State starts a green era

Law encourages renewable sources; Utilities expected to help cut costs - By Beth Daley Globe Staff / July 3, 2008

Governor Deval Patrick signed a landmark energy bill yesterday that does away with long-standing obstacles to building renewable power projects in Massachusetts and making homes and businesses more energy efficient.

The Green Communities Act was hailed by environmentalists as among the most innovative efforts in the nation to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and to encourage use of clean technologies that don't contribute to global warming.

The law will probably result in utilities' designing customized plans for homeowners and businesses to cut energy costs and providing rebates to pay for measures such as installing insulating windows and more efficient boilers. Homeowners and businesses will be able to rent solar panels from utilities to avoid expensive up-front costs, and the law makes it easier for homeowners who have installed wind turbines or solar panels to sell surplus energy.

Supporters said the new law could save hundreds of millions of dollars through energy efficiency, helping to hold down consumers' electric bills as energy prices are skyrocketing.

"I am here today to sign into law the best clean energy bill in America," a jubilant Patrick said during a signing ceremony at the Museum of Science. "Climate change is the challenge of our times, and we in Massachusetts are rising to that challenge."

Massachusetts has long been a leader in energy legislation, and it is taking part in a regional effort to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants. Patrick has set an aggressive goal to increase solar power in the state by 600 percent in four years.

The law "maintains Massachusetts' status as a state leader," said Patrick Hogan of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Virginia-based environmental policy think tank.

Business leaders praised the legislation, saying it could stabilize electric rates in New England, already among the highest in the nation. Utilities, including NStar and National Grid, said they have long focused on energy efficiency but are eager to ramp up the effort, as well as to provide solar power to customers.

"It pushes us to a new level," said Tom May, NStar's chief executive. "We get to cross the street to our customer side and help them with energy choices . . . such as windmills in a neighborhood or solar panels. It's helping them reduce their carbon footprint."

Among the law's major provisions:

A requirement for utilities to invest in energy efficiency when it is cheaper to do so than it is to buy power. Historically, companies would simply buy more power when demand went up, which over time would lead to construction of very costly and polluting power plants. Now, utilities will have to invest in energy efficiency if to do so is equal to or cheaper than buying power. The law will also use at least 80 percent of the revenue from the regional effort to cap power plant emissions for efficiency programs, such as home energy audits to identify how to save on energy bills.

"The cleanest power plant is the one that never gets built," said Sam Krasnow, attorney for Environment Northeast, a research and advocacy group. "Energy efficiency is the cheapest and cleanest energy resource available."

Several efforts to promote renewable power. Utilities would have to enter into 10- or 15-year contracts with renewable energy developers, an effort to help those developers get financing from banks. The Patrick administration is particularly proud of a provision that lifts a prohibition on utilities owning solar electric panels and allows them to rent the panels to customers. The law is designed to allow utilities to recoup the cost of panels over time from rental fees while the customers reap energy savings.

Utilities will have to purchase a greater amount of their electricity from renewable power sources than under current law. By 2030, utilities would buy 25 percent of their power from renewables.

It is unclear whether that goal, one of the most ambitious in the nation, can be met, however. The current requirement of 3.5 percent has not been met, partly because of the difficulty in siting renewable projects. The utilities instead pay a fee to the state.

The creation of "Green Communities." The state will commit $10 million annually to help communities figure out ways to become more energy efficient or invest in renewables, including giving them no-interest loans. New buildings in the state will have to meet updated building codes with energy-savings provisions.

The energy bill encountered some controversy during the two years it took to become law. Early versions guaranteed a market for coal gasification, a technology that is cleaner than conventional coal-burning power plants but still emits large amounts of carbon dioxide.

The final language would give financial incentives to gasification technologies only in limited cirumstances and only to those that capture and store the carbon dioxide underground.

Environmentalists had nothing but praise for the law yesterday, saying it was a paradigm shift in the way energy will be created, bought and sold.

"This is a tremendous advancement that comes not a moment too soon, given rising energy prices and the climate crisis," said Sue Reid, a lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation.

Article source:

Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com.

Trying to make the blacktop greener

States working to curb pollution from road runoff

Every time it rains, a soup of chemicals washes off roadways: Brake fluid, oil, salt, antifreeze, and heavy metals from tens of thousands of cars pour off the asphalt and, often, into rivers and streams.

Until recently, this form of pollution received little attention from regulators and environmentalists, but a movement is slowly building to create what may seem a contradiction: green highways.

