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The Massachusetts utility regulator trying to orchestrate a shift away from gas
In this episode, I'm joined by James Van Nostrand. He is the top utility regulator in Massachusetts, the first state to explicitly tell gas utilities to plan their own phase-out. We explore this complex transition, including the fate of existing gas infrastructure, the potential of networked geothermal as an alternative, and protections for both workers and ratepayers.
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David Roberts
Greetings, everyone. This is Volts for February 21, 2025, "The Massachusetts utility regulator trying to orchestrate a shift away from gas." I'm your host, David Roberts. The state of Massachusetts has some extremely ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals — 50 percent cuts from 1990 levels by 2030, net zero by 2050 — and hitting them will involve rapid, concerted action on the part of both natural gas and power utilities. Basically, power utilities need to think about how to handle substantially more load, while gas utilities need to think about how to gradually wind themselves out of business.
Guiding them along this tricky path will be the state's utility regulator, the Department of Public Utilities (DPU). Listeners who need a reminder of the importance of public utility commissions should go back and listen to my pod with Charles Hua.
Last year, the DPU issued an extensive and (to my knowledge) unprecedented proceeding on the Future of Gas, which directly addressed, or at least began the process of working through, a variety of thorny questions around how to shift residential consumers from gas to electric heating while holding their costs down.
The orchestrator of this complex process is the current Commissioner of the DPU, James Van Nostrand, a longtime energy expert and law professor who runs the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University College of Law. He's also the author of a book called "The Coal Trap: How West Virginia Was Left Behind in the Clean Energy Revolution."
Van Nostrand has been around energy regulation his entire life — he is the son of an energy regulator — so no one understands better than him exactly what utility regulators do, what impact it has, and what Massachusetts is trying to pull off. I can't wait to talk to him.
With no further ado, James Van Nostrand, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
James Van Nostrand
Thank you, David. Thanks for the opportunity to join you.
David Roberts
I've got tons of questions for you, but I want to start at a general level. So, I want to give people a sense of how much of what you do on the DPU is simply implementing what the legislature says, and then how much do you have some latitude to do sort of policy thinking on your own? So, maybe just start by saying, sort of like, what are the kind of legislative mandates under which you are working here? What are the big targets you have been assigned to help reach?
James Van Nostrand
Probably, the biggest one is in the area of greenhouse gas reductions. Back in 2008, the legislature enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act.
David Roberts
2008?
James Van Nostrand
Yes, and then subsequent climate bills directed the Office of Energy Environmental Affairs to produce a clean energy and climate plan which includes sector sub-limits. So, we have the overall Net Zero by 2050 from the Global Warming Solutions Act, and then we have, under the Clean Energy Climate Plan, sector limits in terms of greenhouse gas reduction. For example, when we issued the order in our Future of Gas docket 20-80, it was really looking at, "Okay, we need to put the local gas distribution companies on a path to achieve those sector limits that were set forth in the Clean Energy and Climate Plan." So that's a pretty clear directive. The legislature says we need to achieve these greenhouse gas limits, but then, okay, they turn it over to us to figure out how we're going to get there.
But the policy direction and the goals were pretty much enacted there. And so, that provided the framework. But then, it's largely up to us how to get there.
David Roberts
That's... I mean, that leaves you a pretty wide —
James Van Nostrand
Oh, yeah.
David Roberts
a wide field of play. So, you are then — I mean, I just want people to grasp this — you're not just approving or disapproving rate cases here. This is a much more sort of active policy development and interaction thing that's going on here in Massachusetts.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah, there are some things where we're giving some pretty clear direction. And I think the legislature in Massachusetts is fairly active in terms of prescribing things that it wants done and how. But there is still a lot of discretion that's afforded us in figuring out how to get there.
David Roberts
Right. So, let's talk about the future of gas then. I'm not sure that this has gotten out to a national audience that this happened at all. It's kind of a big deal, as far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, is Massachusetts the first and to my knowledge only state to sort of explicitly say, "We're winding down gas, we're figuring out a plan to slowly wind down and get rid of gas?" Is that unique as far as you know?
James Van Nostrand
I think we're probably the furthest along of any state in the country in terms of having those statutory targets and directing the LDCs (Local Distribution Companies) that we need to be on a path to achieve those targets, the net zero targets by 2050. Yeah.
David Roberts
Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. So, I think when I tell people that this is happening, they have a bunch of immediate questions. Let's get to the immediate ones that occur to people first, which is: how many utilities — you oversee gas and electric utilities, yes? Water too?
