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.

Hands Across New Hampshire protest, Deerfield, NH, September 1, 2012 (photo credit, Wes Golomb, Bear Brook Photography)

After a summer when many in New Hampshire expected to hear about a revised route and a renewed public relations campaign for the Northern Pass transmission project, the current proposal, which surfaced almost two years ago, is facing new obstacles:

• On the heels of its successful campaign to protect the Balsams, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests has announced a new $2.5 million land conservation plan that seeks to stymie the new North Country route Northern Pass has been trying to assemble for more than a year. The fund-raising campaign to support the Forest Society’s plan appears to be off to a good start.
• Last Saturday, in a peaceful statewide event called Hands Across New Hampshire, hundreds of concerned citizens across New Hampshire – from Manchester to Colebrook – joined about a dozen spirited protests against the project. The picture above shows the protest along PSNH’s existing transmission corridor in Deerfield, the proposed southern terminus of the line. The protests showed that grassroots opposition is strong in the North Country but also in the central and southern parts of the state.
• Every gubernatorial candidate on the ballot is on the record calling for careful consideration of alternatives to the current proposed overhead lines, and many are agreeing with CLF that the current proposal does not provide any real benefits for New Hampshire residents and ratepayers.
• A legislative commission is evaluating the feasibility of using state-owned transportation corridors, including rail beds and highways, for high voltage transmission projects like Northern Pass, an approach that Maine and other states are pursuing. The commission already has heard from state agencies and the makers of high-tech underground transmission technology, and it is now evident that burying transmission lines in available state highways and rail corridors is potentially practical and viable. The commission’s work will culminate in a report to the Legislature later this year.
• In yesterday’s provincial election, Québec’s Liberal government – the sponsors of Québec’s energy strategy and Hydro-Québec’s plans to export more hydropower to New England through Northern Pass – was ousted from power. Although the sovereigntist Parti Québecois, which will lead a new coalition government, has committed to continue the Liberal government’s Plan Nord (with its substantial hydropower component), it is unclear how these political changes will affect Québec’s and Hydro-Québec’s relationships with Northern Pass, especially in light of the declining economic value of the project for Québec.

It is long past time for Northern Pass to acknowledge (contrary to Northeast Utilities’ recent sunny pronouncements to investors) that the current proposal – new route north of Groveton or not – is a non-starter in New Hampshire. Instead, we should be shelving this fatally flawed proposal, critically exploring whether and to what extent hydropower imports are needed, evaluating all the alternatives in an open and well-informed planning process, and continuing to pursue greater regional consensus and coordination to build a real clean energy economy with broadly shared benefits, on both sides of the border.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

Perry Marine & Construction workers lower the second of four turbines into place in ORPC's TidGen™ turbine generator unit (TGU) which will be installed at ORPC's Cobscook Bay project site in August. Photo courtesy of ORPC.

Ceaseless, predictable, powerful – the tide is all of these things. We may be adding “illuminating” to that list as our nation’s first grid-connected commercial tidal energy project gets underway off the coast of Maine and begins to light up homes sometime in August. As part of a renewable energy plan, tidal energy may hold great promise for a cleaner energy future. It’s a relatively simple process to convert the kinetic energy of tides into power for the grid (not much different from a wind turbine, really) – but the process of siting and building tidal energy farms in our coastal waters is much more complex.

Cobscook Bay off Eastport, Maine may be one of the most ideal spots in the US for tidal energy. It sits at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy – which has the most extreme tidal fluctuations in the world (an average of 24 feet). It also enjoys a high level of biodiversity – with an abundance of migratory shorebirds and waterfowl, as well as finfish, lobsters, scallops, and clams. Critically endangered North Atlantic right whales use the area. Tourism, fishing, and aquaculture are important parts of the economy here. There are many stakeholders involved in an area where so many depend on the ocean for their livelihoods as well as for tourism and recreation.

The Cobscook Bay Tidal Energy Project from the Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) has been ramping up since 2006. The company is set to deploy its first turbine in mid-August, and hopes to add several more in the coming decade.

In general, the process to site and build a tidal energy project involves the input and coordination of several federal, state, and local government agencies working with numerous existing energy production and environmental laws, as well integrating input from citizen and environmental groups, the energy industry, fishermen, and other stakeholders. Maine recently streamlined the process for developing tidal energy projects, and is now the only state on the East Coast with a formal agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to ensure federal and state coordination in the regulation of this new industry. But the process is still quite involved.

