California and eight other states rolled out a plan Wednesday pushing for wider adoption of policies that would accelerate the use of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) and meet greenhouse gas-reduction goals.
The “Multi-State ZEV Action Plan” calls for increased adoption of ZEV purchase and infrastructure incentives, more consumer outreach and heavier emphasis on the technology at state utility commissions. The plan, which covers 2018 to 2021, comes out of a 2013 agreement signed by California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont, which represent almost 30% of new car sales in the U.S., they said.
The new action plan by the nine states covers 2018-2021
“Transportation electrification is essential to deliver the deep reductions in emissions that are needed to meet state climate goals. The state ZEV programs, which require automakers to deliver increasing numbers of zero-emission vehicles between now and 2025, are a key strategy in state climate plans,” the plan says.
It includes 80 recommendations for states, automakers, dealers, utilities and charging companies in order to bolster plug-in hybrid, battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The new effort follows a similar 2014 multistate plan the coalition said has increased ZEV incentive programs, new education campaigns and new commission initiatives in their states.
With hundreds of millions of fossil fuel-powered vehicles on American roadways, the report acknowledges that ZEV adoption so far has been focused mainly on “enthusiastic early adopters” and that much wider deployment, including commercial/utility vehicle fleets, will be needed to make an impact on climate change.
The report says that automakers are now required to deliver fully electric vehicles to meet specific sales goals in Oregon and other coalition states in the Northeast. More than $500 million in charging infrastructure is planned for the Northeast corridor, and California is now focusing on bolstering its infrastructure through $738 million in utility incentives. (See California to Require Sharp EV Charger Growth by 2025.)
Number of registered plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) in the nine states | ZEV Taskforce
Total U.S. ZEV sales grew from 200,000 to 750,000 since 2013, as battery costs declined and the number of available models and options increased. The states say light-duty vehicle adoption and public-private partnerships are important tools in wider adoption.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and others have challenged in court EPA’s April 4 decision to roll back previous GHG emission standards related to light-duty vehicles, which the agency said “may be too stringent.”
Several governors referenced the EPA decision when announcing the new action plan, with Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy saying: “When it comes to taking aggressive steps to fend off the most damaging impacts of climate change, the Trump administration not only continues to bury its head in the sand but is actively working to dismantle common sense efforts to reduce carbon pollution.”
Light-duty vehicles, classified as those with gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds or less, are the largest contributor to GHGs in the nine states (24% of emissions), followed by the electricity sector (19%) and industry (17%), with the remainder coming from heavy-duty vehicles, agriculture, the residential sector, other transportation and the commercial sector.
The impact of a carbon price would likely reverberate throughout New York’s wholesale electricity markets, industry experts said Monday.
Carbon pricing could be “a real game-changer in terms of likely impacts on the market,” Couch White attorney Michael Mager said during a June 18 meeting of the state’s Integrating Public Policy Task Force (IPPTF), the group charged with exploring how to price emissions into NYISO’s markets. Mager represents a coalition of large industrial, commercial and institutional energy customers.
During the meeting, NYISO presented its proposed approach to analyzing the effects of a carbon charge on various wholesale market processes, including its Installed Capacity (ICAP) market and related demand curve reset.
| NYSEG
NYISO may have to adjust ICAP rules to reflect carbon pricing if it believes the carbon charge is not appropriately reflected in prices, said ISO staffer Nathaniel Gilbraith.
Capacity prices are generally expected to make up for “missing money” from the energy market, and it’s important for capacity rules to capture relevant energy market revenues when setting prices, Gilbraith said.
Issue of Timing
The ISO’s estimation of the energy and ancillary services revenue offset is a key component of its annual process for updating its demand curve. (See FERC OKs NYISO Demand Curve Reset.) But Mager pointed out that if the ISO’s annual update considers only rolling historical revenues and neglects to factor in carbon prices, it will miss the mark.
“One issue is timing. If carbon pricing is implemented, when is it implemented vis a vis the demand curve reset process?” Mager said. “The second is how do you deal with the [energy and ancillary services] revenues in light of a dramatic change like this.”
Power Supply Long Island Director of Wholesale Market Policy David Clarke said, “We would prefer the demand curve to ramp smoothly … consistency would be sensible with what’s assumed in the [locational-based marginal price] and what’s assumed in the bid for demand curve reset purposes.”
Transmission Planning
Ethan Avallone, NYISO senior market design specialist, explained that the ISO performs economic analyses of new transmission facilities in its Congestion Assessment and Resource Integration Study (CARIS) studies and as needed for its Public Policy Transmission Needs Planning Process. Those analyses include production cost simulations and already account for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative price, and would similarly incorporate the carbon charges on suppliers, he said.
