Counting Alewives at the Milltown Dam fishway on the St. Croix river in New Brunswick, Canada, Photo courtesy of the Portland Press Herald

Fish ladders and elevators “aren’t working like they’re supposed to, and fish aren’t making it to where they need to go.” So began a recent article in Science magazine. In many cases this assertion is spot on – but in others, fish passages have been remarkably successful. Maine has examples of both.

To find a faulty fish passage,  one need look only at the dam on the Androscoggin River between the towns of Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. The fish ladder at that dam quite simply does not work and the number of fish that successfully navigate its labyrinth is paltry. If anadramous fish like salmon, shad or river herring are ever to return to the reaches of the Androscoggin, significant changes will need to be made to that fish ladder. Better yet would be, where possible, the removal of dams through collaborative efforts like those that led to the success of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust’s efforts or the removal of the dam in Winterport several years ago.

On the other hand, fish ladders remain an important management tool in areas where dam removal cannot be achieved. Indeed, there are a few fish ladders that have been very successful at passing fish, especially when they are allowed to work. For example, in Maine fish ladders at the first three dams on the St. Croix River worked remarkably well – in just 5 short years of operation in the 1980’s, the number of alewives successfully surmounting the 3 dams via fish ladders went from 20,000 to more than 2.5 million. And in 1995, when, for reasons that had nothing to do with science or logic, a state law was passed closing two of the fish ladders, the number of alewives plummeted to less than 1000. Today, even after one of the fishways was allowed to be opened in 2008, alewives are still barred from 98% of the waters that they use to spawn. That’s why CLF will continue to fight to repeal that law, either through the Courts or with our allies in the Legislature.

That said, the data provided in the Science article is depressing. At three major rivers on the East Coast that less than 150 years ago had been teeming with anadromous fish – the Merrimack, the Connecticut and the Susquehanna – virtually no fish –  706, 86, and 7 respectively – passed through the fish ladders at those dams. The author’s call to remove those dams would no doubt increase those numbers significantly and should be pursued to the extent feasible. Alternatively, the fish passage at those and other dams should be evaluated as to effectiveness and those that fail as miserably as those on the Merrimack, Connecticut and Susquehanna, as well as the Androscoggin, should be repaired, modified or replaced with fish passage that does work, like that on the St. Croix.

On Thursday, January 28, 2013, Maine’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) approved, by a 2-1 vote, the terms of a long-term contract for the first floating turbine offshore windfarm in Maine. After a few months of negotiation, this is good news for the state, and for renewable energy.

This vote clears a major hurdle toward Statoil putting four, three-megawatt wind turbines on floating platforms in deepwater 12 miles off Boothbay, and marks the early days of implementation of Maine’s Ocean Energy Act. Signed into law in 2009, the Act encourages projects like this one, so as to support the development of renewable energy technology that harnesses ocean energy. In this project, energy generated from the project would be transported via underwater cable to a transfer station on land, delivering renewable energy to the mainland.

Approval for this project has been a long time coming. Statoil, which has successfully operated a one-turbine pilot project off the Norwegian coast for the past year, originally sought approval for a version of its project in October of 2012. At the time, CLF submitted comments supporting the project and the long-term contract, but the PUC tabled its deliberations and asked Statoil to come up with terms that would have a lower price for the electricity generated and guarantee more future benefit to Maine. Click here to see PUC Chairman Welch’s notes from deliberations. Since then, the project has only improved.

Working with PUC staff, Statoil revised the terms of its contract to reduce the price of energy to Maine consumers and add more assurances that if its initial small scale windfarm is successful, it will make all efforts to employ Maine companies as it scales up the project. Click here to see Statoil’s Revised Term Sheet.  We liked these additional terms even more than Statoil’s initial proposal. Again we wrote in favor of the project and expressed our increased support. Click here to view our additional comments.

The vote at this past week’s hearing was 2-1, with Commissioner Littell and Chairman Welch voting in favor of the project. Littell has long been a champion of efforts to reduce carbon emissions, whether during his time at the DEP where he championed RGGI or now at the PUC. Welch deserves credit as he was not supportive of the long-term contract in its initial phase, but recognized that Statoil had made efforts to address his concerns and even more so recognized the potential that offshore wind holds for Maine.

