The shape of watts to come

So when the electric utility NStar offered Marshfield residents the opportunity to install solar panels on their homes as part of a town-wide pilot program, he jumped at the chance to reduce his carbon footprint even further.

Now 18 dark-blue photovoltaic panels are perched on the roof of his cedar-shingled garage. Costing roughly $9,500 (after discounts, rebates, and tax breaks), the solar system makes about half the electricity used by the three-bedroom Cape. After Bicknell saw his monthly NStar bill fall from as much as $160 to as low as $40, he and his wife, Dolly, became even more attentive to turning off lights and computers. “We started thinking about ‘What is electricity, why are we using it?’” says Bicknell.

Bicknell is part of a voluntary $4 million program in Marshfield that has three distinct but connected goals: reduced electricity usage, a greater role for renewable energy, and better control of energy usage during periods of heavy consumption. Solar installations have gone up on 36 homes, businesses, and municipal buildings. Some 500 thermostats, allowing NStar to turn down a home’s air conditioning when demand is at a peak, have been distributed. Energy audits, rebates, and other services have been made available to 1,200 homes and 100 businesses.

The Marshfield experiment, continuing through the summer, is becoming a prototype for the greening of Massachusetts. NStar and its partner, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, are trying to find out whether a focused program in a single community can reduce peak energy demand. With 8,900 households and 250 businesses, Marshfield currently reaches its peak demand of about 25 megawatts for just 30 hours per year. If the town can slice 8 percent, or 2 megawatts, off that peak demand, NStar can avoid making expensive upgrades to its circuitry infrastructure in the area. It can also demonstrate the potential to cut energy demand in communities across the state.

Other initiatives to cut electricity usage are also in the works. Under the Green Communities Act signed into law last summer, 25 percent of the state’s electricity load must be met by energy efficiency and other demand management programs, and 20 percent by renewables and alternative energy sources — all by 2020, just 11 years away. The law also calls for a reduction in statewide energy consumption, including electricity, by 10 percent in less than a decade.

The ultimate goal is to curb demand for electricity while cultivating renewable sources of power — all with a view toward reducing carbon emissions and shaking off our dependency on fossil fuels. It’s a lot like the goals of a diet: cutting back, eating better, and living longer.

“We as a society have been eating at the all-you-can-eat buffet for too long, and we need to get a lot more disciplined about consuming the amount of energy or calories that we really need to make our lives work,” says Philip Giudice, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

But this green power push doesn’t mean Massachusetts won’t have to build any new fossil fuel power plants. Saving energy will only get us so far, and not everyone is convinced that we will stick to our energy diet. So electricity generation companies continue to plan for and build new fossil fuel plants — though more efficient ones, to be sure — to keep air conditioners humming in July. Everybody loves to put windmills and solar panels on their roofs, says Robert Rio, a senior vice president with Associated Industries of Massachusetts, “but nobody wants to disconnect from the grid.”

Meeting the peak

Massachusetts has long been a national leader on energy policy, but the Bay State hasn’t been immune to the McMansion and SUV craze that has come to symbolize America’s hitting the snooze button on energy conservation — as a way of putting off the inevitable. Before the current economic downturn, electricity demand had been growing by about 2 percent per year in the Bay State, according to the US Department of Energy. But it’s not the usage spread out over the course of year that causes headaches for the electricity sector. The challenge is furnishing a reliable supply of electricity that can meet “peak,” or the demand upon the electric grid during those few New England summer days when temperatures soar into the 90s, sending air conditioners and pool filters humming.

And meeting the peak has created a role for generating facilities that usually run only during periods of increased demand, when other plants have trouble keeping up. Those plants, known as peaking power plants, are essential to electricity generation.

Building to peak is one of the perversities of our electrical system, says state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles. “We build cathedrals for Easter and Christmas, when you have a thousand people who come to the church, when on [any] given Sunday it might be 100 people who come to the church,” he says.

The economic downturn may have slowed annual electricity demand: ISO New England, the nonprofit entity that operates the regional electric grid and electricity market, has lowered demand projections for this year and next. But summer peak demand continues to show slow growth. ISO New England projects summer peak demand in Massachusetts to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 1.3 percent over the next decade.

There is no “panacea” to meet this still-growing demand, says Angela O’Connor, president of the New England Power Generators Association. “You need a balanced portfolio,” she says. “It’s no different than your stock portfolio. You need base load generation, you need demand response, you need energy efficiency. You need peaking [power plants] that are expensive to run — but, boy, oh boy, when you need them, they can come on in a nanosecond and keep the lights on.”

Changing habits

Conservation used to be the name of the game. Leave the room, turn off the lights, and you’re good. “I think of Jimmy Carter. You go around putting on more sweaters,” says Penni Conner, the NStar vice president who oversees the company’s energy efficiency programs. Yet pulling on cardigans in the age of climate change doesn’t go far enough. Now the buzz has shifted to energy efficiency. It’s a more aggressive strategy that gets consumers to rethink their overall energy usage, from switching out incandescent for fluorescent light bulbs to buying energy-saving appliances.

