A version of this article first appeared in the Sunday August 11 edition of the Rutland Herald /Times Argus.

A cleaner energy future looks bright. It means less pollution, lower costs and better service. Getting there takes some work.

It’s a pretty good bet that a cleaner energy future includes lots more “distributed generation” and fewer large, centralized power plants. Think about your PC or MacBook in place of a huge central computer, or your cellphone — and computer — in your pocket. Examples of distributed generation include solar panels on roofs of homes and parking garages and community wind power.

Linking these sources together so they can power our cars, run our refrigerators and keep us cool is a challenge — one that we must embrace. Failing to meet it leaves us with yesterday’s dirty coal plants or problematic new pipelines for tomorrow’s power needs.

The challenge is that our electrical grid operates without storing energy. The grid is a marvel of human ingenuity that delivers power from any electrical plant to anyone in the region who turns on a switch. It is a bit like a seesaw. The grid must keep in balance the power coming in with the power going out.

Our grid was built and designed to keep this balance by operating mostly with large regional power plants, some of which can be turned on and off fairly easily. When we add more, smaller power sources, keeping the balance becomes a different challenge.

The seesaw must balance with a handful of marbles instead of a few large buckets. But the marbles are more nimble, and the solar panel on your roof delivers power that doesn’t need to travel far. The challenge in the next decade is making our grid as nimble as our power resources to make the most of these new advantages.

If we fail to figure out how to balance our grid with the use of smaller, cleaner resources, we will have more situations where we keep burning fossil fuels instead of allowing wind power on hot summer days, a situation that occurred during our most recent hot spell.

A group of environmental organizations and businesses known as the E4 Group is working with the region’s grid operator to help us meet this challenge. To start, we must correctly account for the amount of new smaller sources that will be used.

A recent report prepared for the E4 Group, “Forecasting Distributed Generation in New England,”  by Synapse Energy Economics shows how billions are being spent in the region now to improve our electric transmission system. Yet these efforts are moving forward without a clear estimate of how much local, distributed generation will be used. It is like projecting the needs for telephone service without considering how many cell phones will be used.

As a result, our electricity system is likely being overbuilt — and we are paying far too much for it. We are building our electrical grid as if the likelihood that you or the school nearby will put up solar panels doesn’t exist. That just doesn’t make sense.

The opportunity is to better tailor our electrical grid investments to take advantage of distributed generation and avoid costly investments for delivering power from far away.

A key finding of the report is that the plans for the grid significantly underestimate the amount of distributed generation that will be installed in the region by 2021. The report forecasts 2,855 megawatts of power from distributed sources by that date, compared to the 800 megawatts assumed by the current plan. This means we will have more than three times the distributed generation than previously estimated.

But the grid and the resources required to meet power needs are being planned as if the real contribution from distributed generation won’t even exist. By ignoring the cleanest, local generation we will be overbuilding and overpaying for bigger, more expensive power upgrades than we actually need.

The report is a clarion call that shows how distributed generation can be better integrated into our regional system and as a result lower pollution and costs for everyone.

Kids playing in Boston’s Christian Science Plaza Fountain, by Mindy McAdams on Flickr

The heat is here!

Even though it’s technically still spring until late June, it feels as though summer has already come to stay in southern New England. While we New Englanders pride ourselves on being able to handle all kinds of weather, the health risks posed by poor air quality shouldn’t be ignored.

On a hot summer day, I know I make sure to check the weather in the morning before leaving to see how hot it might get and if there’s a chance of rain. Weather reports and weather websites are good at giving us lots of data about the day’s weather in general (hourly temperatures, chance of rain, and radar maps tracking storms), but don’t always give a detailed explanation when there’s an air quality alert (like there is this weekend).

What does an Air Quality Alert really mean?

The Air Quality Index combines measurements of ground level ozone and particulate matter to determine when levels of those pollutants might be harmful to humans.