James Van Nostrand
And water, yes.
David Roberts
And water. So, give us a sense of how many entities we're talking about here. Like, how many electric utilities are involved in Massachusetts?
James Van Nostrand
Three electric utilities: Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil. There are a couple of different divisions of some of these utilities, but just generally, we have three electric utilities and five local gas distribution companies. Eversource, Unitil, and National Grid have both natural gas and electric. And then we have a couple of LDCs, local gas distribution companies that are gas only, Berkshire and Liberty.
David Roberts
Sort of a tractable number of entities we're dealing with here. So the first question that occurs to people when I say, "Yeah, Massachusetts is winding down gas," which is there are a bunch of gas utilities that exist to distribute and sell gas to people. What happens to those companies? Right, and I think there's a difference here. You just sort of touched on it in passing. But there are utilities that do both electric and gas, which you can easily imagine those simply moving their gas customers over to electricity and you know, all is well still their business, but they're also a couple of just dedicated gas utilities.
So, what are we telling these gas utilities? Are you just saying, "Plan to not exist in 2050 and plan accordingly"? What is supposed to happen to these utilities? I guess that is the question.
James Van Nostrand
I want to start off by emphasizing that this is a very long-term plan. This is still 25 years out, but that is one of the things I think was made clear in the 20-80 order. And the fact that the Clean Energy Climate plan sets out these targets is where we need to be in 2050.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it's implied in all the targets that all the states and all the utilities have. But it's one thing, you know, for this to be implied, and it's another thing to sort of just state it outright, which is, you know, it shouldn't be that big of a deal but is kind of a big deal just to state the consequences.
James Van Nostrand
The Clean Energy Climate Plan really sets out interim targets as well. No, it's very, very complicated in terms of how we actually accomplish this. As you noted, I think it's a little bit easier to solve when you have combination or dual fuel utilities that just sell more electricity and sell less gas. In Massachusetts, it's a little bit more complicated because the utility service areas don't necessarily overlap neatly. So, you might have Eversource providing electricity and National Grid providing the gas. And then, like I say, we have the two standalone LDCs.
David Roberts
LDC is just for listeners?
James Van Nostrand
Local gas distribution companies.
David Roberts
But they're aware that they're going to wind down over time, wind down their operations in Massachusetts? And they are, they've taken that on board and accepted that fact?
James Van Nostrand
I can't say for how much they're accepting it. I mean, I think it's very clear from the order. One of the things I said when we issued the order, which came out in December of 2023, is that I don't think there should be seen as many surprises in here. What we're doing is implementing the greenhouse gas sector limits that have been given to us. My job as a regulator is to put the local gas distribution companies on a path to get there. There shouldn't be any surprises here. And we know we have 25 years to sort this out.
But I mean, one of the things that we can talk about with the 20-80 order, there was a future gas docket. We're requiring the local gas distribution companies, the LDCs, to file climate compliance plans beginning in April every five years. So, show us how you're on a pathway to get there. So, that process will start, I think, to make it very clear what our expectations are and we'll see how those first round of climate compliance plans look. But I think that really forces them to think about, "Okay, how are we actually going to get there? How does, what does this wind down look like?
David Roberts
Well, in the Future of Gas docket, in the intro kind of list, the six big buckets, the six big things you're trying to do here, number four is "Manage gas embedded infrastructure and cost recovery," which is a big question everybody also has. Massachusetts has, you know, thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines that are actively distributing gas. Who is on the hook for, you know, if you shut those down as opposed to, you know, reusing them or finding something to do with them? If you just shut them down, somebody's got to eat a lot of cost.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah.
David Roberts
How do you think about that?
James Van Nostrand
Well, one of the things we made very clear in the 20-80-B order is that nothing we do here is going to imperil the recovery of all that existing investment. I mean, there's the regulatory compact. Those investments were made, they were prudently incurred. And I'm not going to suggest that we're doing anything to suggest that you're not going to recover those costs because there's no finding of imprudence. What we did say very clearly, going forward, we want to discourage any additional investment in natural gas infrastructure. We want to discourage that. So we made it clear that before you make any additional investments in natural gas infrastructure, you need to show that you performed a non-gas pipeline alternative or an NPA analysis.
Is there a way that you could accomplish this without putting additional investment in the ground? So, we just wanted to lay that burden on the utilities. You need to show your work, show us that you considered alternatives that would avoid putting additional investment in the ground. It's very similar on the electric side, the non-wires alternatives. Right before you invest more money in T&D infrastructure, show us that you considered non-wires alternatives. And so, we lay that out. And of course, there are a couple of different pathways. Electrification, whether either ground source heat pumps or air source heat pumps or energy efficiency.
