Acadia Center

Energy Efficiency and Building Decarbonization:Acadia Center is transforming the region's building systems to make them more efficient and healthier. The project seeks to advance energy efficiency programs that provide incentives and support to consumers to improve the efficiency of their homes and businesses, shifting billions of utility dollars from purchasing power plant contracts into energy efficiency programs including through state energy efficiency planning bodies across the region as well as through emerging policy concepts such as Clean Heat Standards (CHS). The project focuses on transitioning buildings to clean, efficient, all-electric heating and cooling systems and pursues this work through coalitions, state policies, a building-science approach, and innovative methods that make energy efficiency programs easier for consumers to participate in, specifically in environmental justice, rural and other historically underserved communities. These efforts encompass improving weatherization and addressing pre-weatherization barriers for the region's aging building stock, driving flexible loads and grid-interactive buildings, and synchronizing in-building electrification strategies with broader community- and neighborhood-level solutions like networked geothermal. The project further works to sustain and advance energy efficiency as a resource at a regional level, where it contributes some 12-14% of the region's power needs.

Utility Innovation and Accountability: Acadia Center advances thought-leading reforms in state and regional utility regulation so all parties engaged in the energy system utilities, regulators, and consumers work together to achieve shared goals. The program builds awareness about how outdated financial incentives influence utility decision-making and can misalign with clean energy deployment, climate goals, and ratepayer benefits. The program has significant reforms of public utility commissions and state regulatory oversight so that they consider climate impacts and equity imperatives alongside reliability, affordability, and safety. Program goals seek to catalyze modernization of the grid and the utility system of the future, with a focus on performance-based regulation, utility performance incentive mechanisms, rate-design for electrification and DERS, integrated distribution system planning (gas/electric), non-wires alternatives, and inclusive stakeholder engagement.

Clean Energy and Infrastructure:Acadia Center advocates for accelerating the deployment of clean energy on the power grid, from large-scale resources like offshore wind to local, distributed renewables like community and rooftop solar. This work extends to the complex area of reforms to remove barriers to clean power in the regional electricity grid, where our goals include articulating the consumer, health, environmental justice, and climate case against persistent reliance on fossil fuel for electricity in the region. In addition to overarching reform work, the organization has initiated a suite of new grid- and infrastructure-focused projects intended to improve the responsiveness of power grids to consumer, climate, and equity goals. These include creating a forum for northeast regional grid planning across New England, New York, and eastern Canada; a set of analyses on the barriers to and solutions for harmonious siting and community engagement around large-scale grid infrastructure projects; and a novel effort to plug municipalities into the important work of the regional grid operator and help them shape outcomes there to advance local and state policy priorities.Clean Energy:Shifting electric power generation to zero and low-carbon resources is central to Acadia Center's core program work. As building and transportation sectors electrify, securing renewables and clean energy resources on the grid is vital to ensuring adequate renewable supply to keep pace with rising demand, power vehicles and heat pumps with clean electrons, and deliver economic and public health benefits to local communities. Acadia Center is focused on accelerating the deployment of diverse renewable resources that are and will be part of an optimized renewable portfolio for the region, including offshore wind, onshore wind, utility-scale solar, community solar, rooftop solar, clean hydropower, and beyond. The program undertakes policy advocacy and market reforms needed to remove barriers and spur adoption at the local, state, and regional levels from renewable portfolio standards to net energy metering rules, solar incentive programs, and large-scale procurements.Acadia Center has long advocated for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program, which has delivered over $6 billion in funds to invest in clean energy and consumer benefits in 11 participating states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. We lead regional advocacy calls on RGGI, develop recommendations to the states and RGGI, Inc., and prepare analyses and reports on both the program's benefits and ways to improve it.Clean Grid:Acadia Center has long played an important advocacy role before ISO-NE, NEPOOL, and their respective stakeholder committees and bodies, such as the Consumer Liaison Group (CLG). In conjunction with this work, the organization launched a new Communities and Clean Grid project focused on providing energy education resource material about the power grid to municipalities in the region. The objective of this project is to equip and empower local communities to understand better and potentially engage in and influence deliberative ISO New England grid planning and management processes, aiming to 1) place local communities on an equal footing with other stakeholders seeking to influence ISO-NE grid planning and management, and 2) enlist them in the region-wide effort to implement equitable, affordable clean energy solutions.Northeast Grid Planning Forum:The Northeast Grid Planning Forum (NGPF) is a deliberative stakeholder dialogue designed to formalize and deepen collaboration across northeast U.S. states and Canadian provinces around interregional energy systems and grid coordination. Acadia Center and Nergica, independent US and Canada-based non-profit corporations serve as co-convenors for this effort. The dialogue will be convened via three distinct roundtable processes: 1) environmental justice and community mobilization, 2) interregional planning, and 3) clean energy procurement and market development. Interregional grid coordination in this context includes a range of planning, investment, market design, community benefits, and operational approaches. Northeast states already share electrical connections with their Canadian neighbors, but a more holistic approach to planning and implementing improvements to the regional energy system will deliver significant value to New England ratepayers.Infrastructure and Community Engagement:Acadia Center is addressing the issue that to meet climate goals successfully, a large increase in renewable generation will require sufficient transmission and other infrastructure to be built. That increase will occur when communities and stakeholders value and support infrastructure development. This will require improvements in permitting processes to be inclusive and trustworthy of community and stakeholder participation. One near-term project Acadia Center is undertaking to understand better community needs in infrastructure siting and permitting is a partnership with colleagues at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). Acadia Center and CATF are working together to design and understand better and help overcome barriers to the responsible siting and development of clean infrastructure in the region, including barriers related to community engagement and needs in permitting and siting processes.