Complicated, right? Well, if this small commercial project in Eastport and others like it are successful, tidal energy is likely to grow in our coastal waters, and along with it, the challenges of planning for it. Recent U.S. Department of Energy reports find that ocean current power resources could potentially provide up to 250 terawatt-hours of electricity per year nationally (our current demand is around 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity per year). Given the likelihood that ocean energy production is going to grow rapidly and dramatically, we need a better way through the process of planning for new energy development while protecting our valuable ocean resources and traditional uses.

The development in Eastport, Maine might provide some useful lessons in how to approach a project like this at a community level, using the principles of Regional Ocean Planning.

Chris Gardner, Executive Director of the Eastport Port Authority, said ORPC began working with the Port Authority and with local stakeholders from the very beginning of the process in 2006. The Port Authority saw the project as potentially benefitting the community economically, but were “very watchful about how they did their business and if they did it the right way” said Gardner. Fishermen were especially concerned about the project – worried that structures or construction activity would interfere with fishing grounds. According to Gardner, the company took the approach that it was ORPC’s own “responsibility to prove their case.”

John Ferland, ORPC Vice President, talked to me about what the company did to garner community support and ease concerns about tidal energy. First and foremost, he emphasized the importance of communicating with local residents and getting them involved as much as possible. “We have had so many meetings over the last several years. For a while there were a couple of community style meetings a year, and all sorts of private interactions and group meetings in between – city council meetings, selectmen, lots of informal meetings” said Ferland. “The State of Maine Ocean Energy Task Force cited ORPC’s efforts as a model for other ocean energy developers to follow,” he added.

The Cobscook Bay Resource Center facilitated a series of stakeholder and community meetings, as well as provided detailed information about the project on their website. (There is a really interesting clip from the PBS “Sustainable Maine” video with interviews of many of the people involved in and potentially affected by the project, as well as footage of how the turbines will work.)

As a result of conversations with local fishermen, ORPC was able to site the project in an area that wouldn’t impede their fishing. As one fisherman said in the PBS video, “You gotta be careful of what goes where.” In Cobscook Bay, Ferland said, tidal energy is ideal in places that are not important to fishing due to the nature of the ocean bottom and the high currents.

In addition to meeting with stakeholders, ORPC has been working with the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences on fisheries concerns, and with the New England Aquarium to minimize future potential impacts on marine mammals. Whenever possible, said Ferland, they prefer to hire local citizens as employees, local subcontractors as service providers, and have trained local residents as certified marine mammal monitors as part of the NOAA NMFS-required data gathering effort.

Any major human activity in our oceans and coastal waters is going to involve making some decisions about the best place for certain uses. Regional Ocean Planning is the process of defining these uses and potential conflicts, and seeking the optimal path of sustainable development and resource protection. Using the principles of ecosystem-based management, gathering and sharing the best possible data about ocean uses and impacts, and making sure every stakeholder has a say in the process – that’s Regional Ocean Planning in a nutshell.

The phrase I heard over and over as I was researching tidal energy in the Gulf of Maine was, “It’s a good idea, as long as it’s done right.” Regional Ocean Planning can be used to help manage ocean uses the right way – by involving stakeholders at the very beginning of a project, and keeping them engaged throughout, by examining the social, economic, and environmental effects of the project, by filling the data gaps needed to make science-based decisions, and by making the process adaptive so that changes can be made as new information comes in.

The current project in Cobscook Bay might be the beginning of major tidal energy development in the Gulf of Maine. The process of planning and implementation will get more complicated as the scale gets bigger – there will be more stakeholders involved, more potential environmental impacts, and more activities in the water. It is important to have a process that works for everyone.

We all have a lot to gain from the full implementation of the National Ocean Policy. For more information about the need for Regional Ocean Planning check out these blogs about sea level rise, coastal pollution, and protecting endangered whales from ship strikes.

Last week I found myself on the beautiful shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont at the 36th Annual meeting of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers.

Normally, this meeting is a low key affair that doesn’t have a big impact on the place where it is being held. That was not the case this year. Protests outside the meeting drew attention to issues, like potential import of tar sands oil into New England, that were not on the formal meeting agenda.

An Op-Ed by CLF President John Kassel which ran in a number of regional newspapers before and after the meeting and can now be found on the CLF blog, as well as those protests and pointed inquiries by the press in the meeting forced drew focus towards important and contentious issues like tar sands oil imports and the Northern Pass project.

