Over the last two years, the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC)—which is similar to Massachusetts’s Department of Public Utilities—has been conducting an exercise that contemplates fundamental change in the way electric distribution companies should function, make money and correspondingly be regulated by state government. The effort has been aptly named “Reforming the Energy Vision […]
There has been much hand-wringing and crystal ball reading in the days since Kinder Morgan announced its plans to cancel their Northeast Direct natural gas pipeline project. As usual, some of the analysis is spot on but most paint too broad a brush in identifying winners and losers, especially as it relates to consumers. One […]
Much angst has been expressed by the Baker Administration, legislators and others about the need to replace so-called “base load” electricity generation as a result of the shutdown of several aging power plants in Massachusetts, most notably the Pilgrim nuclear plant. The concept of base load generation is that there is an underlying need for […]
In early February, ISO-NE conducted the annual auction for electricity capacity to serve the region. Under this competitive regime, ISO-NE seeks commitments from generators and other sources of supply, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and demand response, for a three-year period in the future, in this case, 2019-2020. The auction was successful in two significant […]
New England is at a crossroad in its energy planning decision-making. The last time the region faced such critical decisions about investment in infrastructure sure to affect issues of reliability, costs and the environment was the 1980s over the future of nuclear power. In moving away from conventional fossil-fueled generation, there are many questions and […]
Every now and then, those of us who stick our necks out to support policy solutions have to admit that what initially sounded like a good idea turned out to be the wrong path. This is one of those times. When the Baker administration first proposed having electric distribution companies (EDCs) enter into long term […]