Representing New York City, Couch White attorney Kevin Lang said, “We don’t really build transmission on a CARIS basis or on an economic basis in this state, and I’m not sure when — or if — we ever will. … So in terms of priorities, this is a much lesser issue than grappling with the demand curve.”
“If you’re accounting for RGGI you should be accounting for the carbon price; that just makes sense,” Lang said. “From our view, we’d like to see the transmission response of how we’re going to encourage more transmission to be built, and I don’t know whether that’s economic, or whether it’s public policy, or potentially reliability planning.”
Clarke said there is a potential disconnection between the marginal carbon component price in the LBMP and the actual change in carbon emissions associated with a new transmission line.
“For example, suppose wind is on the margin before and after a transmission line is added, but the line also unbundles some additional wind that can be added into the market,” Clarke said. “There would be a circumstance where you don’t have a price difference associated with that — the marginal unit hasn’t changed — but you have changed the amount of low carbon resources that are able to enter the market. The change in the carbon may not be reflected in the marginal price.”
IPPTF Chair Nicole Bouchez, the ISO’s principal economist, said such deep transmission planning “is probably a bit beyond what we’re doing here,” adding that the group is “just looking at the impact of a carbon price on the market, not evaluating different transmission opportunities and what the consequences of them are in a carbon adder world.”
Customer Impacts
Timothy Duffy, the ISO’s manager for economic planning, presented three separate planning scenarios. The first case — the reference case — was modeled for three different years (2020, 2025 and 2030), and the remaining two for 2030 only.
The reference scenario presumes 226 MW of offshore wind by 2020, with the state’s full commitment of 2,400 MW calculated into the 2025 and 2030 iterations. All scenarios consider coal plants retired and include western New York and generic AC transmission upgrades.
The scenarios vary on the nuclear component, considering that Indian Point will retire in stages over 2020/21, and that the state’s zero-emission credits supporting nuclear will expire in 2030.
Erin Hogan, representing the Department of State’s Utility Intervention Unit, asked what would happen in 2023 when Indian Point will be retired and the AC upgrade will not yet be completed.
“We didn’t feel that there would be much information gleaned from that particular scenario that wouldn’t be gleaned from running, for example, 2025 with both high and low energy loads,” Duffy said.
The ISO’s broad analysis “captures the bookends of what would be the LMP impacts [and] load-shaving impacts associated with a carbon price,” Duffy said.
Hogan disagreed.
“People talk about price signals, and then the reality is that people have choices with price signals,” Hogan said. “If we are going to have a year with exceptional high price signals with the congestion, not having [Indian Point] and not having the AC transmission, we need to know that. That could go beyond what you’re characterizing as the high load scenario.”
Catch-22
Lang questioned the ISO’s professed need to fit the carbon price analysis into “the allotted time frame.”
“There’s no Tariff requirement, there’s no statutory requirement for that, and we’ve had lots of other cases where things have been delayed because the analysis takes longer than expected,” Lang said.
“I’m extremely troubled that we’re looking at something that could have a very significant consumer impact — we don’t know yet because we haven’t seen the analysis — and all I keep hearing from the ISO is ‘we can’t do the broad analysis that folks are asking for because we don’t have the time to do it.’”
Duffy said the situation was a catch-22.
“You’re telling us that you need to know the results of the analysis before you can decide to move forward, but you’re not letting us get the analysis because we’re debating the assumptions we would use in the analysis,” Duffy said. “We’re trying to get to the point where actually we can run the analysis and present the results.”
If at that point there’s a consensus to continue the analysis, “that’s fine, but please let us get to the point where we start presenting results so we can start talking about those as opposed to what-ifs and maybes,” he said.
The task force next meets July 9 at NYISO headquarters.
American Electric Power on Wednesday announced that Louisiana’s Public Service Commission has approved its proposed mammoth Wind Catcher Energy Connection project.
AEP’s Louisiana operating company, Southwestern Electric Power Co., would own 70% of the $4.5 billion project, a 360-mile, 765-kV line to Tulsa from a 2-GW wind farm being built by Invenergy in the Oklahoma Panhandle. AEP affiliate Public Service Company of Oklahoma would own the other 30%. The two utilities would purchase the wind facility upon its completion, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2020.
AEP’s Wind Catcher site | Invenergy
SWEPCO agreed to a cap on construction costs, qualification for 100% of federal production tax credits and minimum annual production goals, among other commitments.
“Wind Catcher is a major investment in clean energy that will produce long-term savings for Louisiana customers and further diversify our energy resource mix,” AEP CEO Nick Akins said in a press release. “The Louisiana Public Service Commission’s decision recognizes the benefits Wind Catcher will bring to Louisiana customers.”
