Electric battery facility at Provincetown transfer station. (Photo courtesy of Eversource)

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE communities (EJCs) across the country have historically been overburdened by industrial development with little benefit in return. As New England’s largest energy company, Eversource is changing the landscape as we build a clean energy future that will be shared equitably by the 4.4 million customers across our service territory.

Our transformative work is already underway bringing clean energy solutions to EJCs. We recognize that it’s essential to have honest, transparent, and direct conversations, and thoughtfully consider the needs of EJCs while balancing critically needed electric infrastructure to meet clean energy policy goal and ensuring safe, reliable service.

We are proactively engaging customers, communities, and leaders about the company’s clean energy agenda and investments. We are educating customers, recognizing culturally appropriate communications are critical to ensure awareness and understanding. We are taking feedback based on lived experiences of communities and carefully responding to the needs, concerns, and questions that are expressed by each community.

Getting to a clean energy future will take collective effort and buy-in from our customers and stakeholders, and our team is committed to explaining the current electric system limitations, engaging in robust dialogue regarding essential projects, and providing a seat at the planning table so that we fully understand a community’s needs while their voices help inform our policies and decisions.

Following years of rapid growth and development, the electric system has reached its limits in some areas – including EJCs. Particularly in Eastern Massachusetts, entire communities are in critical need of new electric system infrastructure and upgrades to ensure that all customers have access to safe, reliable, and clean electricity.

As more clean energy solutions like building and transportation electrifications and wind and solar generation become interconnected to the grid, this challenge will be compounded in vulnerable areas of the system, creating the potential for overloaded equipment damage and power outages for customers. Without new infrastructure to accommodate this unprecedented clean energy transition, we run the risk of exacerbating the burden of EJCs, which is unacceptable.

That’s why we have fundamentally shifted our approach at Eversource. We have developed an equitable long-term plan to ensure that our communities, particularly EJCs, can gain access to the major benefits of electrification and greater access to affordable clean energy and energy efficiency. 

In September, we filed our draft Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP) with the state, which is a roadmap to achieving 2050 decarbonization goals and making sure those benefits are shared equitably. Over the next two decades, we will invest heavily in innovative technologies like battery storage systems, electric substations, distributed generation like wind and solar, electric vehicle charging, and home electrification that directly benefit our customers.

Our ESMP will enable enough solar power generation to exceed the commonwealth’s 2040 goal and reach 72 percent of its 2050 goal. As part of this wide-reaching effort, we have proposed an ownership program for solar generation for income-eligible customers, which will unlock more clean energy options for customers who otherwise may be excluded.

We have endorsed the new concept of a Grid Mod Advisory Council (GMAC), which will host listening sessions about long-term infrastructure investments, allowing customers to give public comment and feedback in the very early stages of proposed projects. We will incorporate an extensive amount of feedback received from the GMAC, stakeholders, and customers in our final ESMP that will be submitted in January 2024—ensuring that our decades-long investment plans align with the needs of EJCs beyond electric infrastructure.

We are also connecting residential customers and small business owners in EJCs with energy efficiency resources like heat pumps and weatherization solutions to reduce energy use and costs through our community first partnerships. Additionally, our four-year Phase II Make Ready electric vehicle charging program is a $188 million investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Massachusetts. The program contains a specific focus on electrifying public transportation fleet vehicles that operate in and serve EJCs, reducing emissions within these areas.

Even as we explore innovative clean technologies like our networked geothermal pilot in Framingham, we are prioritizing equity by intentionally selecting this community for the pilot and its benefits.

Eversource is quite literally developing a roadmap for successfully achieving a clean energy future in Massachusetts, and as we look at this huge undertaking holistically, we recognize that every voice deserves to be heard and lived experience recognized so that we can maximize the benefits of clean energy for all customers and prioritize the EJCs that have been historically left behind. There is hard work ahead, but we are committed to it and look forward to strengthening our stakeholder and customer partnerships, and bringing communities together around shared goals as we build the smarter and cleaner electric grid of the future.

Digaunto Chatterjee is vice president for system planning at Eversource.