Energy Experts Discuss Cooperation and the Way Forward for Renewables in the Region

The future for renewable energy in the Northeast was under a microscope at the 50th annual Eastern Regional Conference of the Council of State Governments, in Portland, Maine.

In a Monday afternoon session, a panel of experts including the President and CEO of ISO New England, Gordon van Welie, discussed the direction of state and federal policy on renewables.  The panelists encouraged states to coordinate and innovate in order to continue promoting renewable energy development in the Northeast and to support transmission capacity to carry the energy to demand centers.

There has been $4 billion of transmission investment in New England since 2002, with another $5 billion on the horizon, van Welie reported.  As a result, the U.S. Department of Energy recently removed New England from its list of “Congestion Areas of Concern.”

Maine is the region’s leader in renewables, with around 40% of New England’s queued-up renewable energy projects located here; the bulk of investment (over 80%) is in wind.  Because high-wind areas do not overlap with high-demand areas, “you’ve got to connect these two areas in order to make [wind] viable,” van Welie said.  To that end, in October 2010, ISO-NE will release its Wind Integration Study (PDF), which will include recommended technical interconnection requirements and a plan for integrating wind into the regional grid.

A significant challenge is that there is no agreement as to how to pay for transmission for renewable energy.  Van Welie suggested that the New England states could come up with a coordinated competitive procurement process, which would resolve any regional transmission cost allocation issues.  “This is doable as a region,” van Welie said.  But “because of the scale involved, we have to position the region for the long term.”

The panel also included Habib Dagher, Director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Laboratory at the University of Maine; David Littell, DEP Commissioner and presumptive PUC Commissioner; and Paul Hibbard, Vice President of Analysis Group, Inc. and former Chair of the Massachusetts DPU.  Maine Senate Majority Leader Phil Bartlett moderated the panel.

All of the panelists agreed on the need for the New England states to coordinate with respect to transmission planning and procurement.

Commissioner Littell announced that an Environment America study found that Maine is the most improved state in terms of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.  Maine experienced a steep drop-off in emissions through 2008 even while state GDP steadily increased.

Commissioner Littell also took the opportunity to criticize a recent Manomet Center report on Massachusetts wood-burning power plants practices that has thrown into question whether biomass should be considered a “renewable” resource.   Littell described the report as a “flawed study” that “didn’t allow for an adequate period for regrowth, which is necessary” in order to qualify biomass as renewable.

Professor Dagher is at the forefront in the development of floating offshore wind turbines, which are currently being tested off of Monhegan Island.  The Maine PUC will issue an RFP in September for proposals for an offshore commercial wind farm, which must be built within five years.  According to Professor Dagher, the major issue for offshore wind projects is economies of scale.  In his estimation, the optimal size for an offshore wind farm is 64 square miles, with around 200 turbines—smaller projects will not pay off.

Storage of excess generation is a major issue correlative to renewable energy.  Professor Dagher proposed that car batteries could be used to store this electricity, as a “distributed battery.”  Van Welie suggested, however, that the technology to then get this stored energy back onto the grid as a demand response mechanism is “at least ten years off.”

The conference, at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, Maine, was diversely attended, with scores of legislators from New England and the Eastern Canadian provinces, the former head of the FAA under Clinton, dozens of leaders from the private industry in Maine and the Northeast, consulting and public policy experts, and many others.  The conference concludes Wednesday morning.