Galvez Building housing the Louisiana Public Service Commission | LA.gov
AEP says it expects to save its customers more than $4 billion over the 25-year life of the wind farm, primarily through a reduction in the fuel portion of their bills that begins in 2021.
The PSC joined Arkansas regulators in approving the project. The Oklahoma and Texas commissions have yet to weigh in, but AEP appears to face longer odds before those two agencies.
The head of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission’s Public Utility Division and the state’s attorney general have indicated in regulatory filings that they remain opposed to the project, and landowner opposition to the transmission line has been running high. The OCC has scheduled a public comment hearing for July 2.
Texas’ Public Utility Commission staff has disagreed with an administrative law judge’s preliminary decisions approving Wind Catcher, saying “the evidence presented does not support a sufficient probability of improvement of service or lowering of costs to ratepayers.”
Staff recommend that the commission condition its approval on a requirement that SWEPCO guarantee tax credits in the amounts represented by the utility, and that it guarantee some level of net benefits to customers over and above the annual revenues that customers are obligated to pay for the project’s base rate costs. The PUC will take up the issue at its July 12 open meeting (Docket No. 47461).
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) have joined a new organization to build political support for the carbon dividend proposal offered last year by Republican party elders James A. Baker III and George P. Schultz.
Lott | Bipartisan Policy Center
Lott and Breaux are co-chairing the advisory board of Americans for Carbon Dividends, which announced itself Wednesday with financial backing from Exelon, First Solar and the American Wind Energy Association, along with a poll it said shows wide bipartisan support for the Baker-Schultz proposal.
Baker and Schultz’s Climate Leadership Council, formed last year, proposed a carbon fee of $43/ton starting in 2021 that would return the funds to Americans as monthly dividends. Backers say the plan would provide net payments to 70% of Americans while reducing emissions more than the U.S. commitment under the Paris Agreement.
Escalating the fee by 3 to 6% per year would reduce carbon emissions by 34 to 36% from 2005 levels by 2025, they say, and eliminate the need for existing carbon regulations such as the Clean Power Plan. (See Baker’s Carbon Dividends Plan Reaches Across Aisle.)
A carbon fee beginning at $43/ton in 2021 and escalating at 4% annually would reduce emissions by 32% from 2005 levels. | Climate Leadership Council
“This is the inevitable climate solution and the most likely to lead to a grand bipartisan climate compromise,” said Hill+Knowlton Strategies Managing Director Richard Keil, the newly formed group’s spokesman in a press conference Wednesday. Keil noted that former Federal Reserve Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen and former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman have signed on to the plan as founders of the CLC.
Keil said the new group was formed to signal the move to an “inside the Beltway strategy” after the CLC spent last year on policy development and working outside the Beltway.
Breaux | Squire Patton Boggs
Breaux acknowledged Congress is unlikely to embrace the plan any time soon. “This is an educational program that we’re embarking upon … which means we will be talking to leaders in the Congress in both parties. … This is not a sprint. It’s going to be a marathon.”
“I think that both parties are desperate … to find something that they can agree on,” he added.
“I took quite some time to look at this issue and think about it,” Lott said. “I’m convinced this is the solution that we have been looking for as a country and, frankly, in the world.”
Ted Halstead, CEO of the carbon dividends group and the CLC, said Republicans’ views on climate change have shifted over the last five years. “[There’s] no real differences numerically between where younger Republicans and younger Democrats are on this. I don’t want to overstate it because I don’t have a side-by-side comparison of numbers to do this, but it at least in general reminds me about how … attitudes within the Republican Party shifted on issues like gay marriage over the last 10 years. The next generation of Republicans thinks about these and other things differently than some of their older peers.”
The group released a poll showing 81% of likely voters, including 71% of moderate Republicans and 58% of conservative Republicans, agree the government should act to limit carbon emissions. It said the tax-and-rebate strategy is favored by a 2:1 margin overall.
“Members of Congress pay attention to polls,” Breaux said.
In addition to bringing on Hill+Knowlton to handle communications, Americans for Carbon Dividends has hired Squire Patton Boggs — where Lott and Breaux are senior counsels — as lobbyist and Margaret Lauderback, an ally of Rick Perry and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to lead fundraising. Political consultant Mark McKinnon, a former advisor to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former President George W. Bush, and Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, have signed on as senior advisers. Former Bush aide Karen Hughes is of counsel.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California State Senate committee advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow CAISO to be transformed into a Western RTO, a major change in the electricity market that has been met with heavy opposition.
Sponsored by State Assemblyman Chris Holden (D), AB813 garnered the six necessary votes in the Senate Energy, Utility and Communications Committee to move on to the Judiciary Committee for review. The Assembly approved the bill on June 1, and with Gov. Jerry Brown a strong supporter of regionalization, the bill is likely to get his signature if approved on the Senate floor.