But the action inside the conference was real and important.  Some notable highlights:

• The Governors adopted a plan for “regional procurement” of renewable energy that creates an important framework for getting much needed clean renewable energy to get built across New England
• The Governors and Premiers came together to hail the progress that has been made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our shared region since 2001 and to lay out a framework for further action
• A plan was adopted for moving towards a cleaner transportation system that maintains and builds mobility while moving away from gasoline and other dirty fuels that produce a range of pollutants

The overall story here is of a cross-border region that is struggling to do the right thing for its economy and its environment.  The challenge we all face is ensuring that our states and provinces live up to the promises of their words, making the difficult transition away from dirty fossil fuels and providing leadership to both the United States and Canada to build a new clean energy economy.

Against a backdrop of protesters vehemently opposing bad proposals to bring energy from Canada into New England, governors from the six New England states this week demonstrated their commitment to a clean energy future for our region. They resolved to pool their buying power, regionally, for renewable energy. This will boost wind and solar energy, among other clean sources, at the best available price — a much-needed step on our path to affordable renewable energy and independence from dirty fossil fuels.

The resolution was announced at the 36th annual meeting of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers, held July 29th and 30th in Burlington, Vermont. The protesters outside the meeting had the attention of high-ranking officials from Canada, whose energy system has been linked with ours – in small ways so far – for decades.  That linkage could grow dramatically in the future, for mutual benefit.  Eastern Canada has the potential to serve markets all over New England with low-carbon, low-cost and clean electricity from renewable sources. And New England needs it, if we get it on the right terms.

The wrong terms are exemplified by the Trailbreaker proposal and the Northern Pass transmission project, the two Canadian energy proposals galvanizing protesters outside the meetings in Burlington. Trailbreaker would send slurry oil derived from tar sands in Western Canada to Portland, Maine by reversing the flow of the Portland-to-Montreal pipeline that has cut across Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine since it was built over 50 years ago. Northern Pass would cut a route running the length of New Hampshire, including through the White Mountains, for a high-voltage DC transmission line to deliver Canadian hydropower to parts of New England. In both cases, the environmental burdens far outweigh any benefits for our region.

However, long-term supplies of hydro, wind and other sources of power – that respect and significantly benefit the landscape through which they are transmitted, support rather than undermine the development of New England’s own renewable energy resources, replace coal  and other dirty fuels, keep the lights on at reasonable cost, and accurately account for their impacts – are what New England needs. The details will be complicated, but they can be worked out.

Conversations inside the meeting were tilting in the direction of such productive cross-border cooperation, and the announcement of a regional resolution to bring clean, affordable energy to New England may have provided some salve for the protesters. Still, we need to continue to be vigilant about Trailbreaker and Northern Pass and we will spend the effort to defeat them if we must. But any effort spent on these deeply-flawed proposals –whether advancing them or fighting them – is an unfortunate use of precious time for both countries, given the urgent call of climate change.

The sooner we get to the task of building our shared clean energy future the better, for New Englanders and our friends to the north.

The story of renewable energy development in the United States has included many important moments in which the states have provided leadership – most notably through fostering the shaping and building of new markets for renewable energy markets through programs like Renewable Energy Standards (also known “Renewable Portfolio Standards”).  These efforts have been of great value to the states who put them in place and have complemented and reinforced the incentives and programs to build up renewable energy resources like wind and solar by the Federal Government.

We are at a critical moment in the history of renewable energy development.  The collapse of coherent federal renewable energy policy, due to congressional inaction, in the form of failed attempts to put in place a Renewable Energy Standard and renew the Production Tax Credit, has created a greater need for state action – especially when clean renewable energy is an essential puzzle piece in solving the fundamental climate crisis that we face.

An interesting new element in this story is the quest by the New England States, working through a variety of vehicles, to develop a new “regional procurement” strategy that will allow the states to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits of renewable energy development for the region. This idea, also being discussed by leading scholars, could be a way to move forward smart and effective energy and climate policy, producing great value for a very reasonable investment.

This is far from a theoretical question.  Last year, in July 2011, the New England Governors directed their staff and the New England States Committee on Electricity who work with that staff, to continue to develop and build a mechanism for regional procurement. On July 29-30, 2012 the Governors meet again in Burlington Vermont and will hear a report on how that work has gone.  Will they take the critical step of moving beyond study and consideration of this idea and take action?

Moving to a clean energy future means keeping the dirty stuff out. If you are cleaning house in a dust storm, the first thing you do is close the door. 

photo courtesy of Zak Griefen

Environmental groups gathered to show the need to close the door in New England on tar sands oil – the dirtiest of dirty oil. We are moving in the wrong direction to bring oil in and through New England that increases global warming pollution even more.  

