Back in the 1970′s the satirical and surreal Firesign Theater proclaimed that “Everything You Know is Wrong.” At the intersection of energy and economics, that absurdist assertion is a increasingly obvious reality that advocates, policy makers and industry must embrace.

Throughout history, there are moments when prior assumptions and core beliefs have simply stopped being accurate. Great examples include people discovering that the Earth is round, microscopic organisms cause disease, and that various substances (tobacco, asbestos, particles produced by diesel engines) are harmful. To paraphrase what John Maynard Keynes may or may not have said, when confronted with changed facts the intelligent person changes their perspective, assumptions and opinions accordingly.

In the wonky, but critically important, world of energy systems no assumption has been more ingrained than this: “over the long term, energy demand grows over time — and that the only time it stays steady or declines is when the economy is in crisis and not growing.” But this “truth” that “everyone knows” is increasingly obviously wrong: we can grow while using less. Indeed, sometimes we can do better and grow because we’re using less energy.

The good folks at the Andersen window factory in Minnesota agree with this realization that the old conventional wisdom is wrong: a recent newspaper column documenting the experience of Andersen Windows described how even though “Andersen is making and selling more of its products . . . it’s using less energy. They’ve done it by changing light bulbs, upgrading equipment, and educating employees about energy conservation.”

Here in New England we have a strong record of planning and implementing energy efficiency and it is paying off in the same way. That is the clear assessment of the sharp-penciled engineers at ISO New England (the folks who operate and plan our regional electricity system), as presented in the graph below from the final report of a working group that CLF participated in. It may seem like heiroglyphs, but let me explain.

In the graph below, ISO-NE (as it is know) presents three energy futures: the blue line is the traditional forecast of expected growth in energy demand tracking expected economic expansion, the “load growth” that traditional models expect when the economic grows. This is then adjusted in the red line to reflect energy efficiency and other demand resources that have been recognized (and purchased) in the regional  electricity markets, reflecting the past wise decision to allow such resources to participate in those markets. Finally, the forecast is then further adjusted in the black line to reflect the plans and programs for efficiency and alternative energy being undertaken by the New England states.

Credit: ISO-NE

What you see in the flat, black line is economic growth without growing energy demand. You see the kind of growth being undertaken at Andersen scaled to an entire region.

In a quiet way this is a revolution — a clear recognition that new wind turbines, solar panels, or gas fired power plants will replace existing old and dirty oil and coal fired power plants as they retire, not to meet rising demand.  This is a stunning reality and success: the increasingly successful efforts to foster efficiency have ended the upward march of energy demand, allowing our economy to grow without increasing electricity demand.

Let us now hope that, as the facts change, people and organizations change their beliefs, perspectives and plans accordingly.  Building and buying energy infrastructure must continue – but it can no longer assume rising demand. Our investments must be smart, targeted and build towards a cleaner, and thriving, future where we have squarely and honestly addressed our climate crisis and the challenges of economic growth. Getting this right is one of the most positive aspects of what Bill McKibben has described as the “terrifying new math” that global warming mandates – this is a real life example of where we are headed in the right direction, cutting the link between increased prosperity and increased energy use and emissions.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), if airlines were a country, they would be the world’s seventh biggest polluter. Aviation carbon emissions are expected to rise to 3.5 billion tons by 2050. The European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce the carbon pollution that is causing global warming, would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 70 million tons per year – equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road.

On Saturday, September 22, 2012, a bill to prohibit operators of civil aircraft of the United States from participating in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme to reduce carbon pollution from airplanes passed in the United States Senate by unanimous consent. The Senate bill, S. 1956, co-sponsored by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), will allow U.S. airlines to ignore the European Union’s requirement that they reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. If the U.S.-based airlines choose to ignore the E.U. law, they could be on the hook to pay huge penalties, which undoubtedly and inevitably will be a cost passed on to consumers.

