Scott Muller: Vermont is choking on a fishbone

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Scott Muller, of Montpelier, who is a senior scientist for the Sustainable Cities division of Spatial Informatics Group.

[W]e’ve been an all-electric-one-car family in Vermont for the past 4.5 years. It’s been enjoyable, easy and inexpensive. It is the norm for my children. I believe that our bright future will look very different than the infrastructure of the past generation. So I worry when Green Mountain Power presents the rearview mirror as the windshield.

Clean, renewable energy is among Vermont’s greatest ambitions — it’s a very exciting conversation. Vermont has set huge goals, articulated in the “Comprehensive Energy Plan 2016” (link) that intends to deliver 90 percent renewable energy by 2050. This is a crucial part of the effort to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction targets established in the 2005 state law (10.VSA 578); to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2028, and achieve 75 percent reduction by 2050.

To be clear, the purpose of greenhouse gas reduction goals, ironically, is not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, the actual objective of greenhouse gas reduction is economic development, linked with social inclusion, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, decentralization, job creation, reducing vulnerabilities to scarce resources and volatile markets, etc. Measuring greenhouse gas emissions provides a simple nested metric that steers the decarbonization of the economy. It also helps us track our progress and alignment with complementary global, national, regional and states’ goals and investments. It’s one very important measure of the state’s economic health — or if you prefer, the state’s addiction to harmful, toxic, increasingly scarce and expensive substances.

Unfortunately, Vermont did not reach its 2012 target of 25 percent below 1990. In 1990 Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions were 8.1 Mt CO2, and in 2012 they were 8.27 Mt. (link) (1 Mt = 1 megatonne= 1 million tonnes= 1 billion kg)

In fact, 2005 emissions swelled to 9.5 Mt CO2. Today, we’re faced with reducing greenhouse gas emissions to just over 4 Mt of CO2 in the next 10 years. The only metric being reduced is time.

GMP has an opportunity and a particular duty to enable our transformation to achieve this economic priority.

As demonstrated by other OECD countries and other U.S. states with growing economies, the sector where transformational low emission economic development can occur most swiftly, is transportation. Yet in 1990, transportation was responsible for about 40 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont and in 2012, it was up to 45 percent.

Transportation is large part of the energy consumption of Vermont. So it is surprising that the current public policy debate on renewable energy fails to address transportation. The 2016 Comprehensive Energy Plan sets a target of 10 percent of the total vehicle fleet powered by electricity by 2025. This is not only inadequate, it contradicts the non-linear trends of other regions that have committed to electrifying transportation.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is not gradual, when the factors necessary to unlock demand are in place. Vermont requires new policies and public investments right now.

Vermont, along with seven other states, has committed to banning the sale of gasoline cars in the next 35 years. (link) Commensurately, we’ve committed to reducing per capita greenhouse gas emissions to less than 2 tCO2 per person per year. In 2012 we were at 14 tCO2. (see State ZEV Alliance).

Hard infrastructure is an important discussion because it locks us onto a long-term trajectory. One of the exciting mid- to long-term transformations created by the electrification of the transportation load is cutting loose from the centralized fishbone development to which fossil fuels and overly centralized electric generation has constrained us. No longer will energy need to cascade in trucks down the interstates and highways, turning off onto side roads to eventually trickle into small towns.

I write this to put forward a few practical suggestions to help unlock the EV market in Vermont in the short to medium term:

Charging Infrastructure

Domestic and international research clearly shows adequate, convenient and cost competitive public charging infrastructure is needed before the EV market takes off. Access to EV charging infrastructure has the greatest predictive power for growth in EV sales. For example, when a workplace installs a charging station, employees are 20 times more likely to buy an electric car. To be clear, more public investments in corridor enabling level 3 charging stations are needed. This issue is linked closely with investments in storage and “smart grid” technology and the issue of centralized vs distributed generation.

In our family’s experience, the public system of “ChargePoint” stations was perfectly functional, albeit at limited scale. To recharge at a public station cost us around $0.16 per kWh. (That’s about 33 miles per $1 in the summer, around 20 miles per $1 in the winter.)

