 Good evening and welcome to Byline. We have a really great show tonight. I'm so excited to have these two guests because they have been working on helping us save money on our electric bills and helping us reduce our carbon footprint and giving and breathing life into policy around one of the most important things that the Council has been working on over the last year in the policy arena, and that is energy and climate change. And so Darcy Dumont, a town counselor, is here and Dwayne Brager from the UMass Energy Extension Services here. He was also a big shot in Boston for a while. We will not hold that him against him. Did a great job down there, but he came home so he could work through the University to help communities all across the state learn how to do what they could do around energy to help address climate change. But let's dive right in with you Darcy. So you are an activist on this issue before you were a town counselor. You're on the Climate Action Committee. Help me with the name of the committee. Energy and Climate Action Committee of the town council. And recently the town council took an important vote and stepped forward. Tell us about it. All right. The Inter-Municipal Task Force on Community Choice Aggregation has been working for two years now to make a recommendation to the towns. And the three towns that are working together to put forward Community Choice Aggregation are Northampton, Amherst and Pelham. And Northampton and Pelham have already authorized the towns to go forward with a plan of aggregation. And Amherst was the remaining town that needed to authorize the basically the executive to go forward with approving a plan of Community Choice Aggregation. So last Monday, I'm probably not supposed to say a date on show, right? Very recently. Very recently. The Task Force brought forward a recommendation and a suggested motion to authorize the program. And the town council unanimously voted for it. To move forward with. It was a motion to authorize the town manager to execute joint powers agreement and also to approve a plan that's going to go to the Department of Public Utilities. So that's terrific. So all of the background work is now done. The town council is voted. Now the staff gets to go to work on putting the plan together. And with the other two communities, that plan has to be all three communities, then you're going to go to the Department of Public Utilities with your aggregation plan. So for those who don't know yet, Dwayne, what an aggregation plan and program is, could you explain it? You've been helping communities all over the state do it. You're an Amherst resident and you helped your own town just go through this. So community choice aggregation is not a new thing in Massachusetts. And it really dates back to the Electric Restructuring Act of 1997, I think it is. You got it. And I was chair of the Ways and Means Committee at the time. And within that act, there is a provision that allows for municipalities to aggregate. It's called municipal aggregation in the act. And it basically allows municipalities to work on behalf of their constituents to move forward for going out competitively for electric retail supply for their customers in their town who care to use it, who care to opt for that program. And allows the town to work on behalf of their constituents to really get a competitive advantage to get a good energy price from the retail electric markets that were established under the Electric Restructuring Act. And over the course of time, there's been a relatively small number of communities and municipalities that have joined in and opted to go forward with municipal aggregation until recently. And the last probably seven to 10 years, there's been a great deal of interest across the Commonwealth on municipalities to aggregate their loads and go for a municipal aggregation to the extent that there are well over 100 municipalities within Massachusetts that have active approved aggregations at this point. Fantastic. And many more who are in process. That's correct. And the process is that the town's put together a plan that needs to meet the rules of the act. And those plans are submitted to the, are actually first reviewed by the Department of Energy Resources and then are submitted for approval to the Department of Public Utilities. Fantastic. And Darcy, you started working on this well before you got elected to Town Council. What benefits did you see and why did you put so much energy into it, no pun intended, before you became a counselor and continued as a counselor? What's the, what are the benefits to this? Yeah, I'll have to say, I'm so excited about this getting enacted because this was something that I worked on before I was a town counselor. It was an issue that I actually brought to every door as I was campaigning for Town Council. And so I'm thrilled that this is one of my goals that has at least gotten through the first step of actualization. But I was inspired because I had heard of other towns that were using it to green up their energy. But in addition to that, I had heard about what is going on in California, which is a more advanced version of, of community choice aggregation. It isn't just the basic bulk purchasing of energy. It includes two other elements which are providing additional energy efficiency services and also development of local distributed energy resources. And in other words, development of local solar. Usually it would be