EPA’s Air Quality Index

Ground level ozone forms when pollution from cars, construction equipment, factories, and power plants containing oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic chemicals mix in sunlight. While lots of ground level ozone is formed in urban areas on hot days, it can also be blown over long distances by wind. Particulate matter is just what it sounds like, particles from construction dust and pollen down to heavy metals and toxic pollutants. Both ground level ozone and particulate matter can be inhaled and cause serious respiratory problems. Southern New England and the mid-Atlantic seaboard are at special risk for ground level ozone and particulate pollution due to the combination of big cities and winds blowing east.

Ground level ozone and particulate matter at levels that commonly occur here in the summer can cause some very unpleasant health problems for even healthy adults (coughing and wheezing isn’t a lot of fun), but can be dangerous and even life-threatening for kids with asthma or other breathing problems, adults with chronic conditions, and the elderly. And some studies suggest that ground-level ozone can actually cause asthma and breathing problems in kids. Adults at risk and parents of kids at risk probably know more about all of this than the average person, but hearing that there’s an Air Quality Alert on the weather can still leave anyone with a lot of questions.

As you can see from the AQI scale, a score of 50 would be labeled “good” and 51 would be “moderate,” so more precise data is essential. That information isn’t always available on a weather report, which is where the EnviroFlash website comes in. They plot the hourly Air Quality Index measurements on maps, so you can check out the forecast and close to real-time information about local air quality:

What can I do about bad air quality in the summer?

While there are of course steps that people at risk from elevated ground level ozone and particulate levels can take to protect themselves from dangerous breathing events, the good news is that there are simple and very important things we can all do to help prevent elevated air quality:

• Prevent your car from contributing to vehicle emissions: try to limit driving trips and take public transportation if possible.
• Reduce the amount of electricity that your household uses, keeping the worst-emitting fossil fuel fired power plants from being pressed into service: Keep your air conditioner a few degrees higher, and make sure to turn lights and electronics off when you’re not using them.

Hardly a day goes by at CLF that we don’t think about how to describe the work we do more simply and clearly. The issues we work on are complicated; the solutions often complex and nuanced. But the need to help people understand our role and theirs in protecting New England’s environment is critical to our shared success.

This week, we launched something completely different to help educate New Hampshire residents about how their choice of electricity supplier can save them money and help the environment. The multimedia campaign, called EmpowerNH, is the creation of a newly formed coalition of retail electricity suppliers, trade and consumer groups and CLF. The coalition grew out of a common interest among this diverse set of stakeholders in promoting a competitive electricity supply market in New Hampshire. As CLF Scoop has been reporting, PSNH’s state-sanctioned practice of charging sky high rates to keep its old, dirty coal plants in business has prompted tens of thousands of residential customers to switch to competitive suppliers, who are are currently offering better rates for cleaner power. The EmpowerNH campaign aims to inform consumers about their power to choose an alternative to PSNH, and make it easy to access information and compare offers from competitive suppliers.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a short video that uses whimsical drawings and stop motion animation to tell the story of electric supply competition in New Hampshire. Take a look, and let us know what you think. And if you like it, please share it with your friends!

This month Rhode Island’s dominant utility, National Grid, made its second-ever filing with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) under Rhode Island’s “revenue decoupling” statute. Grid’s filing clarifies matters in a debate that swirled around the environmental community in Rhode Island (and the rest of New England) for years but ought now to be resolved once and for all – an argument over whether decoupling is a rip-off of utility rate-payers. CLF (and other environmental advocates) have argued for years that there are important environmental benefits to be reaped from decoupling. Opponents, including some ratepayer advocates, argued that decoupling would be bad for rate-payers because it would inevitably lead to unjustified rate hikes.

Grid’s highly technical, 59-page filing with the PUC this month is dense reading, with pages upon pages of complicated charts, but at the end of the day the filing resolves the controversy. Decoupling is good for ratepayers. In the year that ended on March 31, 2013, Rhode Island electricity ratepayers will receive a collective refund from National Grid of $4.2 million, including over $42,000 in interest on ratepayer overpayments.

Some explanation of what decoupling is and how this controversy has developed is in order.

Traditional utility regulation provides little incentive for utilities to promote energy efficiency. This is because reduction in sales equals a reduction in profits for the utility.

