National Grid’s new willingness to buy electricity from renewable energy suppliers in Rhode Island under long-term contracts has made it unnecessary to create a state power authority to finance and oversee such projects, according to a developer that has proposed a large wind farm in the state.
But Gov. Donald L. Carcieri is still committed to creating a power authority, which he considers integral to his goal of generating at least 15 percent of Rhode Island’s electricity needs from wind, solar and hydroelectric sources.
National Grid’s announcement last month that it wants to negotiate a deal that would enable the company to enter into long-term contracts with renewable energy suppliers insures that renewable energy projects in Rhode Island will be financed, because investors will be more willing to back projects that are guaranteed to sell power at a fixed price, said William J. Fischer, a spokesman for Allco Renewable Energy Group Ltd., a New York-based investment team that has made a preliminary proposal to build up to 338 wind turbines in state waters.
“The question to ask is, do you still need a power authority?” Fischer said. “If you’ve got a commitment from National Grid to purchase the power generated, and you’ve got developers that are willing to enter into this market and generate it, I think at that point you’re looking for a ratification process through the [R.I. Public Utilities Commission].”
But Carcieri and some lawmakers in the General Assembly are not ready to scrap the idea of a power authority, which could be designed to assess and permit renewable energy projects, and could conceivably still be structured to purchase electricity, said Jeff Neal, a spokesman for the governor.
“The governor is committed to the concept of a power authority as a focus point for state efforts to encourage the development of renewable energy sources,” Neal said.
Carcieri has pushed for more than a year for the creation of a quasi-independent power authority that could issue taxpayer-backed bonds to fund renewable energy projects and sign long-term contracts to buy and sell the electricity generated from those projects.
But the proposal was derailed last spring in the General Assembly, in part because lawmakers in the House were concerned about making the state a power dealer. Democratic leaders in the state Senate have said they plan to sponsor a new version of the power-authority bill this year.
Much of the governor’s ambitious energy agenda has advanced slowly in recent months. Last October, a stakeholders group commissioned by the governor to determine a site for a wind-energy project in Rhode Island concluded its work without making a decision. The group did winnow the list of possible sites for a wind project to 11, including in waters near Block Island, Watch Hill and Little Compton and on land in Little Compton.
Late last year, the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, which regulates the state’s waters, announced it would commission the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center to help determine where a wind farm should be built and help draft regulations for such a project.
The CRMC has yet to begin drafting new regulations, said Laura Ricketson-Dwyer, a spokeswoman for the council. The process typically takes at least a year, she said.
“These things take time, because it’s a very public process,” Ricketson-Dwyer said. “There are lots of workshops and public hearings, and it goes back and forth quite a few times.”
Allco, which caught Rhode Island officials flat-footed with its unsolicited, preliminary application to build a wind farm in Rhode Island waters last September, hopes the state will create regulations governing renewable energy proposals sooner rather than later, Fischer said. “We’re not trying to fast-track anything – you know, we want this project to make sense for Rhode Island,” he said. “But at the same time, you can’t start the process if you don’t have rules and regulations on your books. The state of Rhode Island’s stakeholder process last year had ongoing meetings, and while all this was going on you could have had CRMC promulgating rules and regulations. That didn’t take place.”
Neal said Carcieri is focused primarily on working to resolve the state’s severe budget crisis right now, but plans to turn his attention to creating a plan that will enable the state to begin assessing renewable energy proposals in the coming months.
“A lot of the details still need to be worked out, and we need to understand how this process will work,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction.” •
The last thing Rhode island needs is another Quasi-State agency. Their history so far is that they answer to no one and their budget is what they can get their hands on, without providing tangible results. One example would be the R.I Economic Developement Corp.[The title alone is humorus]. R.I. Resource Corp. is another that has been shown to be in the way of having a new privately run recycling industry that would create business and job opportunities accross the State while solving our trash problem. I’m sure other readers could point out similar flaws in all the other agencies.