But in mid 2015 GMP implemented the NRG EVgo systems, a Fortune 250 company. (link) GMP calls the new stations “Freedom Stations,” and proudly announced that Vermont was the first state in New England to use the network. GMP President and CEO Mary Powell announced that the purpose was to help Vermonters save money.

But as we recently learned, the GMP-NRG EVgo stations are objectionably expensive. To recharge at the GMP-NRG EVgo station in White River Junction for the summer journey back to Montpelier equates to a cost of $0.83/ kWh. This is about 6 miles per $1. It is about half that if you become a “member” of the GMP-NRG EVgo network. It is obnoxious to require “membership” to public infrastructure, or to penalize the public to allow access to the “member” network.

Not surprisingly, in late 2015 NRG ousted its CEO. And by May 2016, NRG announced they were abandoning the EVgo system. (link) All EV owners in Vermont would likely have the same advice for GMP: abandon the EVgo system.

Off peak residential rates

GMP offers no economic incentive to charge EVs (or your water heater, clothes dryer, etc.) during off-peak hours. There are pseudo time-of-use rates available at GMP, but they work in both directions — to get the lower price of off-peak electricity you must also pay a penalty for daytime use. Thus the net economic impact on residential use is negligible. Our GMP residential “rate 61” charges us $.08/kWh from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., but this comes with a cost increase to the day rate, sliding up to $0.18/kWh. So that, as a family of four doing 100 percent of our car transportation with an EV (and charging at night) our monthly “blended” rate comes out to $0.14 (unsurprisingly similar to the standard “rate 1” price). While this certainly is comparatively inexpensive electricity, the point is that it does not economically reward EV owners for load shedding. It does, by design, penalize homes from charging EVs during peak hours. In the end, it’s uncooperative and provides no economic reward to shed load.

There are successful, true off-peak price policies in other states and countries to learn from. Maryland and New York have both very successful EV owner time-of-use rates, and Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is currently crafting an innovative time-of-use policy.

500kW net meter limit

GMP has requested the Public Service Board to allow them to restrict net metering of renewables to 500kW per customer. This is a step in the wrong direction because it would preclude the ability of large customers (such as schools, hospitals or city governments) to harness their spacious roof tops and brownfields to shift their transportation load to carbon-free onsite renewable energy; thus obtaining the benefits and savings of modern technologies while also hedging against future changes in the price of energy.

Another option to consider is to pair EV chargers with large PV systems. Customers with PV systems greater than 500kW could be coupled with EV charging infrastructure. This would be a cooperative, decentralized, proactive method to support daytime EV charging and net metered production of large, inexpensive, distributed PV systems.

The fundamental goal of the electric grid is to support our needs and wants. What assets are available, what are the public priorities, and what is the most efficient way forward for the greatest good.

This is one reason why states such as Massachusetts have recently passed a mandate that utilities procure a specified amount of energy storage by 2020. (Link)

Enabling New Energy Infrastructure

Indeed, improving efficiency is the cheapest form of new energy generation. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. And thanks to significant public support, the private sector’s ability to successfully deliver energy efficiency services to clients is now more mature than it was 16 years ago. Public resources have stimulated a functioning private sector market.

However, while harvesting low hanging fruit it’s also prudent to simultaneously nurture the orchard. There is a great deal of simply outdated, aging infrastructure in Vermont. Montpelier is one high profile example. Efforts to improve energy efficiency absolutely help the city’s ambitious plan to achieve “net zero” status by 2030 (transportation, thermal and electric demand met by 100 percent renewable energy). But at some point in the near future, the nine gas stations within a half-mile radius of downtown will need to repurpose their assets into the new economy.

The public deserves to accrue the benefits of new energy technologies — there are many already available. Offsetting installation and maintenance costs of EV charging infrastructure and associated smart grid technologies such as storage, is an important topic. Vermont has successfully demonstrated that investing public money in public priorities to kick start new markets and private sector growth is effective. It’s time to consider how to apply those resources and lessons learned to new public energy infrastructure and policies to unlock clean transportation.

Will GMP as an investor-owned utility providing a public service, help the public enjoy the benefits of new technologies and their significant economic savings — or will GMP be a fishbone on the side of the road in the rearview mirror.