How can you get there? And right now, the utilities are working on that framework. We turned them loose and said, "Work it out with the stakeholders." And so, they're working on that now. We're expecting to see that any day now. But it's going to be part of the climate compliance plans that we expect the utilities to come back and show us what is your MPA framework. Your analysis for considering whether there are non-pipeline alternatives. Because that's a real critical part of how this all fits together is to just get them thinking you need to be looking at different ways of accomplishing this.
David Roberts
Well, I heard from a couple of activists in Massachusetts that they're still out there, fighting several natural gas expansion projects. So, it sounds like if the expansion is slowing, it's maybe not yet visible. When is that going to kind of bite?
James Van Nostrand
Yeah, some of those are FERC certified pipelines. The open season process where they can say, "Hey, we're thinking about building a pipeline. Who wants capacity?" I'm somewhat frustrated. The fact that we still have compounded annual growth rates in our forecast gas and supply plans in excess of 1%, like 1.5% . These utilities are still adding new gas customers. And I don't know how you make the case that "Oh, we're going to get to net zero by 2050, but we're going to continue adding new gas customers." So, one of the things that we've said in 20-80 we're going to look at is the policy for line extension allowances.
David Roberts
Oh, let me just make a note here for listeners too. When you refer to 20-80, that is the number of the Future of Gas ruling proceeding.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah, that was DPU 20. So the order is 20-80-B. That's the order that we issued in December of 2023. And so we said, "Hey, there's a bunch of things we're going to be doing to implement this order." One of them is to look at line extension allowances. And, you know, out in the Northwest, Oregon and Washington have already done things to direct the local gas distribution company to stop providing allowances when a new customer wants to hook up. They say, "Oh, it's going to cost $10,000 to do that. But based on the throughput and based on the lifetime of this investment, we're going to give you an allowance of $8,000 to help you cover that cost."
So, you only owe us $2,000." They tend to make very generous, optimistic assumptions about the throughput. We're revisiting that right now. As we told the local gas distribution company, "File your line extension policies or contributions in native construction. File those policies." We're going to look at whether or not it makes sense to continue providing an allowance. Are we still in that? Do customers all still benefit by providing additional, having additional customers on the grid? That was certainly the case many years ago. We're all better off by adding more customers and spreading those fixed costs over...
Is that still the case? We're looking at that because that's one way that you potentially cut off new growth. We're not going to give you a generous allowance anymore. But it's to be determined. We teed that up as something that we need to consider. There's just a whole range of actions that we need to take to implement that order, and that's one of them.
David Roberts
So, if they turn in plans that you deem insufficiently ambitious, which kind of just between us seems inevitable, what power do you have? Do you have the power to materially force them to do things? What's your sort of police power here? What is the risk to them for going weak on these plans?
James Van Nostrand
There'll be adjudications. Each utility will have an adjudicatory proceeding to review those plans. We'll review them and issue an order accepting, or we could just reject them or say, "Your plan is deficient for the following reasons."
David Roberts
One of the things you're telling utilities is, "Let's try to actively get customers electrified here and decarbonized." This runs into, I think, a renewable energy problem that people are just starting to grapple with. When you're up north, you're in a cold climate, there's a lot of heating load in the winter. If you move all that load from natural gas to electricity, suddenly you have a ginormous new winter load, and you might not have the generation or the grid to handle it. How are you thinking about that? What do you see as the technological way forward here to get everybody off gas, residential wise and small businesses?
James Van Nostrand
In terms of the loads, we're still summer peaking in Massachusetts. What the utilities are showing in their electric sector modernization plans is that they're not going to be winter peaking until probably 2035, 2036. I think maybe Unitil is 2033. So, we have some headroom there by the fact that there's existing capacity because the system right now is designed to serve summer peak. That's really helpful. But going back to what did the legislature direct us to do? Well, the 2022 climate bill required the electric distribution companies to file electric sector modernization plans or ESMPs.
Those were filed with us last January. We had seven months to look at them. That's where the electric distribution companies are telling us, "This is all the additional T&D infrastructure we're going to need to build in order to accommodate EV charging, electric heat pumps, integration of new solar and battery storage." So that's pretty much what those dockets show; the load will pretty much double by 2050. It's because of electrification. That's what we're doing to decarbonize. We need to have electric heat pumps, we need to have EV chargers. The electric distribution company is saying, "Here's the stuff we're going to have to build in order to be able to accommodate that plus integration of solar and battery storage facilities."