local solar and the ability of communities to, to source, own and control their own energy. And so there are a lot of reasons why that is advantageous. It allows you to add to the sources, the renewable energy supply above and beyond what's required under the renewable portfolio standard. It allows communities to be more resilient because it allows them to do more creative solutions with their electricity, like creating micro grids, using electric vehicles for charging, using energy storage and other such things. And so it, it allows you, it would allow a community to sort of accelerate climate action in a way that already not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but it also brings in revenue for the town. So it's like a win-win. Terrific. So, Dwayne, you just, will you try to jump in there? Yeah, I would just say that what Darcy's talking about is, is really important because that's really what differentiates the inter-municipal efforts that we're making with Northampton and Pelham and Amherst. In that, as I was describing before, municipal aggregation is a fairly reasonably commonplace at this point across the Commonwealth. But it's mostly one town at a time. And it's usually, and it's with the exception of the Cape, the Cape Cod, it's, I think it's, it has always been one town at a time. In this case, we recognize that Amherst itself, nor Pelham, Northampton probably do not have the economy of scale individually to do a more innovative community choice aggregation that we're interested in. So we are all forging together with common, common goals. And importantly, we've been very clear, even in the order or bylaw or whatever that was passed by the town council. The provision. Provision that was passed by the town council, that the primary objective of our community choice aggregation is to save green, is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And that's likewise across the three, three municipalities. And that will drive certain choices that will be made, like how much traditionally generated power versus green power will be purchased as part of the portfolio. Correct. And, and there are many because, yeah, you could just say, we want to do this to save money. Right. And you that would lead you to a certain set of decisions. If you start with the idea that this is part of our strategy to reduce our carbon footprint, then you're going to be able to make, you will make other choices. Correct. And, and to date, I would say, probably the large number of municipal aggregations have been strictly about trying to save a little bit of money. Yeah, there are more and more that are very interested in reducing or increasing the use of renewable energy. But for the most part, they've gone about that by buying green power from the grid. And not necessarily locally. The big catch here is, is that we are trying to use this, not only to reduce our carbon by buying more clean energy above and beyond the RPS requirements, but also to do that in a way that really brings forward this concept of energy democracy where we really localize the decisions and actions that the the towns take with regard to making wise decisions and use this program, as Darcy was saying, to really move forward and support and help finance and develop local renewable energy resources, particularly solar for our area that can contribute to our, the supply that we are demanding through this municipal aggregation. So I know this is very early in the process to be making any pronouncements about what the package will look like. But given what we were just talking about, saving money versus improving the environment, one possibility is that you can choose the A package or the B package. The A package could be the lowest cost available based on meeting the state's standards of the mix between traditional and green power. And the B package could be exclusively green power. And there may be a price differential between the two. But if you're making the if you make the decision to go with the second package, it's because you've decided you are willing to spend the extra money to do that. Is that a fair? Yeah, but I think we want to be cautious as well, that we're not expecting, given the availability of technologies and incentives across the Commonwealth. And we are not expecting this program to be costly to electric ratepayers of Amherst, Northampton and Pelham. In fact, we're very cautious to make sure that that does not happen. We're trying to use this community choice aggregation and using it somewhat some different business models than other municipalities have to try to keep as much of that savings locally so that can be expended, particularly to provide assistance and energy efficiency measures and low moderate income citizens around and residences and rent the renter community around the Commonwealth as well. So, you know, generally, these municipal aggregations, you know, probably can save consumers on the order of, I think $1 or $2 a month in terms of savings from gaining into a municipal aggregation. Our idea is to keep that $1 or $2 a month by everybody, which across the three towns accumulates to about $180,000 a year for each for this municipal aggregation that then has the ability to use that money for the benefit of the ratepayers by investing that in energy efficiency measures and demand side management, battery storage, solar to try to really take more local control of our load, reduce our load, reduce our peak