Slashing Electricity Usage and Expanding Renewable Energy Now Critical for New England
The Hartford Courant just reported on November 8, 2014 that CL&P is requesting and will most likely receive approval for a 26% increase in their electricity generation rate. See full article here.
Connecticut and surrounding New England states are now at a critical point: if electricity prices spike, efforts to increase employment will be in jeopardy as companies will reassess locating in the region.
The primary reason cited by CL&P for their need for a rate increase is a shortage of natural gas in New England. Yes, at a time when the United States is about to expand natural gas production to the highest levels in history, pipelines into New England do not have enough capacity to actually deliver the gas needed.
Over the past few years, electricity generators in New England have switched to cleaner burning natural gas. That increased demand combined with more homeowners switch from heating oil to gas has created a regional gas demand greater than existing pipelines can deliver.
One solution could be to purchase more electricity from other regions and then send that electricity over transmission lines to New England states instead of sending the gas to generate electricity here. However, the same problem is occurring with electricity delivery as transmission lines are also at full capacity at certain points during the year.
Clearly it is frustrating for residents and businesses in New England states to be told that their electricity and gas prices will be increasing 25% to 50% over the next two years simply because we cannot get gas and electricity delivered here.
Let’s Fix This New England
Let’s fix this problem with two simple actions:
1. Slash Energy Usage. If every home and business cut the number of kilowatt hours of electricity and BTUs of gas they use right now, demand pressure on both transmission lines and gas pipelines would ease up and Connecticut and other New England states could keep prices down. Based on our current work with energy conservation projects, homes and businesses could easily cut current electricity usage by 30% and gas usage by at least 20%. We believe that these savings alone could eliminate the gas shortage and electricity transmission logjams without having to wait for new delivery capacity.
2. Dramatically Increase Renewable Energy Production in New England. Going green with energy production in New England is not just about reducing our carbon footprint. The more electricity we can produce in our region, the less we will need to rely out electricity from over-burdened transmission lines. That will help keep prices down for all homes and businesses.
In Connecticut, we are extremely fortunate to have the Connecticut Green Bank C-PACE program which finances energy conservation and renewable energy for commercial properties. With this critical financing now available, Connecticut is in position to dramatically reduce overall energy consumption while substantially increasing the amount of clean energy produced in the state. Connecticut has been the leader in this type of financing and other states are working on similar programs. This dramatic price increase announcement should serve as a wake up call to move as quickly as possible to other states in New England to roll out their programs immediately to help solve this crisis.
The good news is that both energy conservation and renewable energy projects can be implemented in months not years. If everyone in the region prioritized both efforts, this is actually a problem that the region could solve in less than 12 months.
– Michael Licamele
– President, MSL Group, Inc.
