Regular readers of our blogs know where we stand on options consumers have for receiving power supply. To recap: For customers of investor-owned utilities, you are better off, and the planet is better off if your community has green municipal aggregation than if you are on the utility’s Basic Service. And more than likely, you are going to pay more than you should if you choose a competitive electricity supplier on your own.
We're excited to announce the start of something good in Rhode Island. Seven cities and towns have adopted “green municipal aggregation” as a way to add more renewable energy to their electricity supply affordably. Here’s the Magnificent Seven: Barrington, Central Falls, Narragansett, Newport, Portsmouth, Providence, and South Kingstown. Better yet, starting in May, customers enrolled in these aggregations will pay a lower rate than what would be charged by Rhode Island Energy.
On November 15, the Mass. Department of Energy Resources published a revised Municipal Aggregation Manual & Best Practices Guide and asked for public comments by December 7. For information, visit here.
The following are our comments.
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.
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.
This blog covers strategies outlined in Massachusetts’ final Clean Energy and Climate Plan (CECP) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the electric power sector. For more background on the CECP for 2025 and 2030, read this blog.
Thanks to policies like the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS) and the Clean Energy Standard (CES), the Commonwealth has made significant progress in cleaning up the electricity supply in Massachusetts. For the rest of this decade, we will need to build on and accelerate that progress to meet the GHG reductions required by the Climate Roadmap bill that passed in 2021. In this blog post, we’ll go over what the Clean Energy & Climate Plan (CECP) has in store for the electricity sector and Green Energy Consumers' thoughts on that plan!
As recently covered by the Boston Globe, Green Energy Consumers is excited to present our new report on the great economic and environmental benefits brought to the Commonwealth through what we call Green Municipal Aggregation (GMA) programs. Our report includes data on over 200 communities and we show how there are opportunities to build upon a great record of success to achieve even more if the state government provides the support aggregation deserves.
Last week, with a resounding vote of 144-12, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed the Offshore Wind and Clean Energy bill. It will now go to the State Senate. We are especially thrilled because we worked hard to get provisions introduced that would help municipal aggregations access offshore wind. With the championship of Rep. Tommy Vitolo and Rep. Dylan Fernandes, and the support of Speaker Ron Mariano and Energy Committee Chair Jeffrey Roy, our provisions were adopted!
Don't miss Green Energy Consumers staff have been posting videos all week leading up to Giving Tuesday (November 30th)! Videos on important climate news and solutions will be posted on this blog, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and on greenenergyconsumers.org/donate all week.
As mayors representing a diverse group of communities across Massachusetts, we are in a unique position to be on the front lines of how the big global issues manifest from block to block in our neighborhoods. One of the many ways we see this is in how our residents want to power their homes and businesses. Their message to us is clear: they want cost-effective solutions that speed our transition to clean and renewable energy, and they want innovative and meaningful ways to help them combat the climate crisis.
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