Decoupling is a way to address this problem and to align the utility’s pecuniary interest with the public interest in efficiency and conservation. Decoupling separates (that is, “decouples”) a utility’s income from the amount of commodity the utility sells. This effectively removes a major disincentive to utility enthusiasm for and participation in energy efficiency measures.

Decoupling is not all that is needed to achieve carbon-emission reductions through energy efficiency; but decoupling is one important and necessary ingredient. Many states have decoupled, and there is a high correlation between states that reduce carbon emissions the most (thereby lowering ratepayer bills the most) and states that have decoupled.

Work on “decoupling” is one aspect of CLF’s wider work on reducing carbon emissions in order to address the climate change emergency. More specifically, decoupling is closely linked to our work on energy efficiency. One of the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions in the short- and medium-term is to work on energy efficiency.

In 2008, CLF participated in a litigation in the PUC in which we tried to get the PUC to decouple gas prices. The litigation, PUC Docket # 3943, took weeks, and CLF presented an expert witness, crossed examined witnesses of other parties, submitted briefs. But CLF lost the case; the PUC ruled that it would not decouple gas prices in Rhode Island.

In 2009, CLF tried again, this time trying to get the PUC to decouple electricity prices. This litigation, PUC Docket 4065, also took weeks – again, we presented an expert witness, cross-examined other parties’ witnesses, briefed the issue. Again we lost; the PUC ruled that it would not decouple electricity prices.

The main argument against decoupling was that it would hurt ratepayers. The Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (this is the statutory ratepayer advocate in Rhode Island, and is different than the PUC) opposed decoupling for this reason, as did others. One expert witness against decoupling put it this way: “[T]he plan would allow a broad range of automatic rate adjustments that would result in rate increases . . . .There is no down side to the Company. The only down side is to the ratepayers.”

In response, CLF introduced evidence that actually came from 28 natural gas utilities and 12 electric utilities in 17 states across the country that have operative decoupling mechanisms. This broad range of utilities showed two important results from decoupling. The first, and smaller point is that decoupling adjustments tend to be minor. Compared to total residential retail rates, decoupling adjustments have been most often under two percent, positive or negative, with the majority under 1 percent. The second, and larger, point is that decoupling adjustments go both ways, sometimes providing small refunds to customers, sometimes providing small surcharges.

Nevertheless, despite the evidence we introduced, we lost both cases. The PUC was persuaded that decoupling was just a trick whereby the utility could always ratchet rates upward.

In 2010, CLF, working with other environmental organizations supported a bill in the Rhode Island General Assembly that would require decoupling of both electricity and gas prices. On May 20, 2010, Governor Donald Carcieri signed the bill into law.

On October 18, 2010, the PUC opened a new docket in order to implement the new law that mandated decoupling. This time, the question wasn’t whether Rhode Island would decouple, but how. CLF participated as a full party in the docket in order to ensure that the decoupling mechanisms adopted would be designed to reap all the environmental benefits without unduly hurting or harming ratepayers. Nine months later, on July 26, 2011, the PUC approved an excellent set of decoupling rules for both electricity and gas.

A year ago, in May 2012, Grid filed its first-ever report under the then-new Rhode Island decoupling statute and under the PUC rules. That report showed that, on the electricity side, Grid needed to rebate to Rhode Island ratepayers just over a million dollars for the year that had ended on March 31, 2012.

This month, Grid filed its second-ever report under the now-not-so-new-anymore decoupling statute.  This year, the amount Grid is going to rebate to Rhode Island ratepayers has more than quadrupled, to $4.2 million.  Rhode Island ratepayers are getting rebates – not additional payments – in both of the first two years that electricity decoupling has been implemented in Rhode Island.

Remember the main point that CLF’s expert witnesses made in the decoupling dockets that we lost in 2008 and 2009: decoupling adjustments go both ways. Sometimes ratepayers pay a little extra; sometimes ratepayers get a rebate. Real-world results from the first two years of decoupling show that CLF’s main point was 100% correct.  And not only are Rhode Island ratepayers getting a rebate from Grid, but everyone in Rhode Island enjoys the savings and efficiency benefits that decoupling enables – and the environment enjoys lower carbon emissions.

