Local Electric Users Can Help Green Up New England

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

The New England GreenStart program gets its renewable energy from a variety of sources across the region. (People’s Power & Light graphic)Too many Rhode Island families annually spend the summer without electricity and hot water, according to the deputy director of People’s Power & Light.

Every year, nearly 30,000 homes have their electricity shut off come springtime because of unpaid bills accrued during the winter, Karina Lutz said. About 30 percent of those families need the entire summer to catch up on their winter heating costs.

The state’s annual moratorium on shut-offs starts Nov. 1 and typically expires in mid-April. There is no such moratorium on oil, however. “There’s no recourse for those people,” Lutz said. “Their oil tanks remain empty.”

Member donations enable People’s Power & Light to help people who are forced to choose between food or heat during the winter. Last year, the agency’s Oil Bank distributed more than $25,000 worth of fuel to provide warmth to those who needed it the most.

Since 1982, People’s Power & Light has been dedicated to making energy more affordable and, just as important, sustainable.

“With fossil fuel depletion causing trouble throughout our economy, we need renewable energy more than ever,” Lutz said.

To help facilitate the Ocean State’s move to a more environmentally friendly energy economy, People’s Power & Light has joined New England GreenStart. The effort is part of a program called GreenUp that is being offered by National Grid. GreenUp allows residential and small commercial customers to choose cleaner energy options.

“New England GreenStart helps more renewable energy projects get built faster—it costs more now, but if we build enough, renewable energy will contribute greatly to stabilizing energy prices, and eventually, it will be less expensive,” Lutz said. “Renewable energy is crucial to solving the global warming problem.”

Most of Rhode Island’s electricity comes from the burning of fossil fuels and nuclear power, but People’s Power & Light ensures GreenStart participants that an amount equal to their electric usage is added to the New England power grid from renewable sources.

GreenStart customers still pay one bill to National Grid, for both their electricity and an extra charge to “green it up” — 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, or about $12 a month for the average residential customer, Lutz said. The GreenUp premium is tax-deductible.

National Grid passes the GreenUp portion of a customer’s bill onto People’s Power & Light so the Providence-based nonprofit can use that money to support renewable energy projects.

For example, a wind-power generator  would have trouble competing on the open market without that 2.4-cent premium, Lutz said, not because over its lifetime the wind turbine will be more expensive, but because a turbine’s costs are up front, with few operating costs and no fuel costs. In contrast, a gas-fired power plant pays for its fuel—its biggest cost—as it goes, she said.

GreenStart customers support local energy sources, which reduce harmful health impacts, have minimal effects on the environment, boost the local economy, decrease dependence on foreign oil, lower the risk of energy price spikes, and help future generations enjoy clean air and water, according to Lutz.

She said the program helps renewable energy projects get built locally. People’s Power & Light supported the wind turbine at the Portsmouth Abbey School from the start, has contracted with the Princeton (Mass.) Municipal Light Department to support the wind turbines it is now building and this year signed an agreement with the Portsmouth Economic Development Committee to buy renewable energy certificates from the Portsmouth High School wind turbine’s production for the next 10 years.

“Harnessing the wind to meet our municipal energy needs provides insurance to the town against future energy cost increases and is a clear, strong commitment to keeping Portsmouth green,” Gary Gump, of the Portsmouth Economic Development Committee, said when the agreement with People’s Power & Light was announced earlier this year.

The high school wind turbine is expected to save Portsmouth more than $4 million in energy costs over the next 20 years, according to town officials.

Besides wind power,  however,  New England GreenStart’s energy mix includes solar, landfill gas and small hydroelectric power, which are all sited in New England and mostly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Current enrollment in the New England program is about 8,000, according to People’s Power & Light.