I am less concerned about the price of my airline ticket than I am about the significant costs that come with our federal government’ and our Congress’ inability to get out of its own way when it comes to responsibly acting to reduce the threat of climate change. I understand that this is election season, and some of the Senate races are tight, and airlines can be powerful lobbyists, but, it is 2012 and an anti-climate emissions control bill is passing via unanimous consent in the United States Senate? Either climate change is really happening or it isn’t.

I expect Fox News, the Tea Party, and even the Wall Street Journal to get its facts wrong about climate change. They have attempted to undermine climate science conclusions by cherry-picking data and attacking individual scientists every chance they get. And, I am not so naïve to think that control of emissions responsible for climate change will ever happen with a Republican majority in Congress (even though the United States Supreme Court said carbon dioxide could be regulated by the federal government nearly 6 years ago). But, I am completely flabbergasted by the fact that the United States Senate unanimously acted to defeat the effectiveness of a good climate reduction law. Not a single Senator stood up in opposition. Not a single Senator even used this as an opportunity to speak publicly about climate change and the implications that passing an anti-emissions control bill via unanimous consent would have on our collective campaign to stop climate change.

For 650,000 years atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been above 300 parts per million. Today, it is screaming toward 400 parts per million. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world, under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there’s a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

And, the rocket scientists agree. That’s right. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s or NASA’s website states that “the current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.” The scientific evidence for the warming of our climate is unequivocal and the cause of it, which should be obvious at this point, is the uncontrolled global burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). The effects of a warming climate are only slightly more obvious than the fact that the climate is warming and humans are causing it.

For example, this is the second time in less than two years that the Petermann Glacier in Greenland has calved icebergs double and quadruple the size of Manhattan. Global sea level rose almost 7 inches in the last century, but the rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century. Arctic sea ice is retreating and thinning at unprecedented rates, West Nile Virus is now something for which people cancel summer events and New Englanders are still recovering from significant storm events that have wiped out whole communities.

At 2 a.m. on September 22, 2012, the United States Senate voted by unanimous consent that U.S. airlines could choose to ignore the European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. Either climate change is happening or it isn’t. But, once you look at the data, once you subscribe to the opinion that it is happening, you have an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to responsibly address the problem. If the Senate believes the evidence of 1300 scientists, NASA, and their own eyes, they should vote accordingly.

My wife and I just moved into a new (to us) apartment in Cambridge and, as is often the case, were faced with a hodge-podge of leftover light bulbs in the fixtures – some too dim, some too bright and glaring, some dead. All were incandescents. New bulbs went on my shopping list.

Much to my surprise, the nearby specialty food store (a high-priced place, frankly) was selling an entire pallet of compact fluorescents (CFLs), for $.99 each! All brightness levels, floods and regular, soft light and cool tones, etc. No rebates, no special incentives, no mail-in coupons, nothing. Just a rock-bottom price. How could this be?

I bought a few and found they work just fine. However, they are the kind that have to “warm up” for 10-15 seconds before reaching full brightness. Remember those?  Almost a thing of the past. Hence the low price.

This is a significant moment. We’ve been doing electric efficiency in a serious way in New England for 25 years – since CLF and others published “Power to Spare” in 1987, which predicted that we could cancel out all increases in electric demand from then until 2005 if we made basic investments in electric efficiency. Like better light bulbs. We are now many generations of light bulbs down the road (with LEDs making their presence, not to mention all sorts of CFLs). And ISO-NE is actually predicting flat growth in demand until 2021, due in part to our collective investments in electric efficiency.

But when it comes to using natural gas more efficiently, we’re still in the dark ages, and we’re faced with potentially huge growth in the use of natural gas and the pipeline infrastructure to transport it around. It’s time to apply the lessons we’ve learned in electricity to the natural gas side of the energy equation. This will save us all money and keep the environmental impacts of expanding natural gas use to the minimum reasonably necessary.

