Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, Climable.org, and Synapse Energy Economics partnered to conduct a study on climate action and public utilities in each of the New England states. The purpose of the study is to compile the climate actions of the New England utilities, the regulatory structures that the public utility commissions (PUCs) have in place to mitigate climate change, and the opportunities and challenges for implementing lasting climate solutions.

The team will conduct stakeholder workshops in each state to inform a final report that identifies policies and other barriers to climate progress in New England. The team will facilitate conversations amongst stakeholders around opportunities and challenges associated with advancing climate action in New England. The background report will summarize research on best practices, barriers, and opportunities across the region. The final report, to be released in late 2022, will include a list of recommendations for addressing barriers and creating equitable, just progress on climate action.

The Public Service Commission of Maryland directed the PC44 Electric Vehicle Work Group to develop a consensus electric vehicle benefit-cost assessment (BCA) framework for the Commission's consideration. The EV Work Group was directed to examine the National Standard Practice Manual (NSPM) and the EmPOWER Maryland Evaluation, Verification, and Measurement Framework to help inform the BCA. On behalf of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel (OPC) Synapse attended a series of EV Work Group meetings over the course of 2021 where it provided guidance and comments on draft BCA proposals. The leader of the PC44 EV Work Group submitted the group’s proposed EV BCA Framework to the Commission on December 1, 2021. Report - 9478 (ML# 238013)

Synapse performed a supplemental study to examine the latest information on the social cost of carbon and develop an updated recommendation. Learn more about the AESC study here.

Synapse assisted the Regulatory Assistance Project with developing a guide utility regulators and other policymakers can use to adapt regulatory frameworks so that their jurisdictions can capture the full benefits of beneficial electrification and associated load flexibility in buildings. Technologies such as controllable water heaters, smart thermostats, and air source heat pumps create new opportunities for buildings to flexibly manage energy use and interact with the power grid in ways that benefit the electric system, homeowners, and the environment. Yet, many existing regulations were not designed to support the transition to lower-emission, electrified, and grid-integrated buildings. The guide focuses on ways to adapt regulations so that building electrification can be equitable, flexible, and grid-integrated. The guidebook addresses the need to update to fuel-neutral energy efficiency resource standards and program design, as well as to modernize building codes and performance standards and the evaluation of gas infrastructure needs. In addition to the guide, the authors provided an interactive webinar on ways to help regulators support the evolution of regulatory frameworks. 

On behalf of the City of Boston, Synapse performed an in-depth building energy data analysis to develop a draft building emissions performance standard. The analysis involved developing frameworks and cost impacts for mandatory GHG emissions targets by building type that decrease over time. As part of the project, Synapse convened and facilitated a series of technical discussions with an advisory group comprised of experts in building science, architecture, engineering, construction, building operations, energy policy, renewable energy, and affordable housing. Using input from the City and the advisory group, Synapse developed recommendations, including proposed targets by building type, example compliance strategies, and aggregate cost estimates. Advisory group meeting materials are available on the City's website. The report published below describes the proposed standard and the methodology used to develop it.

On behalf of the Sierra Club, Synapse developed and modeled a Clean Energy Portfolio for Tampa Electric Company (TECO) that met the City of Tampa’s goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. For our analysis, we modeled a Business as Usual (BAU) Scenario where TECO continues to rely on its current fossil resources, and a clean energy scenarios where TECO retires its remaining coal unit and reduces its dependence on energy from its existing gas plants by building out solar PV and battery storage and increasing investment in demand-side management. The clean energy scenario achieves a 50 percent renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for TECO by 2035. We also tested a more aggressive sensitivity that achieves an 80 percent RPS by 2035.

We found that transitioning to 50 percent renewables is the lowest-cost resource option for Tampa ratepayers relative to continued reliance on fossil resources. The 50% Clean Energy Scenario saved ratepayers between $400 million and $1.6 billion in net present value terms relative to TECO's current fossil plan, depending on the gas and carbon pricing forecasts. This Clean Energy Scenario will also reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2040 (compared to 2021 levels) and prevents approximately 50 million tons of CO2 from being emitted compared to the TECO BAU scenario. We also found that the Clean Energy Scenario generated more and higher quality local jobs than the BAU scenario.

