An incisive and clear essay by Peter Rothstein, President of the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC), published on the Commonwealth Magazine website makes powerful and accurate points about the benefits of clean energy to the regional economy.  His analysis and arguments are deeply consistent with the points that CLF’s Jonathan Peress made in a recent entry on this blog outlining the benefits of the investments generated by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) documented in a study by the Analysis Group.

Unlike the attacks on the clean energy programs that he is responding to, Rothstein backs his assertions up with facts and figures. Here is a long quotation from his essay:

Clean energy investments have many positive benefits, making our energy infrastructure more efficient and sustainable and while growing the regional economy. Though you might not know it from the headlines, the clean energy sector is one of the few bright spots in the economy, growing steadily throughout the recession – 6.7 percent from July 2010 to July 2011 alone. Massachusetts is now home to more than 4,900 clean energy businesses and 64,000 clean energy workers – 1.5 percent of the Commonwealth’s workforce. This job growth is not a transfer of jobs from other industries – it’s a net increase that results from the Massachusetts innovation economy creating new value for national and international markets, not just local.

 Clean energy is starting to grow in much the same way as the IT and biotech sectors, which took decades to become powerhouses of our innovation economy. Massachusetts clean energy companies have brought significant new capital from around the world into Massachusetts, earning the largest per capita concentration of US Department of Energy innovation awards. Massachusetts companies have also brought in the second largest concentration of private venture capital in cleantech, a sector which grew 10-fold over the last decade.

 Consumers, businesses, and the Massachusetts economy all win if we stick with policies that drive clean energy investments. The combination of efficiency and renewables prescribed by the Green Communities Act is a positive force to control costs and make bills more predictable for consumers. While the prices of natural gas and oil are anything but predictable, the impact of investing in renewables is clear and positive as these technologies continue to get cheaper. Solar costs have come down nearly 60 percent since 2008 while wind turbine prices have dropped 18 percent.

It is indeed good news that new technologies not only confront the brutal logic of climate change but also boost our economy by virtue of being sound investments.  At such times as these, we should treasure every bit of good news we find.

Photo courtesy of kriswho @ flickr. Creative Commons.

If you listen to the word on street, or read the headlines, you’ll have heard that our times are hard times. Joblessness remains stubbornly high, markets remain volatile and credit is tight. Most people agree that what we need is a program to creates jobs, generates money, and reinvests each of those in our communities to make them stable, healthier and happier.

According to a study by The Analysis Group, it turns out that’s exactly what the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) – the country’s first market-based program to reduce power plant carbon emissions – has done. In its first three years, it has reduced greenhouse gas emissions, created jobs and fostered increased economic activity proving that addressing climate change is boosting the region’s economy. Simply put, efforts that increase efficiency and reduce fuel use benefit consumers, manufacturers and employers.

As the first regional program in the country, how well it is functioning is being observed by many: how much money will be generated, if any? Who does that money benefit? And, are customers bearing the brunt of this program in already hard times? The Analysis group answers these questions in full. In case you want them in short: $1.6 billion, customers and definitely not.

Outpacing now stalled negotiations on a national greenhouse gas trading program, ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states formed RGGI in 1999, setting a national precedent. The importance of the program is a combined function of its timing and its location: in addition to gaining first mover position, RGGI states are both populous and productive as they account for one-sixth of the population in the US and one-fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product.

These consumers, and this regional economy, now reflects a price on CO2 emissions. And after three years, the results are in. There are a few points to highlight.

First, the program is economically and environmentally effective. As power plant owners have spent roughly $912 million to buy CO2 allowances, emissions have gone down, as a consequence of both RGGI and larger economic trends. At the highest level, then, RGGI has proven to be economically productive while meeting its emission objectives.

Given the way RGGI dollars interact with local economies – through energy efficiency measures, assistance to low income customers to help pay their electricity bills, education and job training programs, and more – the dollars have multiplier effects. Once amplified by these local and regional programs, RGGI’s $912 million in allowance expenditures “produced to $1.6 billion in net present value (NPV) economic value added to the ten-state region.”