David Roberts
How much control do you have over their transmission plans? Because a lot of those are big plans, multi-state plans, regional type plans. Like, if Massachusetts utilities need a bunch more transmission to get the power they need to do this, do they have the power to get it? Do you have the power to get it?
James Van Nostrand
Well, there's transmission that's done more on a regional planning basis. That's ISO New England. I think the New England states have done really well over the last few years of pushing ISO New England to do long-term transmission planning with state goals in mind.
David Roberts
Yeah, I was going to ask about your relationship with ISO New England. Do you feel like they're a good partner in this?
James Van Nostrand
We're getting there. I mean, I tell you, the nice thing about this job is my boss is the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Secretary Tepper, and she has an amazing team. We have a person, Jason Marshall, who really handles the stuff at the ISO New England level. I don't have to spend as much time doing that as probably PUC chairs in other states because it's all being handled at that level and that's just an amazing team. But I think there are good things and bad, but we're getting there. I mean, there's a lot of challenges in terms of the transmission build-out.
I think one of the things that we're seeing around the country is the amount of transmission spending that doesn't have much effective oversight. That's a big concern for state regulators because that's just a pass-through. I mean, those FERC transmission rates are just a pass-through. We want to make sure there's oversight of these asset conditioning projects that tend to go below the radar, but they add up. You're seeing some states that are getting very active on the transmission planning front. But I think it's working pretty well because we have a very good organization of New England states that's very involved at ISO New England to really push the planning process to accommodate state policy goals.
David Roberts
So, if you want a bunch more power in winter, there's a limited set of options: You can get a bunch more transmission to bring it in from outside the region, you can do a bunch more storage, or a bunch more local DER generation. But one intriguing way to heat a bunch of homes electrically but without a huge load is these thermal networks that were discussed on Volts a few weeks ago. These are sort of like shallow geothermal, they bring heat out of the shallow earth. You drill these boreholes to bring the heat up and then basically all the neighborhood is connected.
It's just like a natural gas network, except it's carrying hot water rather than natural gas. The furnaces are replaced by heat pumps. Very excited about these. The Volts audience is very excited about these. One of the signal features of them is that they can heat a bunch of houses with relatively low electricity load. So, how are you approaching those? How are you thinking about those? From what I can tell from the docket, the Future of Gas docket, you are putting quite a bit of weight on those, like making quite a big bet on those.
James Van Nostrand
Well, we definitely made the decision in that docket that electrification is the primary pathway. We're not looking at blending in RNG or blending in hydrogen. We're going to be electrifying. And that would include both air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps. We required the utilities, the gas utilities, by next March, to file demonstration projects with electrification projects. And those will include both air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps. But as you know from talking to Zeyneb Magavi and Eric Bosworth on the show, Eversource has this project in place in Framingham which is the first utility-scale network geothermal project in the country.
It's very exciting. And there are a lot of attractive aspects of network geothermal. I mean, one is, as you mentioned, it's so much more efficient because the coefficient of efficiency is so much higher. So the peak loads are lower, which means we don't have to build as much T&D infrastructure to accommodate them because they're so much more efficient, which means fewer electrons go through the ISO New England market. So the market clearing price is potentially lower. So there are grid benefits, but also from a workforce transition piece, which we're really mindful of. What's the just transition for the fossil fuel workers?
Well, I've toured the project in Framingham a couple of times, and you're putting pipes down the middle of the street and you're running laterals out to houses. You're just running different stuff through the pipes. So, the workforce transition aspects of network geothermal are very attractive. And that's back to the bigger picture. What are we telling these gas distribution companies? Well, the legislature in Massachusetts specifically authorized them to get into the network geothermal business. And it's very attractive for those workforce transition issues.
David Roberts
Should we worry that National Grid canceled its thermal network pilot in Lowell, Massachusetts? I believe because they said it was too expensive.
James Van Nostrand
It's a little worrisome. But these are demonstration projects. It's lessons learned. They ran into, I think, more ledge, which is the hard rock, than they anticipated. But that's the lessons learned. They're moving forward with the Boston Housing Authority project at Franklin Fields Apartments. So that's moving forward. But we're at the early stage of this and we don't want to be unwisely spending ratepayer dollars and give network geothermal a bad image because we're chasing a project where the numbers just don't work. And so, National Grid briefed us and said, "We don't think this makes sense with these numbers and the level of participation."
