, and we have all benefited from cleaner air. In the next few years, well-managed competitive markets are positioned to help us move to a real clean energy future that increases our use of energy efficiency, renewable resources, demand response, and innovative storage technologies.
Meanwhile, like the proverbial ostrich, PSNH gets to ignore what the market is saying. PSNH’s state-protected business model is a relic that has become a major drag on the pocketbooks of New Hampshire ratepayers and New Hampshire’s economy. Current law protects PSNH from market forces because it guarantees PSNH and its Connecticut-based corporate parent Northeast Utilities a profit on investments in PSNH’s power plants, whether or not they operate and whether or not they actually make enough money to cover their operating costs – an astounding rule for the small-government Granite State, to be sure.
The costs of this guarantee fall on the backs of New Hampshire residents and small business people, who effectively have no choice but to pay for PSNH’s expensive power. For their part, larger businesses have fled PSNH in droves, for cheaper, better managed suppliers. This has shrunk the group of ratepayers who are responsible for the burden of PSNH’s high costs, translating into even higher rates for residents and small businesses.
PSNH customers face the worst of both worlds – electric rates that are among the highest in the nation and a fleet of aging, inefficient, and dirty power plants that would never survive in the competitive market.
It is by now beyond dispute that these plants are abysmal performers. Last year, CLF and Synapse Energy Economics presented an analysis to New Hampshire regulators showing that the coal-fired units at PSNH’s Schiller Station in Portsmouth will lose at least $10 million per year over the next ten years, for a total negative cash flow of $147 million. The analysis did not depend on natural gas prices remaining as low as they are now or any new environmental costs; because it is old and inefficient, Schiller will lose money even if gas prices go up and it doesn’t need any upgrades. According to information provided by PSNH to regulators last week, PSNH’s supposed workhorse Merrimack Station will not even operate for five months this year because it would be uneconomic compared to power available in the New England market. Nonetheless, PSNH ratepayers will be paying for the plant even when it does not run.
It will only get worse: PSNH’s rates could skyrocket later this year if New Hampshire regulators pass on the bill for PSNH’s $422 million investment in a scrubber for Merrimack Station to ratepayers, and other costly upgrades of PSNH’s fleet may be necessary to comply with environmental and operational requirements in the future. And the PSNH-favored Northern Pass project, if it ever gets built, would only exacerbate the situation for PSNH ratepayers by making PSNH power even less competitive and reducing the value of PSNH power plants.
PSNH is hitting back against House Bill 1238 with its typical full-court press of lobbying and PR, and we can expect a packed house of PSNH apologists at tomorrow’s hearing. PSNH has even resorted to starting a Facebook page – “Save PSNH Plants” – where you can see PSNH’s tired arguments for preserving the current system plants as a “safety net” that protects PSNH employee jobs and a hedge against unforeseen changes in the energy market. The pitch is a little like saying that we should pay Ford and its workers to make Edsels half a century later, just in case the price of Prius batteries goes through the roof. Make no mistake: PSNH is asking for the continuation of what amounts to a massive ratepayer subsidy for as far as the eye can see.
Public investments have gotten a bad name lately, but it is at least clear that sound commitments of public dollars to energy should be targeted, strategic, and forward-thinking. They should help move us, in concert with the much larger capital decisions of the private sector, toward a cleaner energy future. Instead, PSNH is fighting for New Hampshire to keep pouring its citizens’ hard-earned money, year after year, into dinosaur power plants. That’s a terrible deal for New Hampshire, and CLF welcomes the House’s effort to open a discussion on how to get us out of it.
Entergy asked the Public Service Board today to just give it a new certificate of public good claiming no further review is needed. (Read the motion here.)
Judge Murtha’s decision was clear. The Vermont Public Service Board continues to have authority to review Entergy’s actions and determine if continued operation is beneficial to Vermont.
CLF opposed Entergy’s past efforts. This new request is premature. It is contrary to the Court’s order and ignores facts that are important for the Board to hear. Most notable is the fact that Entergy provided false information to the Board about buried pipes.
Entergy’s lack of trustworthiness cannot be ignored. It is an important matter that has bearing on whether Entergy should be allowed to continue to operate Vermont Yankee.
While Entergy might like to ignore these facts, Vermont won’t.