As I suggested a year ago when the first-year figures came out, there may be two lessons that can be learned from this – one about CLF and one about the broader environmental movement.

About CLF: One of the things I love about working for CLF is the stick-to-itiveness that the organization (and my fellow and sister staff members) have. In 2008, we litigated decoupling, and we lost. So we tried again. When we lost again, we turned to a different forum, the General Assembly. When the law we supported passed, we were pleased – but we didn’t rest. We still had another litigation in the PUC to make sure that the law was properly implemented.

CLF is nothing if not persistent!

And about the broader environmental movement: So often our opponents argue that environmental protections are too costly to implement. Too often, the arguments made by environmentalists about the benefits and savings from environmental protections are just not believed by decision-makers and by ordinary citizens. With decoupling, everyone (including the PUC and so many others) just “knew” that decoupling would be an expensive rip-off. When evidence like this comes to light about the financial and pecuniary benefits of environmental laws, we should make sure that the public knows.

My colleagues in CLF’s Rhode Island office have been doing some important work that deserves attention this legislative session. Two of their efforts stand out: opposing the governor’s attempt to create special legislation to import power from Hydro-Quebec, and opposing the Rhode Island House leadership’s attempt to create a state Commerce Department that would take over permitting functions from the Department of Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Management Council.

Rhode Island State House, courtesy of Mr. Ducke @ Flickr

You’ve likely read more here (or here, or here) about Hydro-Quebec. The company, which (unsurprisingly, given the name) produces power from large-scale hydroelectric dams located throughout the Canadian province of Quebec, has been making a strong push to sell this power to states throughout New England. Hydroelectric power might not be so bad on its own, but Hydro-Quebec has some serious issues. Not least of these is that the most prominent proposal for transmitting additional power from Quebec to New England is a proposed transmission project through New Hampshire – the Northern Pass – that is being developed by New Hampshire’s dirtiest utility and is, in its current form, a deeply flawed proposal that may not provide meaningful environmental benefits. And, also distressingly, Hydro-Quebec has sought special legislation in each of the states it has been courting.

Here in Rhode Island, the governor has been pushing one such piece of special legislation; CLF Staff Attorney Jerry Elmer has been pushing back. The governor’s bill would require National Grid (Rhode Island’s only major electric utility) to solicit proposals and then enter into a long-term contract for a large-scale, 150-megawatt hydroelectric project. This requirement would not only displace but likely eliminate local, small-scale renewable projects that the current long-term contracting statute was designed to benefit. At the same time, it would likely drive up energy costs, sending Rhode Island dollars to Canada. And, again, importing more power from Quebec through this mechanism seems calculated to advance the poorly conceived Northern Pass project in New Hampshire. As Jerry told the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, it is rare that environmental organizations, energy utilities, existing renewable and conventional power plant owners, and ratepayer advocates unite so seamlessly and forcefully as they have in opposition to the large hydropower bill. And the representatives from these diverse interests all recognized Jerry’s leadership, frequently introducing their own testimony with the phrase, “As Mr. Elmer said …” – certainly a sign of effective advocacy.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island House leadership has been touting an “Economic Development Package” of bills designed to enhance the business climate in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, one of these bills would move DEM’s permitting functions and all CRMC programs and functions to a newly created “Executive Office of Commerce.”  The purpose of these moves would be to ensure that environmental permitting delays do not hold up business development.