This money has created jobs and, in turn, kept money local. By generating a market, and a need for labor, RGGI created approximately 16,000 new job-years, or about 20% of the 73,000 civilian jobs lost from September 2010 to September 2011. Moreover, due to reduced demand and investment in energy efficiency, RGGI reduced the 10 states’ payments to out-of-region providers of fossil fuels “by just over $765 million.” New England in particular benefited greatly from this program.7,200 new job-years were created in New England alone, while the region reduced its payments to out-of-region fossil fuel providers by $210 million.

So too are the benefits to energy consumers. As a consequence of energy efficiency programs implemented by RGGI funds and focused on reducing consumption of oil and natural gas heat in homes, energy consumers across the region have saved nearly $174 million through RGGI programs. Furthermore, energy consumers came out ahead of power generators. “Of the three regions, only in New England do the savings to electricity consumers outweigh the reduction in revenues by power generators,” says the Analysis Group.

This benefit is most notably due to New England’s much-higher “level of investment in energy efficiency with RGGI allowance proceeds than the other regions.”At a time when jobs are scarce and the cost of heating a home is an ever rising burden, this is undoubtedly a good thing for New England.

As our country, and New England, faces tough times our politicians and people are calling for programs that create jobs, save money, and protect our environment. RGGI does all three.

photo credit: flickr/OpenThreads

The Northern Pass transmission project is being pitched by its developers as a clean energy proposal for New Hampshire. As I’ve pointed out before, Northern Pass is a regional proposal with dubious benefits in the Granite State. Unfortunately, the developers’ hollow promises have found an audience further south, in Massachusetts.

From the public discussion as well as the developers’ PR blitz, you might think that the Northern Pass – a high voltage transmission line that would extend 180 miles from the New Hampshire-Canada border, through the White Mountains, to Deerfield, New Hampshire – is just a New Hampshire issue. It’s not: the ramifications of this project extend well beyond New Hampshire.  The implications are both regional and enduring, as they will shape the energy future of New England for decades to come.

Given this context, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should be leading a pro-active, regional assessment of the options for additional imports of hydroelectric power from Canada. So far, DOE has squandered its opportunity to lead such an assessment while the Northern Pass permitting process remains on indefinite hold. Since April of this year, CLF has been urging the DOE to use this delay to deliver a fair, big picture review of the Northern Pass. It’s what New England deserves, and what DOE owes the public.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the media or the developers’ “MyNewHampshire” advertising campaign, Northern Pass also is a Massachusetts issue. Why? As if hidden in plain view, it’s at the center of Massachusetts’s plan to combat climate change. You might say it’s the elephant in the room.

Massachusetts’s 2010 “Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2020” (the Plan) seeks to reduce Massachusetts’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. CLF has applauded the Plan as an aggressive, nation-leading effort. However, we long have been dubious of the Plan’s reliance on potential imports of Canadian hydropower.

Regrettably, the final Plan (at pp. 45-46) uncritically bought the Northern Pass developers’ line that Northern Pass will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.1 million metric tons annually by 2020. Where does the Plan get that figure? The figure was never publicly vetted or discussed during the public planning process in which CLF was an active participant. The only citations are to the developers’ website and to a 2010 report by an energy consulting firm hired by the developers. That’s it. Massachusetts is taking the developers’ sales pitch at face value.

The Plan goes on to claim that Massachusetts can take credit for the entire reduction, even though the current Northern Pass proposal, by design, does not guarantee that Massachusetts customers will purchase any hydropower from Hydro-Québec through Northern Pass or otherwise. So, just how much of Massachusetts’s ambitious GHG reduction goal does Northern Pass’s supposed 5 million tons represent? More than 70% of the Plan’s reduction goal for the electric sector and more than 20% of the Plan’s goal overall. Of the Plan’s “portfolio” of initiatives, the Plan credits Northern Pass with achieving the single highest amount of emissions reductions.