“We need to be thinking about a bridge strategy to ensure that we can meet the market demand and deal with the transition to various clean technologies to reduce carbon emissions,” says Tom King, president of National Grid US.

Energy efficiency is one part of the Bay State’s multipronged “bridge strategy.” The state has met about one-third of its increased electricity demand through efficiency measures over the last decade. Massachusetts spends $125 million each year, or about one-fourth of a penny collected from every kilowatt hour distributed by electric utilities, on energy efficiency programs. That means ratepayers have invested $371 million in energy efficiency between 2003 and 2005, helping to save gigawatts of electricity and tons of carbon emissions.

Renewable power is also getting substantial support. The Bay State was the first in the country to require utilities to obtain a specific percentage of electricity from renewable sources. This year, those standards require utilities and other electricity suppliers to obtain at least 4 percent of their power from renewable sources — with the mandate rising by one percentage point each year until at least 2020.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative also finances state energy programs. Two years ago, Massachusetts joined the mandatory cap-and-trade system under which 10 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states have agreed to a 10 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel plants by 2018. So far, two auctions of emission allowances have netted Massachusetts nearly $30 million to plow back into energy efficiency and renewable power projects. (The Obama administration is working on a similar federal system.) In addition, under the recently passed federal stimulus package, the Bay State also could see up to $300 million in federal energy block grants.

Energy efficiency and renewables are also gaining a toehold in the forward capacity market overseen by ISO New England. The organization runs auctions as part of its plan to meet electricity requirements three years in the future; suppliers bid for the right to provide those resources when needed. In the first-ever auction, held last year, 75 percent of the awards for new energy resources in Massachusetts went to energy efficiency plans and other projects designed to reduce demand rather than build additional power plants. In the second auction, also last year, 98 percent of the awards went to new demand reduction plans, with the remaining 2 percent going to new renewable power projects.

State officials see those marketplace developments as healthy signs that when energy efficiency competes with new power generation, efficiency wins out, which may go a long way toward holding Massachusetts to zero, if not negative growth.

But is energy efficiency really winning? That’s still playing out in the electricity marketplace. A certain amount of energy efficiency is more cost-effective than traditional generation, according to Gordon van Welie, president and chief executive officer of ISO New England. What we don’t know yet is how much energy efficiency is out there — that is, how much is economically viable. The market “will decide at what point an incremental cost of a unit of energy efficiency crosses over and becomes more expensive than an incremental unit of traditional generation,” he says.

Then there’s another wildcard: economic recovery. The bright spot in the recent downturn, if one can call it that, is that the slump dampens down growth in overall electricity demand. But as the recession ebbs, how new economic growth will affect electricity demand is the great unknown. Consumers could embrace the new frugal ways or they could just as easily get reacquainted with their inner energy hogs. Compliance could also be an issue; Massachusetts homebuilders are already bristling over proposed energy codes for new construction that they say would raise costs and provide little in savings to buyers.

There’s also the next big thing, plug-in hybrid electric cars. The vehicles will have to connect to the electric grid. If they become wildly popular, they could throw a wrench into the works. “If you wish to see a future with a high penetration of electric vehicles and you wish the power source to be carbon-free, then there’s a lot more infrastructure that needs to be built to support all of that,” says Van Welie.

Out with the old

There was a mini-boom in the construction of natural gas-fired plants in the 1990s, but other plants are getting on in years. According to data furnished by the state Department of Energy Resources, of the nearly 90 fossil fuel units (a power plant can house one or more electricity producing units) currently operating in Massachusetts, about one-third, representing thousands of megawatts, are more than 40 years old. And the likely successor to any antiquated fossil fuel plant, and the megawatts that go offline, is another fossil fuel plant.

Natural gas is still the fossil fuel of choice in Massachusetts, providing about 40 percent of all electricity. It’s cleaner than coal, and natural gas plants are cheaper to build than coal ones, but they are also more expensive to run, leading to higher electricity prices.

There will always be fossil fuel plants of different varieties for the foreseeable future because of the need to replace capital stock, according to Bowles. “I think it’s fundamentally the wrong question to say an investment in energy efficiency means we won’t be creating new power plants, because you will always be creating new power plants regardless of what you do on energy efficiency,” he says.

The inconvenient truth is that the state doesn’t decide which plants get built, the marketplace does. Chalk that up to deregulation.

Electric utilities used to do it all. They owned the power plants, distributed the electricity, and maintained the wires bringing power to the homes, business, and factories in their service areas. Under this centralized planning, utilities had to justify a new plant to state officials, since the costs of building the plant would be passed onto ratepayers.

