New England Governors’ Commitment to Regional Cooperation on Energy Issues March 15, 2019
Not quite sure what this means, but all six New England State Governors signed on to this statement :
"Recognizing that the entire New England region has a stake in ensuring a reliable energy system that also produces affordable outcomes for consumers, the New England Governors commit to work together, in coordination with ISO New England and through the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE), to evaluate market-based mechanisms that value the contribution that existing nuclear generation resources make to regional energy security and winter reliability. In addition, to the extent a state’s policies prioritize clean energy resources, those states commit to work together on a mechanism or mechanisms to value the important attributes of those resources, while ensuring consumers in any one state do not fund the public policy requirements mandated by another state’s laws. The New England states have demonstrated leadership in advancing market-based approaches such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and we are hopeful collaboration can address this important issue as well."
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Comment
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Comment by Dan McKay on March 19, 2019 at 8:45am
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The states use two mechanisms to promote policies. One is power purchase agreements that pay above market costs to selected generators. The other mechanism is a carbon tax, like RGGI.
The carbon tax , at per ton of CO2 emissions, is paid by generators that emit CO2 during operating hours. This cost is passed onto the wholesale energy market and ends up in the retail price of electricity paid by end users.Natural gas plants are assessed a carbon tax. Natural gas plants set the wholesale price of electricity 75% of the time, according to ISO-NE. The embedded carbon tax is part of this price and every generator in the stack receives the same price, whether a CO2 emitter or not. The cost of carbon is not isolated to CO2 emitting generators 75% of the time, it is passed down to all operating generators so it's effectiveness as a focused penalty on CO2 is lessened. Natural gas plants are expected to be the price setter for the foreseeable future. Is RGGI an effective mechanism to lower CO2 emissions or an effective mechanism to raise electric costs ?Power purchase agreements( PPAs) are purchases of electrical output from a selected generator outside the wholesale energy market. State policies are designed to favor renewables, therefore most of the PPAs are for wind, solar, small hydro and biomass.Generation resources with PPA contracts are paid a fixed price with escalators by utilities. The utilities resell the output into the wholesale market as a price taker, which means they will take the price as set by the marginal unit which 75% of the time is natural gas-fired plants.The selected renewable generators are guaranteed entry into the market by accepting the clearinghouse price, ( essentially bidding a zero price ), and will replace generation submitting prices above the clearinghouse price, 75% of the time, that would be NG plants.The Governors are realizing lower wholesale prices are forcing nuclear units to contemplate retirement, as they also are price takers, as "must run " units. Once started up, nuclear plants are designed to run continuously for operational and safety reasons.What mechanism the Governors and counterparts use to value nuclear as a reliable and critical component to the market is yet to be established. Right now, Connecticut is in contract with their in-state nuclear plant to keep it operating for the next ten years. Thus the statement above "Recognizing that the entire New England region has a stake in ensuring a reliable energy system that also produces affordable outcomes for consumers " has implications to Maine electric customers.State policies have immense effects on the competitive wholesale markets and it is accelerating costs to end users of electricity. We no longer have an unregulated, competitive electric supply market.
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Comment by Steve Thurston on March 18, 2019 at 3:27pm
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Dan, what you describe is basically a state takeover of the electric industry. The state will control the means of production, not the markets. The states will put a regional carbon tax on top of this via RGGI to extract more money from consumers to be directed to their favored "green" businesses.
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I think the statement relates to reliability and the need to assure base-load plants stay on-line to back up renewables. Connecticut, recently, secured the output of the Millstone Nuclear Plant for twenty years with a power purchase agreement.
It appears New England is going from a competitive auction energy market to a contracted energy market that encompasses wind, solar, nuclear, hydro. battery storage, demand response and some other exotic resources that are "zero carbon ". Fossil fueled plants, as the remaining merchant producers, will be priced out of the competitive auction market as the competitive market is replaced by state regulatory contracts. That is how hostile takeovers occur.The agreement among governors assures the NECEC project will receive unwavering support from Governor Janet Mills as a reliability asset.Isn't it odd that the nuclear plant contract hasn't even attracted a whimper from opponents, but a hydro project is bloody murder.
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I think it means they will try to implemement a regional carbon tax via RGGI.
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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