Local Energy Rules

New Hampshire, home to some of the highest utility costs in the nation, could be fertile ground for community energy projects that promote lower-cost, renewable generation — especially after investors in one shared solar array pioneered a strategy to promote greater local ownership. Regulatory and legal roadblocks forced solar advocates in Keene to develop a comprehensive framework for adding a 43-kilowatt rooftop array to Monadnock Food Co-op, whose focus on sustainability and downtown location made it a natural partner. Still, when the group began exploring its options in 2013, community shared renewables represented unfamiliar territory in the Granite State. Without a blueprint from other local projects, the group — led by community members — got to work. Peter Hansel, an investor in the project and part of its steering committee who helped develop its model, recently spoke with ILSR’s John Farrell about how it all came together.

A growing number of small- and mid-size communities are harnessing their shared market power to promote local renewable energy. Using a state policy called community choice aggregation, these communities can unseat powerful monopoly utilities and seize greater control over their energy futures by choosing their electricity suppliers or generating their own power. Community choice aggregation — a system pioneered in Massachusetts but now in play in more than a half-dozen states, both regulated and deregulated — allows cities and counties to form a single entity to select the electricity supplier on behalf of all., It expands energy options and gives these small communities market power, while keeping costs down for its customers. They negotiate terms for sourcing and purchasing energy, effectively sidestepping monopoly utilities that have historically made those decisions themselves. https://ilsr.org/articles/westchester-power-energy-future-episode-43-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

Rochester, Minnesota is known worldwide as the home of the Mayo clinic. And in recent years, its leaders have turned their attention to charting sustainable, responsible growth, including in energy with its own municipal utility. This Southeastern Minnesota city has extra flexibility in calling its own shots and recirculating a greater portion of its residents’ electricity dollars within the community. Now in his ninth year on Rochester city council, Michael Wojcik champions this kind of local control. He spoke with John Farrell, who heads the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance about Rochester’s unique opportunity to promote economic growth through better energy policies. https://ilsr.org/articles/municipal-utility-offers-springboard-for-minnesota-citys-energy-vision-episode-42-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

New England offers some of the nation’s biggest incentives for renewable energy generation, but high upfront costs and complicated financing mean many residents are still missing out on the opportunity to go solar. But one cooperative, with a series of pioneering programs, is beginning to change that. Co-op Power, headquartered in Massachusetts, has steadily built up its credentials over the past decade. In a significant milestone, it mounted a $4.3 million community-based fundraising campaign for a biodiesel plant set to go online early next year. It has supported hundreds of rooftop solar installations, and fueled the region’s green job growth. https://ilsr.org/articles/in-new-england-cooperative-values-drive-solar-growth-episode-41-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

The city of Minneapolis has earned wide reaching praise for its innovative, first in the nation partnership with a pair of local utilities formed to advance ambitious goals, to reduce emissions, energy consumption, and more. Two years in, the clean energy partnership is more than a novel tool to propel sensible energy policy. It offers lessons in how cities can better manage their energy futures. https://ilsr.org/articles/at-the-two-year-mark-key-takeaways-from-the-clean-energy-partnership-episode-40-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

A widening chasm between what customers want and what Santa Fe’s electric utility delivers is bolstering a campaign to rejigger power production and distribution, possibly putting the city itself in charge. The municipalization campaign, years in the making, comes as the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) leans on a long-term strategy that shortchanges renewables, includes shaky financial analysis, and diverges from what most ratepayers say they want. Now, New Energy Economy — the Santa Fe advocacy group spearheading the effort — is vetting its options for toppling a monopoly criticized for its resistance to renewables and market-leading fees. Santa Fe could form a municipal utility on its own, or aggregate demand with communities nearby and form a utility alongside them. John Farrell, ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative Director, spoke with Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy, in August 2016. https://ilsr.org/articles/in-santa-fe-momentum-builds-for-locals-to-take-charge-of-elec

