From time to time, we report on how municipal aggregation is going in Massachusetts – and soon, Rhode Island. It’s that time again. For about 90% of the customers in each state, consumers have three choices for their electricity supply – the utility’s Basic Service, municipal aggregation if their community has adopted that model, or retail service from a (often predatory and greenwashing) competitive electricity provider. All of these customers receive delivery service (poles, wires, metering, billing) from regulated investor-owned utilities; the difference lies in the electricity supply. The remaining 10% of customers receive power supply from municipal utilities.
Municipal aggregation (also called “Community Choice Aggregation”) is defined as the process by which a city or town purchases its electricity in bulk on behalf of its community, including residential and commercial customers, often with the goal of reducing costs to ratepayers. Municipal aggregation was first enabled in Massachusetts in 1997. Building on this concept, Green Energy Consumers Alliance, in collaboration with Good Energy, LLC, developed “Green Municipal Aggregation” (GMA). The program first rolled out in Dedham and Melrose in January 2016 as a solution to incorporate a greater amount of renewable energy into these aggregation programs.
Of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, 215 cities and towns currently have an aggregation plan approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU). See our interactive map! They make up 70% of the total population of Massachusetts and 80% of the total that can be served by aggregations, which excludes communities served by municipal utilities.
Note that 49 cities and towns receive their power supply from municipal utilities.
Greener Power at Lower Cost
Municipal aggregation in Massachusetts has been prevalent for some time and continues to grow. We have some numbers to present that clearly show that, of the three ways to receive power supply, aggregation is the winner – hands down.
The GMA model uses the aggregation system to increase demand for new renewable energy generation beyond what is required by state law. While any amount beyond state law is welcome, we define GMA communities as having a default supply program with 5% or more Class I renewable energy certificates (RECs) above what is required by the state Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). For more on the background of aggregation, see our 2023 report “Green Power at Lower Cost.” For more on Class I RECs, see Appendix I of that report.
Currently, 69 cities and towns in Massachusetts have active GMAs. We estimate that these communities are adding approximately 1.5 million megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy to the grid above and beyond RPS requirements per year. This is equivalent to the total power usage of 220,000 to 293,000 homes, or the production equivalent of over 300 onshore wind turbines of two megawatts (MW) each.
As a result, about 14 % of Class I demand in Massachusetts can be attributed to GMA.
Note that these statistics do not include Class I demand from aggregations with 1-45% more Class I content than required by law. The 21 towns on Cape Cod are an example. Their aggregator, the Cape Light Compact, adds 1% beyond state requirements, which adds approximately 34,000 MWh of Class I renewable energy to the grid beyond RPS requirements per year.
| A note on our methodology for estimating statewide: Green Energy Consumers Alliance supplies Class I RECs to 32 municipal aggregations in Massachusetts. We have data on usage for those aggregations. We then extrapolated from the data in our possession to all of the GMA communities and adjusted for the number of households per community and the percentage Class I above state requirements for each of them. |
Consumer & Community Savings
As we have done in the past, we assessed the costs associated with GMA. In particular, we looked at the 39 cities and towns that had between 5 and 11% additional renewable energy in their default product. We found that this cohort was able to stabilize their electricity costs over the past seven years and saved an average of 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in comparison to consumers on utility Basic Service. For the average household using 500-600 kWh per month, this equates to $138-$165 saved per year. If these savings per kWh were extrapolated to all residential households served by the investor-owned utilities (Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil), the savings would total about $350 million per year.
| |
National Grid 12/2018 - 7/2025 |
Eversource 8/2017 - 7/2025 |
Overall |
| Basic Service |
$0.15040 |
$0.14207 |
$0.14624 |
| GMA 5-11% |
$0.12372 |
$0.12361 |
$0.12367 |
| Savings |
$0.02669 |
$0.01845 |
$0.02257 |
While savings cannot be guaranteed, we looked at a total of 52 six-month periods (13 for National Grid and 16 for Eversource) and found that the average GMA price was under Basic service 79% of the time. For the 21% of the time when GMA prices were higher than Basic Service, it was by a smaller margin than when it was under.
| It’s exciting to report that thirty cities and towns have aggregations with greater than 11% Class I RECs in their default products. Cost does go up with the percentage of Class I RECs, but every aggregation we know of allows consumers to “opt-down” to a product that meets, but does not exceed, state requirements. Most also allow consumers to “opt-up” to 100% Class I! |
About Predatory & Greenwashing Competitive Suppliers
The analysis shown above compares aggregation to the utility Basic Service in Massachusetts. It does not compare aggregation to the rates offered by retail electricity suppliers who sign up customers individually. Fortunately, the Mass. Attorney General’s Office (AGO), has produced a series of reports finding that in the last eight years, individual residential customers who switched to and received their electric supply from competitive suppliers paid over $577 million more collectively on their electric bills than they would have paid if they stayed with their utility company’s basic service. As detailed in the most recent report, customers accrued significant net losses in seven of the eight years studied. Again, those are losses compared to utility Basic Service – the losses compared to municipal aggregation are much higher, on the order of a nickel per kWh, or about $350 per year for the average consumer.
At the same time, many of these suppliers sell cheap, relatively worthless renewable energy certificates in their products while touting their supposed environmental benefits. As we have written several times before, this is called greenwashing.
Take Action
Based on the evidence, if your city or town has municipal aggregation and you are not enrolled in the program, sign up. Switch from your utility Basic Service or from your retail supplier (watch out for exit fees).
If your city or town does not have an aggregation, contact your municipal officials and ask them why not. Show them this blog and the reports from the Attorney General’s Office.
Finally, help us ban the retail electricity suppliers that prey on people. Green Energy Consumers Alliance, along with dozens of other community and environmental groups, support An Act relative to electric ratepayer protections, H.3534 and S.2255. This bill would protect people from these predatory companies by prohibiting third-party suppliers from signing contracts with residential customers. This bill would not affect commercial or industrial customers or municipal aggregation programs, since these are areas where reforms to the electricity market have been more successful. If you want to protect your community from these suppliers, please contact your State Representative and State Senator (you can find their email here) and ask them to support this legislation. If you get a response from your legislator, please let our MA Policy Advocate, Carrie Katan, know by email at carrie@greenenergyconsumers.org.
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Larry Chretien
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