The bigger question is whether they can overcome formidable obstacles, including economic problems and opposition by some conservation and community groups, which across the country have increasingly joined forces with fossil fuel interests.Ī vivid example is the vitriolic opposition that rose against a long-planned centerpiece of the state’s clean-energy effort, a 145-mile transmission line that would carry enough hydroelectric power from Quebec through Maine to supply 1.2 million homes in Massachusetts. In its favor, the state has lined up a slate of mammoth projects that could come close to making a clean grid by 2030, if not get all the way there. But am I starting from Florida, or am I starting from Maine?” “If you gave me a map and told me to get to Los Angeles, that’s fine. “It’s not enough to know where you’re going,” said Larry Chretien, director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance, a clean energy advocacy nonprofit. State climate law requires their carbon-free electricity performance rise to 50 percent by 2030.Ĭlean energy experts rail at these gaps and ambiguities and say the lack of clarity could hobble any effort to reach concrete goals. As of 2020, 38 percent of the electricity from these plants was considered carbon free, with a significant amount coming from nuclear power, according to a report by the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. Until a recent change in the law, municipal light plants did not have any clean energy requirements. The state’s calculation also doesn’t include communities that get their power from so-called municipal light plants, which provide 14 percent of the state’s power. “It’s just an abomination that it’s still counted that way, and we’re working on trying to fix that,” said Caitlin Peale Sloan, the Conservation Law Foundation’s vice president for Massachusetts. Such sources are highly controversial and continue to be debated. And some clean electricity is generated by plants that burn biomass, like wood or agricultural products, and landfill waste, both of which can produce harmful air pollutants as well as carbon emissions. Other sources, including a number of hydropower generators, cause some climate-warming emissions in the process of creating clean energy. The system has been repeatedly modified, changing what can be considered clean - and allowing for differing interpretations of progress.įor instance, nuclear power from Seabrook Station was not counted prior to 2021, but a regulation finalized in 2020 allowed it in subsequent years. The state’s estimate is derived from a complex accounting system of so-called renewable energy credits that allow utilities to purchase credits for clean electricity obtained from a broad variety of sources and from across state lines. ![]() “Every single one of these projects is important.”Ĭomplicating the job is the fact that many experts continue to debate the amount of clean energy the state is actually using now. “The pathway right now has little margin for error,” said former Massachusetts energy commissioner Patrick Woodcock. And already each of the biggest clean energy projects the state is counting on is facing complications that could delay or even derail them. Giant offshore wind farms, thousands of new solar projects, sprawling transmission lines, and intrastate energy collaborations all must be completed on schedule, a rarity in any large-scale effort. ![]() While some energy experts question that number - saying it exaggerates how far we have come - all agree that getting to 92 percent by the end of the decade, as mandated by Massachusetts law, or to 100 percent, as Governor Maura Healey pledged during her campaign, will be a monumental task. As of this year, 59 percent of Massachusetts electricity is carbon free, according to state figures.
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