Two weeks ago a federal judge in Boston ruled that the Massachusetts Highway Department was violating the federal Clean Water Act and ordered the agency to better control storm water from roadways in urban areas. Meanwhile, some states are beginning to capture and filter storm water before it reaches waterways, using vegetation and porous median strips among other solutions.

"All the pollution that runs off highways is put very quickly into our waterways," said Christopher M. Kilian, director of the Clean Water Program and the lead lawyer in the Massachusetts case for the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based environmental group that sued the Highway Department. "But there are approaches we can use to stop it."

Once, the biggest problems facing waterways such as the Charles River and Boston Harbor were obvious. Raw sewage and toxic chemicals from homes and factories stank and made stepping in the water so foul people would avoid any contact. A decades-long cleanup of these pollution sources, mandated by the Clean Water Act, has gone a long way toward restoring waterways. Boston Harbor now sparkles on many summer days, and the Charles is clean enough that a 1-mile swim is scheduled there tomorrow.

Yet these scrubbing efforts were relatively simple because the pollution could easily be traced back to its sources. Now environmentalists are focusing on a problem that is more dispersed: runoff, carrying everything from dog waste to fertilizer, from lawns, sidewalks, roadways, natural areas, and farms. It is the main reason about 40 percent of rivers, lakes, and estuaries are not clean enough to meet fishing or swimming standards, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

While it's difficult to tease out the highways' share of the problem, federal officials are focusing on them because so many contaminants are washed from roadways, solutions are available and straightforward, and the federal Clean Water Act requires highway departments to deal with the problem.

"Most roads have no controls at all," said Nancy Stoner, director of the Clean Water Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her group is involved in a long-running lawsuit seeking to force the EPA, which enforces the Clean Water Act, to require anyone building roads, schools, and any private construction to use specific, proven technologies to minimize storm water runoff.

There are many highway contaminants. Chloride, sodium, and calcium can accumulate on the pavement from salt and sanding operations. Ordinary wear and tear causes cars to shed oil, grease, rust, and rubber particles. Once the contaminants are washed into waterways, they can be consumed by fish, frogs, and other aquatic life, or settle in the water, contributing to contaminant levels.

The green highway movement also includes advocacy for the use of recyclable materials for pavement or the creation of wildlife crossings. But environmentalists and scientists say storm water runoff is by far the most pressing problem - and the most expensive to fix.

The solutions are hardly high-tech. The goal is to slow water running off pavement and allow it to percolate through soil, vegetation, and stones, which cleanse it before it reaches waterways. Porous road shoulders and medians allow water to migrate into the ground instead of flowing directly into storm drains and rivers. Man-made ponds and adjacent wetlands hold runoff until it can evaporate or seep through soil. Still, such solutions can be difficult in highly urban areas where space is at a premium.

Headway is being made around the country. In January, California promised to reduce runoff pollution from its freeways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties by 20 percent to settle a lawsuit the Natural Resources Defense Council brought in 1994. Two years ago, the EPA, the Federal Highway Administration, several mid-Atlantic states, and other groups formed the Green Highways Partnership to test small-scale green highway programs that can serve as national models. Maryland has constructed man-made ponds on a pilot basis to hold highway storm water so it can filter through soil more slowly. Universities from Villanova to Louisiana State are working to perfect porous pavement technology.

In Massachusetts, state highway officials say they try to incorporate storm water management when building roads or reconstructing them in urbanized areas. But in its lawsuit, the Conservation Law Foundation said the state wasn't doing anything about runoff from the vast network of roads.

Federal District Court Judge William G. Young agreed, saying highway storm water on Interstate 190 in Lancaster was clearly contributing to pollution in a nearby waterway, as were two Route 495 sites that were polluting the Charles River. He also said the agency needs to do a better job assessing how to keep pollution out of waterways in urbanized areas. He told MassHighway to come back to him with a revised storm water management plan by the end of 2009. He praised the agency for doing a good job given fiscal and other constraints, but said "best efforts, of course, is not the standard."

MassHighway officials said they were pleased with the decision because the judge took pains to compliment them on many of their efforts. They acknowledged that they have not initiated new storm water management technologies on roadways that aren't undergoing any other work because of its prohibitive cost, probably hundreds of millions of dollars if storm water controls were installed on state highways in urban areas. They are now waiting for a US Geological Survey report that will help determine where and how pollution is running off highway segments so they can decide where to focus clean-up efforts.

"I think [the judge] was saying, given the breadth of our responsibility, we are doing a pretty good job," said Highway Commissioner Luisa M. Paiewonsky. "[We are] improving a plan already underway."

By Beth Daley
Globe Staff / June 14, 2008

Home Energy Audits

With rising utility cost to heat or cool a home many home owners are looking for ways to reduce these type of cost.