Proponents say the law would help the state export excess renewable energy and create a more efficient regional market, lowering costs.
“This is an opportunity for California to expand our good policies across state borders and to expand upon that,” Holden told the committee. The recently amended bill was carried over from last year’s session. (See Calif. Energy Bills Move Forward, but Big Ones Stall.)
The bill creates a Western States Committee with three representatives from each state with a participating transmission owner, which would provide input on RTO matters that affect more than one state. Left open is the question of whether state voting power would be weighted by electricity load. It also specifically prohibits the creation of a capacity market.
But memories of California’s 2000/01 electricity crisis remain strong in the state, and many interests have expressed concerns about increased oversight of the market by the federal government. CAISO is already regulated by FERC, but some worry California would lose control of clean energy goals to the federal government and other states.
Committee member Robert Hertzberg (D) said that he “generally likes the notion of regionalization” but added that “I am very unhappy as to how this bill has proceeded.” He said he had many concerns about repeating the mistakes of the electricity crisis and negatively affecting the economy by moving jobs out of the state.
“There is an underlying issue that is legitimate with respect to California jobs,” Hertzberg said. “I am deeply concerned across the board.”
The bill has a long list of opponents, including labor groups worried about exporting energy-related jobs to other states and environmental groups, such as Sierra Club and Earthjustice, who say the changes will make California subject to imports of fossil-sourced generation. More than 12 California cities, the Port of Oakland, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the Utility Reform Network and other groups oppose regionalization.
Former FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff addressed the committee, attempting to ease fears about the commission’s oversight. Wellinghoff said FERC acts independently, pointing out it recently dispensed with the Department of Energy’s proposed Grid Resilience Pricing Rule.
“They are really going after PJM … where most of these coal plants reside,” he said of the Trump administration’s effort to bolster coal.
While the regionalization debate continues, CAISO has proposed bringing its day-ahead energy market to the Western Energy Imbalance Market. That measure would allow more energy trading across the region but does not create a new RTO with new multi-state management as envisioned by AB813. (See CAISO Day-ahead Could be Tailored for the West.)
FERC on Monday ordered Footprint Power to refute a finding that the company violated ISO-NE Tariff rules and federal regulations by filing “false and misleading supply offers” for its Salem Harbor Power Plant in June and July 2013.
Footprint has 30 days from the June 18 order to show cause why it should not forfeit $2,049,571 in Capacity Supply Obligation (CSO) payments for a period during which FERC’s Office of Enforcement staff found that Unit 4 at the plant could not provide capacity. The company must also demonstrate why it should not be assessed $4.2 million in civil penalties.
Salem Harbor Power Plant | Tetra Tech
Enforcement staff allege Footprint submitted supply offers that Unit 4 could not satisfy because Salem Harbor lacked usable fuel. Staff found the company not only failed to report the lack of fuel to the RTO but also “omitted material information from and/or misrepresented the fuel status of Salem Harbor and related operational status of Unit 4.”
Background
In 2012, Footprint bought Salem Harbor, a 748-MW coal- and oil-fired plant with four units, from Dominion Resources Services. Two units at the plant had been retired in 2011, while units 3 and 4 were operational at the time of purchase. Both units had a CSO for both ISO-NE’s Forward Capacity Auction 3 (FCA 3) Capacity commitment period (June 2012 through May 2013) and the FCA 4 commitment period (June 2013 through May 2014).
However, units 3 and 4 were scheduled to retire effective June 1, 2014, coincident with the start of the FCA 5 Capacity commitment period. Unit 3 was primarily a coal-fired unit and Unit 4 was a 437-MW oil-fired unit.
The units have since been demolished, and Footprint is now converting the plant to a 674-MW gas-fired, quick-start, combined-cycle generator, which is expected to go into service by the end of the year. (See “Future Locational Reserve Needs” in ISO-NE Planning Advisory Committee Briefs: June 13, 2018.)
The RTO had rejected earlier de-list bids to retire Unit 4 during FCA 3 and 4, citing reliability needs. In exchange for keeping the unit online and available, “Dominion was not paid the pro-rated capacity auction clearing floor prices in FCAs 3 and 4, but instead received the unit’s cost of service — which was approximately double the amount received by other ISO-NE capacity resources,” the commission noted.
Footprint subsequently collected CSO payments in the same amount awarded to Salem Harbor when Dominion owned the plant, which totaled about $4.4 million from June to July 2013.
Salem Harbor, at the time, had only one fuel storage tank that could hold roughly 200,000 barrels (bbl) of oil used to supply Unit 4. However, Footprint had also sold most of Salem Harbor’s fuel inventory back to Dominion, leaving only 40,000 bbl on site by December 2012, an amount the plant staff believed was less than two days’ worth of fuel.