The money-saving is obvious. Just as electricity-sipping appliances may cost more in the short run but you save money in the long run, investing in more efficient gas hot water heaters and ranges, HVAC systems, and even swimming pool heating systems will save several times the money invested, over time, by using less gas.

And using less gas is obviously better than using more – reducing fracking/extraction impacts, lowering impacts from new pipeline capacity, and of course reducing GHG emissions.  A recent CLF analysis, relying on a 2009 report on the potential for natural gas efficiency commissioned by the Massachusetts state government, determined that an aggressive but reasonable level investment in cost-effective residential natural gas efficiency measures could reduce residential gas use by 30%, thereby freeing up pipeline capacity.  This also helps ensure gas will be available to heat homes in New England’s (still) cold winter, especially low-income homes, and avert the prospect of conflict between the use of gas to make electricity and using gas to keep our homes and families warm.

So, more gas? Only if all cost-effective efficiencies are achieved. And we have a long way to go get there.

And then is it OK to use more gas? Only if we use natural gas as a means to make a true transition to an electric system based much more heavily on renewables. Starting now. Natural gas should not be viewed as a “bridge fuel,” it’s a “niche fuel.” In 20 or 30 years, its niche has to be to backstop and firm up renewables, which will then be the base and majority of our electricity supply. Its niche now, to be sure, is much larger than that, as it supplies the bulk of New England’s electricity generation.

It’s cleaner than coal and oil, but it is a fossil fuel. Burning it emits carbon and that cooks the planet (and extracting it has other serious impacts). We cannot build our long-term future on a plan to extract and burn more natural gas. And if we fail to achieve efficiencies now, and build big pipeline capacity instead, we’ll be locking ourselves into that sort of future, or at least making it very, very likely.

That would be wrong-headed, and a waste. We need to get into the efficiency habit with gas as deeply as we have with electricity – so that we’ll use less of it going forward, for generations to come.

Photo courtesy of phault @ flickr

This is an exciting time for clean energy in New England. Why? Because our region could have not one but three offshore wind farms constructed by 2016.  Not only that, these would be the first three in the nation!

The Cape Wind Project, off the coast of Cape Cod, will site 130 wind turbines between 4–11 miles offshore and produce an average of 170 MW of electricity, or about 75% of the average electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Island. Block Island Wind Farm is scheduled to be constructed in Rhode Island state waters next spring. It is a 5 turbine, 30 megawatt demonstration-scale wind farm about three miles off of Block Island which will generate over 100,000 megawatt hours annually, supplying most of Block Island’s electricity with excess power exported to the mainland. And on a very exciting note, here in Maine, international energy company Statoil’s proposal to build a four turbine floating wind park is moving forward. For recent news coverage, read here.

Clean energy is sprouting up all around New England. For some projects, it’s about time. Recent FAA approvals on Cape Wind, for instance, come after more than a decade of exhaustive reviews and strong opposition from dirty energy-funded opponents. Each of these projects has enormous potential. Together, if built, these three offshore wind farms would transform New England’s energy mix.

Here in Maine, Statoil’s unsolicited bid to develop the floating wind farm is moving through the federal review process. The Bureau of Ocean energy Management (BOEM) has published a notice to determine if there are other developers interested in competing to use the area and to solicit comments about the proposal. The notice is published here.

CLF will provide comments that balance our commitment to helping New England develop clean renewable energy with protecting the ocean environment. BOEM published a second notice that it will prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) when Statoil submits its construction and operations plan (COP). The EIS will consider the environmental consequences associated with the Hywind Maine project. BOEM will accept public comments about the environmental issues that should be considered in the EIS until November 8. For more, read here.

In addition, the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is reviewing the proposed terms of a long-term contract that would permit Statoil to sell the energy generated from the wind farm  into Maine’s energy grid over the next 20 years. The PUC’s authority to approve this contract flows from Maine’s 2010 Ocean Energy Act, which supports research and development of offshore wind energy technology. The PUC may decide whether to accept the proposed contract terms within the month.

