The Massachusetts DPU is looking for ways to streamline its review of municipal electric supply aggregation plans.
Tuesday’s Department of Public Utilities order (Docket 23-67) includes proposed guidelines and a draft template to help municipalities develop new aggregation plans. The DPU is proposing to expedite its review process for certain municipalities that use the template.
Many of the rules governing what must be included in a municipal aggregation plan have already been established through other DPU orders, but the guidelines proposed Tuesday would gather them in one place and provide a simplified explanation for them.
Municipal aggregation holds the promise of lower electric costs for ratepayers, as their city or town buys power for them in bulk. And some community choice aggregation packages have the added benefit of boosting the clean energy transition, if they specify use of renewable energy certificates.
A University of Massachusetts-Amherst report issued in February found that these plans saved money for residents of 79% of the municipalities that developed them. (See Community Choice Aggregation Benefits in Mass. Quantified.)
But the DPU has taken some criticism for the speed with which it approves them. The Boston Globe this year reported that Massachusetts’ two U.S. senators were urging DPU to “stop holding up communities’ attempts to cut utility bills and emissions.”
In the UMass-Amherst study, 26% of responding municipalities decried detrimental DPU delays.
The DPU addressed that in the order it issued Tuesday.
It said it has reviewed each aggregation request on a case-by-case basis, creating a continually evolving body of precedent that future applicants must continually monitor and adjust to.
“As a result, there is an unacceptable backlog of applications pending at the department that suggests a different approach is warranted,” the order reads.
“By providing this clear direction and otherwise streamlining the process for reviewing and approving municipal aggregation plans, the department intends to move expeditiously to address the backlog of applications currently pending before the department, as well as simplify the process going forward in the interests of reducing the administrative resources — on the part of both the municipalities and the department — devoted to this issue.”
The DPU is seeking public comment on the proposals through Sept. 18.
Massachusetts established municipal aggregation in 1997. The DPU has approved more than 175 programs since August 2000, and more than 1.2 million customers statewide are enrolled in an aggregation plan.
