Massachusetts energy policy needed a Republican
Given all the, ahem, craziness of the national political scene and the doom-and-gloom predictions for the American presidency post-Obama, it easy to forget the two-party system has more or less worked pretty well for the past 240 years. For most of that time, two different ideological groups made up of like-minded people with their own intricacies have somehow figured out how to compromise to solve the nation's most vexing problems.The upside of this political balancing act has not been visible in our nation's capital for many years, but it shines through in Massachusetts, a blue state with a Democratic-dominated legislature and a pragmatic Republican governor leading the way.
The latest achievement of a conservative governor working out problems with mostly liberal lawmakers came last week when Gov. Charlie Baker signed a comprehensive Massachusetts energy bill into law. While the law has many elements and only time will tell how these big ideas will play out in practice, the bill championed by Baker and Democrats in the state House and Senate will do a much better job of achieving the state's increasing renewable energy commitments. One of the big breakthroughs is making good on the promise of offshore wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts – often called the Saudi Arabia of wind energy with 6,000 megawatts of potential energy. The 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind required in the law is getting far less public pushback than previous efforts and seems much more achievable.
The last great endeavor to install offshore wind played out as a decade-long melodrama as former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick pushed hard for the 468-megawatt Cape Wind project. Before the project was scuttled, National Grid signed a Cape Wind contract where the utility would have paid nearly 19 cents per kilowatt hour – more than double the market rate. NStar, the state's other major utility now called Eversource Energy, held out much longer than National Grid before finally acquiescing to the Patrick Administration's demands to sign a Cape Wind contract in order to get regulatory approval for NStar's merger with Hartford-based Northeast Utilities. The project's public opposition was overwhelming, especially from influential Cape Cod residents.
What Baker brought to the offshore wind table this year were cost considerations and a strong sense of public relations. Massachusetts commercial and residential ratepayers paid the fifth highest electricity rates in the country in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Given the built-in problems that contribute to higher costs – the trouble in delivering fuels to New England; the complex web of transmission and distribution lines; and general public opposition to new energy infrastructure, especially lower-cost fossil fuel and nuclear power plants – Baker and his team figured if they were going to call for a high-cost offshore wind, they better find lower-cost alternatives to even it out. Offshore wind, on average, costs $158 per megawatt hour to install and operate, according to EIA, which makes it the highest-priced renewable energy after solar thermal. To offset this, Baker and the legislature required the state to get 1,200 of other renewables, mostly large-scale hydro and onshore wind, which at $68 and $65 per megawatt, are the cheapest renewable energy systems.
Previously, many liberal leaning legislators and environmentalists would have turned up their nose at including large-scale hydro, and many still do. Whether or not you consider large-scale hydro a renewable energy probably depends on your feelings toward damming and its impact on wildlife, and – before Baker – Massachusetts didn't include it in its clean energy strategy. Yet, Canada and New York state have already-built hydro facilities and have excess power to sell, so by incorporating them into a clean-and-affordable strategy, Massachusetts isn't calling for new dams and found a way to lower its dependence on carbon emissions.
In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his Democrat-heavy legislature in 2014 turned Connecticut into the first New England state to incorporate large-scale hydro into its renewable strategy as a way to affordably meet clean energy goals, so it is possible the Democrat-heavy Massachusetts political ruling class could have figured out a similar solution without Baker. Ultimately, though, what Baker and the legislature showed is that by not holding on too tightly to ideological concerns, the state could achieve its long term renewable goals while not forcing businesses and residents to fork out a significant premium.
Another achievement of this new legislation was not picking a specific project for the offshore wind goals. While Cape Wind was the focus of the Patrick Administration, the new energy law simply calls for competitive projects to offer the best way to get to the 1,600-megawatt offshore requirement. Right now, three companies hold leases for potential Massachusetts offshore wind farms: two with a track record of building similar facilities in Europe – DONG Energy of Denmark and Offshore MW of Germany – and the third, Deepwater Wind of Providence, is building a facility off Rhode Island. Their proposals might face local opposition and fail to achieve approval, but by giving the state three or more options, public opposition will be spread out and more voices will be in favor of at least one of the projects going through, if not all of them.
Every election cycle forces Americans to choose sides and ultimately feel as if they won or lost the race. What is important to remember is while Election Day marks the end of the campaign, it clears the slate and marks the beginning of new era of governance. When there is meaningful compromise and the system works, as it is with Baker and this legislature, it means the state can move ahead, and not fall victim to the dysfunctional gridlock that has mired our national politics.
When ideology takes a backseat to pragmatic problem solving, we all have a lot more to show for it.
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