From:                                                       Lederman, Jesse <JLederman@springfieldcityhall.com>

Sent:                                                         Friday, July 26, 2019 4:02 PM

To:                                                            RPS, DOER (ENE)

Subject:                                                   Re: Public Comment on Proposed Revisions to the Renewable Portfolio Standard

 

Categories:                                             Has Not Been Sumarized

 

 Re: Public Comment on Proposed Revisions to the Renewable Portfolio Standard



Dear Mr. Wassam,



My name is Jesse Lederman, I am an At-Large Member of the Springfield City Council, where I Chair the Committee on Sustainability and Environment, and the Committee on Health and Human Services.

In June, I attended your hearing in Springfield along with Councilors Justin Hurst, Michael Fenton, Melvin Edwards, and Timothy Allen to state our opposition to the DOER proposal to revise the existing Renewable Portfolio Standard to allow for taxpayer subsidies to be granted to large scale wood burning incinerators.

I hope you will accept this written testimony as a follow up to our statement that night. 

We were both surprised and disconcerted that the state would be considering such an action in light of the clear empirical evidence that these types of large scale electrical generation incinerators are inconsistent with the Commonwealth’s stated goals for greenhouse gas reductions in the ongoing effort to combat climate change, and the fact that this very issue was debated at length several years ago, and the current compromise that exists in the regulations reached.

I would specifically draw the panels attention to the 2010 Manomet Study, which was Commissioned by the state for this very reason, which clearly stated that large scale electrical biomass burning was in fact not carbon neautral or renewable, and could be more accurately compared to emissions from a coal power plant.

Given that the Renewable Portfolio Standard, for which the goals are established most recently in the Green Communities Act of 2008, is specifically mandated to support generation of renewable energy, it is unclear why DOER is suddenly interested in rehashing this debate. 

These proposed revisions would obviously create a scenario in which the Renewable Portfolio Standard evolves into a sham, selling a bill of goods in terms of its mission to the rate payers of Massachusetts that it will be set up to fail to deliver.

In addition, the process your department has utilized up to this point has been highly questionable, rolling out these proposed revisions within just the last several months, and failing to schedule a hearing in our city, a designated Environmental Justice community located in a region with a history of these types of large scale biomass proposals. It was not until members of the public, the state legislature, and the City Council requested such a hearing that your office schedule one.

Finally, well DOER may be under no statutory obligation to consider the public health of our constituents, we are - our city and region continue to be subjected to some of the worst air quality in the country, consistently earning failing grades from the American Lung Association and most recently being named the most challenging region to live with asthma in the United States. This is the result of a combination of factors, including our geographic location in a valley, historic inequities in access to healthcare, and our subjection to additional pollution producing industries and actions that target urban communities.

Because of our region’s geographic location and the history of multiple large scale biomass proposals in the area, it is not unreasonable for us to assume that the granting of taxpayer subsidies could spur a wide scale resurgence of such projects across Western Massachusetts, which would undoubtedly have a deleterious impact on the public health of our community and add to the emissions generated in our area.

This coming at a time when our city and region have worked to make strides in improving air quality, such as through our local Climate Action and Resilience Plan.

In conclusion, common sense, historical evidence, and the law, would dictate that clean, renewable energy does not come out of a smoke stack. It is preposterous to assert otherwise, and it is an affront to our constituents and the rate payers of the commonwealth for tens of millions of their tax dollars to be used for the subsidization of an industry that statewide would lead to more, not less, pollution.



Respectfully submitted,



Jesse Lederman

City Councilor At-Large

Springfield, Massachusetts