Vermont is poised to take a big bite out of the high cost and pollution of heating our homes and businesses. Slashing a full one-quarter of both lies within our reach.

Over the past decade, the cost Vermonters pay for staying warm has more than doubled. This strains our pocketbooks, our environment, our health and our security. Watching our dollars go up in smoke drains our economy.

What can we do? Building on the enormous success of our electric efficiency efforts, we can improve the heating efficiency of our homes and businesses in a similar manner. While some efforts have begun, most of the savings opportunity remains on the table. Throughout Vermont, heating efficiency has saved the average homeowner about $1,000 a year.  (See a recent editorial here).

A new report of Vermont’s Thermal Efficiency Task Force provides a strong roadmap for jumpstarting heating efficiency and renewable heat for our homes and businesses. The Task Force recommendations show how Vermont can stretch its heating dollars farther and provide over $1.4 billion in direct savings. That’s $1.4 billion that is not going up in smoke, literally leaking out of our homes and businesses.

Affordable heat means lowering bills. Every year Vermont struggles to fund low income heating assistance (LIHEAP). With affordable heat, Vermont can reduce the funds needed and can use LIHEAP dollars to help more Vermonters. Cutting fuel use by one-quarter means that for every four homes that are weatherized, help is available for one additional family.

Affordable heat reduces pollution. Every gallon of fossil fuel we don’t burn means less pollution. Whether we are adding solar to our roofs or insulating/weatherizing our homes we leave a lasting positive legacy for our children by taking seriously our responsibility to tackle climate change and reduce pollution.

The long and short of it is that Vermont — and Vermonters — can’t afford to keep wasting energy, wasting money and wasting clean air. Vermont’s commitment to affordable heat is our ticket to more comfortable homes and businesses, and a thriving and affordable clean energy economy.

A few weeks ago, Springfield, MA, was rocked by a natural gas explosion that destroyed a building, ruined a city block, and was hailed as a miracle because no lives were lost.

The pipelines that lie below our communities, always out of sight, came suddenly came into focus. The explosion reminded us of the sobering reality that our streets are not always safe. Despite smart investments in energy efficiency and new energy technologies in New England, when it comes to natural gas, whose infrastructure is among the oldest in the nation, we have been reluctant to prioritize investment in replacing and repairing the pipes and valves that we rely upon not only to heat and power our homes, but to keep us safe.  When it comes to natural gas efficiency and investment, there is much more we can do – so much more.

We need to improve safety, increase efficiency, and reduce the risk to communities and to our planet. It is my belief, as well as that of my colleagues here at CLF, that we can and should make our communities healthy and safe from the unnecessary risk of explosions from old and leaky pipelines. This is vital, for two reasons.

It’s vital because methane, the major component of natural gas, is 25 times more potent as a global-warming causing gas than CO2. In a year that has broken so many temperature records, and in an age when climate is showing the signs of human distortion, we are constantly reminded of the strain we are placing on our global ecosystem. It is a strain we need to urgently reduce.

It is also vital to replace and fix pipes leaking natural gas because it is so combustible. Springfield reminded us of this fact. So too did the explosions that that rocked San Bruno, California in 2010, Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2011, and Gloucester, MA in 2009, and most recently, Sissonville, West Virginia, to name only a few. These explosions are reminders of the serious care and attention that our natural gas infrastructure needs. If we fail to provide them with that care, we gamble with our safety, and with our lives, as this image from the San Bruno explosion vividly shows.

As my colleague Shanna Cleveland recently said, “The need for action is particularly acute in Massachusetts where over one-third of the system is considered ‘leak-prone’—made up of cast iron or unprotected steel pipe.” The leaks in Massachusetts are so significant that the gains by efficiency programs put in place by Massachusetts regulators are disappearing into thin air. A report released by CLF by that name (Into Thin Air, available to download for free here) documents how these leaks, known as “fugitive emissions,” are being borne not by the utilities, or by the regulators, but by consumers. Utilities pass the cost of lost gas onto ratepayers to the tune of $38.8 million a year. Here’s an infographic from that report:

Another report by Nathan Phillips of Boston University combines Google Earth and research into a compelling visualization of just how prevalent these leaks are.

Like the explosion in Springfield, Nathan’s map documenting the 3,356 separate natural gas leaks under the streets of Boston reminds us that, as we walk or drive down the street, we are often driving through an invisible cloud of natural gas leaking from aging pipes. If you are like me, to accept the avoidable risk of a predictably volatile gas is deeply unsettling.

