Energy

3 takeaways on the offshore wind RFP

Plugging In/ Energy/ Environment/ Opinion

3 takeaways on the offshore wind RFP

Getting the $8 billion procurement right

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IMAGINE WIND POWER delivering electricity at prices well below today’s rates. It’s not the fantasy of some wildly idealistic environmentalist: In fact, it’s happening today in Texas, and the potential exists in Massachusetts for abundant and cheap wind power if only we are bold enough to imagine a future largely devoid of fossil fuel energy(...)

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Healey to DPU: Cut Eversource rates

Plugging In/ Energy/ Politics

Healey to DPU: Cut Eversource rates

AG says electricity rates should go down, not up

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ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY is pushing state regulators to reject a bid by Eversource for a $96 million increase in electricity rates and instead order the utility to cut its prices by an unspecified amount. Healey has been extremely vocal in her opposition to the Eversource rate hike, testifying in person at hearings in Boston(...)

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The Download

For Jackson, tight squeeze to Walsh’s left

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Marty Walsh is out of touch with issues affecting working-class people and those in the city’s less affluent neighborhoods. He’s more attuned to downtown development than down-on-their-luck constituents, and he hasn’t been willing to confront the city’s long-festering race issues. If that sounds like a tough case to make against Boston’s workaday mayor, a recovering(...)

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The Download

Hingham drama

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For a small, toney town, Hingham generates an awful lot of news. The latest comes in Sunday’s Boston Globe with the recounting of a suicide by a distraught 26-year-old man whose parents claim a show of force by police led him to shoot himself despite warnings that a confrontation would heighten, rather than resolve, the(...)

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The invisible hand of Gordon van Welie

Plugging In/ Energy/ Environment/ Opinion

The invisible hand of Gordon van Welie

Power grid operator too preoccupied with pipelines

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OUR GRID OPERATOR, ISO New England, celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. For two decades, the ISO has been in charge of keeping the lights on throughout the region, coordinating the flow of electricity to power plants. As we become more aware of the consequences of different sources of energy production – from climate change(...)

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Access Northeast pipeline put on indefinite hold

Plugging In/ Energy/ Environment

Access Northeast pipeline put on indefinite hold

Eversource predicted in Nov. that construction would start in 2019

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THE COMPANIES BEHIND the $3 billion Access Northeast natural gas pipeline said on Thursday that they are putting the project on hold indefinitely. The project faced long odds in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but as recently as November officials from Eversource Energy confidently predicted pipeline construction would begin in 2019 and be completed in 2020.(...)

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Round three on renewable energy

Plugging In/ Economy/ Energy/ Environment

Round three on renewable energy

Supporters’ own data disproves their case

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A RECENT OPINION PIECE in Commonwealth (“The Upside of Renewables” by Peter Rothstein and Michael Behrmann) attempts to rebut an earlier piece by me which pointed out the high cost and lack of reliability of renewable energy. However, any objective analysis of their data undercuts their arguments that renewables are economically productive. First, in response(...)

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The upside of renewables

Plugging In/ Energy/ Environment/ Opinion

The upside of renewables

Clean energy advocates dispute any downside

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A Commonwealth opinion piece (“The downside of renewables”) published on May 11 provided a flawed argument against renewable energy and its implications for the New England electricity grid by picking and choosing facts from European countries that are decades ahead of the US in the clean energy transition. We should learn from the successes and(...)

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Exports explain interest in gas pipeline

Plugging In/ Energy/ Opinion

Exports explain interest in gas pipeline

Project isn't about need, it's about greed

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AFTER MANY SIGNIFICANT LEGAL and legislative defeats, it’s tempting to think that the massive Access Northeast gas pipeline is dead. That project would transport natural gas from the fracking fields of southwestern Pennsylvania to New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and maritime Canadian ports. In the past year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled against the(...)

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