You asked for background on the renewable portfolio standard (RPS), specifically with regard to which resources count towards meeting the standard.

SUMMARY

The legislature adopted the RPS as part of PA 98-28, the law that permitted competition in electric supply. The RPS requires electric companies and competitive suppliers to procure part of their power from renewable and other clean energy resources, with the proportion increasing over time. The companies and suppliers can meet the RPS by buying the power directly or buying renewable energy credits on the regional wholesale market.

There are three classes of resources, I, II, and III, as defined by CGS § 16-1. Class I resources include solar and wind power, power from fuel cells, and certain biomass and hydropower resources, among other things. Power from biomass resources counts as class I if the facility uses sustainably-produced biomass and meets other requirements. Power from other types of biomass facilities, as well as from trash-to-energy facilities, counts as class II. Power from small hydropower facilities is class I or class II, depending on when the facility went into service. Class III resources are the power produced from certain cogeneration and waste heat recovery systems and the energy saved from certain conservation programs.

CLASSES OF RENEWABLE POWER

Class I

Class I resources are: solar power, wind power, fuel cells, methane gas from landfills, ocean thermal power, wave or tidal power, low emission advanced renewable energy conversion technologies, and power from certain biomass and hydropower resources.

Biomass resources count as class I or class II depending on their environmental characteristics. To count as a class I resource, the biomass must be cultivated and harvested in a sustainable manner. The following do not normally count as sustainable biomass: (1) construction and demolition waste; (2) finished biomass products from sawmills, paper mills, or stud mills (e. g. , two-by-fours); (3) organic refuse fuel derived separately from municipal solid waste; or (4) biomass from old growth timber stands. However, these resources do count as sustainable biomass under limited circumstances. These are when (1) the biomass is used in a gasification plant that received funding before May 1, 2006 from the Clean Energy Fund, (2) the energy derived from the biomass is subject to a long-term power purchase contract as part of Project 150 (CGS § 16-244c(j)(2)) entered into before May 1, 2006, or (3) the biomass is used in a renewable energy facility that was certified as a Class I renewable energy source by the Department of Public Utility Control before December 31, 2007 and that uses biomass from a Connecticut transfer station and volume-reduction facility that generated biomass during 2007 and used the resulting power in that year to earn Class I renewable energy certificates. The third exception ends when the department certifies that any biomass gasification plant is operational and accepting up to 140,000 tons of such biomass annually. If neither the gasification plant or the renewable energy facility described above is accepting the normally excluded biomass, up to 140,000 tons of this biomass can be used annually in one or more other renewable energy facilities certified as a Class I or Class II renewable energy source by the department, so long as these facilities use biomass from a Connecticut transfer station and volume-reduction facility that generated biomass during 2007 that was used during that year to generate Class I renewable energy certificates.

The power from the eligible biomass resources counts as class I if it is used in a facility that has an average emission rate of no more than 0. 075 pounds of nitrogen oxides per million British Thermal Units (BTU) of heat input for the previous calendar quarter. The emissions restriction

does not apply to facilities with a capacity of less than 500 kilowatts that began construction before July 1, 2003. Five hundred kilowatts is one-half of a megawatt, or about the power used by 375 to 500 homes.

Power from hydropower resources counts as class I resource if it is produced at a run-of-the-river facility that (1) has a generating capacity of up to five megawatts, (2) does not cause an appreciable change in the riverflow, and (3) began operation after July 1, 2003.

Class II

Class II resources are the power produced by trash-to-energy plants and certain types of biomass and hydropower. Any type of biomass can be used to produce power that counts as class II resources, so long as it is used in a facility that went into operation before July 1, 1998 that has an average emission rate of 0. 2 pounds of nitrogen oxides per million BTU. Hydropower counts as a class II resource if it is produced at a run-of-the-river facility that (1) has a generating capacity of up to five megawatts, (2) does not cause an appreciable change in the riverflow, and (3) began operation before July 1, 2003.

Class III

Class III resources are the power from (1) combined heat and power (cogeneration) systems with an operating efficiency level of at least 50% that are part of customer-side distributed resources developed at commercial and industrial facilities in Connecticut on or after January 1, 2006 or (2) a waste heat recovery system installed on or after April 1, 2007, that produces electrical or thermal energy by capturing existing waste heat or pressure from industrial or commercial processes. Class III also includes the electricity savings created in this state from conservation and load management programs begun on or after January 1, 2006.

RENEWABLE PORTFOLIO STANDARD

Table 1 shows the proportion of the power sold by an electric company or competitive supplier that must, under CGS §§ 16-245a and 16-243g, come from the three classes of resources. The requirements that apply in 2020 continue in subsequent years. In practice, electric companies and competitive suppliers use class II resources to meet the requirements of the second column, since they are typically less costly than class I resources.

Table 1: Percent of Power that Must Come from Clean Resources

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