Tar sands are a carbon bomb that will catapult us past several dangerous climate tipping points. It has no part in our region’s clean energy future.

A new report, Going in Reverse: The Tar Sands Threat to Central Canada and New England, outlines an array of threats associated with tar sands.

In late May, a pipeline company announced it would reverse the flow of a 62-year-old pipeline bringing oil from southern Ontario to Montreal. Reversing the pipeline opend the door to another pipeline reversal enabling tar sands to flow through Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine. The tar sands industry has been in a desperate search for a port of export since the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects have become mired in controversy. CLF and others expressed concern that these proposals are being advanced by the same pipeline company responsible for the largest tar sands spill in U.S. history resulting the devastation of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. 

As the placard of one young CLF supporter noted, we need “More Tarzan, Less Tar Sand.” The help of a super-hero would be nice. In the meantime, let’s just shut the door.

Associated Press story:  Alarm Raised About Potential Tar Sands Pipeline

photo credit: flickr/brianjmatis

This week, the New England Power Generators Association (the trade group for most of the region’s power plant companies, also known as NEPGA) released a new study analyzing the potential effect of the Northern Pass project on New England’s energy market – the first independent study addressing this issue. More than two years after the deeply flawed energy study that Northern Pass’s developer commissioned and has cited unrelentingly since, NEPGA’s study is an important, credible contribution to the public discussion surrounding the Northern Pass project.

The new study’s conclusion: the supposed energy benefits of the project – that it will lower the region’s energy costs and diversify the region’s power supply – won’t materialize. The study also shows that the economic merits of the current proposal are much weaker today than they were when the proposal was formulated two years ago, due to reductions in the cost of natural gas.

You can read NEPGA’s press release about the study (PDF) here and the full study (PDF) here. You’ll find press coverage of the study in the Union Leader here, in the Concord Monitor here, on WMUR-TV here, and on New Hampshire Public Radio here.

A few key takeaways:

• The study’s finding that natural gas prices have declined is not news to Hydro-Québec or to Northern Pass’s developer, which is trumpeting new domestic natural gas supplies as a “game-changer.” What this means, in practical terms, is that the project will not put much downward pressure on the already-low regional market price of power. That’s a problem for Northern Pass: reducing regional energy costs is at the heart of the Northern Pass sales pitch. (As we’ve pointed out before, this “benefit” in fact perversely would put upward pressure on – rather than lower – the rates that most New Hampshire consumers pay.)
• With the economics of the project so tenuous, there is a clear risk that the proponents will seek to qualify Northern Pass power for the benefits afforded to new renewable energy sources under state clean energy laws, a legal change that would unfairly undermine the market for renewable energy development in New England. (The risk that hydropower imports will need subsidies to cover new transmission costs has also recently been cited by critics of the Champlain Hudson Power Express project in New York.) If it’s true, as proponents insist, that Northern Pass doesn’t need subsidies, New England should accept nothing less than a binding legal commitment from Hydro-Québec and Northern Pass’s developer not to seek or accept them.
• NEPGA’s study suggests that Northern Pass would shift Québec hydropower exports from New York and Ontario to New England. This effect may completely offset the supposed carbon emissions reductions from Northern Pass (which are inherently dubious for other reasons) because it is extremely likely that New York or Ontario would ramp up natural gas power plants to make up any deficit. In this regard, the study shows yet again that a rigorous big-picture regional analysis – of the kind that could be provided in the comprehensive regional assessment of our energy needs and the role, if any, for more Canadian imports that CLF and others have sought and Northern Pass’s developer has opposed – is essential to making a well-informed decision on a proposal like Northern Pass.
• The developer’s hair-trigger response – to question the credibility of the sponsors of the study and not the study’s actual findings, a classic Bulverism – speaks volumes. At every turn, the developer has refused to acknowledge or address the problems with its current proposal, even in the face of unequivocal facts that debunk the supposed benefits. Sadly, we can expect the potential rollout of the “new route” for a piece of the project later this summer to follow a similar script.

Above all, NEPGA’s new study underscores that that no one should rely on the stale, incomplete, and misleading information that Northern Pass’s developer is using to sell the project to the public and to government agencies. We need a much deeper, clear-eyed understanding of what Northern Pass would mean for the region’s energy consumers, New Hampshire communities, and the environment on both sides of the border.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

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.