Since 1997, utilities have continued to distribute electricity, but they no longer own plants. Today, power generation developers bid into the forward capacity market and, if their bids are accepted, take the associated investment risks of building a facility. So the nine fossil fuel-based projects that are in various stages of the permitting process today in Massachusetts must undergo an environmental review process, but they are not required to demonstrate need for the electricity.

Still, conventional power developers will have to hedge their bets as more stringent environmental and carbon emission regulations add compliance burdens and fossil fuel plants become more expensive to operate, forcing some generators out of business.

Society is at a crossroads when it comes to electrical power from natural gas, says Seth Kaplan, vice president for climate advocacy at the Conservation Law Foundation. “Ten years in the future, will it make sense to build a…natural gas plant? I’d say absolutely not,” he says. “Do we need it now? I’d say it’s a close call.”

Though fossil fuels plants occupy an important niche in the short term, the future is uncertain. The key to reducing their role in the electricity mix is renewable power. Former vice president Al Gore wants to see the US move to clean carbon-free sources and produce 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources within a decade. (That’s an ambitious timetable that the state isn’t even trying to match.) Renewable power also leaves a role for traditional plants. Since the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, that makes producing electricity with renewable power problematic. Viable cost-effective solutions to store wind and solar are in the works, but until such technologies are widely deployed, conventional facilities must fill the gaps. The expense of developing renewables, particularly solar, is also frequently cited as an obstacle. However, as more renewable power sources join the fuel mix, power prices may drop.

A brightfield in Brockton

At first glance, you’d think a sculpture garden had sprung up not far from downtown Brockton. But tilted skyward are more than 1500 solar panels mounted on silver metallic frames evenly spaced across a raised field of stones and processed concrete. The edge of a cloud boosts energy production, explains Carl Landerholm, the designer of the Brockton Brightfield solar plant. Sure enough, as the sun slowly emerges from behind a wispy cloud, the recorder measuring the plant’s electricity output shoots up from nearly 72 kilowatts to 225 kilowatts.

The contaminated parcel of land that once housed the Brockton Gas Light Company’s gas works didn’t have great prospects for redevelopment. But since 2006, the site has been home to the largest brownfield-turned-brightfield in the US, and the largest solar array of any kind in New England. Bishop Filipe Teixeira of the Catholic Church of the Americas, whose church is nearby, thinks the plant “is a natural.” “I have no problem with that because it’s not hurting anybody,” he says.

Brockton Clean Energy, the Boston–based subsidiary of Advanced Power of Switzerland, hasn’t received the same warm welcome from city residents. The company’s plan to build a 350-megawatt facility, primarily fueled by natural gas, was still pending at press time, contingent upon final approval by the state Energy Siting Facility Board and compliance with local zoning laws.

Project manager Ron Kelly calls the $350 million proposal “the Brockton economic stimulus package.” Landerholm, who supports the plan, says that the 468-kilowatt brightfield would have to be multiple times bigger to equal the output of the proposed power plant. But Teixeira and other opponents say the plant would saddle a low-income, predominately minority neighborhood that already has a significant industrial presence with another source of health-threatening pollution.

The debate in Brockton shows an emerging disconnect. The message that there’s a continued need to build traditional power plants, even as the state slowly goes green, hasn’t made it down to the general public. Brockton residents hear state leaders talk about “green communities,” “energy efficiency,” and “renewable power,” and then wonder why a natural gas plant gets proposed for a tire-strewn field a short drive away from a nationally recognized solar success story. “Right now, the governor is trying to do something cleaner,” argues Teixeira. “Why can’t we go to solar power?”

In light of the Green Communities Act, Eugene Benson, an attorney for Alternatives for Community and Environment who represents a group of Brockton and West Bridgewater residents fighting the power plant, wants to see a moratorium on fossil fuel plant construction. He’s skeptical of a market-driven process that determines and responds to need, which means that the siting board can’t consider those issues.

“I think there is a really serious question about whether we should be allowing more fossil fuel power plants to get built until we figure out what this new world is going to look like,” he argues.

If Bay Staters are going to get fully behind renewable energy, the “green is good” message needs a tweak. Since much-touted renewable power facilities aren’t immune from controversy, Massachusetts must plot a course though the pervasive NIMBYism that characterizes the public siting debate. For Exhibit A, see Cape Wind, the Nantucket Sound wind farm proposal. Meanwhile, even as some homeowners evangelize about their solar panels (an expensive undertaking in the best of times), others battle fossil fuel generation.

Energy efficiency and renewables haven’t delivered the knock out just yet, but forces that aim to make traditional power plants history are on the march.

“Over the period of our lifetime, you will certainly see a diminution of the number of fossil fuel generated plants and a dramatic increase in the number of renewable plants and a generally much more energy efficient economy,” says Bowles. “I think those things will all happen.”