With the exuberance for cheap, domestic natural gas on the rise, proposals for new massive interstate pipelines are in the works. Houston-based Spectra, a natural gas pipeline company, is proposing a $500 million expansion for Massachusetts alone. Before we go down that route, I would like to make three simple suggestions.

1) Whether the natural gas industry ever delivers on its claim of being more environmentally friendly than coal or oil depends on how well natural gas infrastructure addresses leaks. We develop more accurate tools for assessing the greenhouse gas emissions from pipelines.

2) Not only is investment in new pipelines and power plants expensive, but it comes with serious and lasting environmental consequences whose costs are too often discounted or ignored.  Before we blindly rush ahead with investments to expand, we need to look closely at the full range of costs.

3) Finally, we would do well to remember the lessons we have learned so well about the environmental and financial benefits of looking to efficiency first. Efficiency, both in the traditional sense of reducing our use of natural gas, and in the sense of maximizing the efficiency of our existing natural gas infrastructure by replacing outdated infrastructure and repairing leaks will reduce risk, reduce costs, reduce environmental impacts and put people to work throughout the region.

As the explosions in San Bruno, Gloucester, Allentown, and Springfield have reminded us, this is about the safety of our communities. We should not let promises of short-term profit in new projects trump both the near-term risk of thousands of leaks and the long-term sustainability of this region and stability of our climate.

Ignoring leaky natural gas infrastructure is risky business. Let’s fix what we have, and maximize our efficiency gains, before aggressively expanding. We’ll be more sustainable, and safer, that way.

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.

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.

CLF is pushing the ISO-NE to fully and properly account for all of the valuable energy-efficiency programs that the six New England states are already operating.

Energy efficiency is the cleanest and cheapest way for New England to meet its energy needs. We can save money and create jobs while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. To learn more about what CLF is doing to promote energy efficiency, click here.

“ISO-NE” stands for Independent System Operator-New England; this is the organization of engineers and technical experts that runs New England’s electricity grid. To learn more about CLF’s work with ISO-NE, click here.

Together, the six New England states are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on energy efficiency programs. In 2011, the ISO created an “Energy Efficiency Forecast Working Group” to forecast how much energy efficiency was actually going to get bought for all that money. CLF has been participating in this ISO-NE Working Group since its inception.

The first report of this Working Group, published in April 2012, was very exciting, because it predicted that more than 100% of projected electricity load increases for New England over the next three years could and would be achieved  through energy efficiency, not from new generating plants. This is good news for the environment because it means lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, CLF thought that there were some mistakes in the forecast, mainly from under-counting the energy efficiency expenditures of those states (Massachusetts and Rhode Island) that had made the most enthusiastic commitments to energy efficiency.

On July 11, 2012, CLF sent a letter to the ISO-NE’s Energy Efficiency Forecast Working Group, urging it not to repeat those same under-counting mistakes in its work on the 2013 energy efficiency forecast. You can see the full text of CLF’s letter, here.

Ultimately, energy efficiency is paid for by electricity customers. In order for ratepayers to get all they efficiency they are paying for, the ISO-NE needs to count all the money that is being spent.

If CLF’s recommendations are adopted by the Working Group, it will benefit ratepayers by reducing electricity bills; and it will benefit the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a classic win-win!

This Sunday, an Op-ed of mine appeared in The Portsmouth Herald. Below find a copy of the original text. You can find a copy of the original story here.

The nation and New Hampshire are relying less and less on coal — our dirtiest, least efficient fuel — to meet our electric power needs. PSNH recently announced it is not operating its flagship coal plant, Merrimack Station in Bow; the plant will sit completely idle for six months of 2012. The two coal boilers at PSNH’s Schiller Station in Portsmouth will operate even less. Yet, PSNH customers continue to pay a premium to keep PSNH’s coal plants on life support, thanks to a regulatory system that protects PSNH’s interests over those of ratepayers.

Coal-fired power plants — expensive new facilities and decades-old dinosaurs like PSNH’s plants alike — can’t compete in today’s marketplace. Investors and customers are moving toward cleaner, cheaper alternatives, principally natural gas, but also renewables (especially wind) and high-tech ways of reducing energy use. Northeast Utilities — PSNH’s parent company — admits that this reality is not going away anytime soon.

