Clean energy advocates say offshore wind is not being taken
seriously enough as an option amid discussions of transmission lines and
natural gas pipelines.
Coastal Massachusetts is blustery enough that a robust
offshore wind system could power a residential and commercial electricity load
that is 20 times larger than exists today.
That math, highlighted in an advocacy group’s recent report,
has some clean energy backers questioning Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s
pursuit of Canadian hydropower to meet state renewable energy targets. The
transmission lines needed to bring that hydropower to Massachusetts have faced
strong opposition in neighboring states.
Ben Hellerstein, state director of Environment America,
which produced the report, says hydropower offers a “comfort factor” to an
administration, leading legislators, utilities and big businesses more at ease
with an incremental approach to weaning the state of fossil fuels.
“Saying that offshore wind is unproven is an outdated way to
think about it,” Hellerstein said in an interview. “Their thinking hasn’t
caught up to reality. Both wind and energy storage are advancing very quickly.”
In 2016, Baker signed a bipartisan measure green-lighting
the procurement of 9,450,000 MWh of clean energy annually.
Clean energy advocates are elated that the law opened the
way for bids on 1,600
MW of offshore wind. But they are disappointed that Baker opted for 100
percent hydropower to fulfill a separate call for 1,200 MW of clean energy.
More local offshore wind, they say, would better mesh with
Massachusetts’ ambitious goal to curb greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent below
1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
“The bottom line is, we have this tremendous clean energy
resource right off our coast,” Hellerstein says. “The sooner we tap into it and
the bigger the scale means bigger benefits for our environment and our health.”
Connecting with hydropower generated by Hydro-Quebec
requires construction of a lengthy, land-based transmission line. Last month,
the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee rejected the Baker administration’s
first choice, the 192-mile Northern Pass project proposed by Eversource Energy
partly because it would have cut through the state’s iconic White Mountains.
A second option, the New England Clean Energy Connect,
is under permit review now. That 145-mile transmission line would run from the
Canadian border to a Lewiston, Maine, substation. Central Maine Power, part of
Avangrid, also partnered with Hydro-Quebec on this project.
On the offshore wind front, Deepwater Wind, Vineyard Wind
and Bay State Wind have submitted
proposals to install the state’s first round of turbines in coastal
waters.
Gideon Weissman, a policy analyst with the Frontier Group,
sees no reason why Massachusetts shouldn’t drop the hydropower option and fold
those megawatts into more offshore wind projects.
Frontier co-authored the report “Wind Power to Spare: The
Enormous Energy Potential of Atlantic Offshore Wind” with Environment America
in late March. They drew upon calculations from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Interior
Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Massachusetts stood out in the study because of its
combination of relatively shallow waters and high wind speeds.
“It certainly wouldn’t be politically feasible to build in
all the state’s coastal places,” Weissman says in an interview. “But states
don’t have to get all of the wind from their own waters. They can import wind
from other states.”
The overall cost of new offshore wind has fallen by 25
percent in the last five years, according to the asset management firm Lazard.
And Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts those costs will decline an
additional 71 percent by 2040.
“Right now, the moment for offshore wind is perfect,”
Weissman says. “The technology is proven and advanced and the price has dropped
significantly.”
That might be, but the state shows no signs of budging on
hydropower—even when critics question methods used to account for quantifying
the emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Katie Gronendyke, a spokesperson with the Executive Office
of Energy and Environmental Affairs, says a balanced approach is crucial to
diversifying the state’s energy portfolio.
“Large-scale renewable resources like hydropower can play a
critical role … by delivering reliable, clean baseload generation to meet
Massachusetts’ energy demands and greenhouse gas reduction targets,” she wrote
in an email.
Boston-based attorney Mark LeBel says the clean energy
nonprofit Acadia Center, where he works, “strongly supports going big on
offshore wind all across New England,” but recognizes that the appeal of
hydropower is its low price.
“There are plenty of questions about hydropower. It’s not a
perfect resource,” he says. “Hydro-Quebec has been building out new dams for
roughly the last decade with the idea of selling to new customers.”
LeBel emphasizes that the more renewable sources
Massachusetts can bring online, the less additional natural gas infrastructure
it will need.
Hellerstein and Weissman are aware that connecting offshore
wind power to population centers on the mainland will likely cause disputes,
but they say those shorter distances make more sense than transmission lines
such as the Northern Pass.
Earlier this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
granted permission to a company called Anbaric Development Partners to advance
the concept of an offshore transmission network capable of moving up to 2,400
MW of power.
In the meantime, Democratic legislators continue to try to
push Massachusetts farther on renewable energy. A bill released in February by
the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change guides the state toward
100 percent locally generated renewable electricity by 2035, with other sectors
such as heating and transportation following suit by 2050.
That bill, called the Act to Promote a Clean Energy
Future also would accelerate the timeline for the state to develop its
first 1,600 MW of offshore wind power and also boost that total to 5,000 MW by
2035. In tandem, it sets an energy storage target of 1,766 MW by 2025.
Hellerstein notes that solar power, long dismissed as a
no-go in Massachusetts, flourished once legislation matched the technological
advances and possibilities.
“We’ve had a more than 300-fold increase in solar energy
since 2007,” he says, adding that the full potential for offshore wind should
also be unleashed. “We have the resources, the smarts and the know-how, so what
are we waiting for?”
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