And so, they're still moving forward. But National Grid, last month, late December, filed with us an electrification demonstration project for two environmental justice communities, Leominster and Winthrop. And so, they're moving forward with what we asked them to do in the Future of Gas, the 20-80 order was a demonstration project by March of 2026. Well, they filed one in December.
David Roberts
Is that going to be mostly air source heat pumps?
James Van Nostrand
Yes.
David Roberts
Yeah, you know, a lot of people, when discussing the future of gas, let's just say, I'll put it this way. When the gas companies discuss the future of gas, a frequent topic that comes up is renewable natural gas, as you said, which is natural gas derived from agricultural operations, landfills.
James Van Nostrand
Right.
David Roberts
Et cetera, et cetera. The gas companies have this idea that, like, "Oh, we'll keep our infrastructure in place, and we'll just inject some renewable natural gas which will bring down the average carbon intensity of the gas." Or same thing with hydrogen: "We'll synthesize some clean hydrogen, inject it and bring down the carbon intensity of the gas." I think among energy types, the consensus here is that this is ludicrous and never going to work. And that seems to be what you concluded. But I don't know if it is worth saying something about that, like, how much time did you spend on that? Or why did you end up rejecting it?
James Van Nostrand
I mean, that's fair to say. I think we were fairly skeptical. We definitely did not want to encourage, "Oh, we're just going to blend in some hydrogen or RNG, and it's going to be business as usual" because we just don't think RNG can be scaled up enough. It's going to be very expensive. At the same time, though, I don't want to take anything off the table because I think we're still learning about hydrogen and I think there may be some hard-to-electrify industrial uses where we're still going to have to have some gas running through the pipe.
But, I think we wanted to make it very clear that we don't see that as, you know, business as usual for residential and commercial heating. It's going to be, you know, we have to go down a different path.
David Roberts
What's the — I forget who did the analogy, but someone compared putting hydrogen into your residential natural gas pipelines to pouring champagne into your municipal water supply.
James Van Nostrand
It doesn't seem to make sense, but obviously, we have all these hydrogen hubs and we're spending lots of billions of dollars exploring the possible uses of hydrogen. So, we don't want to take anything off the table because there are still some hard-to-electrify industrial uses. Although, I think those uses are getting, with the continuing technological developments, it seems like the hard-to-electrify industrial uses are getting smaller in number all the time.
David Roberts
That category shrinks, yeah, with every passing day.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah.
David Roberts
One thing a lot of people brought up when I raised the prospect of talking to you is just affordability. Massachusetts has pretty high electricity rates. How do you think about simultaneously engineering this sort of mass transition to newer technologies while at the same time trying to bring down costs? Like, how do you think about affordability?
James Van Nostrand
I mean, that's exactly what we were looking at once I started getting into the Future of Gas docket in 20-80. And I think with our aggressive climate goals and my sense of urgency about addressing climate change, we need to move forward full steam ahead on addressing climate change by meeting these greenhouse gas targets. That being said, how are we going to address affordability? So, about 13 months ago, we started what we call the Energy Burden docket, which is docket 24-15, where we looked at: can we design our rates to make it more affordable for the varying levels of income that we have in the state?
A number of states have a percentage of income payments. A number of states have tier discounts. So, we opened a proceeding to look at that, because the way it was for most utilities is you either get the discount or you don't. The discount is 32%, 40%. And what National Grid did in the case that we just approved this last fall was they implemented tiered discounts, five tiers, basically. So, the lower the income, the higher the discount. The higher the income, the lower the discount. And that's one solution that I think has a lot of promise.
David Roberts
This was National Grid's idea, not your idea. They brought it to you.
James Van Nostrand
They knew we were looking at it, but I think they looked at the issue of this cliff where you get a 32% discount or 40%, and all of a sudden you just popped over 60% of the SMI, this median income state median income, and now you get nothing. And so, they recognized that and so they spent a lot of time studying it, but they made a filing and they spent a lot of time developing those tiers. And we tweaked it a little bit, but we pretty much approved it.
David Roberts
Am I right then, that if like they still have to recover the same amount of money?
James Van Nostrand
Yes.
David Roberts
So if low-income ratepayers are being given a discount, does that imply that higher-income ratepayers are paying a little extra to cover that?
James Van Nostrand
Yes, the revenue requirement is going to be the same. The utility has to recover a certain amount of dollars. That's what we said in the rate case. But then, how that's allocated among the customers. And so, basically, the bigger the discounts you give, then the more of an under-recovery that needs to be recovered. And we do it from all ratepayers, basically. But obviously, if you're not getting any discount at all, you're going to end up paying more. That's how it works.
