We think it is. This state has lots of great natural capital. Their policies are aggressive and many smart investors have come into their program. They did set, no doubt, very ambitious goals. However, it proves again the government cannot hit goals independently. All leaders, all sectors, including home owners who need to make the same investments in solar, must come to the table and participate if our general and specific goals around dropping the use of fossil fuel are to be met.
MOST OF THE energy produced at the Block Island Wind Farm, developed by Deepwater Wind LLC, wasn't factored into a new report critical of clean-energy programs in Rhode Island and other states. / COURTESY DEEPWATER WIND LLC
PROVIDENCE – With its wind and solar projects, Rhode Island is known for doing its part in the march toward so-called “clean” energy production. However, a report released Tuesday found the Ocean State is on pace to fall far short of its renewable-energy goals.
Rhode Island received a “D” grade in the report from Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for corporate and government accountability. Rhode Island was one of 29 states with clean-energy initiatives that were evaluated. Neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts received “D” and “F” grades, respectively.
Rhode Island energy officials, meanwhile, disagreed with the state’s poor grade, saying the report doesn’t reflect recent ongoing efforts to boost clean-energy output.
“We are making unprecedented strides in renewable energy,” said Robert Beadle, a spokesman for the state Office of Energy Resources.
Gov. Gina M. Raimondo “recently announced enough offshore wind to power half of Rhode Island’s homes; the Office of Energy Resources just announced initiatives to encourage the expansion of solar power on brownfields, rooftops and parking structures,” he said.
Often through legislation, Rhode Island and 28 other states have adopted mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RSP, programs to encourage renewable-electricity generation – producing electricity through “clean” sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy as an alternative to producing it by burning fossil fuels.
The programs require utilities to purchase or generate a minimum percentage of electricity from renewable sources.
“Unfortunately, most RPS programs have not been robust enough to foster a rapid transition to clean, renewable energy,” the report states.
“About half the states aimed to achieve only up to 25 percent renewable power,” it adds. “And almost all states allowed combustion-based energy sources, including wood burning and the burning of waste methane – so-called ‘biogas’ – to meet RPS goals.”
Lobbying by the fossil-fuel industry is partly the reason for the lagging transition to clean energy, said Patrick Woodall, Food & Water Watch’s research director.
“There’s extreme pushback from the fossil-fuel industry” to efforts to expand the use of renewable energy, he said.
Perhaps a more prevalent reason, however, is the energy grid’s existing infrastructure, dominated by fossil-fuel-burning power plants with dozens more now in development, creating too great of an investment to simply abandon, Woodall said.
“Once an [oil or gas] pipeline and a plant are built, it absorbs all the investment opportunity” in a given area for renewable-energy projects, he added.
Rhode Island’s RPS program calls for 40 percent of the state’s electricity production to come from solar, wind and other clean-energy sources by 2035. However, the report found Rhode Island is on pace to produce just 2 percent of its electricity from clean-energy sources by 2035.
To reach those projections, researchers collected federal data of each state’s power generation and retail sales from 2007 through 2016 and used the information to extrapolate future clean-energy production levels in each state.
The data examined for Rhode Island, however, would have captured only a small part of the power produced by the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind-energy turbines, which started operating in December 2016.
When factoring in the full annual potential output of the Block Island Wind Farm, Woodall said, Rhode Island’s projection for clean-energy-produced electricity would roughly double to 4 percent.
“These projections will increase as more of these projects come on line,” he said.
Another problem with the RPS programs, the report pointed out, is that many states loosely define what is acceptable as clean or renewable energy.
Rhode Island’s RSP plan, for example, allows three sources of “dirty” energy – wood burning, waste methane and renewable-energy credits, the report states. Rhode Island allows utilities to purchase the credits instead of producing actual renewable energy while continuing to generate the same amounts of fossil-fueled electricity.
“Counting filthy energy as clean, renewable power is a cynical, hazardous ploy to reward polluting industries while avoiding the real work required to transition Rhode Island to a real clean-energy future,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director.
The state Office of Energy Resources, meanwhile, said Rhode Island is making more progress than the report reflects.
“While we disagree with the [D] grade, we remain focused on the governor’s charge to accelerate our progress toward clean energy,” Beadle said. “The vast majority of our current and proposed clean energy comes from wind and solar.”
The Food & Water Watch report, Beadle said, “is based solely on the statute [establishing the RSP goal] and a 10-year look back, and in no way reflects the governor’s 1,000 megawatts of clean energy goal [by 2020] and our rapid progress toward it in 2018.”
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@pbn.com.
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