For a current and accurate summary of the state of offshore wind off the Atlantic Coast, please read the National Wildlife Federation’s report released on September 24, “The Turning Point for Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy.” CLF helped write sections of the report and co-sponsored it.

There’s no question we’re making incredible progress – but there is more to be done. If you support this work, sign up to become a CLF e-activist to keep informed about our work. And check back in regularly for updates as we try to get these projects built!

In 2011, CLF Ventures, the strategy-consulting arm of CLF, received a grant from the EPA to help two New England fishing/whale watching vessels replace the aging, inefficient engines on their vessels with cleaner-burning, more efficient four-stroke diesel engines. In this video, Captain Brad Cook of the Atlantic Queen II and Captain Chris Charos of Captain’s Fishing Parties reveal how the EPA grant and CLF Ventures enabled them to update their vessels’ technology, reducing emissions and substantially cutting their fuel use:

The EPA’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance program is designed to reduce air pollution and exposure to diesel fumes by covering up to 75% of the cost of an engine upgrade or repower. Replacing an outdated engine with the clean-burning technology used by Captain Brad and Captain Chris reduces asthma-causing particulate matter emissions by 63 percent and smog-producing nitrogen oxide emissions by 40 percent.

The program also cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions by improving efficiency and reducing fuel use by up to 14 percent. Fuel use is a serious concern for the fishing industry. A 2005 report published in AMBIO revealed that in 2000, the industry consumed about 13 million gallons of fuel, or 1.2 percent of global consumption. If the fishing industry were a country, it would be the world’s 18^th-largest consumer of oil—on par with the Netherlands. Fishing is also one of the only industry sectors to consistently become less fuel-efficient in recent years. With declining stocks sending fishermen farther from shore, this problem will only become more severe without significant investments and improvements in technology. Programs like EPA’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Program play an important role in greening the fishing fleet and helping to make fishing more sustainable.

The program isn’t just good for the environment; it’s also good for fishermen. A more efficient engine can save a fisherman 9,500 gallons of fuel per year, cutting fuel costs and increasing profit margins. Crew aboard these vessels reduce their exposure to harmful diesel fumes, which were recently classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization and placed in the same category as deadly toxins like asbestos and arsenic.  Consumers asking for sustainable options will appreciate the reductions in emissions and fuel use, too, and recreational fishermen and whale watchers aboard vessels with new engines can enjoy a quieter, cleaner ride.

Still, new engines can only go so far in cleaning up the fishing fleet. The industry is built on technology that made sense decades ago, when fuel was cheap, fish were more plentiful close to shore, and consumers weren’t demanding sustainable seafood choices. Down the line, greening the fleet will mean rebuilding it from the water up and introducing lighter, safer vessels that inherently use less fuel.

Massachusetts’ commitment to a new clean energy economy has been welcome news both economically and environmentally. There’s an awful lot to like about reversing the export of billions of dollars sent outside Massachusetts and the country each year to buy dirty fossil fuel energy that harms our health, increases our health care expenses and has substantial impacts on our environment, economy, jobs and national security. No question, there’s tremendous potential for investing in clean homegrown energy right here in Massachusetts, in a win for the economy and the environment. But if we’re truly going to be successful in building a new clean energy economy, we need to pay attention to the “clean” element of that equation. And if our burgeoning clean energy revolution is to be successful, it absolutely cannot leave behind the Massachusetts communities that long have borne the brunt of our dependence on dirty energy.