Transportation options in nothern tier states like Maine are a critical part of sustainable communities and a low-impact ecncomy. Photo credit: Lawrence Whittemore @ flickr

Let’s face it: population density is a critical factor in any decision to provide transit services. In CLF’s “northern tier” states, where dense populations are limited to a few metropolitan areas, transportation options like bus services  have been slow to develop, leaving people to drive. In asking for directions from one place to another, the response most often is: “You’re on your own.”

In Maine, for example, Portland and surrounding towns and cities are served by a number of independent municipal fixed-route bus systems, an inter-city commuter bus linking Portland with a few cities in southern Maine, and an outlying “on demand” provider. But there is no regular service between Portland and Maine’s second-largest metro area, Lewiston-Auburn, about 40 miles away. Maine’s L/A has a growing immigrant population and plenty of affordable housing, but greater Portland, where housing is expensive, is the locus of most employment expansion.

CLF Maine has been working with the elected leaders of these areas to promote new ways for commuters on this corridor to avoid single-occupancy vehicle commuting, and provide greater connectivity to Portland’s air, bus, and train transportation hub. Recently, at the urging of Auburn’s mayor, Jonathan Labonte and Portland’s mayor Mike Brennan, Portland’s city council voted to explore this option, as reported here.

It’s an encouraging step in the right direction and validates the work of CLF and its partners to create a unified transit authority for the entire southern Maine region. This would promote better customer service and alignment among providers as disparate as a ferry service, Amtrak, and local bus lines, and provide the potential for common investment and bonding authority.

Mainers have recently been seeing and hearing advertisements for alternatives to the standard offer electricity supply that most residential customers receive through their transmission and distribution (T&D) utility. I’ve been ask numerous times to explain the meaning of these new alternatives. This post is written as a guide to that very question.

In Maine, the majority of customers are served by three investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities: Central Maine Power, Bangor Hydro-Electric Company, and Maine Public Service Company. These T&D utilities maintain the transmission lines and related equipment to carry electricity throughout the grid. Prior to 2000, these same utilities also generated electricity.

In 1997, in response to federal changes that decoupled or split generation from transmission, the Maine legislature passed a law requiring that electric utilities divest their generation assets. Additionally, as of March 1, 2000, all Maine consumers had the right to purchase generation service directly from competitive electricity suppliers.

Until recently, however, there have been few options for residential customers other than the standard offer available through each of the T&D utilities. That, thankfully, is changing.

Recently a number of companies have entered the residential electricy supply market in Maine. They operate by purchasing power on the wholesale market, generally at rates slightly lower than the standard offer rate. The electricity itself is primarily generated by conventional power plants.

Another, greener option on the horizon is Maine Green Power. Maine Green Power is currently pre-enrolling customers who wish to offset their energy supply with renewable energy credits generated by 100% Maine-based renewable energy projects. This offer – of entirely renewable energy – is a first for the state, one that is certain to apply pressure on competing providers.

Maine Green Power’s definition of green power projects is, on the whole, in line with CLF policy priorities and includes solar photovoltaic systems; hydroelectric projects that meet state and local fish passage requirements; wind turbines; biomass facilities that use wood, wood waste, landfill gas or agricultural biogas; tidal power projects; geothermal projects; and fuels cells that use landfill gas or agricultural biogas.

To be clear, the power isn’t purchased directly. When power is generated through the above no- or low-emission sources, Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are created. RECs are then sold by the green power generators to support their further development. These RECs are what Maine Green Power is purchasing and, in turn, what Maine Green Power’s customers are paying for. By doing so, customers are investing in local renewable energy projects, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing our society’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Let’s put the cost into perspective. A typical Maine household uses roughly 500 kwh of electricity per month. A 500 kwh “block” of renewable energy can be purchased from Maine Green Power for $7.50 per month (a half block of 250 kwh is available for $3.75/mo.). This charge is paid in addition to the standard offer price for electricity.

That, from my perspective, is an entirely reasonable price to pay for a brighter energy future. In fact, when you factor in the currently externalized costs of climate change and dirty energy to our public health, to our environment, and to our economies and communities, I’d say it’s more than a fair deal.

And so, to return to the original question, what exactly do these alternatives mean for the state? They mean a brighter future.

On Tuesday, Americans across New England joined their countrymen in casting their votes. As the results have become clear, one thing has become clear with it: It was a good night for science and for clean energy.

