Today’s Boston Globe details one aspect of the energy bill being pushed by Speaker Dimasi and Governor Patrick. It appears that the Speaker and Governor will be supportive of modification of the funding for the Renewable Energy Trust, the beneficiary of a small charge attached to every electric bill. The Trust is charged with utilizing that money to promote “green energy”, and over the years has taken in about $250 million dollars. With many questioning the results of such spending the Governor and Speaker are recommending that the trust funding be taken from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a quasi that currently operates the trust. From today’s Globe.

Deep inside the wide-ranging, 51-page renewable energy bill the state House of Representatives will take up later this week, Patrick and DiMasi have agreed on legislative language that could amount to a hostile takeover of the trust fund. If adopted, the measure would allow a new Department of Clean Energy – an upgraded version of today’s Division of Energy Resources – un limited use of renewable trust revenues to pay for energyconservation measures in city and town halls and municipal buildings.

Top aides to Patrick and DiMasi say they aren’t trying to make a political attack on the technology collaborative, just get better results from it. “I think we’re all frustrated, and I think the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative would indicate they’re frustrated, too,” said state Representative Brian S. Dempsey, a Haverhill Democrat who is cochair of the Legislature’s energy committee and a key drafter of the bill. “We just feel perhaps it’s time for a different approach, and we felt that a more centralized approach to the funding issue is crucial.”

The Governor weighed in as well.

Ian A. Bowles, Patrick’s energy and environmental affairs secretary, said in an e-mail the trust “has made significant contributions over the last decade. However, Governor Patrick has made clean energy development a top priority and we are working closely with the Legislature to evaluate programs like (the renewable energy trust) and maximize the amount of renewable power generation we build in Massachusetts.”

The custodians of the Trust have rejected criticism, citing NIMBYISM as a major impediment to siting of green energy facilities in localities.

A spokesman for the technology collaborative and renewable energy trust, Chris Kealey, said the trust has made “grants and loans to support more than 1,300 clean energy projects across the state.” Referring to frequent not-in-my-backyard opposition to wind turbines and other projects, Kealey said, “Anyone who has followed the controversies around big wind projects knows that the major hurdle facing clean energy in Massachusetts is NIMBYism.”

But the Trust has some notable achievments:

As of Aug. 31, the trust reported, it had paid for 84.7 megawatts of green-power capacity, enough to power about 64,000 homes at a time. That included 642 solar panels, 23 wind turbines, two “biomass” generators run on wood fuel and crops, two generators that run on landfill gas, and two hydro units. Measured by how much actual electricity they have produced since they were built, the facilities funded by the trust had by late August yielded a little less than one year’s worth of electricity for 60,000 homes.
The 40-employee trust has also spent money on hundreds of projects and initiatives including helping cities and towns study good locations for wind turbines and build energy-efficient schools, creating “public awareness” campaigns to promote green energy supply options for utility customers, and awarding solar-powered trash cans to communities including Andover, Egremont, Monterey, and Swampscott.

The Senate side seems to have reservations about this approach. Senator Michael Morrissey, while expressing the belief that improvements could be made, does not appear to support this change. This bill has important ramifications for Massachusetts, beyond the issue raised here. We will follow it closely. Read the Globe story here.