Climate Policy and Solutions:Every program and project at Acadia Center touches on climate policy and solutions. Climate Policy represents a dedicated set of activities specifically focused on addressing opportunities for states and the region to achieve overarching climate targets, which require deep, economy-wide decarbonization and phaseout of the use of fossil fuels. Program area activities include engaging with states on comprehensive climate planning studies, modeling, and energy system strategies. This work advances long-term, "big picture thinking," which is needed to ensure that comprehensive and cohesive strategies for decarbonizing entire economies are considered. Climate Policy includes work in Acadia Center's CLEAN-E Analysis team. It embraces three project areas that are essential to the achievement of near- and long-term climate targets at a state and regional level: 1) Fossil Fuel Phase-Out, and 2) State and Regional Climate Policies, which includes work on programs that set binding caps on emissions (e.g., RGGI, cap-and-invest).Climate, Energy, and Equity Analysis (CLEAN-E):Acadia Center develops analytic materials and independent, thought-leading recommendations across various clean energy and climate issues. Work products created by our Climate, Energy, and Equity Analysis program include 1) comprehensive, proactive reports, 2) analytically focused comments to government agencies and filings with regulatory bodies, and 3) rapid response offense/defense analysis. In recent years, we have produced groundbreaking reports about building electrification, the RGGI program, and issues around claims for clean fuels. Work performed in 2023 includes comprehensive assessments of the climate impacts of fuels such as hydrogen and "renewable natural gas; in-depth analyses of technical issues related to shaping an effective Clean Heat Standard for building decarbonization; and original research that found sizeable public health impacts of smaller fossil fuel powerplants that fall under the radar in policy arenas.Fossil Fuel Phase-Out:To meet climate goals, the region must almost entirely phase out its use of fossil gas, commonly referred to as natural gas and other fossil fuels. Acadia Center seeks to replace fossil gas with clean energy alternatives in electricity production, building heating, and transportation. This conversion necessarily requires the downsizing and decommissioning fossil fuel infrastructure and supply chain networks, such as gas distribution system transition. This project advances proposals to level the playing field for renewables and efficient electric technologies and shrink the reliance on fossil fuels across the region and all program areas. As the electric sector faces an approaching need to develop and deploy dispatchable, emissions-free resources (DEFR) such as long-duration storage, green hydrogen, and other potential resources, Acadia Center is engaging closely on the question of how to address reliability and resource adequacy role currently served by fossil fuels, including reliance on dual-fuel oil/gas and LNG resources for winter reliability.Transportation and Mobility:Acadia Center accelerates the transition to low-carbon transportation. We advance policy approaches that address transportation emissions and invest in equitable access to clean mobility solutions, including solutions that specifically focus on disproportionate impacts and gaps in service in underserved urban and rural communities. The solutions we promote range from electric vehicles and zero-emission buses and trucks to transit, rail, and biking/walking infrastructure, among other measures to reduce emissions and vehicle miles traveled (VMT). We strive to help states evolve the way they and their DOTs plan for and invest in their traditional transportation assets to a model that is compatible with emissions reduction requirements while also ensuring that the region's construction workforces see a vibrant future even as funding is shifted away from, e.g., highway expansion projects. Our vision also includes place-based decarbonization interventions at key hubs within the region's transportation system, including ports, freight terminals, and airports. After the Transportation and Climate Initiative's (TCI) cessation, Acadia Center continues to coordinate advocates working on transportation and equity issues. It may resume focusing on the potential for cap-and-invest to drive equitable transportation emissions reductions through broader economywide models.Equity and Environmental Justice:Embedded across Acadia Center's work is addressing climate and clean energy policies and solutions designed to improve the lives of all residents and specifically redress the detrimental impacts of a fossil fuel economy on lower-income urban and rural communities. Acadia Center internally applies diversity, equity, and environmental justice through staff discussions, materials, approaches, and engagement. Programs seek to connect and build relationships with community-based organizations and diverse stakeholders to improve energy system decisions and planning to be inclusive and responsive to community needs. These efforts seek to place and keep environmental justice solutions at the forefront of state and regional initiatives that formerly overlooked this vital imperative.Communications and Public Engagement:A core focus of Acadia Center's approach to climate is to consider how the organization's program efforts should resonate with decision-makers, media, communities, and the broader public. To those goals, program work includes developing educational and explanatory materials that raise awareness about the benefits of a clean energy economy in accessible, digestible formats. Using top-notch graphic design, these innovative materials connect clean energy and climate progress with issues of concern to the public's daily lives, such as economic prosperity, equity, health, quality of life, and climate benefits. Acadia Center staff participate in numerous public forums and produce original analyses and reports. In 2023, the organization launched a new Climate and Energy Explainer Series that has addressed complex issues that the organization is addressing in its program work, such as clean energy technologies available on the power grid, the lifecycle implications of claims for "renewable natural gas; what a Clean Heat Standard is and why it can be a powerful building decarbonization tool if done correctly and other topics. The Climate and Energy Explainer Series will continue with monthly reports throughout 2024.