Indeed, the trend is accelerating. In the first quarter of 2012, coal power accounted for only 36 percent of the nation’s total electric output — the smallest role for coal in a generation and down almost 9 percent from the first quarter of 2011. Regionally, a new milestone came in April, when the New England regional electric grid operator announced that, during the previous month, the entire New England coal fleet was uneconomic — meaning there was not a single hour when a coal plant was able to compete with other energy sources. Despite coal’s downward trajectory, PSNH made big bets that the market for coal-fired power will exist for years to come. Exhibit A: PSNH’s investment — over vigorous opposition from the Conservation Law Foundation, ratepayer advocates and others — in a $422 million life extension project for Merrimack Station. If PSNH gets its way, ratepayers will foot the whole bill, plus a 10 percent guaranteed profit for PSNH’s sole shareholder, Northeast Utilities.

Why has PSNH been so richly rewarded for bad economic decisions? Put simply, New Hampshire’s relic of a regulatory system still protects PSNH and its coal plants from the market. Remarkably, ratepayers continue to pay for upkeep and staffing at PSNH power plants, even when they sit idle, and also pay that same 10 percent profit on the book value of all PSNH assets. No other power plant owner in New England gets such special treatment. Yet PSNH continues to sidestep scrutiny.

Earlier this year, following a massive lobbying effort orchestrated by PSNH, the New Hampshire House voted to table a bill that would have forced a hard look at PSNH’s continued ownership of these obsolete power plants.

In the meantime, PSNH remains in an economic “death spiral” with few large business customers to cover its costs and its remaining customers — homeowners and small businesses — now paying as much as 50 percent more for power than customers of other utilities, which get their power from the competitive market. Under the status quo, PSNH will siphon more than a $100 million in above-market costs out of the New Hampshire economy this year.

For the environment, the climate, and the long-term public and fiscal health of the communities surrounding these plants, coal’s demise is encouraging news. The market is providing an unprecedented opportunity to relegate coal power to the history books for good. New Hampshire should seize it.

This week Rhode Island’s dominant utility, National Grid, made its first-ever filing with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) under Rhode Island’s newly enacted “revenue decoupling” statute. Grid’s filing resolves once and for all a debate that has been swirling around the environmental community in Rhode Island (and the rest of New England) for years – 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.

In response to Grid’s filing with the PUC, the PUC opened a new docket (case) to consider decoupling.  CLF has filed papers to intervene in (participate in) this new PUC docket as a full party; you can see CLF’s Motion To Intervene here.

Grid’s highly technical, 51-page filing with the PUC this week 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. And in just this first year of operation, Rhode Island electricity ratepayers will receive a collective refund from National Grid of over a million dollars.

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. First, decoupling adjustments tend to be small, even miniscule. Compared to total residential retail rates, decoupling adjustments have been most often under two percent, positive or negative, with the majority under 1 percent. Second, 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.

And this week, Grid filed its first report under the new Rhode Island decoupling statute and under the PUC rules. It shows that, on the electricity side, Grid is going to rebate to Rhode Island ratepayers just over a million dollars for the year just ending.

Remember the two points that CLF’s expert witnesses made in the decoupling dockets that we lost in 2008 and 2009.

• First, decoupling adjustments tend to be very small, even miniscule.

• Second, decoupling adjustments go both ways. Sometimes ratepayers pay a little extra; sometimes ratepayers get a rebate.

Grid’s filing this week in the PUC shows that CLF was correct on both points. This time, ratepayers are getting a rebate. And, yes, the amount is small. For the average (500 kilowatt-hour per month) electricity customer, the rebate will be 7¢ per month, or 84¢ per year. (And, yes, the adjustments can go both ways, and next year there might be a miniscule surcharge.) Meanwhile, everyone in Rhode Island enjoys the savings and efficiency benefits that decoupling enables – and the environment enjoys lower carbon emissions.

I think 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.

The Patrick Administration recently released new rules on biomass energy that will do more to protect critical forest resources. Photo credit: Lizard10979 @ flickr.

Last week, the Patrick Administration released new proposed final rules and guidance on the state’s incentives for biomass energy. It is a big win for our forests, for the role of science in policy making, for efficiency, and for environmental advocates across Massachusetts. I’m proud of the Patrick administration for their tireless work on this issue.