Maine, for instance, elected former wind developer Angus King as its new Senator, who ran with an ad dedicated to the need to address climate change and support sustainable energy. (Watch that ad here.) Meanwhile changes in both houses of Maine’s legislature are likely to dampen Governor LePage’s unpredictable but largely obstructionist posture. The same is true in Massachusetts, which elected Elizabeth Warren, a strong supporter for renewable energy and climate change mitigation. New Hampshire and Vermont also saw the pendulum swung strongly in a way that is likely to advance much needed efforts to protect the health of their environment and communities. Rhode Island seems to be the only state that has kept its status quo. (For full perspectives on each state, click here.)

In the end, New Englanders voted for a strong environmental agenda, and for candidates who shared that support. These local trends also broadly echo national voting trends. Obama, for instance, was strongly supported by Latino voters. A landmark 2012 study showed that 92% of Latino voters believe we have a responsibility to take care of the earth. The pro-environment agenda endorsed by Obama no doubt contributed to his support.

In reelecting Barack Obama, Americans also voted for an administration that has made science-friendly appointments to science positions, that has a high degree of scientific accomplishment, and that has been very supportive of science education and research.  And while the President was disappointingly silent about climate change and clean energy policy during the campaign, his administration’s pro-health and pro-environment actions to reduce toxic air pollution and to improve automobile  fuel economy standards no doubt resonated with voters nationally.

While there were many issues on the ballot, here in New England and across the country, there are also some very simple lessons from this election. The voters said a few things:

Yes, we believe in science.

Yes, we believe climate change is happening.

Yes, we need more sources of sustainable energy.

Yes, we want candidates who move us away from the dirty energy of the past to a more prosperous future.

And no, dirty energy, you cannot buy my vote.

Despite historic spending, the money spent by the dirty energy industry to try to buy this election didn’t seem to have much effect. In the end, clean energy and science were big winners.

New England cemented its reputation on Tuesday as a bastion of progressive environmental politics. Voters across our region want action on climate change, they want to advance clean energy, and they want to strengthen their communities.

It is my sincere hope that the elected officials in each state listen to their voters and make progress on these issues. It is also my sincere belief that we will be stronger as a movement if we work together across our New England: while some of our issues are local and some cry out for national leadership, many are regional in nature and can most effectively be addressed at the regional scale.

And then there’s the pragmatic reality that visionary leadership from Washington is very unlikely at this politically fractious time. But with New England’s leaders – of all political stripes – largely sharing a common vision for an economically, socially and environmentally thriving region, we can and must chart our own course right here. To succeed, we need to work together. When New England works together, we have shown that we can.

Tides in Maine vary enormously along the coast – tides along the sandy southern coast in York range between 5 to 7 feet while the tides in Eastport range from 18 – 21 feet. This week’s election results in Maine were more like the Eastport tides than the ones in York.

Maine is the first state to enact a same-sex marriage law by a vote of the general public. Mainers chose to replace Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican long known for her independent streak, with an actual independent, former Governor and now Senator-elect Angus King. And Mainers also voted to replace the Republican majorities in the State House of Representatives and the State Senate with a Democratic majority in both houses. All of this is good news for Maine and for Maine’s environment.

Senator-elect King is an eloquent and thoughtful leader when it comes to climate change, an issue that received embarrassingly little attention in the Presidential election until the nation witnessed the devastation and loss of Superstorm Sandy, just the latest in a series of increasingly severe weather events that have caused death and destruction along the Atlantic coast. Prior to running for Senate, King not only talked the talk but he walked the walk, developing wind power projects here in Maine. While CLF is likely to have its disagreements with Senator-elect King on certain matters, his election to the Senate will provide that body with a strong voice for acting on climate change in a way that is both good for our communities and good for our economy.

Closer to home, the loss of one party rule at the State House in Augusta marks the end of the hegemony of the LePage Administration over the past two years. With control of both the House and the Senate, the LePage administration was able to push through many changes to Maine’s regulatory structure to the detriment of the environment with little benefit to the economy. Whether that was in limiting access to the Board of Environmental Protection, making it easier for a Canadian company to conduct open pit mining or eviscerating the Land Use Regulatory Commission, the track record of the current administration has been deeply troubling and well worth the D grade it received from the Maine Conservation Voters recently.  Indeed, had it not been for a few courageous and principled members of his own party, the damage would have been even greater.

