If you’re a health-conscious consumer, you want to know how much cholesterol, saturated and trans fats, sodium, potassium, or sugar is in the yogurt you’re buying, and whether there’s anything unhealthy (like aspartame or additives) in it. Similarly, if you’re an environmentally-conscious energy consumer, you want to know how much solar, wind, biogas, or hydro is in the energy mix you’re buying, and if there’s anything bad (like diesel, gas, coal, or nuclear) in there.

There ought to be a straightforward way to find out, but despite the many conversations I’ve had and emails I’ve exchanged with the energy people who provided much of the information in this post, no one can give me a clear answer to the simple question — what exactly is in the energy mix I’m buying and where does it come from?

Part of the problem is that reporting is not geared toward addressing consumer or environmental concerns — but instead on reporting compliance with energy certificate tracking mandated by a series of laws following the 1998 deregulation of the energy industry. Here is the type of information typically shared with energy consumers:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GcoKiggT99cU11Q7wU-0MWx-4DWT0hCE/view

Rather than telling you what’s in the yogurt container, instead you get numbers that represent a theoretical mix of energy types under Class I RPS Requirements, “Other” RPS Requirements, “Additional” Class I power requirements, and “System Power” requirement (“RPS” stands for “Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard” and “APS” is “Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard”). It all looks like so much word salad for the average consumer.

What these reports tell you is that when you buy “renewable” energy you are buying a mix that can be satisfied from a variable number of generators providing all sorts of energy. Because you don’t know what you’re getting or where it came from, it’s impossible for anyone to describe with any degree of precision the difference in energy mix between Dartmouth’s default 50% “renewable” plan and its opt-in 100% “renewable” plan. And that’s a problem if the state is trying to woo consumers to buy greater percentages of renewable energy.

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/program-summaries

According to the program summary above, “NEPOOL GIS tracks all electricity generated within the ISO New England (ISO-NE) control area and fed onto the New England grid, as well as electricity exchanged between ISO-NE and adjacent control areas.” The NEPOOL GIS website is:

https://nepoolgis.com/public-reports/

It sounds like a promising information source, but when you visit the site this stands out: “Due to the confidentiality reasons, the identity of the generator is masked.” This means that a consumer has no ability to learn who is generating the energy being purchased, or how much they produce. You’d hope that some of this information might be published by the state in its annual compliance reports, but (for starters) mass.gov’s RPS and APS most recent reports are 3 years old:

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/annual-compliance-reports-and-other-publications

None of the data tables in the referenced spreadsheets can answer my consumer question. The 2020 Executive Summary’s accompanying spreadsheet does list suppliers (in table 13), but not what or how much each supplier generates. Dartmouth’s supplier, Constellation New Energy, is listed only as a “Competitive Retail Supplier.” And only the value of energy credits for the three energy suppliers who failed to live up to their contracts are shown in table 14.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-rps-aps-annual-compliance-report-final-draft/download

https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-rps-aps-annual-compliance-report-executive-summary/download

So the state isn’t telling the consumer much, and with a goal of 100% renewables by 2037 (if the planet hasn’t already burned up by then), the state’s energy goals don’t reflect much of a sense of urgency.

If we want to know what we’re actually buying — as well as having information to advocate for more and faster adoption of renewables — Massachusetts needs to start requiring energy resellers to put their own “Nutrition Facts” on each consumer’s energy bills.

Because there’s so little that displays energy data in a consumer-friendly format, one suggestion I received was to download an app called “ISO to GO” to track what the state’s energy grid is currently powered by.

https://www.iso-ne.com/about/news-media/iso-to-go

It’s entertaining, and may give you a sense of what’s in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Canadian grids, but it still won’t answer the question of what you’re actually buying and who’s generating it.

Massachusetts needs to do better.

Peter Friedman’s essay in Monday’s editorial section sounds like another press release from the Bush administration: Don’t blame the Republicans for the current energy crisis, and if it were not for Bill Clinton, we’d be bathing in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil by now, and would have made more progress in exploiting oil shale and nuclear power.

Never mind that even John McCain has opposed drilling in the ANWR, or that exploitation of this area was rejected in the Senate in 2005 – under Republican watch. Or that two U.S. Geological Survey reports, one from 1987, the other 1998, disagree on the quantity and location of possible oil. Or that the 2008 Energy Information Agency’s 2008 report predicts a maximum of 780,000 barrels per day after 20 years of development. (The U.S. currently consumes 21 million barrels per day.) Their report also estimated that the additional supply would create a reduction in oil prices of only 47 cents per barrel.

But these are all speculations. EIA admits in a May 2008 report, “There is little direct knowledge regarding the petroleum geology of the ANWR region.” In other words: We don’t really know.

Dr. Friedman claims that the Green River region in the Southwest has three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia in oil shale. However, a 2006 Congressional Research Service report stated, “… oil shales have not proved to be economically recoverable, they are considered a contingent resource and not true reserves.”

It turns out that oil shale doesn’t actually contain petroleum, rather a substance called kerogen, a petroleum precursor. According to the report, extracting “oil” from shale requires strip mining vast areas, lots of superheated water for a process called retorting, and results in vast environment destruction and groundwater contamination.

And after all that, the report continues, – “unlike conventional crude oil, oil-shale distillates make poor feedstock for gasoline production and thus may be better suited to making distillate based fuels such as diesel and jet fuel.” Kerogen also has high nitrogen content, making it “problematic in terms of producing stable fuels.”

After a number of federally funded oil shale research programs, federal support for oil shale research ended in 1985 – smack in the middle of the Reagan administration.

It may well be that some newer, cleaner form of nuclear power can be developed that addresses valid public disposal, capitalization, decommissioning and security concerns. Perhaps the book hasn’t been closed on this technology, but I want it overseen by a less secretive and much more transparent government, with contractors above reproach. I don’t see that happening under a Republican administration.

Dr. Friedman doesn’t mention conservation once and doesn’t accord other forms of energy source any space in his piece, despite the fact that conservation can prolong energy reserves and ameliorate environmental problems, and that the use of alternate energy sources would not only provide energy and harm the environment less, but provide a new technology focus for American jobs.

The only point on which I agree with Dr. Friedman is that we can’t blame the Republicans. Yet we desperately need an energy policy based on values that don’t emanate from buddies in the oil industry.

And it won’t come from Republicans like Dr. Friedman.

This was published in the Standard Times on July 10, 2008
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20080710/opinion/807100317