Northern Pass is a highly questionable element of the Plan for a number of reasons. First, it’s not clear how much power Massachusetts will actually get from Northern Pass. Second, the project faces myriad permitting hurdles and isn’t anywhere close to a done deal. Third, Massachusetts has no direct role in the project’s development.

But it’s worse than that. The report by the developers’ consultant – and its 5.1 million ton estimate of Northern Pass’s reductions of GHG emissions – is simply wrong. The report’s error is a contagion that directly undermines the Plan’s ambitious GHG reduction goal.

To make a long story short, the report assumes that Canadian hydropower results in no GHG emissions. That assumption is contradicted by Hydro-Québec’s own field research on the GHG emissions from the recently constructed Eastmain reservoir – the very reservoir where, according to testimony by a developer executive, Northern Pass’s power will be generated.  Together with other scientific literature, the research demonstrates that reservoirs have long-term, non-zero net GHG emissions (in part because they permanently eliminate important carbon “sinks” that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as boreal forests). That makes the  5 million tons, at a minimum, blatantly inflated.

But even more importantly for Northern Pass and Massachusetts’s GHG reduction goal, the same research suggests that Northern Pass may not reduce GHG emissions at all before 2020, if ever. According to Hydro-Québec, a newly inundated reservoir has GHG emissions comparable to a modern natural gas power plant in the decade following flooding.  This chart from a Hydro-Québec paper, which itself likely underestimates reservoir emissions over time, tells the tale:

Natural gas plant and reservoir (Eastmain 1) emissions are similar in first decade of reservoir operation

And according to the developers’ projections, Northern Pass would overwhelmingly displace natural gas-fired generation (itself a missed opportunity to displace the output of coal-fired power plants).  If Northern Pass relies on new hydroelectric facilities in Canada for its power (as the developers and their consultant are assuming), Northern Pass as proposed will have no net effect on emissions in its early years and may never result in meaningful reductions, let alone 5 million tons per year.

Without the claimed reductions from Northern Pass, the Plan cannot come close to achieving the bold 25% reduction in GHG emissions that made headlines, even if every element of the Plan is implemented. In other words, there is a 5 million ton hole in the Plan that Massachusetts needs to fill with real and verifiable reductions.

CLF has been making this case during Massachusetts regulators’ review of the proposed merger of Northeast Utilities and NSTAR – the same companies behind Northern Pass – that week approval to form the largest electric utility in New England. Piggybacking on the Plan, Northern Pass’s developers are citing the emissions reductions from the project as the premier “climate” benefit that Massachusetts will supposedly get from the merger. That benefit appears right now to be a zero; particularly in light of the merger’s negative impacts, Massachusetts deserves a lot more to satisfy the “net benefit” standard that the merger must achieve to gain approval.

In the months ahead, we also will be pushing back against Hydro-Québec and its corporate allies in Massachusetts, who are now urging radical changes to Massachusetts’s clean energy laws that would subsidize large-scale hydropower imports, at the expense of local renewable energy projects that provide jobs and economic benefits in Massachusetts and throughout New England. The Plan itself explains the reason this is a bad idea – large hydro is a mature technology that is economic and cost-competitive without any additional public support; large hydro also has caused dramatic environmental damage and major disruptions to native communities in Canada. If imports secure little or no reduction in GHG emissions, the case for new subsidies disappears altogether.

Some may be hoping that no one is looking seriously at what Northern Pass would mean for the climate and that the Northern Pass debate will remain within New Hampshire’s borders. CLF, however, is committed to securing real scrutiny of Northern Pass’s misleading claims, ridding Massachusetts’s climate plan of its faulty reliance on Northern Pass, and advancing clean energy solutions that will, in fact, meaningfully reduce our region’s carbon footprint while enabling Massachusetts to achieve its full 25% reduction in GHG emissions by 2020.

