The Green Communities Act: WMECO perspective

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The Green Communities ActWMECO perspective

• 9/12/2008 Boston, MA Jim Robb
• Senior Vice PresidentEnterprise Planning
  Development

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• MA policy goals are laudable
• Build on technology heritage with clean tech
  focus
• Drive economic development and create green
  collar jobs
• Expand energy efficiency and renewables
• Timing is perfect
• Energy prices
• CO2 realities and will
• Supply security and fuel diversity
• Demand growth increasingly on peak
• New supply limitations
• Customer needs /desires for control

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• Top 5 List

• Expansion of Energy Efficiency Market
• Utility Investment in Distributed Resources
• Green Power Product Offering
• Broader Access to Renewables
• Smart grid technology evaluation

Discussed further
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Achieving our energy efficiency goals

• Drive implementation through the utilities and
  leverage their scale economies, branding, and low
  cost customer access
• Move forward with decoupling utility revenues
  from sales volumes
• Develop a new funding and incentive mechanism
• Over time, migrate from kwh saved to CO2
  avoided focus and capture increasingly feasible
  tradeoffs among
• Good old fashioned energy efficiency investments
  and behavior incentives
• Maturing technologies (AMI, renewables,
  distributed generation)
• Emerging end use fuel switching opportunities
  (PHEV, electric heat pumps, etc.)
• Restructuring generation fuel mix (swap high
  carbon for low carbon generation)

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Solar economics need to get the flywheel
turining
Economic Impact
Program Design Concept

• 100 KW units
• Deploy 1000 KW/year for 3 years
• Utility owns and unit rate based with a
  generation ROE
• Power supplied to grid simplifies billing and
  likely interconnections and socializes costs
  amongst all customers public good
• Customer receives lease payment for roof
• Third party likely will perform actual
  installation

Several solar panel providers project costs
approaching grid parity within next 2-3 years
until then subsidy and social support will be key
may need special investment vehicle to capture
Federal ITC
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Solar programs are all about will, not the
resource
Source EPRI
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Renewables Great potential remote from load
Class 6 7 Potential
Source Levitan Associates
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Where should we go from here?
FROM

• The Pickens Plan
• Develop midwestern wind
• Develop long distance high voltage transmission
  to wheel power to load centers
• Replace natural gas generation with wind
• Use displaced gas to fuel natural gas vehicles
• Reduce dependence of foreign oil

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Where should we go from here?

• The Robb Plan
• Expand funding and create the right incentives
  for conservation to reduce load growth
• Develop local renewables and transmission to
  wheel renewables and hydro power from northern
  New England and Canada to southern load centers
  to meet growth and displace fossil generation
• Develop smart infrastructure (PHEV, DG and AMI)
• Substantially reduce carbon emissions and improve
  air quality

TO
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Where should we go from here?
OR TO

• The Raab Plan
• Expand funding and create the right incentives
  for conservation to reduce load growth
• Develop local renewables and transmission to
  wheel renewables and hydro power from northern
  New England and Canada to southern load centers
  to meet growth and displace fossil generation
• Develop smart infrastructure (PHEV, DG and AMI)
• Substantially reduce carbon emissions and improve
  air quality