NEW ENGLAND GOVS UNITE ON NEW ENERGY

New England Takes Step Toward Clean Energy Revolution

Angela Beniwal, 1 August 2012 (Renew Grid)

“Governors from the six New England states have [unanimously] decided to move forward with a process to jointly procure renewable energy in the near future…The states plan to release a joint request for proposals (RFP) in 2013…The New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) will be in charge of developing and implementing a plan…

“In 2009, the New England governors adopted the New England Governors' Renewable Energy Blueprint, which includes technical analysis from ISO New England (ISO-NE) that identifies significant renewable resources in the area…[A] request for information (RFI) issued by NESCOE in 2011 that resulted in over 4 GW of generation and transmission proposals…”

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“The RFP is expected to be technology agnostic; however, the New England region has quite a bit of wind energy potential…The 2010 New England Wind Integration Study from ISO-NE found that up to 12 GW of onshore and offshore wind could be developed in the region, potentially meeting up to 24% of the region's annual electricity needs. The study estimated that adding 12 GW of wind power and building new transmission lines would cost between $19 billion to $25 billion…[ISO-NE] supports this collaboration…

“A status report on the RFI from NESCOE stated that transmission projects in various stages of development had been identified and could possibly facilitate the delivery of the additional renewable energy…[E]conomies of scale and utilizing market forces to help reduce the delivered cost of renewables are some of the benefits of procuring energy as group…[T]he states in New England are not large enough to warrant big renewable generation and transmission investments by themselves…”

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