The New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability engaged Synapse to assess the feasibility of implementing a local community choice aggregation (CCA) program. Synapse performed an in-depth study of the local context as well as the policy landscape for CCA programs across the U.S. and in New York State. In partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, we developed three CCA pathways for detailed scenario modeling:

1. Traditional Pathway: a structure that is typical of CCA programs that purchase bulk renewable energy for customers while attempting to maintain affordability
2. High Ambition Pathway: a program design that pursues aggressive environmental and community impacts through bulk purchase of new local renewables and value-add services, such as demand response
3. Low-Income Community Solar Pathway: a novel design that would unlock distributed community solar projects and take advantage of state incentives to provide energy savings to low-income participants

The pathway designs were devised based on interviews with national experts on CCA programs and careful consideration of CCA literature, state rules, and NYC decarbonization goals. Synapse quantified the environmental, health, and consumer cost impacts—including the cost of renewable attributes, administrative fees, and other program offerings—for each of the three CCA pathways. Our model forecasted renewable energy production in both the state and NYC through the year 2035 and quantified state and local emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants, effects on electricity rates, and electricity bill impacts of CCA offerings compared to the local electric utility’s default service. Synapse evaluated the benefits and costs for NYC relative to a reference case in which the city does not adopt a future CCA program. This comparative approach provides a lens for New York City Council into the incremental impact of various CCA policy options.

Synapse prepared a series of conclusions and recommendations to help guide the City Council in its careful consideration of the merits and risks of enacting a CCA program. We identified key considerations for program design, including:

• Regulatory barriers and financial risks to New York City
• CCA program scale, including customers served and geographic scope
• Effects on equity and energy affordability
• Methods to guarantee savings to low-income participants
• Technical potential for local renewable energy
• Grid hosting capacity for distributed energy resources
• Customer engagement and opportunities to provide value-add services
• Consumer protections for participants

GridLab commissioned Synapse to evaluate Duke Energy's 2020 Integrated Resource Plans and to present an alternative, optimized resource portfolio for the state on behalf of a coalition of environmental non-profits. Synapse used the EnCompass capacity optimization and production cost model to create an alternative resource portfolio. This alternative resource plan meets North Carolina's emissions reduction target of 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, relies on a portfolio of increased energy efficiency, renewables, and storage, and is the least-cost option when compared to those presented by Duke in its filings.

Synapse Energy Economics, Climable, GreenRoots, and Clean Energy Solutions provided technical assistance to the City of Chelsea, Massachusetts to develop a community-centric microgrid at two of its critical facilities: City Hall and Police Station 911 Call Center. The team of experts provided technical design, economic analysis, community engagement activities, and policy support to the City. Funding from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Municipal Energy Technical Assistance Grant helped complete the following project activities:

• An energy assessment of City Hall and police station, including recommendations for electrification, resilience, and energy savings.
• Calculation of the public benefits from improved resilience, electrification, and energy efficiency of the 911 Call Center and City Hall.
• Preparation of public-facing materials to describe the upgrades and their benefits to the community.
• Development of design concepts and selection criteria for contractors to perform building improvements.
• Identification of a strategy for City Hall and the Police Station to integrate into a broader distributed microgrid in Chelsea.

The resulting the proposed projects create a variety of opportunities for the City of Chelsea and its residents to “prosper-in-place,” produce decentralized clean energy, develop local career pathways, lower energy costs, improve climate resilience, and engage actively with the community.

Community Flyers on the Benefits of Microgrids

Synapse partnered with subcontractor Slipstream, Inc. to produce a comprehensive assessment of the energy storage potential in Iowa for the Iowa Economic Development Authority. The study produced forecasts of energy storage deployments in Iowa. By 2035, Iowa could see between 1 GW and 2 GW of energy storage deployed within the state. The study found that the scale and pace of energy storage deployments in Iowa will depend on many factors. This includes future capital and maintenance costs for battery storage systems, wholesale market reforms, and the degree to which state regulators incentivize utilities to consider storage as an alternative to traditional utility investments.

The study included macroeconomic modeling using Implan to explore the impacts on Iowa's gross domestic product and employment. The state economic impacts of a growing battery storage industry were estimated to be limited, but positive. This includes net job impacts ranging from 298 to 595 full-time equivalent jobs and state gross domestic product impacts from $13 million to $24 million per year. The macroeconomic impacts could be larger if Iowa attracts new businesses to the state that are part of the battery storage supply chain.