So, what exactly IS biomass? Generally speaking, in the energy context, “biomass” refers to a class of fuels derived from trees and plants. Other types of biomass fuel are organic wastes such as livestock manure, spoiled food, and even sewage. These fuels are, in turn, converted into various forms of useful energy (electricity, heat, transportation fuels) by a very broad spectrum of established and emerging technologies.

When we hear about biomass energy, most often the focus is on large electric power plants. There are many such biomass power plant proposals pending throughout New England, including several in Massachusetts. We hear about them in the news, but rarely is there much talk about why so many biomass power plants are in the permitting pipeline right now. Although not often noted, the reality is that these projects are responding to state and federal economic incentives.

One might assume that state and federal biomass incentives are specifically designed to promote projects consistent with our clean energy and climate objectives, right? Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

Understanding of the substantial potential climate and environmental impacts of biomass power plants has lagged behind the incentive programs. When the incentive programs were created, no one was focused on the potential climate impacts of building power plants that burn whole trees to produce electricity, for example. The thinking was that if a tree were used as fuel, it simply needed to be replaced with a newly planted tree and – voila! – some of our energy needs would be met with a “renewable” fuel.

To the contrary, as we now understand, burning whole trees as fuel results in a climate “double whammy”:

1. Instantaneously releasing all the carbon stored in each tree into the atmosphere; while also
2. Taking whole trees out of commission as carbon “sinks,” no longer capturing and storing new carbon emissions.

Thankfully, the last few years have provided a huge wake-up call. We’ve seen an increasing body of peer-reviewed science about the potential climate impacts of irresponsible use of biomass energy. The forward-looking Patrick Administration itself commissioned a groundbreaking study, culminating in the 2010 “Manomet Report,” to bring that science home to Massachusetts in the context of a hard look at better-designed state incentives for biomass. And now, just last week, the Patrick Administration released new proposed final rules and guidance that infuse this science into the state’s biomass incentives. You can read a copy of CLF’s official statement here.

From a preliminary review, we are delighted to see that the newly proposed Massachusetts rules embrace the three key pillars of responsible policy governing biomass incentives:

1. Adopting science-based standards to seriously account for the climate impacts of eligible biomass facilities and the fuels they use, and ensuring that incentives no longer will be directed toward projects that can seriously undermine our climate objectives;
2. Curbing wasteful use of limited biomass resources by requiring most eligible facilities to meet a minimum efficiency standard of 50-60% (as compared to many existing facilities that are in the range of only 25% efficient);
3. Protecting forests against over harvesting of biomass fuels, for example by prohibiting the harvest of fuels from old growth forests or steep slopes that are vulnerable to erosion, requiring minimum amounts of tree tops and limbs to be retained on the forest floor to replenish nutrients and provide habitat, etc.

Hats off to the Patrick Administration and the team of policymakers who worked tirelessly to infuse the science into such an important policy! They appear to have done a remarkable job balancing many competing interests and considerations, setting a standard that we hope other states and the nation will follow.

The run-up to the holidays is always a busy time of year, and can make us all feel a bit overstretched. That’s certainly true at CLF.

In fact, at times this fall it has felt like we’ve been at a pre-holiday pace since Labor Day. In preparing an internal President’s Report in December, I realized I could only capture a fraction of our accomplishments – the tip of a large iceberg of great work that we love to do.

I worry sometimes, frankly, that we love it too much. My concern for all of us (in CLF and in every cause-driven organization) is that we take care of ourselves as we do what we do. This includes optimizing our efficiency, taking time off to recharge, leaving work at work, and of course selecting work carefully so that we spend our time and energy wisely. These are relatively objective elements of prudent and careful management.

It also includes the more subjective, human-oriented, affective things we all do – as human beings – to feel fulfilled, grounded and happy: asking for, receiving and giving help, supporting our partners and being supported by them, sharing common cause. There is nothing quite so energizing and gratifying as knowing that we’re in it together.

This past year was replete with examples of how we at CLF do this at the inter-organizational level. We partnered with other groups, we led coalitions, we leveraged our work for the benefit of similarly-aligned organizations with complementary skills, we developed strategy in cooperation with others and implemented it jointly. As I said in a recent letter to The New York Times, it’s “a great time to be in the environmental movement.” These partnerships are one of the reasons; they sustain us.

As we round the dark corner of the year and head into the light, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a joyous new year.