Connecticut Buys Fake “Clean” Energy from New Hampshire Biomass Incinerator

[Oth­er than ignor­ing all health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, this arti­cle false­ly claims that the Burgess BioPow­er incin­er­a­tor in New Hamp­shire can oper­ate at 90% effi­cien­cy, while in real­i­ty bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors oper­ate at 20–25% effi­cien­cy. ‑Ed.]

- by Geof­frey Craig and Derek Sands, Platts

Con­necti­cut’s Pub­lic Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­to­ry Author­i­ty approved on Tues­day a New Hamp­shire-based, 75-MW bio­mass pow­er plant as eli­gi­ble to gen­er­ate Class I renew­able ener­gy certificates.

The facil­i­ty, called Burgess BioPow­er, has a 20-year pow­er pur­chase agree­ment with Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­pa­ny of New Hampshire.

PSNH will pur­chase a max­i­mum of 400,000 RECs annu­al­ly. Assum­ing 90% effi­cien­cy, Burgess BioPow­er would be capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing 591,300 RECs per year, which means RECs would be left­over that can be sold in oth­er mar­kets, such as Con­necti­cut.
Berlin Sta­tion, LLC owns Burgess Biopow­er. The man­ag­er is Cate Street Cap­i­tal, an invest­ment firm. The pow­er plan­t’s ini­tial oper­a­tions began in Novem­ber 2013.

A 75-MW, non-inter­mit­tent renew­able facil­i­ty rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant injec­tion of REC sup­ply for a region that is gen­er­al­ly strug­gling to keep pace with esca­lat­ing renew­able require­ments.

In New Hamp­shire, for exam­ple, the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion recent­ly opened an inves­ti­ga­tion about the REC short­age, and whether it should take action to help alle­vi­ate the under­sup­ply by tweak­ing the demand require­ments. Oth­er­wise, load-serv­ing enti­ties must pay a penal­ty fee when they are unable to obtain all of the RECs required under the renew­able port­fo­lio stan­dard. New Hamp­shire’s alter­na­tive com­pli­ance pay­ment is set at $55.37/Class I REC in 2014, an amount adjust­ed each year to account for infla­tion.

PSNH expects a short­fall regard­ing the 2013 Class I oblig­a­tion, accord­ing to a let­ter it filed in ear­ly May with the PUC. The util­i­ty has con­duct­ed pub­lic solic­i­ta­tions twice so far in 2014, but received no pro­pos­als.

Efforts will con­tin­ue to be made to pur­chase Class I RECs through bro­kers and sup­pli­ers until a June 15 dead­line reached, PSNH said. Despite these efforts, the util­i­ty does not believe it will be able to buy enough RECs to be in full com­pli­ance for 2013, it said.

But the out­look should change in 2014 when Burgess BioPow­er comes online, PSNH said. The RECs acquired from Burgess BioPow­er and oth­er sources should be suf­fi­cient to meet demand, it said.

As for the RECs gen­er­at­ed in excess of the amount pur­chased by PSNH, Mon­day’s deci­sion means these cer­tifi­cates can be direct­ed toward Con­necti­cut’s Class I mar­ket. 

How­ev­er, com­pe­ti­tion for the same RECs will exist because Burgess BioPow­er also qual­i­fies as an RPS-eli­gi­ble resource in Rhode Island and Maine.