loads in particular, and make that's where additional savings can come to the consumers as we are instituting these new practices, which you might not otherwise have access to through the traditional utility company products. That's right. And what Dwayne is explaining here is what we define as CCA 3.0. And what you had said a little earlier about the different options. If that's what a municipality is offering, we define that as CCA 2.0. In terms of just buying credits. Right, just buying credits and offering different packages with different credits. But the version that we're hoping for over the long term is this much more complex program that we define as 3.0 that will provide this local resilience, keep the money in the local economy, keep the jobs in the local economy. And so it not only has the benefits of, for rate payers, but it has benefits across the board for local resilience. Okay, so this is getting a little bit in the weeds, but it's a potentially important point. So there are about 30 communities in Massachusetts that currently have traditional municipal electric companies. Some of our electric, electric and gas, electric gas and telephone, but they're local municipals and they've been around for a long time. The municipal aggregations that we're talking about now are new. It's a new invention. It's maybe 20 years old or so in Massachusetts because 1987 was when we wrote the law. And by the way, this is where I will tell you that I actually put that provision in the plan. It was my top priority as Senate Ways and Means Chair to create municipal aggregation was not my idea, but it's okay. It brought it to me and I said, make sense. So I'm excited to hear how many communities are doing it. But now let's help me understand this. The 100 or so communities, are they now considered municipal electric companies? Not at all. Very important distinction. That's what I wanted you to clarify. And I don't suspect Amherst Northampton or Pelham are looking to become municipal utilities. Municipal utilities are micro utilities, if you will, that have control and responsibilities for their poles and wires, essentially, and the electric distribution around their city or town. In this case, for the CCA, the Community Choice Aggregation, the utility company ever source or national grid would still provide the distribution system and the billing to residences. Okay, so now let's take this the next step. Traditional municipal electric companies do not have to collect the two fees that are associated with green conservation and green energy and roughly on our, for most of us on our electric bills, there are these two little fees every month we pay a tiny bit into the fund, 600 million a year's reach is raised from each of the funds. And one fund is used to help with energy audits and implementing energy conservation in our homes, our businesses, our communities, our schools. And the other is to help stimulate and bring to market green technologies that will help reduce our carbon footprint and address climate change. Will our bills in municipal aggregation continue to have those two little fees? And do those two little fees go into the state pool? Or are they retained in the pool of these three communities to use as we choose in the work? Okay, Dwayne. Okay, so the enlighten us. Yeah, okay, in the weeds, it'll complicate it up to it. But it's a very important question. I think the way that we're envisioning it in the way that the task force is envisioning envisioning it is that that ratepayers would continue to pay those small fees that go to all the mass saved programs, as you mentioned, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to support their programs that that small fee will continue to be on the bill. And as we plan it at this point, those would continue to serve to enable those programs statewide programs. So they would go to the state into those programs. Exactly. Now, the exception is that in the municipal aggregation bill that you wrote or put together, does allow for what's called a part B of that provision, which does allow for a municipal aggregation to also take over, if you will, the energy efficiency programs away from mass the mass the statewide mass saved program and to deliver deliver comparable and approved energy efficiency programs on their own. If they are approved to do that, and it's a much higher lift to be able to demonstrate that the town the municipal aggregation is enabled to do that, then only in that case with the DPU approve you and enable you to keep that that extra charge on the bill for for energy efficiency for the community. So in Massachusetts, it's only the Cape Cape light compact that has gone for that part B. And and they did that very quite a quite a while ago. So that's an option that's on the table. Our local aggregation has not yet made that decision. We probably I think that there's an agreement that we would need to scale up a fair amount in order to have the capacity to do that. But if we did do it, we would have a massive amount of extra revenue. But so I think that the task force is for seeing that other towns will join in. And so it's just a question of overtime. How many other towns will join join this aggregation? Yes. Yes. And are you going to actively pursue that as a three town entity after you get up and running and everything is stable and working well? Do you post launch? Yes, post launch. Yeah, the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission