Expensive Renewable-Energy Report Completed But There Are No Plans to Advance Its Recommendations
By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff
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The Road to 100% Renewable Electricity by 2030 in Rhode Island outlines how established incentives and power mandates can achieve the target through a mix of programs and energy sources, such as offshore wind and small solar arrays.
The report notes that sharing out the
power production creates equilibrium between costs, economic growth, emission
reductions, and environment justice.
Single solutions, like
maxing out the Renewable Energy Standard
(RES), can meet the target, but the 99-page report points out the drawbacks of
going all in on one approach.
Since it was established in 2004, RES has quietly increased the state’s amount of so-called green energy, at least on paper. It’s one of the few renewable-energy programs mandated by the General Assembly, and it works by requiring National Grid to buy renewable-energy credits (RECs) from commercial solar, wind, and other types of renewable sources.
Through the program, National Grid increases Rhode Island’s renewable electricity pool 1.5 percent annually. This year, 17.5 percent of the state’s energy supply is expected to come from renewables. The renewable mandate caps out at 38.5 percent in 2035.
The report, released in December, calls for increasing the RES mandate to 100 percent by 2030, which can be done by state lawmakers. National Grid has expressed a willingness to go along. But this renewable-energy expansion alone won’t achieve the mission.
RES
isn’t perfect. It uses power from high-carbon-emitting energy
producers that run on wood. RES is an accounting system that assigns
renewable energy to the state from power entities located across New England
and New York. So it doesn’t favor development of Rhode Island-based
renewable-energy systems. It, therefore, omits some of the local economic
benefits and reductions in pollution and emissions that local renewables deliver.
The report notes that an
oversupply of RECs in the market reduces their price and may ultimately lower
demand for green power from states with such programs. A flood of RECs blunts
the goal of offering a financial incentive to build and run renewable-energy
systems. Therefore, it may not always meet its goal of displacing fossil-fuel
power plants.
Increasing demand
Renewable power from all sources will be called upon as Rhode Island and southern New England increase their electricity usage beyond 2030, as the transportation and heating sectors ramp up electrification. According to estimates by The Brattle Group, the Boston-based consultants who wrote the recent report, electricity demand more than doubles from current usage by 2050.
Rhode Island’s
electricity demand is expected to more than double by 2050. (The Brattle Group)
RES and other incentives
also don’t pay attention to equity for communities of color or
environmental-justice communities.
For that, the report
recommends shifting the narrative on equity from focusing solely on income,
“which fails to provide a full accounting of those in need,” and instead
emphasizes demographics, income, renter status, “and other metrics that provide
more of an intersectional approach to the problem.”
The equity
recommendations are short on details but suggest listening, discussions, and
outreach spearheaded by existing groups like the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council.
Community groups should be relied on to decide which solutions to adopt to
address technological access and housing and health issues, according to the
report.
The Brattle Group
recommends borrowing best practices from jobs programs in other states to
establish community-based training programs for employment in the
renewable-energy sector. The report also notes that new renewable-energy
programs should include consumer protections for frontline communities and aid
to low- and moderate-income households that go beyond installing technology to
include plans for helping with upkeep and services.
“We must ultimately
strive to prioritize the concerns of the community and address systemic
inequities from our position of power as best we can,” according to the report.
A recent press release from the Rhode Island Office of
Energy Resources (OER) applauds Gov. Gina Raimondo for having the study done.
Now that Raimondo is leaving for a job in the Biden administration, the fate of
this project and other climate-related initiatives is unclear.
Even though the Jan. 13
press release says the new report “details analysis and pathways to reach that
bold, but achievable goal” — meeting 100 percent of Rhode Island’s electricity
demand with renewables by 2030 — there are no immediate plans to advance the
recommendations in The Brattle Group report.
OER director Nicholas
Ucci said the information is public and available to policymakers and
stakeholders to use. Some efforts are already underway, he noted, such as a draft request for proposal for up to 600
megawatts of offshore wind energy.
The Brattle Group report
cost $355,000 and was paid for by OER. The 11-member agency is funded by the
system benefits charge paid by electricity ratepayers.
When asked how the change of leadership in the governor’s office might influence the plan, OER spokesperson Robert Beadle said, “We are not at liberty to comment on the governor’s transition at this time.”
Rhode Island has a
number of renewable options that offer different economic benefits. (The
Brattle Group)
Economic benefits
The Brattle Group report contrasts costs of each portfolio with economic
benefits. Energy prices, according to the report, can be controlled by
procuring power directly from competitive bidding. Costs can be reduced through
regional sharing of expenses, and by adopting demand-management systems and
expanding energy storage.
National Grid has suggested that the report pay more attention to the implications of having too much renewable energy in the region. A Nov. 6, 2020 letter noted that renewable-energy projections by the regional grid operator, ISO New England, have consistently underestimated the amount of renewable power coming to the grid, a surge that may get much worse with the influx of offshore wind energy.
This creates two problems: excess unused energy that forces temporary
usage of fossil-fuel power and higher costs for expanding the transmission
system and expenses for interconnecting renewable sources to the power grid.
The Brattle Group
responds in the report by noting that the state should work through a 2017 directive by
Raimondo asking state energy offices to collaborate to control the long-term
costs of the power sector transformation. This included offering more energy
options and building a flexible grid to integrate more renewables.
“These investments can
reduce the cost of maintaining the electric grid and can allow more distributed
energy resources to connect to the grid with less-expensive system upgrades,”
according to The Brattle Group.
Environmental groups
support the recommendations outlined in last month’s report but worry that the
ideas will collect dust like last year’s report on heating sector transformation,
also done by The Brattle Group.
“The Road to 2030 could
be an exciting initiative — if this study is accompanied by a detailed plan of
immediate action from (OER),” according to a letter signed by the Acadia
Center, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, the Green Energy Consumers
Alliance, and The Nature Conservancy. “Making a commitment to decarbonization
is not the same as doing the work and passing the necessary policies to make it
happen.”
The renewable-energy
advocacy group Northeast Clean Energy Council (NECEC)
advocates for planning beyond 2030, when energy demand will be much greater,
with an increased emphasis on energy storage to address the intermittency of
wind and solar power.
“Driving in-state
deployment will give Rhode Island greater control over its clean-energy destiny
and will be especially crucial in delivering local benefits to
environmental-justice populations that all too often bear a greater burden from
local pollution and lack access to the economic benefits of clean energy,”
according to NECEC.