A fast growing field is home energy auditing. Not a new field but new in the area of residential homes. And in mosA fast growing field is home energy auditing. Not a new field but new in the area of residential homes. And in most cases unregulated.

With high tech tools (such as infrared cameras) an inspector will come to your home and inspect and suggest the fixing of various energy hogs throughout one’s home.

Some States offer its residence upward to $ 1,000 if they make improvements to lower energy cost. In fact recently the State of Massachusetts Senate passed a bill requiring that home sellers provide prospective buyers with an audit scoring of the home’s efficiency.

But today most people simply want to know whether it is worthwhile to find the various leaks, look at appliance efficiency, and have healthy air in the home.

Some problems can be resolved without an inspection. If your home has a furnace that is 30 to 75 years old you recognize there could be a problem. The furnace efficiency is kaput and a newer one would be more efficient. However the cost of replacing the heater or furnace may be an insurmountable task and the payback may not yield the return on replacement.

If it is decided to get an energy audit, expect to pay between $ 300 to $ 700 or more. Therefore one’s energy consumption needs to have jumped significantly over a short period of time or was extremely high from the start of occupying the home to justify the cost of finding out what has to be done to to decrease cost overall.

Upon completion of an energy audit one will receive a 15-50 page report of problems that exist inside and outside of the home. It will include recommended fixes, such as replacing the heater/air conditioner/appliances, as an example and will give a ball park figure of what it will cost to make the fixes.

True some things can be done by the homeowner. But when windows need to be replaced, or a seperation between ceiling and walls needs fixing, or exterior electrical outlets need to be replaced then one needs a professional to do these things and the home owner is looking at some significant cost.

Is the home energy audit worth the price?

Yes. It would be good to know where the problems are and certainly one could, if they wish, create a plan of attack to resolve the most critical. So some action to reduce energy cost may result in some good saving for the home owner which may warrant the expenditure.

But one has to be careful to make sure that the problem being resolved is the real problem. If one puts insulation in the attic and it is the roof that needs to be replaced, the savings, if any, will be extremely small.

It is a case by case situation and the bottom line is money and the pay back for implementing the required changes.

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Consumer Demand for Green Practices Changing the Business of Home Improvement Contractors

Pristine Home Solutions, a Massachusetts home improvement contractor serving Middlesex and Worcester County, says that increasing demand for eco-friendly home solutions will further influence consumer buying decisions.

As Americans become more eco-conscious, consumer-driven companies industry-wide have begun offering more ecologically friendly products and services to retain a competitive edge.

Massachusetts home improvement contractor Warren Fish, president of Pristine Home Solutions, says that an increasing number of homeowners are seeking out his company because of its eco-friendly home improvement practices.

Pristine Home Solutions has for years used eco-friendly products such as low VOC paint and green cleaning products, and HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filtration vacuums for cleanup after jobs are complete.

Fish makes it a point to partner with green companies for products ranging from cleaning supplies to countertops. “Eco-friendly countertops made of recycled glass and concrete as opposed to granite have become a hot item in households where people are committed to green living,” says Fish.

Even with the growing popularity of green products and practices, Fish says that quality still reins the number one priority among consumers. He says that over the past decade, green products have made major leaps in the area of quality and can now be integrated into the company’s high quality home improvement contractor jobs.

“Even homeowners that prefer green materials still will often choose quality over the environmental impact. Because of the improvements in green materials, we have been able to include many more environmentally friendly products and practices into our standard service offerings. As more manufacturers address this growing trend the more you will see green materials being used by building and home improvement contractors,” says Fish.

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Soaring electricity prices leave Massachusetts manufacturers struggling

Higher power bills contribute to plant closings

State lawmakers will soon finalize energy legislation that aims to promote efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuels. But as legislators iron out differences between recently passed House and Senate bills, businesses say they need to pay closer attention to what many firms consider the real crisis: spiraling electricity costs.

Massachusetts manufacturers pay the highest electricity prices in the continental United States, and the gap between their costs and those of competitors in other states is widening, according to the Energy Department. In 2006, the most recent annual data available, industrial users in Massachusetts paid more than double the average US rate, compared to 60 percent more in 2005. Only Hawaii has higher industrial rates.

As a result, Massachusetts manufacturers are struggling to stay in business. Electricity costs have contributed to the shutdown of several plants with the loss of an estimated 2,000 jobs, according to Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the state's largest employer group.