At a hearing before the House Finance Committee, CLF Vice President Tricia Jedele pointed out the many reasons this proposed bill makes no sense whether viewed through the prism of policy or law. (You can view her testimony here, beginning midway through minute 162.) The bill ignores the reasons for permitting delays under the current regime: some delays are the result of the severe staff cutbacks DEM has suffered in the last several years; others are perfectly justified as a way to protect Rhode Island’s greatest asset – its natural resources – against exploitation. Moving permitting functions to a new Executive Office of Commerce would not restore DEM staff or better prevent exploitation.  Moreover, the bill suggests a tension between business and environment, even though a robust business climate and a clean, healthy environment can peacefully coexist under an adequate permitting regime. Perhaps most importantly, though, the bill could throw Rhode Island’s environmental permitting programs into total disarray. Many permitting programs are founded on authority delegated to the state by EPA under a host of federal environmental laws. These programs are subject to EPA oversight, and tinkering with them could easily result in EPA’s withdrawing approval and taking over permitting functions itself. Needless to say, this is not the goal of the commerce bill. Instead, Tricia told the Finance Committee, a simple solution would be to leave DEM and CRMC’s functions alone, to staff them adequately, and to add staffers to the new Department of Commerce who can help guide businesses through the permitting process. This argument was well-received, and CLF now has the opportunity to work with the House to reform the bill.

Again, my colleagues have been too busy doing this work to call attention to it, but I think it’s important to take a moment to recognize just how valuable they are to Rhode Island and its environment.

Earlier this week, I brought a message from New Hampshire to a gathering of major players in the Northeast’s energy industry in lower Manhattan, the Platt’s Northeast Energy Markets Conference.

(photo credit: flickr/Mathew Knott)

Remember Northern Pass, that novel Northeast Utilities transmission project that would import 1,200 megawatts of large-scale hydropower from Hydro-Québec?

The project, as it was conceived and pitched to the region and the industry, Northern Pass version 1.0 if you will, is dead.

I ran through the key financial elements of the original proposal, what I called the Northern Pass gambit:

• $1.1 billion to build a new transmission line, funded wholly by Hydro-Québec.
• A generous “return on equity,” or guaranteed profit on project costs, of 12.56% for project developer Northeast Utilities, paid by Hydro-Québec.
• Easy and inexpensive siting approvals for the line, which would be located solely in New Hampshire, mostly in corridors controlled by Northeast Utilities subsidiary Public Service of New Hampshire, the state’s largest and most powerful electric utility.
• Ample profits that would cover all Northern Pass costs and much more for Hydro-Québec, which would sell its hydropower in New England’s lucrative wholesale electric market, where energy prices were, in 2008 and 2009 when Northern Pass was conceived, orders of magnitude higher than Hydro-Quebec’s costs of generating power.
• Unlike New England-based renewable projects, no public or ratepayer subsidies.

These elements looked good to investors on paper. But they have, one by one, fallen apart, and they no longer add up. I took the audience through the Northern Pass reality:

• Years of a stalled siting process, as Northeast Utilities tries to purchase a new route for the northernmost 40 miles of the project, where PSNH has no transmission corridor, with repeated missed deadlines for announcing the new route and restarting the federal permitting process.
• Increasing costs – an estimated additional $100 million in project costs already, even without accounting for any new route, mitigation commitments, or any underground component.
• Growing doubt (even more pronounced than a year ago) that Hydro-Québec can recover Northern Pass development costs and its hydropower costs (which will only increase as costly new dam projects continue in northern Québec) through energy exports, given that wholesale energy prices in New England are now much lower.
• Opposition by the vast majority of communities affected by the project, 33 at last count, local chambers of commerce, political leaders, and a diverse, well-organized grassroots movement of residents.
• No support from any New England environmental group.
• Mounting risk to NU’s lucrative return on equity, with the underlying deal expiring in 2014, and any renewal subject to federal regulators’ recently more skeptical view of such incentives.

And finally, I gave the eulogy for the key financial element of Northern Pass 1.0 – the one that attracted so much interest in regional energy circles, was the project’s key distinguishing feature from New England renewable energy projects, and continues to reside within the project’s discredited and misleading media campaign: the promise that the project would not require any subsidies.

In the last several months, as CLF predicted, Northeast Utilities, Hydro-Québec, and their allies have launched a major initiative to secure out-of-market subsidies of one form or the other for Canadian hydropower.  These efforts are now raging in the legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island and are simmering in other New England states. CLF is deeply engaged in protecting our state Renewable Portfolio Standard laws from this incursion and in turning back any long-term deals that will supply Canadian hydropower to these states at above-market prices or in a way that threatens renewable deployment in New England.

