A note from Green Energy Consumers Alliance: We are big fans of electric school buses. You might've read our recent blogpost about the electric school buses coming to Massachusetts and Rhode Island thanks to new grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today, we're excited to share a guest blogpost from Block Island about their new electric school bus, which was donated by the Solar Initiative (not funded by the EPA). Many thanks to Cindy Davis of the Solar Initiative for this post!

Earlier this summer, we wrote about applications being open for the Clean School Bus Program. Now, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced who got awarded – and school districts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are on the list!

GECA staff and partners with an electric school bus in Beverly, MA.

The Massachusetts Offers Rebates for Electric Vehicles Program (MOR-EV Program) has increased electric vehicle rebates from $2,500 to $3,500 for battery electric vehicles. This is the first of several changes to the state rebate program that will help make the car buying/leasing process more manageable for Massachusetts residents. 

Late on Friday afternoon, November 18, Eversource filed its Basic Service power supply rate (excluding delivery rates) for its eastern Massachusetts territory for the period of January 1 through June 30, 2023, with the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU). That supply rate came in at 26 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), up from 15.8 cents/kWh for the same period in 2022 and 11.8 cents/kWh in 2021.

If you’re shopping for a new electric vehicle (EV), there may be several key features you’re looking for: trunk space, driving range, and other attractive styling options that may sway your decision for you.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you will. Gas utilities everywhere are putting out propaganda that they can decarbonize the gas that flows through our pipes to heat our homes and businesses. National Grid, one of the major utilities in Massachusetts and New York, has produced a document with its vision of a clean energy future. If you read through the paper carefully, you will see how important it is to the gas utility to mix Renewable Energy Gas (RNG) and hydrogen with natural gas (fracked methane). Whether it’s in the public interest is a different question.

Rhode Island’s Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4)needs your input on their draft chapters of the 2022 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Plan: Priority Actions within the Electric, Transportation, and Thermal Sectors. Comments are due by December 2nd. You can access the draft chapters here.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island have both committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions economy-wide to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Achieving these required reductions means zeroing out emissions associated with heating our homes and businesses, which means phasing out the combustion of fossil fuels for heat.

Our two favorite states have had nation-leading energy efficiency programs for many years and those programs have saved an impressive amount of electricity, heating oil, propane, and natural gas. But are these programs up to the task of actually phasing out fossil fuels by 2050?

In recent weeks, gas and electric utilities have been announcing steep price hikes for the next few months – some starting on November 1 and some starting later. Consumers of heating oil and diesel fuel have also seen extraordinary retail price increases compared to a year ago. It’s a topic that Green Energy Consumers Alliance has been monitoring with an eye toward the short run and the long run. So, when our good friends at Metro West Climate Solutions asked for a presentation on why energy prices are so high this coming winter and where are headed, we were happy to oblige and join them for a webinar on October 25. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.

In case you missed it, the Boston Globe did an excellent story exposing how the Mass. Department of Public Utilities has been poorly managing applications of cities and towns to adopt municipal aggregation.