Posts by
Executive Director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance
Massachusetts and Rhode Island are nationally recognized as clean energy leaders. The gains made to date are impressive, but mitigating climate change necessitates even more substantial investment in efficiency, renewables, and emerging technologies.
Massachusetts is one of a few states allowing cities and towns to aggregate consumers for the purchase of electricity. In the last year, we have seen a good number of communities take the opportunity to do just that in ways that are bringing on significantly more renewable energy than required by state law. The first to commit was Melrose, followed by Dedham. Both started their programs in January 2016. But this year, many more are following suit in the world of “Green Municipal Aggregation” or “Community Choice Energy”. This summer, programs are starting in Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Lexington, Somerville, Sudbury, and Winchester.
When we started our Drive Green with Mass Energy & People's Power & Light program on November 2nd, we felt like we were catching a fast moving train. And nine months into the program, we can say that that’s an understatement. Month after month, sales in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, the US, and the world are significantly higher than a year before. Here in America, we have seen strong sales from Tesla (Models S and X), Chevrolet Volt and Bolt, Toyota Prius Prime, and Nissan LEAF. But where is this all going?
We’ve written several blog posts about the environmental, health, and economic benefits of electric vehicles. Understanding these benefits helps to drive consumer demand for EVs, which helps to accelerate their adoption. When it comes to fully transitioning away from gas-powered cars, consumer demand is one piece of the equation, but the build-out of charging infrastructure is the other. There are important decisions to be made in this regard. Here I explain what is taking place and how you can weigh in to the public process.
As a nonprofit organization, we’re not here to tell you how to vote, but we can speak out on the president’s policies. We’ve already commented on his appointees. A truly comprehensive article covering the range of his energy policies would be quite long, so for this piece, I will cover just a few of the more recent announcements of particular relevance to consumers and the environment.
Americans are now spending less on energy as a percentage of income than ever recorded. That’s a finding from a recent study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. On average, consumers spend just four percent of their incomes on electricity, heat, and transportation. This statistic is a clear pushback against those who would say that “we cannot afford clean energy.” It also points out that our economy has changed over the years in such a way that we don’t need to burn as much stuff in order to make a living.
In a 1932 Supreme Court decision Judge Louis Brandeis famously wrote in a dissenting opinion, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
There’s a bromance going on between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It’s bizarre and has all kinds of serious implications for national security, foreign policy, human rights, and more. The focus of this blog is about how their shared agenda would have us relapse into a deeper addiction to petroleum.
If you have been thinking about getting a car in the next few weeks or months, let me see if I can persuade to act now through our Drive Green program before the New Year. Here are the reasons:
Our Drive Green program is still very new, but already we have some participants who just love their new cars. If you’ve been wondering whether an EV is right for you, check out what these folks have to say:
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