Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Pumped Storage Exclusion topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
River advocates and scientists urge excluding pumped hydro from Massachusetts ‘clean energy’ definition
Summary
Multiple environmental scientists, river stewards and local residents testified in favor of S.2237, which would exclude existing pumped-storage hydropower from the statutory definition of clean energy because of river impacts and the cost of procuring existing storage.
Scientists, river advocates and western Massachusetts community members urged the committee to narrow the statutory definition of “clean energy” so that existing pumped-storage hydropower does not qualify for the state’s clean-energy subsidies.
Eve Vogel, a scholar of river and electric power systems at UMass Amherst, told the committee that procuring existing pumped storage could cost ratepayers “hundreds of millions of dollars” and that including pumped hydro in the clean-energy definition could divert funds from new infrastructure. She said that ISO-New England market incentives already enable many storage operations and that additional state subsidies for existing pumped storage could raise costs and encourage operations that increase net fossil-fuel consumption.
Nina Gordon Kirsch of the Connecticut River Conservancy and other witnesses described ecological harms from facilities such as Northfield Mountain and Bear Swamp — including altered flows, erosion and impacts to fish and endangered species — and urged the exclusion of pumped storage from any definition that would reduce regulatory oversight or authorize new subsidies.
Proponents of the change sought a precise statutory fix: remove pumped storage from the definition of “clean energy facilities” so that these existing plants are not eligible for procurement payments or simplified review reserved for newer technologies. Opponents in other panels had argued that pumped storage provides grid reliability; supporters of the exclusion acknowledged reliability benefits but argued that environmental costs and the fact that the facilities already exist argued against additional subsidies or designation as “clean.”
Why it matters: state definitions determine eligibility for subsidies and streamlined review. Removing pumped storage from the clean-energy definition would redirect funds and regulatory attention toward new storage technologies and other renewables.
What’s next: the committee heard repeated testimony and asked for written materials and technical cost estimates to support any statutory change.