Among them: a 200-year-old paper mill in Lee. The mill's owner, Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., said electricity played a role in the decision to shutter the plant later this year and lay off about 160 workers. Power costs at the Lee mill jumped nearly 30 percent, or $2.8 million, over the past two years, with electricity accounting for 17 percent of manufacturing costs, said Bill Foust, vice president of administration.

That compares to 5 to 7 percent at Schweitzer-Mauduit's other mills.

"Electricity isn't the only reason we plan to cease operations," said Foust, citing other factors such as falling demand for the cigarette papers produced at the mill, "but rising energy costs have been significant there."

Massachusetts has long had high electricity prices, but several factors contributed to the recent run-up, specialists said. First, the state depends on expensive fuels to make electricity. About 60 percent of New England power plants run on natural gas or oil, and sharp increases in the costs of these fuels passed through to electricity prices, according to ISO-New England, the organization that runs the region's power grid.

Nationally, these fuels account for a combined 21 percent of power generation. Cheaper coal-fired and nuclear plants generate nearly 70 percent of the nation's power.

Other factors driving costs here are growing demand, lagging supply, and inadequate transmission, which creates bottlenecks that further constrain supply. Difficulties at power plants and other facilities, such as liquid natural gas depots, also push prices higher.

"These are constraints that are self-imposed in New England," said Gordon van Welie, chief executive for ISO-New England. "Yet we keep consuming more."

Western Massachusetts has been hardest hit by rising electricity costs, recently pummeled by sharp increases in delivery charges from Western Massachusetts Electric Co., a unit of Northeast Utilities of Berlin, Conn. Those increases, approved in a 2006 settlement with former Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, helped raise power costs for large commercial and industrial users more than 20 percent last year.

Total power costs for large users are projected to rise 11 percent this year, according to the utility.

Under Massachusetts' deregulated market, utilities just deliver electricity, charging delivery rates regulated by the state. Independent generators that make electricity sell it at market prices determined by supply and demand. Utilities pass those prices on to consumers.

Economic development officials in Western Massachusetts say soaring electricity costs are not only pushing plants like Schweitzer-Mauduit's over the edge, but also are hurting efforts to recruit companies. About a year ago, Ice River Springs Water Co. Inc. of Feversham, Ontario, planned to open a bottling plant in Pittsfield. But when corporate officials saw electric rates, they put the building they purchased up for sale and opened the plant in New Hampshire

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Sandy Gott, executive vice president, said her company is working with economic development officials to revive the Pittsfield project. The Berkshire Chamber of Commerce recently formed a cooperative of smaller companies to buy power in larger volumes at lower rates. Gott said Ice River Springs is examining whether those savings will be enough.

"We're kind of in limbo and trying to make a final decision," said Gott. "The electricity prices were quite a shock."

At the Friendly Ice Cream Corp. plant in Wilbraham, soaring prices boosted power costs by nearly $1 million over the past 2 years, gobbling savings from investments in energy-efficient lighting and refrigeration and other projects, said Mike St. Marie, vice president of production and distribution. Friendly pays 14 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, up from about 8 cents three years ago.

"Rates have really spiraled out of control," St. Marie said, "and it makes us a little uncompetitive."

Ian Bowles, the state's secretary of energy and environment, said the Patrick administration recognizes that high electricity prices hurt competitiveness and is pushing initiatives to lower them. They include investing heavily in energy efficiency; revamping utility rate structures to promote conservation; and developing renewable sources, such as wind, solar, and biofuels, to reduce reliance on natural gas and oil. Significantly increasing efficiency could slice electricity expenses 3 to 5 percent a year, Bowles said.

Robert Rio, senior vice president at AIM, agreed energy efficiency could cut prices. But, he said, policy makers should move carefully in subsidizing alternative energy and other programs.

"We need a policy that puts electricity prices first," Rio said. "All these programs are nice, but we need to constantly ask, 'How is it going to reduce prices?' "

Many of these programs are funded with surcharges on utility bills, typically fractions of a cent per kilowatt hour. Many homeowners barely notice these charges, Rio said. But for industrial users, consuming millions of kilowatt hours a year, they boost costs by thousands of dollars.

M. Brian O'Shaughnessy, chief executive of Revere Copper Products Inc. of Rome, N.Y., said surcharges for energy efficiency, renewables, and other programs contributed to the shutdown this fall of Revere's plant in New Bedford. About 90 workers lost jobs.

New York development programs exempt manufacturers from such surcharges, O'Shaughnessy said, and rates at Revere's Rome facility are half those at New Bedford. "Massachusetts has to recognize that industrial companies have to be competitive with industrial plants around the world," O'Shaughnessy said. "You can't burden manufacturers with higher costs in a region where high costs already make it harder to compete."