A true clean energy economy ought to mean cleaner air for everyone. It’s a ‘no-brainah’ (as they say in these parts), right?  Apparently Massachusetts DEP doesn’t think so. In a deeply troubling decision issued on September 11, Massachusetts DEP Commissioner Ken Kimmell upheld an air pollution permit for a 35 Megawatt (MW) wood-burning power plant that is proposed to be built at Palmer Paving, smack in the midst of a state and federally designated environmental justice community in Springfield. In taking this action, DEP gave the green light to a facility that will annually release dozens of tons of damaging fine particulates and hazardous air pollutants, as well as hundreds of thousands of tons of harmful global warming pollution, in an area documented by the MA Department of Public Health to have significantly worse air quality and markedly higher rates of respiratory illness than the state average. What’s up with that?!  Has the DEP Commissioner already forgotten his own “tweets” this summer that alerted the public to unhealthy air quality in central Massachusetts, even before the PRE power plant adds new air pollution to the mix?

While we’re pleased that DEP Commissioner Kimmell reversed the agency’s earlier findings on standing, allowing CLF, Arise for Social Justice, Toxics Action Center and our “Ten Residents Group” partners to challenge Palmer Renewable Energy’s (PRE) air permit, the decision to uphold the permit reflects a sorry abdication of DEP’s obligation to protect against damaging air pollution.  Among other troubling flaws:

•  DEP’s Final Decision lays out burdensome new requirements for “Ten Citizens” groups seeking to participate in air permitting proceedings, forcing concerned residents to invoke trial-like proceedings at the public comment stage to protect their rights even before DEP’s air permitting decisions are known;

• In upholding the PRE air pollution permit, DEP relies on highly questionable testimony of the power plant developer’s expert witness whose unorthodox views on the health impacts of fine particulate matter were discredited recently by at least one federal court on the basis that the witness’ unconventional views cast him as an outlier in his field;

• Despite the hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions the PRE wood-burning power plant would release each year, DEP’s Final Decision explicitly – and erroneously – suggests that there is an open question regarding whether the decision must comply with the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, even though the Act’s language is unequivocally clear that DEP must comply.

At the end of the day, I’m reminded of the sage words of a 10 year old girl with asthma who hand-wrote her pithy letter to DEP opposing the PRE power plant: “We deserve clean air… It’s not fair!!!!” Well said.

So, we will work to hold DEP accountable for reducing, not increasing, air pollution and respecting the right to meaningful public participation. And we will continue to cheer the local officials in Springfield who are refusing to allow the PRE power plant to cut corners and have revoked all local permits for project.

A New York Times opinion piece titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” caught my eye the other day. My first job out of college was teaching algebra to teenagers. I can still factor a quadratic equation, and I actually find it kind of fun. However, many students, at the high school and college levels, fail the required course in algebra and drop out. The eloquent author of the piece – an emeritus professor of Mathematics – argues that quantitative reasoning is essential, but mastery of algebra is an unnecessarily narrow measure of quantitative skill, and our society is poorer for excluding students who are befuddled by algebra.

In other words: a too-rigid insistence on a particular analytical technique (algebra) is tripping up people who “get it” (have a sufficient general grasp of quantitative issues), and we are worse off as a result.

In a recent edition of Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben beautifully demonstrates the importance of not getting tripped up on details, but firmly understanding the big quantitative picture. In “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (which I highly recommend), McKibben avoids the trees and tells the lesson of the forest, in its blindingly obvious and powerful simplicity: We have to change dramatically, and quickly, to preserve the planet as we know it.

McKibben’s message stirs you deeply. It evokes an existential, even spiritual response. And it does so by appealing to our hearts and our guts. There’s enough math to convince our heads, but his message is not aimed at our heads. We know what’s going on in the world. We can feel it. McKibben knows that, and aims to connect with us where we feel things, not in the left side of our brains.

Which leads me to the question: does the environmental movement have the equivalent of an algebra requirement? Do we tacitly insist that everyone master the complex facts before they get involved? If so, should we? Does everyone need to be a left-brained, deep diver into the complexity of the debates, or is it sufficient that they feel strongly that it’s time to act, and are compelled to do so by their heart, their gut or their spirit?