The Eastmain Powerhouses from space (photo credit: NASA)

Beyond the discredited sales pitch that Northern Pass will lower electric rates in New Hampshire, the developers have repeatedly claimed that the power to be imported through the Northern Pass project will be “low-carbon,” “clean,” and “green,” with “no greenhouse gases,” and “no global warming.” The power will also, we’re told, “improve the quality of the air we breathe.” The developers have said, over and over, that the project “is expected to reduce regional carbon dioxide emissions by up to 5 million tons per year, the equivalent of removing from the road one million cars annually.” In fact, the study on which this claim is based – a report (PDF) commissioned by Northern Pass and authored by Boston-based energy consultant Charles River Associates – began with the assumption that hydro power is “zero-carbon.” Let me repeat that: the developers’ claim that the project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a net 5 million tons is based on their unexamined presupposition that the power to be delivered by the project has no carbon dioxide emissions at all.

There’s no other way to say it: this assumption is false.

You don’t have to take my word for it; read Hydro-Québec’s own research report (4.4 MB PDF) on the net greenhouse gas emissions of the Eastmain 1 Reservoir, flooded in 2005 (aerial shots here). In an Orwellian twist, the developers of Northern Pass have repeatedly cited this very same research.

The Hydro-Québec report found that net carbon emissions from Eastmain-1 were 500,000 tons in 2006 and 165,000 tons in 2009, and are projected to average approximately 158,000 tons per year on a long-term basis.  While certainly less than coal-fired power plants – PSNH’s Merrimack Station emitted more than 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2010 – 158,000 tons of net carbon emissions per year is far from ”zero-carbon” or even “low-carbon” power.  Based on our own survey of reservoir greenhouse gas research, we have some serious questions about the report, and there is reason to believe that it understates emissions over time and per unit of energy generated. But the report does confirm that Hydro-Québec’s reservoirs will continue to emit more greenhouse gases per year than the natural environment they flooded. These emissions are locked in for decades if not centuries – unlike a power plant that burns fuel, you cannot turn off a reservoir.

When compared with the power plants that Northern Pass’s power could displace, new hydroelectric projects in their early years of operation are no cleaner in terms of carbon emissions.  According to the report, ”it takes about five years for the accumulated CO2 eq. emissions to fall below the [natural gas combined cycle] value” (p.15). So, on a net and cumulative basis since its flooding in 2005, the Eastmain 1 Reservoir has had the same carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions as a modern natural gas power plant that has the same power output and began operating in 2005. 

The report also highlights what appears to be a clear difference between the net emissions of a newly impounded reservoir and the emissions of a reservoir that was impounded decades ago: a new reservoir emits more greenhouse gases, as the vegetation and organic material in the newly inundated area decompose.

This distinction is especially important when considering the contradictory stories we have heard about where Northern Pass will get its power. On the one hand, Northern Pass’s website claims (click on “Hydro-Québec” on this page) that “Hydro-Québec does not need to build any new generation to support this project.” On the other hand, it is clear that Québec is developing and planning vast new hydroelectric projects, many of which will require new inundation and reservoirs, as part of a concerted strategy to maintain and increase exports to New England and the northeast United States. See Erin’s blog post from yesterday for more on Vermont’s new long-term contract with Hydro-Québec. 

In fact, Charles River Associates’ fundamentally flawed estimate of carbon emissions reductions depends on the development of new hydro projects in Canada. And just ten days ago, in testimony to Massachusetts regulators, Northeast Utilities’ CFO David McHale stated under oath: “We already know for a fact that the utility Hydro-Quebec has initiated the construction of dams, and we’ve already entered into the record a discussion about the Eastmain Water Reservoir that will provide the water source. So this is not speculative. They’re building the dams and they will go into service; and that will be the primary source, if not the exclusive source, of energy that will flow over [the Northern Pass] line. . . . [T]hat is the full expectation.” What McHale was referring to is Hydro-Québec’s major new project in the vicinity of Eastmain-1 – the Rupert River project (project website here and explanatory animation here). Since 2009, this 918-MW project – now in the final stages of development – has newly flooded 346 square kilometers  - an area about the size of two Lake Winnipesaukees. That Northern Pass power will be coming from new projects means that Northern Pass will enable and contribute to the substantial carbon emissions associated with new reservoirs.  There has been no accounting of the potential emissions from the Rupert project and other future projects that Northern Pass may make possible, and how they would cut into the potential emissions reductions Northern Pass and Charles River Associates have claimed.

