Global Warming Reports

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Executive Summary

New England is heading for an energy crisis. Indeed, it may have already begun. Energy prices are high and increasingly volatile. The region’s energy infrastructure is strained. The long-term outlook for oil and natural gas supplies is questionable. And our use of energy contributes to a variety of environmental and public safety problems, not the least of which is global warming.

A clean energy strategy that maximizes our region’s near-term potential to use energy more efficiently and generate more of our power from clean, home-grown renewable resources can address New England’s energy problems and dramatically reduce emissions of global warming pollutants – providing a “win-win” path forward for the region.

In this report, we describe some of the many opportunities New England has to reduce its use of energy and tap local sources of renewable energy. We focus on addressing the biggest sources of energy use in New England, using technologies that are feasible today.

Achieving the region’s near-term energy efficiency and renewable energy potential could shave our energy consumption by at least 18 percent and reduce the region’s emissions of carbon dioxide – the leading global warming pollutant – by at least 20 percent. 

Achieving New England’s clean energy potential will not happen all at once. And it will take investment, creativity and hard work. But the availability of vast amounts of energy efficiency opportunities and renewable energy potential suggests that New England’s energy problems are solvable – and that they can be addressed in ways that reduce our contribution to global warming and preserve the region’s environment, public health and economy.

New England’s energy challenges are real and they are serious.

• New England imports about 90 percent of our energy from other nations and other regions of the United States. If the region were forced to rely only on native resources we use today, our homes would be dark, our streets empty of cars and our businesses shut down for all but 2 hours and 15 minutes of every day.

• Energy prices have been rising and are extremely volatile. Natural gas prices have fluctuated by a factor of four over the last four years, New Englanders paid record (nominal) gasoline and heating oil prices in 2005 and 2006 and electricity prices have spiked as well. Long-term trends in the oil, natural gas, and electricity markets suggest that higher and more volatile energy prices could become more common in the future.

• New England’s traditional energy supply alternatives each come with significant drawbacks:

• Coal burning is a major contributor to global warming as well as local environmental harm. In 2004, coal accounted for 6 percent of New England’s energy use, but 10 percent of its carbon dioxide pollution.

• Nuclear power has proven to be very expensive and poses long-term challenges related to public safety, waste storage, terrorism and weapons proliferation.

• Importation of liquefied natural gas from overseas poses potential public safety problems and would make New England more dependent on foreign nations for another major source of energy.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy can address the region’s energy problems while reducing emissions of global warming pollution.

By implementing technologies available today, New England can significantly reduce energy use and global warming emissions. Such technologies include:

• Technological improvements to cars and light trucks that would enable vehicles to achieve average fuel economy of 33 miles-per-gallon over the next decade, and much better fuel economy in the years to come.

• Improvements to heavy-duty trucks that can reduce their fuel consumption per mile by 29 percent.

• Weatherizing homes in New England to reduce their use of fuel for space heating during the cold winter months and reduce air conditioning demand in the summer.

• Improved water heaters and other major appliances for homeowners that achieve significant reductions in energy consumption.

• More energy-efficient space heating, cooling and lighting equipment in commercial buildings.

• More efficient motors in industrial facilities, along with smarter integration of motors into industrial processes.

• Combined heat-and-power technology that allows business and industry to create heat and electricity at the same time – resulting in a large improvement in overall energy efficiency.

In addition, New England can begin to tap its vast potential for renewable energy development. New England’s solar and wind energy resources are sufficient to power the entire region several times over. Taking advantage of only a small share of our renewable resources could enable us to replace 10 percent of the region’s electricity generation with new renewable energy in the near future. One scenario for near-term renewable energy development might include:

• Building five offshore wind energy facilities of the same size as the proposed Cape Wind project off Massachusetts.

• Installing 1,860 wind turbines in onshore locations in New England, requiring temporary disruption of less than 0.03 percent of the region’s land area and permanent impacts on only a small fraction of that area.

• Installing solar photovoltaic panels on less than one-half percent of New England’s homes or 1.5 percent of its businesses.

• Using cost-effective biomass resources from mill wastes and low-quality wood from our forests.

A clean energy strategy for New England would have major benefits for the region.

• A scenario that takes advantage of the region’s full near-term energy efficiency and renewable energy potential could:

• Cut gasoline consumption by 21 percent.

• Cut diesel fuel consumption by 13 percent.

• Cut natural gas consumption by 22 percent.

• Cut nuclear power production by 26 percent.

• Cut coal consumption by 28 percent.

• In addition, such a scenario could reduce the region’s emissions of carbon dioxide – the leading global warming pollutant – by nearly 20 percent, exceeding the near-term goals for emission reductions set out in the New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers’ 2001 Climate Change Action Plan and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Reductions of this scale would put the region on track to achieve its share of the emission reductions scientists say are necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

• Further opportunities for energy savings and renewable energy development exist in the region, including in technologies that exist today but were not included in this analysis (such as solar water heating and geothermal heat pumps) and technologies that could emerge over the next decade (like plug-in hybrid vehicles, biofuels from plant residues and energy crops, and small-scale wind energy).

New England should pursue a clean energy strategy to provide an environmentally sound, economically wise, and long-term solution to its energy challenges. Specifically:

• New England states should cap global warming pollution – and support a similar cap at the federal level – to achieve the emission reductions that scientists believe are needed to prevent dangerous, human-caused global warming. Global warming emissions in the United States must be stabilized at current levels by the end of the decade, reduced by at least 15 to 20 percent by 2020, and be reduced by at least 80 percent by 2050.

• Each New England state should set concrete goals for energy savings and develop plans and marshal the necessary resources to achieve those savings.

• New England states should remove remaining financial and bureaucratic obstacles to cost-effective energy efficiency improvements and the expansion of renewable energy production.

• New England states should require utilities to devise and implement long-term, least-cost plans for securing electricity that take full advantage of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

• New England states should impose aggressive codes and standards for new buildings and equipment and revise those standards frequently as technology improves.

• New England’s leaders should use their influence to pursue necessary policy changes at the federal level and should involve the public in efforts to move the region toward a cleaner energy future.