On June 17, John Farrell delivered a keynote address to the annual Midwest Energy Fair in Custer, Wisconsin. In this presentation, John detailed the growth of renewable energy and how new technologies and smart policies can lead to the downfall of the monopoly electric utility. https://ilsr.org/articles/video-the-coming-of-energy-democracy-midwest-renewable-energy-fair/

“We just need to become the Ben and Jerry’s of the utility world!” So said Mary Powell, CEO and president of Green Mountain Power, as she announced in 2014 that her electric utility had just earned B Corp certification, making it one of more than 1,700 companies in the world committed to rigorous standards. https://ilsr.org/articles/mountains-beyond-mountains-how-green-mountain-power-became-more-than-an-electric-utility-episode-38-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

Incentives designed to make rooftop solar feasible for a wider range of consumers are under attack nationwide, threatening new solar development as well as the consumers that already have rooftop panels. The staunchest opponents? Utilities who say, despite a growing body of research to the contrary, that rooftop solar hurts other ratepayers and their bottom lines. In particular, utilities have railed against net metering policies that require them to provide credits to customers that produce energy from their own solar arrays. Those programs, and other key incentives supporting rooftop solar, are at the center of fierce debates in several states — notably in Arizona, on former U.S. Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr.’s home turf. https://ilsr.org/articles/competition-and-freedom-at-stake-episode-37-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

A surge of interest in residential solar arrays threatens traditional utilities’ outdated business model of selling more and more electricity, prompting them to adopt a controversial fee that hurts efficiency and diminishes long-range cost savings — even for themselves. Mandatory fixed fees on utility bills force consumers to pay up no matter how much, or how little, electricity they use. Utilities are increasingly pushing higher fees, skewing rate plans to erode benefits for customers with rooftop solar that offsets power demand and eases strain on the grid. https://ilsr.org/articles/utilities-strip-consumers-control-over-energy-bills-episode-36-of-local-energy-rules-podcast/

Andy Johnson works with the soil. When younger, he served in Peace Corps in Central America for three years, working on conservation practices. Then he worked in the Natural Resource Conservation Service for years, the same agency that his father Paul Johnson headed by appointment from Bill Clinton in 1993.  After moving back to northeast Iowa in 2007, he started farming christmas trees and grass-fed beef cows, but thinking about how the concept of conservation applied to his community’s energy use and economy. https://ilsr.org/articles/northeast-iowas-winneshiek-energy-district-shows-how-communities-can-capture-local-energy-dollars-episode-35-of-local-energy-rules/

When people pay their electric bill to an investor-owned utility such as Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, they are generating energy for themselves, but the profit and wealth accrues to the utility’s investors. But now, customers have an opportunity to buy in. Community solar programs are popping up rapidly across the country, offering electric customers an opportunity to own a slice of solar energy production. Most are utility-owned, and almost all limit customer benefits to energy credits on their electric bill. But some community solar models are going further, letting the customers themselves take ownership. https://ilsr.org/articles/sunshine-and-ownership-a-cooperative-solar-garden-blooms-in-north-minneapolis-episode-34-of-local-energy-rules/

Electric cooperatives arose from New Deal legislation that provided government-backed low-interest loans to bring electricity to rural areas that for-profit companies wouldn’t serve in the 1930s. They were engines of the rural economy. But today they face unique challenges, including a disproportionate reliance on coal-fired power, often purchased on decades-long contracts. Additionally, even though rural coops serve 90% of counties with persistent poverty, member engagement has declined precipitously from the golden years, and now few cooperative members even realize they are owners of their electric company. This week Ed Marston, former board member of the Delta-Montrose Electric Association in western Colorado, joins John Farrell on Local Energy Rules to talk about the electric cooperative world. He highlights the good, the bad, and what his and other cooperatives are doing to spur clean energy investment in a region that so desperately needs local economic development. https://ilsr.org/articles/freeing-

