March 2022

Perhaps you are like me, committed to “greening” the electricity supplied to your home but not able to invest in solar for your home right now. Or perhaps you are confused by the steady stream of offers for “clean energy” arriving in your mailbox or inbox. Happily, there are ready answers to these questions.
Thanks to the efforts of Westford Climate Action and the Westford Clean Energy and Sustainability Committee, the Town has enrolled in a community electricity aggregation program to supply power supplied from high quality renewable sources. The program, called the Power Options Program (POP), allows residents and businesses to enroll at fixed rates at three different levels that all meet the MA Renewable Energy requirements. All levels contain more than the Massachusetts mandated minimum Class I Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). Note: A fourth option is available. This option allows you to opt-down to State mandated renewables levels.

• Westford POP Green: 10% extra RECs at 10.793¢/kWh
• Westford POP Silver: 50% extra RECs at 12.083¢/kWh
• Westford POP Gold: 100% extra RECs at 13.695¢/kWh

1. Q: Am I “locked in” if my circumstances change and I wish to disenroll? A: No, subscribers can enroll or disenroll without penalty at any time.
2. Q: How is the electricity delivered to my home? What happens in an outage? A: Electricity is still delivered to your home by National Grid, who collects fees for “Delivery Services” shown on your bill. National Grid is still responsible for correcting any service outages.
3. Q: How do I know where my electricity is coming from? I think that I am enrolled in Westford POP; how can I confirm? A: Your electric bill has two sections: Delivery Services (page one), which will always say National Grid; Supply Services (page two) which lists the source of the electricity delivered to your home. If enrolled in Westford POP, the Supplier will read, “Constellation New Energy (Westford POP).” The rate shows your enrollment level.
4. Q: I have solar on my roof (or am enrolled in community solar), but at times our requirements exceed what we are generating. Can I participate in Westford POP to ensure that all our electricity comes from renewable sources? A: Yes, Westford POP is fully compatible with home (or community) solar installations and does not impact “net metering” agreements or credits.

Westford Climate Action’s “Meeting the Climate Challenge: The View from an MIT Observatory” webinar in January was a terrific success! A recording of the webinar is available online here.More than 175 people logged in to hear Dr. Colin Lonsdale, radio astronomer and MIT Haystack Observatory’s director, introduce Haystack’s work. He also presented a clear explanation of some of the latest data available on climate change and what we can do about it. He was followed by Dr. Pedro Elosegui, the leader of the geodesy group at Haystack, who described his team’s ongoing research on global climate and sea-level change in the Arctic and Antarctic.
 
Dr. Lonsdale described the observatory’s emphasis as science through technological innovation. “We work with radio waves,” he said. “We are a radio observatory that looks out at not just the stars and galaxies but also looks at the upper atmosphere and ways that radio techniques can help us understand the world around us.” 

“What does that have to do with climate change?” Dr. Lonsdale asked. His answer: the observatory’s researchers use radio techniques to complement and help others “do many different areas of science and that includes climate science.” MIT has identified the climate crisis as a “Grand Challenge,” and Dr. Lonsdale said that Haystack is committed to help in ways that its staff is particularly qualified to do.
The use of incoherent scatter radar is one example of how their research can uncover evidence of climate change. This technique detects many physical properties of the upper atmosphere, including its temperature. Haystack has been using it for decades, and their data show that the upper atmosphere temperature has been going down steadily for about 50 years, which is an expected consequence of climate change. While the lower atmosphere is warming, the upper atmosphere is actually cooling – it’s all part of closely connected processes, Dr. Lonsdale said.
 
Another example of Haystack’s climate research is its extensive polar research program, led by Dr. Elosegui. Illustrating his talk with stunning photos, Dr. Elosegui described how his team and their international collaborators use a combination of geodesy (which he defined as the science of Earth’s shape, rotation, and gravity, including their evolution in time) and geophysics to study the cryosphere, “where the world is frozen,” he explained.
 
Their research involves field-based projects in Greenland, the Arctic Ocean, and Antarctica with the goal of understanding the response of the cryosphere to recent and future climate change. Using a range of techniques, including GPS, radar, lasers, and seismometers, the researchers take measurements in real time – with accuracy within a few millimeters – of glaciers, icebergs, sea ice, and ice shelves. 
What their research has shown, Dr. Elosegui said, is “huge rapid changes” in arctic sea ice loss, ice sheet mass loss, and global sea level rise. And what happens in the Arctic and Antarctic, he emphasized, “has an impact everywhere.”

Dr. Lonsdale’s presentation stressed the same conclusions. Using data primarily taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 report, which he called “the gold standard” of research studies, he demonstrated that there’s no longer any question that the earth is warming, and it’s warming very quickly. He summarized the consequences of unchecked climate change with a list of “what to be really afraid of”:

• Changing flood and drought patterns, disrupted agriculture
• Faltering ecosystems, spread of disease (especially insect-borne diseases)
•  “Headwinds” for developing economies – poverty and exploitation

• Sound economics can help set priorities (e.g., carbon tax).
• Government policy can accelerate clean technologies (Research plus economic incentives are key)
• Bad government policy can lock in burning of fossil reserves.
• Public opinion is central to ensure that key options, such as new technologies in nuclear energy, continue to be developed. Advocacy groups and individuals are essential to offset “Big Energy’s” lobbying to continue using and building permanent, carbon-producing infrastructure.