These inaccuracies and contradictions are being disseminated with hundreds of thousands of dollars in media buys, money which could have been invested in engaging in a collaborative process to rework the current proposal.  This situation makes CLF’s fight for a world-class, independent, and comprehensive permitting process all the more important.

CLF has been adamant that the Department of Energy must consider the environmental impacts – including greenhouse gas emissions – of the hydropower generation projects and any other power plants in Canada that will supply the Northern Pass project.  Given the developers’ recent announcement of new delays in their schedule, there’s still time for the Department of Energy to change course and answer our call for a regional, holistic analysis of the right approach to importing power from Canada, taking into account the truth about that power’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Mount Hope Bay (photo credit: John McDaid)

After nearly a decade, Weaver’s Cove Energy (WCE) finally abandoned its liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) terminal project that initially had been proposed for Fall River, MA and, more recently, for the middle of Mt. Hope Bay just off the shores of Somerset, MA. This puts to an end a project that would have required massive LNG tankers to pass through dozens of miles of waters adjacent to some of New England’s most densely populated coastlines, and would have included a four-mile-long cryogenically cooled LNG pipeline through critical winter flounder spawning habitat in Mt. Hope Bay and up the mouth of a federally designated Wild & Scenic River.

Despite significant litigation, extensive public opposition, and questionable economics, WCE LNG persisted for years in its ultimately fruitless pursuit of state and federal approvals for the project. For a number of those years, CLF took a leadership role in pressing for comprehensive environmental review, calling for a regional analysis of LNG terminal siting in New England, and insisting that federal authorities take a hard look at clean energy alternatives.

CLF is proud to share this victory with the many stakeholders who worked tirelessly to protect Mount Hope Bay, Narragansett Bay, and the Taunton River –from dedicated local activist Joe Carvalho to the talented attorneys representing the City of Fall River and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, and from tenacious members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation to former Fall River Mayor Ed Lambert who vowed “death by a thousand paper cuts” to WCE’s ill-conceived project.  Now, all of the people and natural resources that depend on these important waters no longer need to sing the “LNG Blues”!

Listen to “LNG Blues,” written and performed by local activists in Somerset, MA:

LNG Blues by conservationlawfoundation

Two of the best sources of information and dialogue about climate and related issues are the Climate Progress blog edited by Dr. Joseph Romm a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, author, former Clinaton Administration official and general smart guy (pretty much known to everyone as Joe) who is now assisted by longtime renewable energy writer/editor/video producer Stephen Lacey and the Dot Earth blog maintained on the New York Times website by Andrew Revkin, who started the blog while working as a staff reporter at the Times and has continued with it while moving to a new day job at Pace University (and yes, he is known to one and all, including people who just know him as the guitar player in Uncle Wade, as Andy).

Andy Revkin and Joe Romm often disagree in ways that can be grating and sometimes, less often, entertaining.   So it is striking when they converge on the same topics.

In a Dot Earth post on May 25 Revkin calls out with approval for Romm’s blog post about tornadoes and global warming quoting Joe’s conclusion that:

When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.

Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

In the same blog post Andy complements another Climate Progress blog post about the full greenhouse gas emissions associated with natural gas use, specifically discussing a new analysis from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (that is not yet peer reviewed) that, “appears to strongly undercut the widely cited conclusion by Robert Howarth of Cornell that leakage and other issues make natural gas a greater greenhouse threat than coal.”