To us and to others, the false urgency associated with these proposals seems transparently calculated to advance a “Northern Pass 2.0,” just as Northern Pass 1.0 falls apart.

What would Northern Pass 2.0 look like? On the ground, whatever the “new route” New Hampshire continues to wait for, it will almost certainly look the same as Northern Pass 1.0, suffering from many of the same failings. But there will be some key differences, as the project’s underpinnings shift to accommodate a new economic reality. It will rely on public and/or ratepayer subsidies that will mean that New England will pay an above-market premium for the power or will provide an out-of-market gift of long-term energy price certainty to Hydro-Québec, in part to finance the associated transmission. In addition, many in New Hampshire’s North Country believe that the project will need to be sited on public land that is legally off-limits to circumvent the strong, ongoing efforts of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests to secure blocking conservation easements – in effect, another public subsidy for the project that will face overwhelming pushback in New Hampshire. (Clearly, Northern Pass’s dogged legislative fight to secure an ability to use eminent domain for the project, which it lost in resounding fashion in 2012, was only a preview of coming tactics.)  

As CLF has consistently said, there may be appropriate alternatives to Northern Pass that strengthen New England’s access to Canadian hydropower resources, but only if those alternatives are pursued through well-informed, fair, and transparent public processes, provide meaningful community and ratepayer benefits, displace our dirtiest energy resources, and verifiably result in carbon and other emissions reductions. It does not appear that the emerging Northern Pass 2.0 – buoyed by a set of special deals and no discernible improvements – would do anything to advance these basic common sense principles, which should guide the region’s transition to a resource mix that will power New England’s clean energy future.

With few signs that Northern Pass’s sponsors have learned lessons from their missteps so far, Northern Pass 2.0 looks to have an even tougher path in New Hampshire than the dead end road that Northern Pass 1.0 has traveled. This was a message from the Granite State that the world of energy industry insiders and analysts needed to hear.

Come join Conservation Law Foundation and our allies THIS SATURDAY in Burlington, Vermont for a discussion on Vermont’s Energy Choices.

Vermont’s Energy Choices: Old Dirty Problems and Clean Energy Solutions
Saturday, April 27th, 1:30 PM at the Billings Auditorium at UVM in Burlington

The time is NOW to move away from dirty sources of energy such as tar sands, nuclear, oil and coal. Solutions are available now to move us away from expensive, dangerous and polluting energy.

Come hear national and international experts on the problems of dirty energy – from fracking to tar sands – and  the real-world successes of renewable power – including community based renewable power in Europe.

Throwing up our hands is not an option. Come find out how to make a clean energy future our reality.

You can sign up and more information here:  See you Saturday!

As New England’s leading environmental organization, CLF has more than 60 staff people who work every day for healthy communities, clean water, and to reduce carbon emissions that cause climate change.

Sometimes we win big victories that make headlines, like when my colleague, Shanna Cleveland, won a major victory in federal court that required the permanent shuttering of the Salem Harbor coal-fired power plant. You can see more about Shanna’s victory here; and you can learn more about CLF’s coal-free New England program, here.

Other times, CLF’s work is much quieter, and behind the scenes, in obscure forums that no one has ever heard of. And CLF sometimes accomplishes good things very quietly.

I recently participated in one of these quiet victories. CLF is an active, voting participant in the New England Independent System Operator (ISO-NE), the operator of the regional electricity system. You can read more about CLF’s work with ISO-NE here. Very few environmental organizations participate in this important forum and, of the few that do, CLF is by far the most active.

One of the things that the ISO is most concerned about is the “system reliability” of New England’s electricity grid. System reliability basically means that when you or I turn a light switch, the lights actually go on. No one wants to see power outages or blackouts, and the ISO’s concern with system reliability is sensible.