With both chambers of the legislature now controlled by what the Governor calls the “opposition,” the LePage tide is now receding and one hopes that means that instead of trying to recreate the false dichotomy of environment vs. economy, Augusta can focus on the real challenges and opportunities for Maine’s environment and its economy.

Memorandum

To: The President Elect
From: John Kassel, President of CLF
Date: November 6, 2012, 11:30 a.m.

First, let me offer my sincere congratulations. Whichever candidate you are, you have won a hard fought victory. Well done.

With your victory comes the responsibility to lead this country safely through the most critical issues of our day. Judging by your campaign I am afraid that is something you have already shown you will not do.

During the campaign, you were largely silent on climate change. During each one of the debates, for instance, none of the moderators asked a question – and you didn’t push the issue to the fore. When asked about the economy, you didn’t say that not addressing climate change presents the single largest risk of market failure ever seen. When asked about foreign policy, you didn’t echo the Pentagon and others in identifying climate change as a threat to our national security. And when asked about domestic policy, you didn’t identify climate change as endangering our communities, our economies and our future generations.

Not once did you identify climate change during these debates. In a year of record-breaking temperatures, drought in the West, and Arctic ice melt, this is disappointing. It is as though, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, you and your opponent tried to will this problem away through silence.

It took Sandy to shake out of you a direct response to climate change. Sandy reminded us of many things: about the need for preparation, about the human and economic price that nature will extract, suddenly and mercilessly, and about the suddenness of slow change once it is upon you.

Up until Hurricane Sandy, climate change was the elephant in the room. Now, we are trying to figure out how to clean up after the elephant. It is a devastating experience and heart-rending sight – one that should compel action, and has among some of your peers.

Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote, “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.” I couldn’t agree more.

Climate change is not just a global issue, but an American issue, as it threatens all Americans – the 99 percent and the 1 percent, liberals and conservatives, voters and nonvoters. It also threatens all New Englanders, from all walks of life: white or black, young or old, red or blue.

Slow devastation at the hands of predictable and largely preventable causes does not advance the interest of your electorate, Mister President Elect. But your continued silence will only guarantee just that.

It is your responsibility, Mister President Elect, to not only protect and safeguard the citizens of the United States, but to lead them to prosperity. We need you to lead on climate change. We need you lead on this issue – now, more than ever.

My sincere congratulations again. We eagerly await your leadership.

Sincerely,

John Kassel
President of Conservation Law Foundation (CLF)

We’re still counting the casualties and costs, but one thing is sure: after a second “hundred year” event in the last two years in New England (last year’s Hurricane Irene and this week’s Sandy), we need to pay some sober attention to building our region’s capacity to roll with the climate punches.

“Adaptation,” “adaptability,” “resilience,” “adaptive capacity,” and “vulnerability” are all part of the emerging vocabulary that seeks to describe a basic and simple question: what prudent steps should we be taking to ensure that we can lower the risks and minimize the effects of severe events linked to climate change even as we strive to lessen greenhouse gases? In the wake of this week’s destruction, it’s worth considering how best to engage our communities in the kind of thoughtful planning and action that can prevent or offset the worst effects of events like Irene and Sandy, and then enable us to bounce back.

As noted by my colleague Tricia K .Jedele in Rhode Island on this blog, many coastal communities like Matunuck sustained significant damage to their beaches, seawalls, and jetties. The storm surge temporarily returned Manhattan to being a real island, cut off from the mainland, and stranding millions without power and transportation. The economic cost of replacing damaged public infrastructure and people’s homes will certainly be in the billions of taxpayer, insurance, and private dollars, not to mention the economic damage done when a region is brought to a standstill.

Anticipating and planning for potential problems associated with climate change makes a difference. New York City, for example, has been working for several years already to implement a climate adaptation plan that will make its transportation system less vulnerable to precisely the kind of effects that Sandy brought about this week. Similarly, Groton, CT has engaged in a local effort to calculate how best to use its resources to minimize the local economic impact of sea-level rise and storm surge.