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Massachusetts Public Lands Preservation Act

Article 97 of the State Constitution grants citizens of Massachusetts a right to a clean environment and the enjoyment of natural resources on publicly owned land.

The article requires that public land acquired for natural resource purposes not be used for other purposes or otherwise disposed of without a two thirds vote of each branch of the legislature.

There is hardly a city or town in the Commonwealth that does not have some park, playground, conservation land, or other public land that is supposed to be protected by Article 97. Article 97 Lands.

Unfortunately, conversion of land acquired for natural resource purposes to other uses has been sanctioned frequently by the legislature with little examination, debate, or opposition. Article 97 Land Transfers.

The Public Lands Preservation Act or PLPA (S. 2388) (aka the Article 97 bill and the No-net-loss bill), would be a statement of legislative policy to approve change in use or disposition of Article 97 land, only when there is no feasible alternative and if replacement land of equivalent acreage and market value is provided.

The PLPA has been sponsored and co-sponsored by 43 senators and representatives and endorsed by numerous environmental and other organizations.

Encourage your legeslators to support the bill too!

Mass. plant will make natural gas from coal

A Cambridge start-up that converts coal to clean-burning natural gas will take its cutting-edge process to the next step, building a $25 million demonstration plant near Fall River to ready their technology for full-scale commercial production.

GreatPoint Energy Inc., is scheduled today to unveil its plan to develop the project, which includes a research center, at the Brayton Point power station in Somerset, a coal-burning plant owned by Dominion, a Richmond, Va., utility and energy company. GreatPoint will create more than 100 jobs at its new facility after completion in about a year.

"This is where we are going to demonstrate our technology to the world," said Andrew Perlman, GreatPoint's chief executive. "This is going to be the most leading-edge gasification center anywhere."

The development of the demonstration plant and research center represents a milestone not only for the company, but also the state and its burgeoning alternative energy sector. GreatPoint is considered among the nation's most promising alternative energy firms, and recently raised $100 million from investors, one of the industry's biggest venture capital rounds ever.

For Massachusetts, GreatPoint's selection of Brayton Point over sites in three other states further solidifies its position as a leading center of alternative energy technology, an emerging sector that employs an estimated 14,000 in the state. It also indicates the sector is maturing, moving closer to commercial production that could mean even more growth for the sector and state employment.

"This isn't a few hippies in the backwoods," said Warren Leon, director of the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, which finances alternative energy projects. "GreatPoint is showing that creative new technologies are starting to hit the big time."

The demonstration plant will produce natural gas on a small scale as a way to test and refine the process for full-scale commercial production. Once the technology proves ready for commercial production, Massachusetts could reap another benefit too: lower energy costs. Massachusetts companies and residents pay among the highest natural gas rates in the country. Perlman said his firm's process can produce natural gas for about half the cost it now sells for.

"One of our major economic challenges is the high cost of natural gas," said state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, "and this is potentially a game-changing technology."

GreatPoint uses a proprietary catalyst to convert coal, petroleum coke, a refining byproduct, and organic material, such as switch grass, into methane, a clean-burning natural gas that can be transported through existing pipelines and burned in existing equipment. The process prevents the release of carbon dioxide, a so-called greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, and captures other byproducts, such as sulfur, which can be reused by chemical makers.

The combination of environmental benefits and the ability to use the gas with existing equipment has attracted venture firms as well as traditional energy companies, such as AES Corp. of Arlington, Va., and Suncor Energy, Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, as investors. Coal is among the most plentiful, but also dirtiest energy sources, and solving the pollution problem is "one of the Holy Grails of the clean energy movements," said Jim Matheson, general partner at Flagship Ventures, a Cambridge venture capital firm that invests in alternative energy companies.

Flagship hasn't invested in GreatPoint.

"If you figure out a way to use coal cleanly, it's a huge opportunity," Matheson said. "Maybe they'll solve it, maybe they won't, but they're going after it in a very deliberate way."

GreatPoint was founded in 2005, and now employs about 45 in Cambridge and at a small pilot program near Chicago. The Chicago-area workforce will be consolidated into the new facility.

Perlman said the firm selected Massachusetts because of its access to engineering and technical talent at MIT and other universities, and the efforts of Governor Deval Patrick. During a meeting on energy this year, Patrick brought GreatPoint together with Dominion, one of the nation's biggest power generators. Dominion, which has a small investment in GreatPoint, is providing the site and technical support for the project, said Diane Leopold, a Dominion vice president.

"We don't believe coal is going to go away," said Leopold, "and we want to find a way to use coal that's extremely clean."

Source - Boston Globe.