Our newest report shows how Green Municipal Aggregation (GMA) allows a municipality to contract for cleaner, more affordable electricity for residents. Green Energy Consumers Alliance serves GMA programs in 21 Massachusetts communities and seven Rhode Island communities by providing additional renewable energy above and beyond what is required by state laws.

Written by Larry Chretien and Mikaela Hondros-McCarthy. Significant contributions made by Rebecca Toomey and Kate Marcellino.

Mapping GMA

Of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, 167 cities and towns currently have an aggregation plan approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU). See our new interactive map!

*Note that 49 cities and towns receive their power supply from municipal utilities. 

These plans range from including no Class I renewable options (“brown”) to including 30% or more Class I renewable options than are required by state law (“very dark green”), depending on how much renewable content each municipality has opted to incorporate into their program.

Consumer & Community Savings

We found that these municipalities within the cohort were able to stabilize their electricity costs over the past six years and saved an average of 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in comparison to consumers on Basic Service. For the average household using 500-600 kWh per month, this equates to $200-$237 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 over a half billion dollars per year.

Additional Renewable Energy

In all, 54 cities and towns in Massachusetts currently have active GMAs. We estimate that these 54 GMAs are adding approximately one million megawatt hours of renewable energy to the grid above and beyond RPS requirements per year. This is equivalent to the total power usage of 150,000 to 200,000 homes.

Learn more at our upcoming webinar: GMA & Your Community (12:00pm on December 7th)