is part of our task force. And so they're sort of keeping an eye on that as well. We're really cautious to submit our plan is the three towns first, to get this going in the in the vision that we have. And then but then be open and work out a methodology to add more towns, do you have to return to the DB DPU? Or are you going to put in your plan that over time, you will welcome others to apply to be part of your aggregation? It's a good question. I think I think, okay, if another day, if another town was to join, they would have to put in their own plan to DPU. Okay. And in some way, say that we're going to aggregate, but we're going to join this one with this. So that's very helpful. So there's two very important questions right there. The first one is, are you going to go plan B? Yeah. And the second is, will you try to take control? I'm sorry, that that is what how you take control of your conservation and your are you allowed to take your conservation money and leave the research money with the state? Yeah, in fact, I think part B is only about the mass save energy efficiency. Okay, that's what makes sense, because you're not going to be able to do research at a proper scale locally. Okay, well, that's a very, very interesting. I will say just to add to that. Our strategy is, as Darcy said, let's table the part B until we get going and afterwards. But our strategy from the get go is to let's use our program just as the way it is to really stimulate our right to access mass save statewide mass save programs much more robustly than we are currently in Massachusetts. And our other communities successfully doing that, because mass save is a very complicated animal, as I can see you. Yes. And as a legislator, we I was trying to get a review and revise after 30 years of program should be reviewed and revised. And we couldn't get it through because the utilities control effectively control mass save, although on paper, it may not appear so, but they effectively control mass save. And there's inherent conflicts of interest there, because conservation means you're going to be delivering less power. Right. And that I think that was a mistake that the legislature made. I was in part, I was in the legislature, but I was, I was, I was young and naive at the time. It was in very early. Not so long ago. Okay. It was in my very early years. And so I did not have a big role in it at that time. But subsequently, I came to understand that that was a structural mistake. Right. It really needed to be in an independent agency with independent capacity. So it's such an interesting thing. So are a lot of communities making that move? Are they keeping their money? Or doing plan Bs or most? No, no, no. Only, only the K and I. And are they just, are they afraid or they just thought that was biting off too much? Because you've been advising. Yeah. So what's been the dynamic around the state? Sure. Well, there's evidence that, and clear that it's a much heavier lift in terms of developing your plan. The plan that you have to submit to get approved for Part B, which is a separate approval, is a much heavier lift. And for good reason that the town needs to demonstrate how they would be delivering energy efficiency that's on par with MassSafe. And so we really don't feel like we have the ability, potentially, to do that at the get-go. And we don't want to compromise or jeopardize our ability to get approved for Plan A, Part A, by putting in something for Plan B. So how often do you have to go back to the DPU after they first approve your Plan A? Ever? I don't think so. I'm not aware that we have to. And then you are free to go back later and propose a Plan B? Correct. And so any municipality that hasn't done it yet could potentially do it? Exactly. And there's been a few that have done that. Well, there's been a few that have been submitted for Part B but have not been highly scrutinized and I think either rejected or Lawrence. So Plan Bs as a separate entity are tough and very few communities have tried to do an A and B at the same time. Correct. Only the Cape Light. Only the Cape Light. And that was at the very early days of the Venus Y aggregation. I would say that what we're trying to do, as you mentioned, a good observation MassSafe can be complicated. And so one of the things that we are looking to do as a community choice aggregation just with Part A is to try to simplify that and have some programmatic activities within our three communities to bring MassSafe and cut out some of the complications so that there is more adoption by people within our communities. If there were ways of being able to do that it would be really terrific. Okay, in the final minute, how long it's 47 seconds? When does it go to the DPU? How long do they take? And when do we think we're going to be able to start this? Well, we think that we will be able to submit to the DPU within three or four months, ideally. We don't know how long it will be at the DPU. But once we get approval we think that we then will be able to launch probably best case scenario within six months after that approval. So sometime in 2021 we might be able to buy electricity from our own community? Absolutely. You heard it here. Thank you so much for joining us. What an inspiring conversation I really enjoyed having you guys here and thank you for doing this work. This is so great. Thank you, Sam. Really, thanks. And we'll see you again another time. And you too.