This is somewhat uncomfortable terrain for us. Let’s acknowledge that. We have seen examples in the public realm of policy being based solely on faith, without regard to evidence from the real world. Sometimes this can be disastrous. And it is a rock-solid principle of our movement that policy must be based on sound science and evidence. All of that is entirely true and I would never veer from it.

But there are many people who could be our allies who are not, even though they know the same truth: we need to change in order to save the planet as we know it. And to avoid massive human suffering in the near future. And to protect species faced with extinction. And to deliver a more equitable world. And even to help promote a world better aligned with spiritual forces much larger than us.

Does our preoccupation with matters of the head prevent us from reaching those for whom matters of the heart and soul are more motivating? Is that our “algebra”?

My hunch is that as a movement we expect too much “head” and not enough “heart,” in general. We look for people who can “figure out” what to do next, and trust that if we can win people’s minds either their hearts will follow or we don’t even need their hearts.

What if we attracted to our movement people who appeal to the hearts of others, to begin with? Who see water pollution in the lower Mystic River in Boston, for example, not as an issue of discharge pipes and toxicity but as an issue of hunger and hope, exclusion and unity? What if we talked about climate change not as sea level rise and drought, but as a threat to our spiritual wellbeing?  Would we reach different audiences, and could they help us achieve our mission, having become part of us?

Recently I read two books, one new and one old, on the subject of environmentalism and spirituality, or at least environmentalism and much bigger, existential themes.

The first, Between God and Green, is by Katharine Wilkinson, who is a friend and former classmate of CLF staffer Ben Carmichael. The Boston Globe recently reviewed the book, saying:

Wilkinson tells a vitally important, even subversive, story at the heart of this carefully researched book. Over the past 30 years or more, even as the culture wars raged, an honest-to-God “evangelical Center” came to life in the political no-man’s land between the old-guard religious right and the secular liberal establishment. And as Wilkinson shows, one of the most significant expressions of that increasingly assertive center — as it seeks to broaden the “evangelical agenda” beyond abortion and sexuality to include global poverty, health, and social-justice issues — is a far-reaching environmental movement, based on the theology of “creation care,” and the effort by a new generation of moderate leaders to put climate change on the evangelical map.

I was struck by this more general observation by the author (p.8), about how messages grounded in spiritual terms can be more powerful than those aimed at the head, which we normally rely upon: “The guilt-based, fear-inducing messages that have often dominated can lead to paralysis rather than action, but religion is in the business of communicating a future worth fighting for. It can generate new meanings for climate change that drive engagement.”

The second book was Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It is a true New England original – written in a snowy winter in the Berkshires (looking out at Mt. Greylock, in fact), also describing New Bedford and Nantucket in some detail, and expressing (it seems to me) the New England Transcendentalists’ view of the natural world and humans’ place in it. My colleague at CLF, Robin Just, like me, also just re-read this great fish tale and pronounced it “a strange and wonderful book.” I concur. It’s worth the time and investment, yielding sentences you stop and re-read several times, just for the joy of it. But I was arrested by this famous passage, from ch. 35, the Mast-Head, where Ishmael explores his spiritual connection to nature, high aloft in a crow’s nest on the mast, scanning the sea for whales:

. . . lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reveries is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space . . . forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. . . .

If we as an organization – and a movement – began appealing more to the heart, where would this take us? What would we do differently? What would it cost, and what returns can we expect?

These are tricky questions for us, but we have to pursue them. Otherwise, we will continue to fail to include large parts of our population in our movement, just like algebra may be excluding many who should be thriving in our society, and helping it thrive. The environmental movement needs a change of “heart.” We must not steer away from evidence-based, quantitative reasoning, but we must also reach out to people’s hearts. That’s where they feel their deep connection to nature and the planet.

At this unsettled and noisy time, it may be much easier to reach people’s hearts than their minds.

