New England Public Radio

Mass. Legislature Wraps Up Late Night With Last-Minute Measures

Members of the Massachusetts legislature worked late into the night on Sunday, up against a midnight deadline to end their two-year formal session. With just a few hours left, four major bills remained unfinished: an economic development package, a measure to bring more renewable energy into the state, a bill to regulate non-compete agreements between employers and workers, and the state’s first regulations on ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft.

For a closer look at what got done and what was left behind, we called up State House News Service reporter Matt Murphy. He says three of those four bills got finished.

Click the audio player above for Henry Epp’s interview with Matt Murphy of the State House News Service.

 

Worcester’s Big Solar Dreams Could Evict Threatened Sparrows

A huge solar array is planned for Worcester’s Greenwood Street Landfill. The project has been celebrated by the city. But it has some naturalists concerned about the future of wildlife in Massachusetts.

Soon, Worcester could become home to Massachusetts’ largest municipally owned solar array. Panels would sit atop a 26-acre stretch of capped landfill. This site would be an important source of renewable energy for Worcester.

‘Sort of going through a rebirth right now’

Worcester's John Odell, Bob Fiore and Ed Kochling at the Greenwood Street Landfill in August 2015.
Worcester’s John Odell, Bob Fiore and Ed Kochling at the Greenwood Street Landfill in August 2015. (Casey Gilman for NEPR)

The Greenwood Street landfill is a windy hill surrounded by trees, overlooking parts of the city, the Worcester-Providence Turnpike, and Route 20. The top had been recently seeded, and the well-spaced four-inch shoots of grass were more suggestive of a new lawn than a solar project. A solar project that has John Odell, Worcester’s director of energy and assets, really excited.

“From the city’s perspective, this is a huge win,” Odell said. “This is financially a huge win. This is a huge win in terms of walking the walk, as it were, in terms of climate adaptation and mitigation, that we all want to do. It’s also a great hedge, in terms of economics.”

A “hedge” because Worcester officials expect the solar array to produce up to 20 percent of the yearly electricity city facilities use. And it will, in fact, not only save money, but be a money maker. Odell estimates 20 years after the solar array goes in, the city’ll be $20- to $25 million ahead.

And there’s another thing, according to Odell: For Worcester, this would be a signpost for the city’s new green outlook.

“Part of it is that Worcester is an industrial town that’s sort of going through a rebirth right now,” Odell said. “And this is one of the many things that Worcester’s doing to sort of showcase that we’re coming into the 21st century here, we’re green, we’re trying to promote economic development, and this is just one rather large project to sort of showcase that.”

A habitat threatened

But not everyone is happy about the planned solar array. You might think environmentalists would love a big renewable energy project. But they had other ideas for what to do with this land. After the landfill was originally capped in the mid-1980s, nature took the site back. It became a grassland habitat some hoped to make into an urban wildlife sanctuary.

Grasshopper sparrow. (via Flickr by Kenneth Cole Schnelder)
Grasshopper sparrow. (via Flickr by Kenneth Cole Schnelder)

“It’s buffy underneath,” described  birder Mark Lynch. “It’s got this extraordinary color pattern on the upper part of its feathers, and it’s got a little yellow bend in the wing.”

In his Worcester home, Lynch gave me the basics on the grasshopper sparrow, a bird he’s monitored since the 1970s. The sparrows have flown south for the winter, so he showed me pictures his wife took of the sparrow on his laptop.

“And I’ll show you how you normally see them,” Lynch said. “This is really more realistic pictures of them. They love to perch up in like single bushes or tall weeds within sort of a rough grassland environment, and that’s where they’ll sing and advertise their territory there.”

Since 1995, the state of Massachusetts has labeled this bird “threatened.” And the Greenwood Street landfill? It’s been one of its breeding sites. Lynch and other grasshopper sparrow fans had pitted their hopes on using the landfill to save the sparrows.

“It was really interesting because here you have an urban environment, and in the middle of it was this raised island that was this incredible grassland habitat,” Lynch said.