David Roberts
Is that something that you think the other utilities might follow suit?
James Van Nostrand
Yes, I think we just had a technical session last week on this, and all the utilities are at the table, along with some really good witnesses from the Attorney General's office, from the National Law Conservation Center. I mean, some really good experts on this issue. It makes sense. And Eversource has designed a similar program in Connecticut. So, they shared their experience with us. It's complicated because you kind of go into it thinking, "Well, let's put the tiers here, the discounts here," but then you actually have to populate, based on the actual customer data, those tiers and figure out, because you might have a number in mind in terms of what is that under-recovery?
Are we okay with 3%? That's going to get spread to everybody, and then it may turn out to be a higher number or a lower number. So, you're kind of — it's an iterative process. And then, the legislature in this climate bill that just got passed last year gave us the authority to provide discounts to moderate-income customers. So, we're looking at that as well because right now the cutoff is two times the federal poverty limit or 60% of the state median income. So, we asked for additional comment on what is moderate income? How would that look?
So, that's going to complicate a little bit more in terms of the income verification process. But I'm really optimistic. I think everybody's on the same page that we need to get this done. So, it's in place for National Grid and I think Unitil and Eversource and the local gas distribution companies will follow. But we need, we need to provide the guidance and develop an order saying, "Okay, here's the template," and then each utility will have to file to actually implement it.
David Roberts
Well, that kind of solves the problem in that it gives relief to lower-income ratepayers. But does that solve the larger problem of just like the amount of recovered money being high in the first place? Are costs being high in the first place? In particular, it seems like transmission costs are just skyrocketing everywhere and killing everyone. And so, is there anything that the utilities can do to bring down overall cost to reduce rates for everybody? Or are we just kind of in an era of rising costs structurally?
James Van Nostrand
I mean, we're looking at a lot of infrastructure costs with this transmission distribution build-out to accommodate electrification. There's no question about that. I mean, I think longer term, as we rely on renewable energy and we move away from high price and volatility associated with fossil fuels, this is a miserable experience that we had in Massachusetts with the global price of LNG doing what it did a couple years ago. And so that highlights the fact that we need to get off fossil fuels. So I think long term, wind and solar have zero fuel prices, fuel cost, right.
So, I think longer term, we're going in the right direction. And frankly, our job as regulators is making sure that utilities are doing all they can to hold down costs. So, when we look at when the utilities are implementing their electric sector modernization plans, we're going to make sure there were cheaper ways you could have done that. Much like the non-gas pipeline alternatives for the local gas distribution companies. It's not non-wires alternatives, it's virtual power plants. We don't want you to build any more transmission distribution infrastructure than you absolutely have to. So, our job as regulators is making sure that they're not building more than they have to and that's how we keep costs down.
And obviously, we provide very close oversight in the rate cases when they file them periodically.
David Roberts
Before we leave behind the subject of rates, another tool that I think the clean energy world has come to see as sort of key in this battle is the fact that electricity is worth more at different times of day and in different geographical areas. Temporally and geographically, it varies, but rates tend to be historically flat, volumetric, not reflecting that differing value. Have you encouraged your utilities to implement time or place varying rates, sort of more dynamic rates? Is that on your radar?
James Van Nostrand
Definitely. It requires advanced metering infrastructure and smart meters, which we're going to be rolling out for Eversource over the next three years and National Grid over the next three years. So, four years from now, that advanced metering infrastructure should be in place across the state with smart meters. Then we can roll out the time varying rates so we can send customers those price signals, and then because that's going to help us manage the peaks, right? That's going to help us avoid unnecessary transmission distribution infrastructure. If we can send strong price signals to customers through time varying rates and then expect them to manage their loads or, you know, there's lots of products out there to help customers manage their loads seamlessly.
But that's really tied into the affordability issue, is time varying rates and managing the loads.
David Roberts
You know, there's the whole supply management side of things, but then there's the whole demand side of things management side of things.
James Van Nostrand
Definitely.
David Roberts
And that requires those smart meters, that requires that knowledge of that granular knowledge of what's going on in there. So, actually, Governor Healey signed a law in November, I believe, that among other things, called for a statewide depository of this information from these advanced meters. Do you know when that goes live, that data repository? Because, you know, a lot of utilities — this is something we've podcasted here on Volts about also — a lot of utilities have this information, but they just don't share it or won't share it in a useful format. They're very proprietary over it. What's the status of that?