Enforcement staff alleged that because Unit 4 burned between 14,000 and 16,000 bbl of fuel per day when operating, the plant’s managers were aware the remaining 40,000 bbl would not last longer than two days because only 29,000 bbl could be physically accessed from the tank.
‘Feasible’ Defense
ISO-NE’s internal Market Monitor alerted the commission to Salem Harbor Unit 4’s repeated inability to meet its CSO, also alleging “that false or misleading Day-Ahead (DA) supply offers and verbal communications were made to ISO-NE regarding Unit 4’s availability.”
In 2015, FERC staff and Footprint counsel discussed staff’s preliminary findings and Footprint’s claim that staff relied on assumptions rather than data to calculate Salem Harbor’s usable fuel inventory. Footprint claimed staff used the wrong data in its investigation, but “even after staff used the data source proffered by Footprint, use of that data source did not materially impact staff’s calculations,” said the commission.
In response, Footprint claimed Unit 4’s offers were “feasible” because the unit did not have to operate in accordance with its CSO due to certain environmental limitations on nitrogen oxide emissions.
In February 2018, after Footprint and staff had the opportunity to discuss the settlement, staff issued a letter providing notice of staff’s intent to recommend the commission initiate a public proceeding against Footprint.
Footprint submitted its response on March 12, 2018. “Although staff narrowed the set of violations pursued in light of the additional information it received … staff still concluded that the majority of Footprint’s arguments were not supported by the evidence and did not alter staff’s views that violations occurred,” said the commission order.
Footprint must now provide a concise statement regarding any disputed factual issues and any law upon which they rely, admit or deny each material allegation and set forth every defense relied upon. Failure to answer the order to show cause will be treated as a general denial and may be the basis for summary disposition, the commission said.
Footprint may also choose to apply section 31(d)(3) of the FPA to the proceeding. If the commission then finds a violation, it will issue a penalty assessment and, if not paid within 60 days of the order assessing penalties, it will institute an action in the appropriate United States district court.
BOSTON — Private car ownership in cities will be a rarity in five years, but it may take 30 years to get all the gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs off the road.
Those were two extremes of visions for decarbonizing the transportation sector presented Friday at Raab Associates’ 158th New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable.
Two big challenges in decarbonizing passenger vehicles are geography and scale, said Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack.
“Lyft has pledged that its company alone will provide 1 billion autonomous, electrified rides annually by 2035, which would be far more important if we didn’t make 411 billion trips a year in the United States, meaning that the 1 billion trip goal represents less than one day’s travel — and that’s one day’s travel in 2015, not 2035,” Pollack said.
“That, my friends, is the problem of scale in transportation,” she said. “Sometimes I refer to it as the ‘denominator’ problem. We talk about the numerator — we’re going to have 300,000 electric cars, we’re going to have a billion trips — and we forget the denominators, and in transportation they’re enormous.”
Inundating Innovation
“As we sit here today in this low-lying seaport/innovation district — someone in the audience said ‘inundation district’ — the announcement yesterday that Antarctic annual ice loss has tripled in the last decade, and now stands at 219 billion tons of ice per year, should continue to instill a sense of urgency in these matters for all of us,” said moderator Jonathan Raab.
“Although this is our Electricity Restructuring Roundtable — and the electrification of cars is often viewed as the panacea for reducing carbon in the transportation sector — we should not forget the critical importance of strategies to reduce VMT, or vehicle miles traveled in personal vehicles, through mass transit, shared mobility, biking, walking, telecommuting and other strategies, as well as making transportation more efficient generally,” Raab said.
Robert Klee, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, boasted that his state, though small, is keeping up with its neighbors in offshore wind procurements and even moving ahead in setting interim goals for greenhouse gas reduction, highlighting the passage earlier this month of Public Act 18-82 (Senate Bill 7).
The department had announced Wednesday that the state will purchase 200 MW of output from Deepwater Wind’s Revolution Wind project, adding to Rhode Island’s 400-MW procurement. (See Conn. Awards 200-MW OSW, 50-MW Fuel Cell Deals.)
“As Massachusetts is thinking about their interim goals, we’ve actually put them into law, so for 2030, there are 45% reductions in greenhouse gas,” Klee said. “We took where we are today, and where we have to go by statute — 80% by 2050 from 2001 levels — drew basically a straight line, that’s 45% by 2030. That is actually the most ambitious target in the country right now.”
Transportation represents 36% of the state’s GHG emissions, “and that means we have to do a whole lot on deployment of zero-emission vehicles, and transit, and it’s an all-of-the-above strategy for Connecticut,” Klee said.
