THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION is taking aim at power plants and using a lighter touch with private vehicles as it seeks to comply with a court order requiring the state to set greenhouse gas emission targets by economic sector.
The draft regulations issued on Friday call for greenhouse gas emissions to fall another 7.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Of the total reduction, 4 percent is expected to come from power plants and 3.1 percent from transportation, with the remaining 0.06 percent coming from plugging methane leaks in the gas distribution system.
Under the regulations, individual Massachusetts power plants would be required to reduce their emissions and retail electricity suppliers would be required to purchase more clean energy, with a focus on hydroelectricity, nuclear power, and electricity from fossil fuel-fired power plants equipped with special carbon capture technology.
For the transportation sector, nearly all of the reduction would come from the state’s existing low emission vehicle program, which requires cars and trucks manufactured after 1995 to come equipped with advanced emission control systems. The MBTA and the state Transportation Department will also be required to reduce their emissions.
Dan Dolan of the New England Power Generators Association said the draft regulations unfairly target power plants. He said new federal data indicate emissions economy-wide are already down 24 percent from 1990 levels, just 1 percentage point below the target for 2020. State officials say emissions are down, as of 2013, by 19.7 percent compared to 1990 levels. The goal for 2050 is an emissions reduction of 80 percent from 1990 levels.
Dolan said the power generation sector has already cut emissions 60 percent below 1990 levels, primarily by using natural gas instead of coal and oil to run electric generating plants. By contrast, he said, emissions from the transportation sector have actually gone up slightly. The transportation sector is the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Dolan said some power plants may have trouble meeting the 2018 emissions targets, let alone those for 2019 and 2020. Environmental advocates, however, said they plan to push for even tougher emissions targets for power plants.
The draft regulations are a response to a May decision by the Supreme Judicial Court in a case brought by the Conservation Law Foundation. The so-called Cain decision said the state must set emission reduction targets for individual sectors of the economy and not just rely on an economy-wide approach.
Beacon Hill is taking over the redesign of the power grid. The power grid has evolved into a reliable engineering marvel. Beacon Hill politicians are destroying it. ISO-NE has been issuing warnings for years, but no one is listening.
The prospect of mandates to increase wind and solar grid penetration is what is forcing the early retirement of coal and nuclear. Removing both dirty coal and clean nuclear does not reduce carbon emissions. Replacing coal and nuclear with natural gas, no matter how much renewable energy the grid can absorb, does not reduce carbon emissions.
The reduction in carbon emissions is only on paper. In the real world recently they were increased. All we are getting from the states’ misguided RPS mandates for reduced carbon emissions are skyrocketing rates.
Retiring old power plants should not be feared… in fact it may be time to retire some old natural gas power plants and replace them with newer ones (greater efficiency means less carbon emissions).
What is a big problem is the failure of the state to insist on a more speedy transition to new lighting technologies. A simple mandate requiring the installation of LEDs for outdoor lighting would solve a lot of the problems that ISO-NE warns about with peak energy loads. We may not need more energy at all; all we may need is better management (and storage) of the energy (and transmission grid) that we already have. A shift in emphasis can save money, as we are paying for transmission capacity today that we may never use!