James Van Nostrand
Data access is an issue that we're looking at because I think we're going to be spending a lot of money on the advanced metering infrastructure and the smart meters to give customers those pricing options. A lot of customers just don't want to spend the time messing around with it. They need some interface. Right. A third party is going to come in there and say, "I'm going to do all these things with your thermostat or just do these things to smart-charge your car in the middle of the night without you having to do that yourself."
But that means all this stuff needs to fit together, and it's interoperability, it's digitalization. So, we're looking very closely at that because as we're spending these massive amounts of dollars on advanced metering infrastructure, we want to make sure the utilities are taking advantage of the latest technology. So, when these products are rolled out, that will help customers manage their energy costs. These things all work together. But, data access is a big deal. And, having been on the utility side of the fence for a number of years, I mean it's confidential customer-specific information, and we don't like to let that out.
And then, you have cybersecurity issues to make sure that it can't get hacked. But it's definitely part of the discussions because these things, it's not going to happen if the other players. Because what we don't want is the utilities to be sort of the gatekeepers of technology. So, the other players need to have access to the customer information. But, we got to work that out so that it's done in a responsible way.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, that's basically the premise of the whole demand-side market, the whole virtual power plant market, all that stuff requires that information. Do you know specifically when that repository is going to exist?
James Van Nostrand
No, I don't know the date certain.
David Roberts
Let's talk about these transition plans, which I think are very interesting. So, there's a lot of pressure everywhere in the country to decarbonize and everybody's got their plans. States have plans, utilities have plans. But this is interesting because you are telling each individual utility, "Make it explicit, tell us what you're going to do." So, what have you told them that those plans must include? Like, what do you expect them to look like? And have you seen them yet? And what's your take on the enthusiasm of their compliance thus far?
James Van Nostrand
These are the climate compliance plans for the local gas?
David Roberts
No, the electric sector.
James Van Nostrand
Oh, electric sector modernization plans?
David Roberts
Yeah. Are these different? The gas utilities have to have plans, and the electric utilities also have to have plans. Are those separate plans?
James Van Nostrand
Yes, they're separate plans. The climate compliance plans come out of our Future of Gas docket. So every five years beginning in April, and then on top of that, we have this LNG import facility right here in Everett, the Everett Marine Terminal. And so we had four of the LDC's local gas station distribution companies are off-takers of that. So it was going to otherwise close down once the Mystic Power plant closed down. And because we need, I think the Everett Marine Terminal is a pretty strategic asset because it can put LNG directly into the wholesale pipelines right there.
And also, the vapor can go right into the National Grid distribution system, and there's also truck loading facilities right there. So, as an insurance policy, because if we do have an extended cold snap, we were convinced that we needed to keep the Everett Marine Terminal open. But as part of the orders that we issued in May of last year approving six-year contracts, those utilities who are off-takers from the Everett Marine Terminal have to file every year. It's kind of another aspect of the climate compliance plans. But what are you doing between now and when those contracts run out in the spring of 2030?
What are you doing to reduce your reliance on the Everett Marine Terminal? So, it's very similar in terms of the climate compliance plans, but focused more on when do we need the Everett Marine Terminal. What particular uses or neighborhoods or geographic areas are we increasing our reliance on the Everett Marine Terminal, and how can we phase that out? So, that's another aspect.
David Roberts
So, you're trying to make that into a kind of backup or last resort rather than a main source.
James Van Nostrand
It's a very expensive insurance policy. Because the fear was, without the Everett Marine Terminal, if you have an extended cold snap and we're going to be trucking LNG over potentially long distances, it was risky. So, we decided we needed to step up and have the LDCs pay the insurance policy premiums to basically keep that thing open. But we don't want it to last any longer. We have an Office of Energy Transformation which the Governor, Governor Healey, Healey-Driscoll administration, created, being headed up by Melissa Lavinson. One of her three focus groups is on this very issue, working with the local gas distribution companies, really pressing them on their reliance on the Everett Marine Terminal.
What can we do to reduce that? So, that's going to be a part of the climate compliance plans that we get in April. There's going to be for those LDCs that are off-takers from EMT, there's going to be a separate discussion, and "Here are the things we're going to be doing." That's an annual requirement during the term of that contract. So, really complementary paths, but it's really helping get the message that we don't want to have to renew the contract to keep the Everett Marine Terminal open past 2030. So, we've got to reduce reliance.
