Tag: electricity

  • Belmont Electricity Rates Climb 6%; Residents Tighten Belts

    Belmont Electricity Rates Climb 6%; Residents Tighten Belts

    Belmont Light raised its residential electricity rate by 6% on March 1, and residents say the increase has compounded a year of climbing energy costs that are straining household budgets.

    Sue Choquette, 60, a Belmont renter since 2021, opened her January bill and found a $458.71 charge, up about $70 from the same month last year. She attributed the increase partly to colder weather but also to energy costs that crept higher throughout the year.

    “It really just kind of eats away at your savings,” Choquette said. “Your money doesn’t go as far, basically, because your pay is not increasing at the percentage that everything else is going up.”

    The mounting costs forced Choquette to trim her spending. Where she once went out to eat roughly three times a week, she now limits herself to about once a week. Electricity, she said, is just one piece of a larger financial strain.

    “Gas, electricity, it’s all been really high this year,” she said. “To some, $70 might seem small, but everything is going up, and it adds up.”

    Belmont Light, the town’s municipal utility, raised its residential electricity rate to about $0.246 per kilowatt-hour last month, citing higher transmission costs and adjusted conservation charges. The Municipal Light Board approved the increase at a Jan. 13 public hearing. Supporting documents, minutes, and other materials are available on the utility’s website.

    Belmont Light sets its rates locally, unlike investor-owned utilities such as National Grid or Eversource, where the state Department of Public Utilities plays a larger regulatory role. Even after the increase, Belmont Light’s rate remains below the statewide average. Massachusetts electricity costs rank among the highest in the nation. The utility does not impose seasonal rate hikes during the winter, unlike some investor-owned providers.

    Still, residents say the rate hike compounds costs that were already rising.

    Larry Berger, 76, a retired public health worker, moved to Belmont from Albuquerque, New Mexico, last September with his wife. He said he quickly adjusted his habits to control costs.

    “We’re already making sure we walk around the house to turn out lights and turn down the heat at night,” he said. “You try to be aware of the high cost of energy.”

    Belmont costs more than Albuquerque in almost every category, he said, from housing to food to transportation.

    Kathy Keohane, 67, said she invested in energy efficiency upgrades: solar panels, heat pumps and LED lighting. Even so, her bills continue to climb. Keohane said Belmont Light should expand its time-of-use programs, which allow customers to shift electricity consumption to off-peak hours when rates are lower.

    “We’re moving toward green energy,” Keohane said, “but it doesn’t fully shield us from rising costs.”

    Choquette said her concern extends beyond this year’s bill to what comes next.

    “Everyone wants clean, reliable energy,” she said, “but we need to understand the cost, the timing, and how it’s governed. Otherwise, it hits us—the people—hardest.”

  • Ain’t No Sunshine: Trump’s tariffs on steel, aluminum stall Newton’s solar plan

    Construction of a solar canopy in the Memorial Spaulding Elementary School parking lot has been halted after Trump’s tariffs caused steel prices to soar.

    The city has made a consistent effort to stay at the forefront of the Commonwealth’s sustainability efforts, with initiatives like the Climate Action Plan, a five-year timeline to introduce sustainable practices into the city, and Newton Power Choice, a city-funded program that enables citizens to easily invest in clean energy.

    As of 2022, the city had 18 solar projects online, which generate 5 million kW/hr a year, equal to 25% of the city’s total electricity use. Now, it has one additional project completed, two more under construction and six planned.

    Since 2022, Newton has also planned to install solar canopies at the Education Center, the Wheeler and Meadowbrook Road corner parking lot, and Memorial Spaulding Elementary School. However, the construction at Memorial Spaulding suddenly shut down when the developer was looking to do the last round of purchasing, specifically for steel.

    As of June 4, Trump raised the tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, causing steel prices to climb from $700 to $900 per ton.

    “With recent uncertainty around tariffs and the tariffs that were already in place on steel coming in,” said Sam Nighman, Newton’s co-director of sustainability. “The project was no longer financially viable for them.”

    Construction had not started, but the project was in the final planning stages.

    “With canopies, those end up involving a lot more steel compared to, like, your overall roof system or a ground mount system,” Nighman said.

    There is still hope that the project will resume at Memorial Spaulding. There are no barriers besides tariffs preventing construction.

    “I think everyone agrees it would be a good location for a solar canopy,” Nighman said. “If we can, in the future, find a way for that to work financially. We’ll pick that up and try to make that happen then.”

    The remaining canopies are larger and are predicted to produce more energy, which makes them more financially viable. As of now, construction for these areas is still planned for the summer, but Newton is not certain of the exact outcome for the other canopy projects.

    “Ones where we are looking at canopies, this could be impacted,” Nighman said.

    The solar projects are conducted under power purchase agreements with Ameresco, a New England-based solar developer, which means the company owns and maintains the projects and the city leases the space to them, Nighman said. Ameresco pays for the panels, the installation and all the upfront costs. The city buys the electricity produced by these panels.

    The solar projects allow Newton to mitigate some effects of climate change and save money on energy because solar is less expensive than other energy sources.

    “So I think if we look at our overall portfolio, the amount annually that we save is somewhere around $1 million in electricity costs from all of our solar projects,” Nighman said.

    The plan includes solar installation on municipal property as a big part of their plan to mitigate climate change.

    The issue is seen not only in Newton but in construction projects across the country. Even the talk about tariffs before they were implemented was enough to disrupt the supply chain that was still reeling from the pandemic.

    “There’s been a lot of disruptions,” said Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor at the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago and the policy division chair at the American Solar Energy Society. “It’s definitely not just in Massachusetts or New England or a regional thing, like it’s all across the country.”

    A report published in 2021 by the Newton Citizens Commission on Energy, a citizen-run group that creates renewable energy policy, found that residential homes and cars were responsible for 61% of the greenhouse gas emissions created in Newton. Commercial properties accounted for 37% and municipal uses 2%.

    Philip Hanser, the commission’s chair, said the group will set its sights on finding ways to encourage more solar adoption in residential areas.  

    “I think our next sector to tackle is residential homes and buildings, particularly less than 20,000 square feet, because they represent over a third of the emissions in the city,” Hanser said. “That’s the kind of next big frontier, and that’s where things need to be concentrated.”

    The biggest hurdle is motivating more of Newton’s 31,730 households to participate.

    “There are state and national mandates to help do that, but a lot of it is getting the word out and convincing people it’s a good idea,” said Michael Gevelber, a member of Newton’s Energy Commission since 2012 and an associate engineering research professor at Boston University.

    “How do you get more of them to put solar panels up, buy electric cars, put in heat pumps to provide heat during the winter?” Gevelber said. “That’s the question we’re contemplating, and that’s what goes into the climate action plan.”

    The same 2021 report revealed that Newton was not on track to reach any of its 2025 goals regarding EV ownership, residential heating emissions, commercial heating emissions, and heat pump installation.

    “Five years later, you measure, ‘Where are we?’” Gevelber said. “We barely scratched the surface, unfortunately.”

    To combat this issue, the commission urges the government to educate residents about their energy consumption.

    “The commission right now is putting forward that the city needs to think about putting into place an ordinance for homes to know what their energy use intensity is, and to use that data in the long run to develop decarbonization plans for everybody’s homes,” Hanser said. “And part of the decarbonization plans could be to supplement the energy sources with solar panels.”