A deal with the state

Lynch — along with the group Mass Audubon — wants the city to ditch the big solar project — and instead construct a handful of smaller arrays around Worcester

But the city struck a deal with the state, a compromise of sorts, that requires Worcester to either find new homes for the sparrows or provide funding for existing habitats elsewhere in the state.

Jesse Leddick, a biologist with the Massachusetts department of Natural Heritage & Endangered Species, defended the arrangement.

“With the Greenwood Street Landfill being a fairly small contributor to the conservation of the species, that either creation of habitat elsewhere or funding for land protection or habitat enhancement could actually provide a long-term net benefit,” Leddick said.

But it’s not quite a done deal. This big solar project hinges on the legislature raising the net metering cap. That’s necessary before Worcester can sell some of the excess energy it gets through the solar panels back to the electric company. The big pay-off. The state House and Senate passed separate bills last year raising the cap, but they still have to work out the differences.

If a compromise is reached and all goes as planned, installation on the Greenwood Street landfill would begin in late spring, with the panels accepting sunlight by the end of the summer — around the time the grasshopper sparrows used to migrate south from their grassy, urban sanctuary.

Despite Lower Prices, New England Grid Operator Says More Gas Pipelines Needed

Despite falling natural gas prices over the past year, the operator of New England’s power grid says the region still needs more gas pipelines. In a call with reporters Tuesday, Gordon Van Welie, the President of ISO New England, said the region continues to see price spikes when demand is high on cold winter days.

“The question is always going to be, what’s the weather going to be?” Van Welie says. “If one could arrange weather like we’ve seen this winter, we wouldn’t have a problem and we wouldn’t be highlighting this problem. But of course no one can predict what the weather will be in the long run.”

Van Welie says while renewable energy in New England is likely to expand in coming years, natural gas is needed to make up for the loss of coal and nuclear plants. Several companies have proposed new pipelines, though they have faced strong opposition from some residents.

Massachusetts Ranked 2nd State in the Nation for Clean Technology

A report released this week ranks Massachusetts as the number two state in the country for clean technology. The Baystate trails California on an index that ranks states based on development, policy, and investment in clean energy. Ron Pernick is director of the Portland, Oregon-based company, Clean Edge, the publisher of the annual report. Pernick says Massachusetts is a leader in clean energy policy and investment, but lags behind in generating renewable energy.

“Right now, California, Oregon, the West Coast states, as well as the Great Plains states, have a large abundance of renewable energy resources.”

Pernick says the purpose of the report is to keep tabs on U.S. clean energy development at the state and local level.

“If you don’t track, then you can’t see improvement, and so it’s very important that we look at the emerging clean tech ecosystem and really understand what’s working and what’s not, and where leadership is occurring.”

Other New England states rank lower than Massachusetts. Connecticut is 11th, New Hampshire, 14th and Vermont is 15th. Among metro areas in the country, Boston ranks 10th.

 

Massachusetts Energy Secretary Discusses Year Ahead

Although renewable energy has been a big part of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's agenda these past six years, he said little on the issue during his state-of-the-Commonwealth address Tuesday night. But New England Public Radio's Anne Mostue spoke with the state's Secretary for Energy and Environmental Affairs Richard Sullivan about what's ahead for renewable energy development.

Governor Patrick did say that the clean energy industry grew nearly 7% last year, adding "thousands of kilowatts of renewable generation and thousands of jobs." Secretary Sullivan gave some detail.

"There was a 6 percent job growth. There's now over 64 thousand people working in the field of clean and green energy here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And those companies project that there will be a 12% job growth in 2012 just in that sector."

Aside from environmental benefits, Sullivan says it's important to create reliable, local sources of energy. And with that comes the need for increased transmission capabilities. He says those costs should not be passed on to customers.

"In terms of the transmission, particularly from Canada with respect to Hydro Quebec, since it is a mature industry, that is not something that needs to have a subsidy from the rate payers or the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

A recent order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says the grid managers who decide whether consumers or developers pay for new transmission lines must consider state policy goals when approving new  projects.  In Massachusetts that goal is to obtain 15% of power from renewable sources by 2020.