These are two very important topics: the causal relationships that can be seen between global warming and our immediate environment, teasing apart the very real effects of climate change from other phenomena, and understanding the true environment effects of choices we make like increased extraction and use of natural gas.

When someone offers you a simple answer to a complicated and big problem be very suspicious.

Global warming, the ultimate in complicated and big problems, can only be addressed by deploying a wide array of tools aggressively and with honest awareness of what each tool can and can not do.

Some measures, like reducing energy use through efficiency and conservation or generating electricity from the wind or from sunlight, have a clear pollution reduction effect although measuring that effect and managing those resources to ensure they are as clean, affordable and effective as possible is not simple.

Other resources can best be thought of as being a choice between “less bad options” – a powerful example of this is the discussion of the relative greenhouse gas emissions (when you look at the full life cycle of the fuel and its uses) from coal and natural gas.

A paper by Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth has started a valuable dialogue about this important topic.  For a good discussion of that paper and the responses to it take a look at the New York Times blog post and news story about it as well as coverage in The Hill (a political publication in Washington) – and you can even read the paper for yourself.  MIT’s Technology Review also offers a perspective on this study.

The paper also figured in the Senate Committee hearing about hydraulic fracturing and natural gas held this morning.  If you really have nothing better to do check out the archived webcast.

Is natural gas only half as bad as coal?  Are they comparable? Is in fact gas worse under some circumstances?  These are all important questions but overlay the critical reality that both of these fossil fuels are simply not something we can rely upon in the long term to power our societies and our economies.

The explosion at a nearly-completed power plant under construction in Connecticut illustrates the direct dangers inherent in harnessing fuels like natural gas.  The accident occurred during the “purging” of the gas lines that were to provide the fuel for the plant – an activity of concern to some observers who believe it to be an unsafe practice, and even  has elicited investigation by the government regulators who oversee such plants.

The workers who lost their lives, or were injured, in the explosion, and their families, should be in the thoughts and prayers of all.

We should never forget that the power that we use to operate our homes, offices and wireless devices does not come free – and sometimes we pay that price with something more precious than mere money.  The implications and impacts of our flipping a switch and plugging in appliance are rarely visible but they are very real.

Georges Bank is the underwater icon of New England – a place of legendary bounty for those fishermen willing to brave dangerous storms in search of Atlantic cod. But, the Bank has always been more than a popular and productive fishing ground. In New England, it’s comparable to the Grand Canyon for its popular resonance and cultural significance. Georges Bank is part of our cultural heritage that ties us to New England.

Between 1976 and 1982, three oil companies drilled ten oil and natural gas wells on Georges Bank. They were stopped from additional drilling by Conservation Law Foundation, working fishermen and citizens from around the region. In 1998, President Clinton issued an Executive Order that prevented the leasing of any area in the North Atlantic and, as a result, all of the 1979 Georges Bank leases have been relinquished or have expired. However, in 2008 President Bush removed the moratorium on oil and natural gas drilling and the day before he left office. Georges Bank and the rest of New England’s ocean are again at risk of drilling.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimates that the entire Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, which includes Georges Bank, has 3.82 billion barrels of oil. This represents a meager 3.31% of all known and predicted US OCS reserves. According to the US Energy Information Administration statistics, US consumers would use up this oil supply in less than 185 days and the natural gas available would consumed in about 585 days.

We don’t need to gamble with New England’s oceans, wildlife and coastal communities by drilling for oil in the North Atlantic. The Mineral Management Service is taking comments until September 21st on a pro-drilling plan that was designed by the Bush administration to drill in New England’s ocean. Please click here to send a pre-written letter urging the MMS to protect our oceans and wildlife and to promote clean, renewable energy. After you take action, please share this post with family and friends. We need everyone to participate!

The health and security of our oceans, wildlife, coasts and communities depend upon an energy plan that protects and conserves our ocean wildlife and their important habitat areas.

Click here to act now.