The Iowa energy storage study included an assessment of the barriers and best practices to the development of sustainable market opportunities for energy storage in Iowa. This report identified three key barriers to the broader implementation of storage in Iowa. These include: (1) lack of current alignment between storage value and markets; (2) the relatively high capital cost of battery systems; and (3) uncertainty in the future (for markets, regulation, and battery technology).

Read the Iowa Economic Development Authority's Executive Summary here.

Devi Glick provided expert testimony on behalf of Sierra Club in the Fuel Charge Adjustment Proceeding filed by Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) and Duke Energy Progress (DEP) in North Carolina on behalf of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in South Carolina. Ms. Glick's testimony evaluated Duke’s unit commitment and dispatch practices at its coal-fired power plants. Her testimony demonstrated that the costs used by Duke to make its unit commitment decisions differ from those costs it sought to recover from customers and discusses how that discrepancy is driving uneconomic unit commitment decisions. Ms. Glick calculates excess costs that are passed on to ratepayers as a result and makes recommendations as to how Duke can improve its unit commitment process.

Synapse assisted Sierra Club with comments on Mississippi Power's 2021 Integrated Resource Plan. These comments identify areas in which Mississippi Power’s IRP failed to advance the goals of protecting ratepayers, providing transparency, and operating a well-planned and efficient electricity system. To address these flaws, Sierra Club and Synapse made the following recommendations:

• Mississippi Power should accelerate the retirement of Plant Daniel, an uneconomic coal plant that the utility currently plans to operate until 2027.

• Mississippi Power should devote more funding to energy efficiency and demand-side management programs that help customers use energy more efficiently - saving money and helping the environment in the long term. Mississippi Power’s commitment to low-income energy efficiency programs pales in comparison to other jurisdictions with comparable high energy burdens and high poverty rates.

• The Commission should revise the IRP rule to require greater transparency and opportunity for public input because utilities will not do so without a stronger mandate. Greater transparency and opportunities for public engagement would strengthen Mississippi’s IRP process and center customers in the process.

Synapse supported Sierra Club in its engagement in Arizona Public Service (APS) and Tucson Electric Power’s (TEP) Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process. Over the course of the last two years, Synapse attended and participated in many IRP workshops and stakeholder sessions on behalf of the Sierra Club. Synapse also prepared several presentations to the Commission and utilities with recommendations for improving APS and TEP's IRPs. Finally, Synapse assisted in the development of several rounds of comments on both APS and TEP’s IRPs. These comments identified areas in which TEP and APS respectively failed to advance the goals of protecting ratepayers, providing transparency, and operating a well-planned and efficient electricity system.

Synapse and Sierra Club recommendations to APS focused on the following topics:

• APS should develop a more reasonable load forecast that incorporates COVID impacts and corrects the historical pattern of over forecasting load
• APS should better justify its modeling assumptions and decisions that continue to systematically favor new gas resources and disadvantage renewables, and the Company should not be able to add any new gas resources in the near term based on its current modeling.
• APS should conduct a study that properly models the economics of retiring the Four Corners Coal plant early and paying out the remaining coal contract relative to retiring it early and replacing it with clean energy resources.
• APS should properly reflect the costs and risks associated with future environmental regulations, including the coal combustion residuals and effluent limitation guideline rules, and the risk of water shortages.

Synapse and Sierra Club recommendations to TEP focus on the following topics:

• TEP should improve its modeling tools and employ optimized capacity expansion modeling.
• TEP should demonstrate how it will reduce its reliance on fossil resources in light of the substantial quantity of new gas resources it produced just prior to the IRP.
• TEP should utilize gas prices that are higher and more aligned with those forecasted by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook (AEO).

Synapse was retained by the New Hampshire Office of the Consumer Advocate to provide expert witness services in proceedings related to energy efficiency, grid modernization, rate design, least-cost integrated resource planning, revenue decoupling, alternative regulation, and more.

In docket DE-21-030, Melissa Whited and Ben Havumaki testified regarding Unitil's proposed rate increase for the residential class, multi-year rate plan, revenue decoupling mechanism, and grid modernization investments.