The state is also pushing against federal rollbacks by working with other states, such as through the U.S. Climate Alliance, he said. It also joined the Transportation and Climate Initiative with eight other states in the Northeast to consider a cap-and-trade system for transportation similar to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in place for the power sector.
Ridesharing Fix
Corey Ershow, Lyft’s transportation policy manager for the Eastern U.S., wants to help tackle Pollack’s denominator problem through ridesharing, which cuts total VMT by increasing the number of passengers in a vehicle.
“About three-quarters of commuters not only drive to work every day, but they’re doing so alone, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, but it does cause significant problems — $160 billion a year in congestion costs, and 40,000 American fatalities last year,” Ershow said.
Historically, we haven’t given people a lot of options, he said. “Either you take mass transit, which is great if you live right along an existing route, and it’s operating at high capacity, but that’s not the case everywhere,” Ershow said. “As a result, car ownership looks pretty appealing.”
In the vast majority of use cases, a private vehicle is going to be the fastest way to get from point A to point B in an era in which we are placing an increasing price premium on time, he said.
“But ridesharing has proven demand for an alternative,” Ershow said. “This is going to become that much more ubiquitous as we move into autonomous vehicles,” which when shared on a platform like Lyft could mean dramatic reductions in VMT numbers in the U.S.
The company projects that within five years, fully autonomous vehicles will provide the majority of Lyft rides across the country, and by 2025, private car ownership will all but end in major U.S. cities, he said.
Mechanical engineering professor John Heywood of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that huge swaths of the country are outside urban areas, and drivers who live in rural areas are more prone to be concerned about the range of an EV.
“Long recharging times are also an issue, because if you up the power, you fry the battery,” Heywood said. “Most EVs must recharge at home, and they do 90% of their recharging at home, and 90% of EV buyers buy a home recharger. But how many homes have that potential? Our current estimate is about a third of the 110 million homes in the U.S. So that’s a constraint that we haven’t yet found a way around.”
Ben Haley, cofounder of Evolved Energy Research, posited three pillars supporting a deep decarbonization strategy for the transportation sector — electrification, energy efficiency and electricity decarbonization.
Reducing carbon emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, Haley said, would require a threefold increase in the share of energy from electricity, coupled with efficiency gains to reduce per capita energy use by 40%. But even that is not enough, he said.
“Even with energy efficiency, electrification increases load precipitously, but as we are doing that we’re also needing to bring on renewable resources or other decarbonized resources to lower the emissions intensity about 90%,” Haley said.
“These are sobering numbers, undoubtedly,” he said. “Per capita energy use needs to drop, which can be through a combination of electrification, fuel efficiency, a reduction in service demand through conservation or reimagining of service demand through mobility — all of those can reduce energy. Every unit of energy we don’t demand means we don’t have to build a system to support that.”
Evangeline Levesque, executive director of sustainable transport and electrification policies for the Quebec Ministry of Transportation, said her province is in the middle of a five-year, $420 million plan to electrify its transportation.
“Quebec has a lot of clean, renewable energy,” Levesque said, referring to the province’s vast hydropower resources. “As it is, we have a lot of it. As it is not too expensive, it was the obvious treatment.”
The difference between Quebec and New England is that it funds its decarbonization programs through an active carbon market, being part of the Western Climate Initiative with Ontario and California. The province set a target of $500 million of investment and 5,000 jobs in the EV industry by 2020, by when it aims to have 100,000 EVs registered.
Monumental Shift
Terence Sobolewski, chief customer officer for National Grid, acknowledged the barriers mentioned by other speakers, such as consumer awareness, high cost and EV model availability. But he said that building charging infrastructure was the most important step now, in the early stages of the industry.
To achieve 80% GHG reductions by 2050, “we need to have half of our light duty fleet be electric by the year 2030, [for which] you actually need to have 100% of sales [be] electric at least two or three years before that to effect that transition,” Sobolewski said.
“That means that in less than 10 years, every car and light duty truck sold in the Northeast would have to be electric,” he said. “That’s a monumental consumer shift we’re talking about achieving.”
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FirstEnergy Solutions is looking to recent developments in New England to bolster its renewed argument that FERC take emergency action to financially support “fuel-secure” resources to promote resilience of the nation’s electricity grid.
ISO-NE’s request to prop up Exelon’s Mystic gas-fired plant shows FERC’s “failure … to ensure the continued operation of critical nuclear and coal-fired generators while a long-term solution is developed” when it declined to implement the emergency price supports envisioned by the Department of Energy’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking earlier this year, FES argued in comments filed on Friday in FERC’s resilience docket (AD18-7).
Mystic Generating Station
“On multiple occasions in the past several years, the commission was asked to undertake decisive action to preserve grid resilience but failed to do so,” FES wrote, calling on FERC to implement “the same relief requested by ISO-NE but applied at a level sufficient to protect the resilience of the nation’s electric grid.”