It’s not sexy. But it can make you warmer. It can even make you cooler. On-bill financing provides loans for energy efficiency improvements through the local utility company, paid back with energy savings on monthly electric (or gas) bills. And it’s a powerful tool for simplifying the financing for energy savings, and for making home comfort and lower bills available to those without the credit to borrow money on their own. On-bill financing is not new. The Tennessee Valley Authority has offered it for years. More recently, numerous municipal utilities and electric cooperatives have created programs. But Midwest Energy, on the prairies of western Kansas, might have the best track record. Brian Dreiling, manager of energy services at Midwest Energy, shared his utility’s story with Local Energy Rules this week, explaining the on-bill program, what makes it successful, and how an investment in the member-owner’s home is an investment in the utility. https://ilsr.org/articles/a-kansas-electric-cooperative-off

Former CEO Dwight Brown did a number on the Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (EMC). Cobb EMC serves around 175,000 member-owners just outside of Atlanta, Ga., and is one of 900 member-owned electric cooperatives in the United States. From the late 1990s on, the co-op’s members lost nearly $400 million dollars to Brown’s for-profit Cobb Energy, a shell entity Brown engineered to drain money from the cooperative. Over a 15 year span, Brown personally pocketed more than $21 million through self-dealing and conspiring with other business entities, including a proposed $2 billion coal-fired power plant that would’ve raised members’ electric rates by 10 to 20 percent in its first year of operation alone. Brown was indicted on more than 30 charges including theft and racketeering in 2011; he is still awaiting trial. https://ilsr.org/articles/members-reviving-atlanta-electric-co-op-after-ceo-takes-millions-episode-31-of-local-energy-rules/

ILSR’s John Farrell was a plenary speaker at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s 2016 annual conference in Boston, MA. The conference was held from March 8th through the 10th and focused on advancing the adoption of sustainable energy practices by bringing over 3,500 renewable energy professionals together. John’s opening plenary pinpointed key challenges of our current centralized energy infrastructure and the opportunity to ensure local ownership and distributed energy resources. Later on in the conference, John gave a session presentation focusing on the question: Does Electric Grid 2.0 Mean Energy Democracy? https://ilsr.org/articles/john-farrell-nesea-keynote/

In 2014, Chris Villarreal helped write the white paper, Microgrids: A Regulatory Perspective. As a regulatory analyst with the California Public Utilities Commission, he outlined the regulatory questions of microgrid development at a time when the state was mulling over how to allow more distributed, renewable energy come onto the grid. The questions weren’t small or easy to answer. Microgrids naturally straddle the definitions of utility and customer, of supply and demand, of community- and utility-ownership. Their existence and emergence points to a not-so-distant future when utilities simply manage different communities of distributed power generators, a departure from the historical monopolistic ownership style. https://ilsr.org/articles/podcast-microgrids-and-regulation-with-chris-villarreal/

Most microgrids today are single buildings that rely on diesel generators to run when the grid is out. They’re simple backup, redundant power. But some more advanced microgrids, such as the Clean Coalition’s planned community microgrids, are looking into the future, when multiple sources of generation can support a community of homes and businesses. https://ilsr.org/articles/clean-coalition-podcast/

In April 2014, Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power generator, made a $6.8 billion offer for Washington D.C.-based Pepco. Exelon – which already owns Illinois ComEd and Baltimore G&E – would become the largest electric utility in the country, with nearly 10 million customers. Shareholders, federal regulators, and many state utility commissions have approved the deal. But in August, the D.C. Public Service Commission unanimously rejected it, finding little public benefit. Now, just three months later, amid allegations of corruption, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has settled with Exelon and the D.C. Commission has been asked to reconsider. https://ilsr.org/articles/dont-take-the-bait-exelons-ambitions-go-beyond-d-c-s-power-episode-28-of-local-energy-rules/

The publicly-owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or SMUD, had already installed the first utility-scale PV array in the nation back in 1984. By the early 1990s, the utility saw a potential for rooftop solar and launched its PV Pioneer program, placing dozens of solar arrays on their customer’s rooftops, for a fee. https://ilsr.org/articles/two-decades-of-solar-pioneers-in-sacramento-episode-27-of-local-energy-rules/