Group irate over Massachusetts, NStar green power plan
By Peter J. Howe, The Boston Globe -- June 24
A coalition including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and a big real estate firm is blasting a proposed new state deal with NStar Electric to promote "green power" installations like fuel cells and solar panels, calling it nothing more than a "horse trade" that will fail to promote any significant off-the-grid power generation projects.
Earlier this month, state officials, the Conservation Law Foundation,
Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and a local solar energy trade group
reached an agreement they are urging state utility regulators to approve this
month.
But the MIT-Harvard group, which also includes Equity Office Properties
Trust, the Shaw's Supermarkets chain, and golf ball manufacturer Acushnet Co.,
says the new rates are grossly unfair to so-called combined heat and power
installations, which involve big property owners installing their own highly
fuel efficient projects to produce electricity, heat, and hot water.
Equity Office owns 16 Financial District and Back Bay office towers,
including 60 State St. and 225 Franklin St., and big office parks in Wellesley
and Burlington.
Compared to small-scale solar, wind, and fuel cell units, combined heat and
power operations could have far bigger environmental and power grid benefits,
the group says. But because they would help business and institutional sites
produce much more of their power than they could with a fuel cell, solar panel,
or wind turbine, they could pose much more of a threat to NStar's $2.5 billion
in annual electric revenues.
As a result, the Harvard-MIT group is accusing NStar of essentially buying
off opposition by agreeing to special rates for boutique-sized solar and wind
projects, while maintaining prohibitive rates to thwart development of
heat-and-power plants that threaten the utility's business.
In recent filings with the Department of Telecommunications and Energy, Roger
M. Freeman, an attorney with Ferriter, Scobbo & Rodophele, who represents
the MIT-Harvard group and several companies that produce and sell distributed
generation systems, called the proposed pact "an ill-conceived effort by a
limited number of parties representing a limited set of interests who have
colluded with NStar Electric to exempt themselves from the proposed standby
rates, at the expense of others and the public interest."
"Policy outcomes should be established by the facts, law and merits,
rather than a series of horse trades by a limited group of participants,"
Freeman said in a brief urging the DTE to reject the proposed new rates.
State officials, the Conservation Law Foundation, and the Solar Energy
Business Association of New England all defended the distributed generation plan
as fair, saying it will remove many current roadblocks to distributed generation
development.
NStar lawyer David S. Rosenzweig called the plan "a reasonable middle
ground," and noted it has strong backing from AIM, which represents 7,500
companies across the state, including many interested in installing their own
on-site power systems.
Businesses and institutions see distributed generation as a way to save on
energy bills, especially at times like hot summer afternoons when electric
demand soars and prices can spike to 10 or 20 times normal levels.
Many environmentalists also like the systems because they emit less air
pollution than traditional big power plants and because reducing even 1 or 2
percent of the demand on the New England electric grid during peak price-spike
hours can slash overall costs for all electric customers by millions of dollars.
Officials at the DTE, which is due to rule on the new plan by June 30, had no
comment because the case is pending.
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