Protecting New England’s fresh and ocean waters has been a CLF program priority since the organization’s beginnings. Hurricane Sandy has caused wide-spread runoff of farmland and urban pollutants into our streams, as well as sewer overflows from inadequate and damaged urban treatment plants and systems. In some places, like Wells, Maine, local decision makers are including climate considerations into the kind of choices all towns face, in this case the replacement of an aging sewage treatment facility that will not function adequately as sea levels rise.

Deciding how repair, rebuilding and replacement take place can either repeat the mistakes that brought us here, like allowing houses to be rebuilt in shoreline flood zones, or make significant progress toward lessening the effects of future storms. For example, the coastal towns of New Hampshire, and five municipalities in southern Maine, are each working together to establish common regulatory standards that will protect lives and property as the shoreline reacts to climate change. Hurricane Irene’s destruction of stream and river banks in Vermont in 2001 resulted in wide-spread damage, but as we noted recently, also demonstrated the importance of preserving and enhancing wetlands as a way to mitigate some of those effects.

George Santayana’s dictum, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” together with Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” should lead us to consider what we can learn from these events, and then act with our elected leaders and communities to build resilience that can prevent or mitigate the effects of a changing climate on New England.

Change is hard.

And the larger, more important and more entrenched the thing being changed, the harder it is.

There are few things that are larger and more important than our electricity system. Just ask a parent of a child who was in the intensive care unit of a New York City hospital when Hurricane Sandy wiped away the electric grid and the emergency generators failed. In some moments, like that, electricity is quite literally a life-saver.

In 1882, the world’s first practical coal fired electric power plant came online in New York. For the last fifty years coal has been the dominant fuel and backbone of our electric generation system, spawning a  massive industrial process of extracting coal from the earth, transporting it to power plants, burning it to make heat, transforming it into electricity, and finally disposing of the plants’ waste products into the air, land and water.

Given coal’s longstanding role in maintaining a stable electricity system in this country, it is not shocking that some reasonable folks find it hard to contemplate life without it – despite the evidence of the harm it causes both to human health and the environment.

But ending our dependence on the most harmful fuels to generate electricity is part of the change we need to make if we are going to avert full-on climate disaster. The hard truth is that past emissions of greenhouse gas pollution from coal plants and other dirty fuel sources have already transformed our world, warming our oceans and increasing the water vapor in our atmosphere. As a result, the weather dice are now loaded in favor of catastrophes like Hurricane Sandy, among many other effects.

Propping up and retaining our obsolete and inefficient old coal plants so they can continue to spew global warming greenhouse gases into the air is not an option – and thankfully, the economic tide in this country is starting to turn against them. But after decades of depending on coal for electricity, many wonder how we are going to keep the lights on without it. The answer, to borrow a phrase, is: “Use less electricity, mostly renewable.”

The first step is very clear: we must be much smarter and careful about how we use electricity. This means going all out in our deployment of  energy efficiency that slashes energy use at all times, and also reducing electricity demand at the moments of greatest need when the system is pressed hardest. We are evolving towards a world where highly flexible demand will simply be a routine part of our energy system – our dishwashers, cell phone chargers and air conditioners will ramp up or down their energy use based on price signals and energy system conditions.

Second, we need to redouble our commitment to develop zero emissions renewable electricity generation like wind and solar. Every watt of energy we get from those sources displaces the need for energy that comes from the burning of fossil fuels. Eventually, we will be able to store enough of that clean power to meet demand even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. But, until that technology matures, we will still require some “firming” power to fill in the gaps.

Here in the Northeast, that power is likely to come from sources like hydroelectric dams, or natural gas fired power plants, which are cleaner and cheaper than coal, but  come with their own environmental price tags. The specter of over-dependence on natural gas is the cause of much consternation in environmental and energy expert circles. And for good reason: locking ourselves into dependence on a finite imported fossil fuel would be a mistake. Instead, we need to carefully manage our transition to a new and cleaner power system, ensuring that we maintain a sufficiently diverse portfolio of resources and keep the lights on as we move surely and steadily away from fossil fuels.

The transition from dependence on coal to natural gas in our electricity system is crudely analogous to a heroin addict moving to methadone. It is a step in the right direction and movement away from a dangerous addiction, but it is still only a partial step toward toward the full recovery we need: elimination of greenhouse gas pollution from our electric system.

Fundamental change is indeed hard, but the roaring winds of Katrina, Irene and Sandy loudly remind us that we have an absolute obligation to step up and manage the transition to a better, safer and cleaner energy future.