STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
ACCUSED BY A NATURAL GAS PIPELINE EXECUTIVE of failing to back up Baker administration policy proposals with numbers or analysis, the state’s energy chief said Monday that detailed analysis is not yet available.
Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton said Gov. Charlie Baker’s hydroelectric procurement bill (S 1965) includes a data-driven analysis as part of the process that would precede hydro procurement. The Department of Public Utilities would conduct the analysis.
“How could we analyze and know precisely the effects of something where we don’t have the actual plan in front of us yet? We don’t have a contract to analyze yet,” Beaton told the News Service outside the governor’s office.
Canadian hydropower, which already provides some electricity to New England, has been pitched as a means to avoid carbon-emitting forms of electrical generation in Massachusetts, and the governor’s bill would facilitate new hydro agreements.
At an ISO New England event last week, TransCanada Vice President Mike Hachey, a registered lobbyist, accused Gov. Baker of proposing a “massive government intrusion into the market.” Hachey said that at a recent New England Council meeting Beaton said there wasn’t any data to back up the administration’s policy.
Beaton told the News Service the bill would lay out a process for the Department of Public Utilities to determine whether a hydroelectric procurement is in the best interests of the state.
“If it is deemed not to be in the public interest, we would deny the contracts that come before the DPU,” Beaton said. He said, “Our process is designed for those answers to be answered in the DPU process.”
Baker had reacted with skepticism when Hachey confronted him Thursday on his hydro policy and Beaton’s alleged lack of data at a prior meeting.
“That’s not how he’s built,” Baker said
Hachey represents a multinational pipeline company with projects in Mexico and Canada and a viewpoint that increasing the supply of the relatively cheap, domestically harvested gas would do a better job of lowering energy costs than wiring the region to Canadian hydroelectricity.
Beaton said that while he did not provide Hachey with spreadsheets, he explained that data would be used in the Department of Public Utilities process.
“It was a great, great meeting where he asked very similar questions to what he asked of the governor. I think his questioning and statements to the governor were inaccurate and not appropriately worded,” Beaton said. He said there are “studies and fundamental conceptual-level stuff that has been done, but nothing specific.”
Between the Green Communities Act, the Global Warming Solutions Act, and similar regional legislation the state and region is forcing ISO-NE to design a system that will provide 25% and more of our electricity from wind and solar power in the future. On windy sunny days the system will need to run mostly on wind and solar, with the rest of the system on standby in case of a cloud or a wind change.
Technically this means that baseload power, mostly from coal and nuclear will have tor retire early, and be replaced with quick reacting flexible power such as natural gas.
Mr. Beaton needs to be sure that the arrangement with Canadian hydropower is NOT for baseload operations, and the need for flexibility does not carry extra cost. My concern is that the long distance and cross-border complexities will make Canadian hydropower difficult to control automatically as the system progressively transitions to the goal of a fossil fuel free future.
In the West Canadians are burning cheap coal for themselves and selling expensive hydro to California.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2015/09/02/the-epas-clean-power-plan-canadian-electron-laundering-and-the-poor/
Let’s hope we do not do the same.