One of the things the ISO has been doing of late to improve New England’s “system reliability” is to encourage the owners of gas-powered electricity-generating plants to install dual-fuel capability that would allow those plants to burn oil during periods of natural gas shortage – that is, allow those plants to be more reliable. Part of the ISO’s plan was to make sure that, when such a gas shortage arose, these power-plant owners could and would get compensated properly for burning oil, which costs much more than natural gas.

Of course, burning oil to make electricity is also much, much more polluting than burning natural gas. And the way the ISO was going to structure this new system would have provided no reason for generators to burn gas when gas was actually available – because those generators would be fully compensated regardless of which fuel they burned.

CLF reluctantly accepts that some of these generators will burn oil on those very, very rare occasions (at most a few times a year) when cleaner fuels truly are not available. (Of course, an even better idea is to reduce demand by efforts like turning down electricity use in places like factories and large stores; and CLF has long worked to promote programs that pay for and encourage such “demand response” efforts.) And such burning of oil is always limited by the air-pollution permits (under the Clean Air Act) of the generators. At the same time, CLF wanted to make sure that ISO rules would never allow compensation to an electricity generator for burning a dirtier fuel when a much cleaner fuel actually is available (which is nearly always).

None of the ISO experts realized the potential danger of the ISO’s proposed rule change at the time it was being discussed. None of the electricity generators pushed to prevent the originally proposed rule change from going through. Why would they? They were going to get fully compensated for burning a dirty fuel even when a cleaner fuel was available!

But CLF noticed the problem, and was willing to push for a change. As of this writing, I am cautiously optimistic that our proposed change will be approved by the ISO (and later by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, that oversees and must approve ISO rule changes). The change that CLF pushed for would allow electricity generators to get compensated for burning a higher-priced, dirtier fuel only on those very rare occasions when cleaner, cheaper fuel is truly not available.

Ratepayers benefit because we are assuring the use of the lower-cost fuel whenever possible. And the environment benefits because we are assuring the use of the cleaner fuel whenever possible.

As I say: this was certainly a small victory. But if we are going to be able to address the threat of climate change successfully, it will take hundreds of victories in a variety of forums. Some of those will be big wins, like Shanna’s federal court victory in the Salem Harbor case. And others will be small, incremental steps in obscure forums like the ISO.

Northeast Utilities (NU) tells investors and the public that it is will announce a new northernmost route for its Northern Pass transmission project by a certain date. The date arrives. A “project update” appears on the website of NU subsidiary and project developer Northern Pass Transmission LLC, saying that it isn’t ready to announce the new route just yet.

What’s behind the curtain, Northern Pass? (photo credit: flickr/Nick Sherman)

Sound familiar? It happened at the end of 2012. As reported in the Caledonian Record, it happened again last week, a mere month after NU said – in writing to investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that it would announce a new route by the end of March. This is the fourth self-imposed deadline that Northern Pass’s developer has failed to meet since last summer. You’d be forgiven if you started asking yourself whether Northern Pass’s route is the transmission equivalent of vaporware.

For whatever reason, NU has repeatedly misled the public and its investors about the Northern Pass project, and not just the project’s schedule.

• Its claims regarding the climate benefits of the project are based on the demonstrably false assertion that large-scale hydropower has no greenhouse gas emissions. The other New Hampshire benefits that NU ascribes to the project are little more than overblown talking points that do not withstand scrutiny.  
• Last November, NU’s CEO misled investors by falsely claiming broad support for Northern Pass among environmental groups, New Hampshire’s governor, and the regional operator of the electric grid; a corporate spokesperson then misrepresented what he said in an attempt to cover up the misstatements. 
• While it continues to insist Northern Pass-transmitted hydropower needs no subsidies, NU has been openly lobbying to obtain special treatment for large-scale hydropower from Connecticut officials and the Connecticut state legislature.

Securities regulators should take note of this pattern of behavior and insist on honesty and transparency from NU, just as Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley did when NU recently balked at revealing its CEO’s 2012 compensation package. As we’ve said before, investors, the public, and our energy future depend on accurate information and forthright disclosures from energy companies. That’s not what we’re getting from NU on Northern Pass.