PLEASE RSVP BELOW.
The day is to answer three questions:
- What do Municipal Light Plants (MLPs) do?
- What do they not do (at least right now)?
- What COULD they do?
- HOW can you be involved?
We want to bring together everyone who cares about climate and clean energy in your town and other MLP towns.
Ideally, we want at least two people from each MLP town. So please, recommend this meeting to anyone you think would be a good fit, or send recommended attendees to us and we will reach out to them directly.
We will have speakers from MLP towns that have taken innovative approaches and had successes, as well as a guest from the Conservation Law Foundation and other experts who will be there to answer your questions.
The meeting location: Audubon Broad Brook Sanctuary, Worcester on Saturday, September 30th
The meeting will run from: 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. lunch will be served.
A little background: why does this matter? Right now light plants (which cover 13-15% of the electricity customers in MA) don’t have requirements for clean energy and energy efficiency. You might know that current state laws about clean energy and energy efficiency exempt municipal light plants. Unlike Eversource or National Grid, they are not required to purchase a portion of their electricity supply from qualified renewable resources.
There are some great and innovative MLP policies in place, and the path for munis to be involved in more renewable energy initiatives is there. The problem is that they are not taking advantage of such opportunities and we want to figure out why some are and others are not.
Recently the state Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, proposed better clean energy policies that include MLPs. Unfortunately, more than a third of the MLPs submitted comments to the state saying they disagreed with being included. They need to hear from people in their towns that you care about clean energy and want them to do better.
Coming together for this meeting is a big step for us all to learn about what has caused some munis to come forward with a clean energy initiative, and the majority not to. Together we can learn how to gain more involvement of munis in the clean energy agenda.
Our success and productivity will be dependent upon your attendance and involvement. We hope you can join us!