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.

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.

A package of three major new renewable energy bills has just passed both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly unanimously.  Taken together, the bills will give Rhode Island one of the best and one of the most coherent sets of renewable energy laws in the country.  Over the past three months, CLF staff have worked extensively with the leadership of both the RI House and the RI Senate on drafting the actual language of these major bills.

One bill addresses what is called “net metering.”  Net metering occurs when an electric customer’s meter can run not only forward but also backward.  Net metering is important to individuals and companies that have small renewable projects (like solar panels on the roof of a home) because net metering often makes the difference between those projects being economically viable and being non-viable.  Until now, net metering law in Rhode Island was a shambles:  for example, some renewable energy technologies qualified for net metering but (for no apparent reason) other did not qualify; moreover, many portions of the law were so vague (or incoherent) that no one was sure what they meant, and there was even litigation challenging net metering by alleging that Rhode Island net metering law conflicts with federal law.  The newly passed statutes fix all those problems.  The new law makes clear that net metering is available to all renewable technologies, gives a generous price to renewable energy generators, and outlines exactly the boundaries between Rhode Island and federal law.

Another of these bills addresses “distributed generation.”  The DG Bill seeks to fix an unforeseen problem in an earlier renewable energy law, the Long-Term Contracting Statute (LTC Statute) that the General Assembly enacted in 2009.  Long-term contracts are especially important to renewable energy developers because such long-term contracts enable the developers to get financing for their projects.  The LTC Statute turned out to have one unexpected problem.  It worked very well for large companies, like Deepwater Wind, that wanted to develop and build utility-scale projects.  But the LTC Statute was not so good at helping smaller developers that were unable to afford an army of lawyers to negotiate individual contracts with the utility.  The  DG Bill solves this problem.  The DG bill carves out a portion of the long-term contracting obligation created in the 2009 LTC Statute and sets that portion aside just for small, local projects (like a town that wants to put up a single wind mill at its Town Hall).  In order to obviate the need for that (expensive) army of lawyers, the DG Bill creates a very simple, standard contract for developers of small, local renewable energy projects.  Basically, the law says:  If you have a small, local renewable energy project, you do not need to negotiate your own contract with Grid; instead you can automatically get a standard, short, easy-to-understand two-page contract.  The DG Bill also sets a standard price for such small renewable energy projects — the price is set by a board and is designed to be high enough so that such small projects are economically viable, but low enough so that the public is not forced to over-pay for renewable energy.  The big, utility-scale projects can still be built; but the DG bill will now make it easier for smaller projects also to be built.

The third bill in the set makes it easier for renewable energy developers to connect to the electricity grid by setting a timetable and prices for such interconnections.

CLF worked long and hard on this package of renewable energy legislation, and we are very gratified to see its success in the General Assembly.  We were also pleased to see the package of bills highlighted in the lead editorial of the Providence Journal on June 21.