The well-attended April 21 Hull Municipal Light Board meeting included another discussion about the town’s 2015 agreement through the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) to purchase power from the yet-to-be built Peabody Peaker Power Plant during periods of peak electricity demand.
Hull is one of more than a dozen participating communities and owns 2.38% of the project.
Peaking power refers to providing capacity to generate more power during periods of peak demand, when the normal supply is not adequate to meet the needs of all of an electric company’s customers.
The plant is expected to run approximately 239 hours per year – only when “the powers that be make the decision that we need more power for the grid,” Light Board Chair Patrick Cannon told The Hull Times after the meeting. “That’s the average since the plant’s existence.”
The plant is licensed for 1,250 hours, “but obviously we wouldn’t be using it nearly that much,” he said. “The intention isn’t to run the plant 24/7, 365 days a year – it would only run when needed.”
However, there are a number of Hull residents, among others, who oppose the plant and have aired their concerns at previous Light Board meetings – including the most recent one, during which a number of residents spoke against the town continuing to be part of this agreement. A couple of people spoke in favor of the agreement as it now stands.
Concerns aired relate in part to environmental impacts, the cost, and potential negative health impacts.
At the Thursday meeting, following the lengthy discussion, Light Board member Jake Vaillancourt made a motion that the board direct MMWEC to explore the possibility of Hull withdrawing from the agreement by selling its shares, but that motion was not seconded.
As background, the non-profit MMWEC – through an energy partnership established in 1969 – assists Massachusetts municipal light departments such as Hull with their needs to contract for energy.
“No vote was taken [because the motion was not seconded], so the [2015] agreement stands so far as the majority of the board is concerned,” Cannon said. “We’ve spent time during four meetings on this subject, with people from different [environmental] groups and residents having their fair shot [to air their views].”
When asked, Cannon said he didn’t expect this issue to be on the agenda again “because the decision has been made [due to the motion not being seconded].”
In response to an inquiry from The Hull Times, Vaillancourt said a “big issue is that this agreement commits Hull to continuing carbon emissions beyond 2030.” He was referring to Town Meeting 2019’s approval of the establishment by the Select Board of a 100% clean energy climate action task force to develop and make publicly available an operational plan on how to achieve the goal of using 100% clean and renewal energy by 2030 for all public, residential, and commercial energy users in Hull.
Vaillancourt also said remaining in the agreement would mean that the town would not be in conformance with 2050 Massachusetts Decarbonization RoadMap legislation designed to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by that year. These two factors could mean that the 30-year Peabody plant could become a “stranded asset,” he said.
“We had a third party look at this [issue] for us, who determined that if Hull could sell its shares, ratepayers would save an average of $4 to $8 a year, in addition to the environmental benefit [of getting out of the agreement],” he explained.
However, Cannon said, “It’s not like we can snap our fingers and say, ‘We’re out.’ We would have to find someone to buy our shares, and four of the five board members don’t think this is the way to go.”
Conversely, Vaillancourt stated, “We’re not stuck with this decision forever. I think if a new light board member were to come onboard, such a motion [referring to the one he made at the meeting] might be seconded. I as a light board member can make a motion anytime during a meeting under ‘new business,’ and The Town of Hull could request MMWEC to sell its shares even after the peaker power plant is operating.”
Vaillancourt noted that after none of the other four board members seconded the motion during the meeting, he commented, “There’s no right way to do the wrong thing.”
The decision for the board to enter into the agreement in 2015 was driven by the recognition that the project would help stabilize rates while also providing reliable service, Town Manager and Hull Municipal Light Plant Manager Philip Lemnios said earlier.
The fact that a high percentage of Hull residents are on fixed or low incomes was one of the considerations the board made when deciding to enter into the agreement, Cannon said.
For further information about MMWEC’s plant, visit the energy organization’s Project 2015A website, https://www.project2015a.org/.
