Renewable future for the Bay State

[kristopher]

Renewable future for the Bay State
by The Republican
Wednesday December 17, 2008, 6:00 AM

A decade ago when Massachusetts established a set of goals requiring electric companies to increase their renewable energy purchases - to 15 percent of their total by the year 2020 - cynics thought the standard seemed overly ambitious and impractical.

The naysayers said that "renewable power is not going to be produced in large enough quantities, that it's too expensive, it's too hard to develop," said State Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles.

But the naysayers were wrong. Production of renewable energy - from solar and wind energy to landfill methane gas and low-emissions biomass - is increasing in Massachusetts, allowing electric companies a chance to buy more green power than they are currently required to under the 1997 utility restructuring act.

According to a new report from the State Department of Energy Resources, the amount of renewable power available nearly doubled from 940,000 megawatt hours in 2006 to about 1.6 million megawatt hours in 2007. The increase meant that utilities had more than enough green power to meet their current obligation to purchase at least 3 percent of their electricity from renewable sources in 2007. Next year's goal is 4 percent and the obligation will increase by 1 percentage point a year, reaching 15 percent in 2020.

While the progress is...

http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/12/renewable_future_for_the_bay_s.html