“If the commission acts now to preserve nuclear and coal-fired generators, it will have more options to address resilience problems in the future,” the company said. “These options will not exist if the commission waits years or even months to act.”
‘Things to Come’
FES argued that ISO-NE’s Tariff waiver request to keep Mystic running despite Exelon’s plans to retire the facility (ER18-1509) “foreshadows things to come if the commission does not undertake swift and decisive action to preserve fuel-secure generating resources” and “is the consequence of commission inaction and, particularly, its failure to ensure that RTO/ISO markets contain just and reasonable rules that provide adequate compensation for needed generation.”
ISO-NE’s request inspired a Section 206 complaint from the New England Power Generators Association on the issue (EL18-154), along with dissent from other stakeholders. (See Mystic Waiver Request Spurs Strong Opposition.)
Such individual reliability-must-run agreements “are merely Band-Aids,” and without action “at once and on a national level … the commission soon will face a flood of similar requests … that do nothing to address the underlying problems that necessitate such requests,” FES said.
FES filed for bankruptcy on March 31, just a day after announcing the closure of its three nuclear plants and two days after asking Energy Secretary Rick Perry to issue an emergency order under Section 202c of the Federal Power Act directing PJM to compensate coal-fired and nuclear power plants that have 25 days of on-site fuel. Parent company FirstEnergy has since developed a plan to extricate itself from the woes of its merchant subsidiaries. (See FirstEnergy Announces Mixed Earnings, Plan for FES Bankruptcy.)
FES’ pleas to Perry came less than 90 days after FERC rejected his call for cost-of-service payments to coal and nuclear generators (RM18-1) and opened a new docket (AD18-7) to consider grid resilience. (See DOE NOPR Rejected, ‘Resilience’ Debate Turns to RTOs, States.)
The company’s comments were filed in the new docket — along with the Mystic RMR and NEPGA complaint dockets — calling on FERC to reconsider the company’s proposal in the docket initiated by Perry’s request.
FES frames the current resilience docket as a chance for FERC to rectify past mistakes, laying out what it believes are previous opportunities to address issues the commission missed. They include Maryland’s attempt to subsidize construction of a gas-fired generator in 2009, Ohio’s requests for power purchase agreements in 2016, DOE’s NOPR in 2017 and its 202c emergency relief request.
No Real Markets
The filing also takes on repeated claims by RTOs/ISOs that they have the situation under control.
“ISO-NE’s request represents a breach in the dam. Without immediate and meaningful action on a broad scale, the commission will soon be faced with a flood of requests for waivers. Even that may not even be enough to address the threat to the grid’s resilience if RTOs and ISOs continue to ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,’” the company said. “The record also makes clear that the commission can no longer rely on assurances from RTOs and ISOs that ‘all is well’ and that they have the problem in hand.”
The company argues two views that radically diverge from sentiment in much of the industry.
First, even though most electricity outages are caused by disruptions at transmission and distribution facilities, resilience isn’t resolved by adding more redundancy on those networks because “threats to the electric grid’s resilience stem first and foremost from problems with the nation’s fuel supply mix,” the company said. However, the filing doesn’t define the threats.
Second, the company argues that providing supports to nuclear and coal-fired units won’t “blow up” markets because they don’t really exist. The idea “that we have truly efficient markets today, where competition among suppliers actually sets prices” is “fundamentally flawed.”
The company included in its filing a 20-page report done by D.C. law firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer in May that FES said “demonstrates that continued deification of these so-called markets is misplaced.” The paper argues competitive energy markets are “in tatters,” having been “trampled” by out-of-market payments to generators, such as renewable energy credits or RMR contracts.
“An overreliance on natural gas in New England has produced a loss of fuel security and diversity so extreme that the retirement of a single natural gas-fired station that does not rely on pipeline gas will expose ISO-NE’s electric grid to rolling blackouts in the coming years,” FES said, noting that CAISO has recently had to confer RMR contracts on three gas-fired plants. (See FERC Approves CAISO-Calpine RMR Settlements.)
WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Offshore wind development, energy efficiency and engaging electricity users were the topics at ISO-NE’s Consumer Liaison Group meeting on Thursday. Here’s some highlights.
“Offshore wind is happening a lot faster than people thought it would,” observed Edward Anthes-Washburn, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority. Within the past month, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island selected a combined 1,400 MW of offshore wind contracts, New York is set to procure 800 MW later this year, and New Jersey set a target of 3,500 MW by 2030.
Massachusetts officials hope to develop supply chains for the nascent offshore wind industry in New Bedford because of “the existence of trained welders, mechanics, etc., since workforce training is a big expense in starting a new industry,” Anthes-Washburn said.