Hands Across New Hampshire protest, Deerfield, NH, September 1, 2012 (photo credit, Wes Golomb, Bear Brook Photography)

After a summer when many in New Hampshire expected to hear about a revised route and a renewed public relations campaign for the Northern Pass transmission project, the current proposal, which surfaced almost two years ago, is facing new obstacles:

• On the heels of its successful campaign to protect the Balsams, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests has announced a new $2.5 million land conservation plan that seeks to stymie the new North Country route Northern Pass has been trying to assemble for more than a year. The fund-raising campaign to support the Forest Society’s plan appears to be off to a good start.
• Last Saturday, in a peaceful statewide event called Hands Across New Hampshire, hundreds of concerned citizens across New Hampshire – from Manchester to Colebrook – joined about a dozen spirited protests against the project. The picture above shows the protest along PSNH’s existing transmission corridor in Deerfield, the proposed southern terminus of the line. The protests showed that grassroots opposition is strong in the North Country but also in the central and southern parts of the state.
• Every gubernatorial candidate on the ballot is on the record calling for careful consideration of alternatives to the current proposed overhead lines, and many are agreeing with CLF that the current proposal does not provide any real benefits for New Hampshire residents and ratepayers.
• A legislative commission is evaluating the feasibility of using state-owned transportation corridors, including rail beds and highways, for high voltage transmission projects like Northern Pass, an approach that Maine and other states are pursuing. The commission already has heard from state agencies and the makers of high-tech underground transmission technology, and it is now evident that burying transmission lines in available state highways and rail corridors is potentially practical and viable. The commission’s work will culminate in a report to the Legislature later this year.
• In yesterday’s provincial election, Québec’s Liberal government – the sponsors of Québec’s energy strategy and Hydro-Québec’s plans to export more hydropower to New England through Northern Pass – was ousted from power. Although the sovereigntist Parti Québecois, which will lead a new coalition government, has committed to continue the Liberal government’s Plan Nord (with its substantial hydropower component), it is unclear how these political changes will affect Québec’s and Hydro-Québec’s relationships with Northern Pass, especially in light of the declining economic value of the project for Québec.

It is long past time for Northern Pass to acknowledge (contrary to Northeast Utilities’ recent sunny pronouncements to investors) that the current proposal – new route north of Groveton or not – is a non-starter in New Hampshire. Instead, we should be shelving this fatally flawed proposal, critically exploring whether and to what extent hydropower imports are needed, evaluating all the alternatives in an open and well-informed planning process, and continuing to pursue greater regional consensus and coordination to build a real clean energy economy with broadly shared benefits, on both sides of the border.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

How does a community balance the potential costs of siting clean energy projects with the economic benefits they provide? What are the local economic realities of hosting distributed clean energy generation facilities and energy efficiency projects in a community? CLF Ventures explored these questions and others in a recent webinar we co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) and the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s (MMA) Massachusetts Municipal Energy Group.

The first in a three-part series CLF Ventures is co-hosting this summer and fall, the August 15 webinar featured a presentation by James McGrath, Park and Open Space Program Manager for Pittsfield, a Massachusetts Green Community that has hosted several large-scale solar projects and implemented robust, community-wide energy efficiency programs. He spoke about how to initiate clean energy projects, the advantages of clean energy at the local level, and strategies to manage the most common roadblocks in implementation.

The webinar series is targeted to municipal officials and volunteers who are already engaged in clean energy and energy efficiency issues or interested in learning more about how to site and finance clean energy facilities and programs in their communities. Building on themes explored in CLF Ventures’ earlier work with MassCEC on siting land-based wind energy projects, the webinar series gives participants an opportunity to learn first-hand from municipal leaders and technical experts as they share their experiences implementing clean energy and energy efficiency projects across Massachusetts.

Upcoming webinars on September 12 and October 24 will explore how to engage the public when siting solar and wind energy projects and the ins and outs of financing clean energy through power purchase agreements. For more information or to register for upcoming webinars, email liz.carver@clf.org.