Why '100% renewable electricity' plans may not be as green as you think

I'm not sure how many industries are built on this stunning a level of BS.

May 08, 2023

Miriam Wasser

There’s a good chance you’ve received flyers in the mail from companies selling 100% renewable energy plans. Maybe you’ve seen an ad online that says you can fight climate change from the comfort of your couch, or a social media post telling you that you can help the planet every time you turn on the lights. It’s easy, these companies say; all you have to do is switch your electricity supplier.

In Massachusetts, residents can choose to buy electricity from a private company instead of a utility like Eversource or National Grid. If you sign up with a so-called competitive supplier, nothing physically changes about your electric service; it’s just that the private company buys power in the wholesale electricity market on your behalf instead of your utility.

Many competitive suppliers promise cheaper electric rates, while others — like CleanChoice Energy, Inspire Clean Energy or Verde Energy — use renewables as a selling point.

So if you sign up, is your toaster suddenly powered entirely by the sun?

“The supply companies, they're not like literally bringing solar power to your home,” said Jenifer Bosco, a senior staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “But you wouldn't necessarily know that from the marketing materials.”

To understand why you don’t suddenly get green electrons coming into your home when you enroll in one of these plans, it’s helpful to picture the New England electric grid as a big lake. There are many streams flowing into it, which are power generators like natural gas plants and wind farms. The water these streams carry represent the electrons these generators produce. Once these streams meet the lake, all of the water gets mixed together. When you turn on your toaster, you're drawing water from the lake; you can’t control which electrons move through the wires and enter your house.

So let’s say you enroll in one of these plans. You might not be using renewable energy when you turn on your lights, but is your supplier actually buying 100% green power?

The answer is: it depends.

To track and verify the renewable power delivered to the grid, states and regulators use a system of “renewable energy credits.” Think of a credit like a token — every time a megawatt hour of renewable energy is produced and delivered to the grid, a credit is generated. When suppliers buy renewable energy, they get the corresponding credits. And after they sell that energy to their customers, they turn in those credits to the state.

In Massachusetts, these renewable energy credits are a key part of the state’s climate plans. That’s because all electric suppliers — utilities and private companies — are required to buy an increasing percentage of their power from renewable energy sources every year. In 2023, suppliers need to buy 22% of their electricity from qualifying renewables. Next year it will be 24%, and by 2030, it will be 40%.

In this system, credits serve two purposes: they're how suppliers prove they’re complying with the mandate, and they incentivize the development of new renewable energy sources. When demand for credits rises, clean energy developers build new wind and solar farms because they know there will be a market for the energy they produce.

As an incentive program, “it has been wildly, wildly successful,” said Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner of the Department of Energy Resources, which oversees the credit tracking system. “We have built quite a bit of onshore wind. We're building offshore wind. We've been very successful in Massachusetts in building solar. And there's been some other creative opportunities out there to build clean energy.”

But not all credits are equal, and not all credits “count” in Massachusetts. The state only accepts and tracks credits from renewable power that feeds directly into the New England grid. So credits from a wind farm in Maine count, but credits from.........................

Please continue reading at https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/05/08/massachusetts-competitive-supp...

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