But the new ocean development must coexist with the Atlantic fishing industry that preceded it, Anthes-Washburn said. The port supports about 13,000 jobs and generates nearly $10 billion in economic activity each year.
“Since we are the No. 1 fishing port in the U.S., I look at [OSW development] through the lens of the commercial fishing industry because that is by far my No. 1 stakeholder,” he said. “We really want to make sure that as the offshore wind industry develops, it does so in a way that integrates with the commercial fishing industry. It’s really critical that we do that now, with the first project.” (See Competition, Cooperation and Costs the Talk at OSW Conference.)
Between the shipping transit lanes, the fishing grounds and the wind energy areas, “there is a lot going on on the continental shelf,” Anthes-Washburn said. “The sooner we can de-conflict a certain area and understand who’s going to be impacted by offshore wind, the faster we can start having a conversation with the commercial fishing industry, with the recreational boaters, with the commercial marine operators.”
Because of New Bedford’s outsized role in the fishing industry, the Port Authority’s Fisheries Advisory Committee on Offshore Wind represents about 30% of all U.S. commercial fishing, he said.
States are vying to get the early-entrant advantage in establishing supply chain centers for the industry.
Last week, the Department of Energy awarded a $18.5 million grant to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to lead a nationwide research and development consortium for the offshore wind industry.
Mike Jacobs from the Union of Concerned Scientists noted that ISO-NE “has a fuel security analysis circulating, and they’re basing their policies on the idea that there’s not an offshore wind industry coming along … so this [forum] is a helpful thing for educating ISO New England.” (See Report: Fuel Security Key Risk for New England Grid.)
However, Anne George, ISO-NE vice president for external affairs, said one scenario in the fuel security analysis assumed 2,000 MW of offshore wind. “We wanted to show the range so that we could have this conversation,” she said.
Emphasizing the Consumer
The CLG holds quarterly meetings around the region to provide a chance for residents, state officials and energy experts to learn more about the grid operator.
CLG Chair Rebecca Tepper, chief of the energy and telecommunications division in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, emphasized the “consumer” in the name of the group. CLG Steering Committee member Bob Espindola echoed Tepper’s remarks.
“Our primary focus is to think about what you can do as an end user to impact your own electric and gas bills, and knowing what’s coming in the future, to be in a better position to do that,” said Espindola, energy systems program manager at Acushnet, the maker of Titleist golf balls.
Sue Coakley, executive director of Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, spoke of energy efficiency’s affordability, reliability and contribution to reducing carbon emissions. “Just in the last three years, the current portfolio of efficiency programs in Massachusetts is saving $4 billion for consumers,” she said. “That’s just a tremendous resource.”
Wendy O’Malley, manager of the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program at MassDevelopment, explained how her organization uses tax assessments to enable property owners to obtain low-cost, long-term financing for EE projects and more.
“End users have all these solutions, but if they don’t have a way to finance them, or buy a new technology, they’re really left with no solution,” O’Malley said.
PACE assessments are similar to those used to collect the cost of public infrastructure that benefit specific properties such as sidewalks or sewers. The program finances EE projects at up to 100% and for terms of 20 years or more. Property owners pay for the improvements as part of their property tax payments, and the local government remits the PACE portion to the lenders.
Andy Haun, microgrid chief technology officer at Schneider Electric, said the rapid increase in the digitization of electricity “is usually an IT solution, and it’s not really helping us directly.”
“What is helping us is we’re also digitizing the control of that electron, so the devices — the actual appliances that use the electricity, the appliances that produce the electricity — these are under very smart control systems, which by themselves and aggregated are able to then act on the energy equation,” Haun said.
“This Internet of Things-enabled data infrastructure is allowing new ways for us to do more effective use of our energy and, in particular, electrical energy,” he said, adding that decarbonizing the grid and decentralizing it “go hand in hand.”
Brett Feldman, research analyst with Navigant Research, spoke about engaging customers through demand-side management.
The old way of obtaining customers was going door to door, but the “new way is to lasso the entire customer base and give them the chance to opt out of the savings opportunities rather than having to sign up people one by one,” Feldman said.
Another new trend is utility/vendor marketplaces, especially for millennials, who increasingly make their purchases online, he said.
Edward Woll Jr., a partner with Sullivan & Worcester, asked whether microgrids could help both shave the peak load for New England and be “cheaper than the power that you get from the grid.”
Haun responded that “in most all cases — except when someone put the microgrid in specifically for resilience needs — you’d be doing it because it’s going to save you cost from the tariff rate.”
“The distributed energy resources reduce costs because they’re being packaged, they’re being manufactured in locations that enable them to be very easily deployed,” Haun said. “These systems are going to put pressure on the cost of the energy against what you wouldn’t be buying from the grid, absolutely.”
