Renewable Energy

Electricity on the New England grid is a single interconnected collection of vibrating electrons. Once electricity is added to the grid, it can no longer be identified with its source. The New England grid is sourced from a mix of renewable and non-renewable sources.

A separate accounting system has been created to keep track of renewable energy on the grid, and thus, to allow it to be bought and sold. That system uses Renewable Energy Certificates, or RECs. Each time a renewable energy project generates 1 megawatt hour of electricity, 1 REC is minted. That REC can then be sold. Purchase of a REC gives the buyer, and no one else, the right to claim use of that amount of electricity from that specific renewable energy project.

To supply renewable electricity from the grid to customers, an energy supplier must purchase two things: the electricity itself from the grid, and RECs equal to the amount of renewable electricity the supplier wants to provide. RECs needed for Acton Power Choice customers are bought by the Acton Power Choice energy supplier.

Massachusetts state law requires that all electricity sold in the state must include minimum amounts of electricity generated by renewable sources, from clean sources that are not necessarily renewable, and from alternative, highly efficient sources that are not considered renewable (such as waste-to-energy operations). The required amounts increase a little every year. The components of the state requirements include:

RPS: The RPS is the Renewable Portfolio Standard. Massachusetts’ (RPS) was one of the first programs in the nation that required a certain percentage of the state’s electricity to come from renewable energy. The RPS requires all electricity suppliers to obtain a minimum percentage of the electricity they supply to their customers from a range of qualifying renewable energy facilities, which include both old and new solar, wind, small hydro, and landfill gas, ocean, geothermal, and low-emission biomass, as well as old (pre-1998) waste-to-energy.

CES: The Clean Energy Standard (CES) requires all electricity suppliers to obtain a minimum percentage of the electricity they supply to their customers from post-2010 clean energy sources. 

CES-E: The Clean Energy Standard – Existing requires all electricity suppliers to obtain a minimum percentage of the electricity they supply to their customers from pre-2010 facilities, which in practice typically includes large hydro and nuclear.

For 2024, the combined total of all three requirements is 62%, which includes a minimum of 24% from new renewable energy projects in the Northeast (“Class I RECs”). You can download a spreadsheet with the specific required amounts from this web page from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

How does buying RECs help encourage future renewable energy projects in New England? To put up a wind farm or a small hydro plant, a potential energy developer considers the potential income and expenses involved. The success of the ongoing REC auction process, which matches supply and demand for New England RECs, encourages energy developers to choose renewables. Customer choice of additional renewable energy — by opting up to Acton Power Choice GREEN, for example — creates more demand, helping keep prices for RECs healthy enough to encourage more renewable energy development. The ability of RECs to motivate additional renewable energy development is known as “additionality.”

One reason Acton Power Choice has decided to use only New England RECs is because of the power of additionality in our region. Some energy supply programs use Midwestern wind RECs, which are now priced so low that they provide very little additional incentive for energy developers. The Midwestern wind energy supply is growing quickly because of the simple economics of tapping into steady, strong Midwestern winds, rather than because of the little bit of extra income from RECs. Also, very little Midwestern energy makes its way onto our New England grid. 

First, for all Acton Power Choice customers, Acton’s electricity supplier has to buy the number of RECs required to match the RPS for everyone’s electricity use.

Plus, for all the electricity used by Acton Power Choice Standard customers, Acton’s electricity supplier must buy additional RECs to increase the renewable energy portion of the supply by another 40%.

Plus, for all Acton Power Choice GREEN customers, Acton’s electricity supplier must buy enough RECs to bring supply for those customers the rest of the way up to 100% renewable energy.

All of those RECs add up. As of September 2022, the additional REC purchases has helped to reduce the Town’s carbon emissions by more than 24 million pounds of CO2. This is equivalent to eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by passenger cars driving more than 27 million miles, or avoiding the emissions from the burning of 25,204 barrels of oil! By working to increase the number of Acton Power Choice GREEN customers, and the amount of renewable energy supplied to Acton Power Choice Standard customers, Acton is taking direct action to advance the critical switch from fossil fuel use to renewable energy use. This advances Town and resident goals of slowing the pace and reducing the severity of climate change impacts on our community.