David Roberts
This is all pretty remarkable. Are you not getting pushback from the gas utilities?
Like, are they, you know, sort of resigned that this is all inevitable and they're on board? Or do you feel like they're complying in good spirit? It feels like you'd get more fight.
James Van Nostrand
I mean, it's great having Melissa Lavinson on the team helping with this. She's got a lot of experience in the utility sector, and I think she can have more difficult conversations with them than I can in the context of what the Office of Energy Transformation is doing. But I think they're getting the message that we are very serious; we're going to do all we can to hit these targets. Massachusetts, I think, has had a long track record of being one of the leading states in the country in terms of addressing climate change. We take it very seriously.
I certainly take the urgent need to address climate change very seriously. So, I think they are getting the message and it's great to have that additional push from the Office of Energy Transformation helping us with these gas transition issues.
David Roberts
Yeah, it's good to have a united government. I will say the levels of government are on the same page.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah. The Healey-Driscoll administration has been great, and Secretary Tepper and the folks at EEA have been great. It's a great team, and we're all on the same page.
David Roberts
Well, what about these electric sector modernization plans? What do you want out of those?
James Van Nostrand
What those show is what's going to be spent over the next five and 10 years, and then over the next through 2050. I mean, it's been really helpful to think about what this decarbonization, what electrification actually looks like in terms of how many additional electric heat pumps do we need to accommodate? How many additional EV chargers, how many solar facilities, how many battery storage facilities? And just forcing the utilities to take that long-term look is how much is your load going to increase and where are we going to put these facilities? And then I think it gives us the opportunity to really push hard on sort of the non-wires alternatives, the virtual power plants.
Are there lower-cost options that you could be pursuing? And, I listened to the podcast you had with Cara Goldenberg because I've talked to her many times at RMI. I try to pick her brain whenever I can because she's one of the best people in the country on this issue. But, it's, "How can we put in incentive mechanisms so that our interests in achieving these clean energy goals are aligned with the utilities' financial interests?"
David Roberts
Right. This is performance — this is for listeners who might not remember — that was the pod about performance-based rate making, which is just —
James Van Nostrand
Or regulation. Performance-based regulation.
David Roberts
Yeah, performance-based regulation, which is just compensating utilities based on their performance rather than just cranking stuff out the door.
James Van Nostrand
And we've been doing that for years and years in Massachusetts with multi-year rate plans and decoupling. And with the National Grid case, we actually put in place performance incentive mechanisms and said, "Here's a couple of things that will motivate the utility. They're aligned with our goals." We put a performance mechanism, incentive mechanism in place for integrating distributed energy resources.
David Roberts
Interesting.
James Van Nostrand
So, there's an upside and a downside. If you put a certain number of megawatts in there and if they exceed it, they get rewarded. If they fall way short, they get penalized. And the other thing was enrolling customers in these income-eligible, the discount programs. They did a great job of designing these tier discount rates. Now, go out and enroll your customers. And so, we put a performance incentive mechanism in place there that will reward them for getting low-income customers and income-eligible customers enrolled. Because these discounts don't do much good if we can't get the people who need them enrolled.
And I think the numbers showed out of 370,000 eligible customers in terms of the low-income discounts, only maybe 150,000 were currently enrolled. So we thought that was a good place to put in a performance and incentive mechanism. That's just another aspect of performance-based regulation that we really hadn't done much in Massachusetts. And another piece of performance-based regulation is service quality indices. Because we hold the utilities accountable, we take it very seriously. The frequency and duration of outages. And over the last 20 years, we've imposed penalties of $42 million against the distribution companies under our service quality standards.
So, I think we've got a pretty good track record on implementing performance-based regulation. The challenges are great with the billions of dollars that the utilities are proposing to spend on these electric sector modernization plans. To figure out how we can address what's obviously a bias of the utilities is to build more T&D, put it into rate base, and earn a return on it. How do we address that bias by including some sort of incentive mechanism? Because the tools that we have available are really not all that great.
It's a prudence review. Right. You've already built the thing and we decide, "Oh, there was a lower cost solution that you could have done and now we're going to disallow a portion of the cost." Well, it's already built, so that's not a great deal.
David Roberts
And you're dealing with counterfactuals, which are...
James Van Nostrand
Exactly, exactly. And it's very, very, very hard. The staff resources that it takes, and we've got a great staff at the DPU, but the staff resources that it would take to do a prudence review, to second-guess T&D infrastructure investments because it requires a lot of technical expertise. And utilities, they can out-resource us and they will.
David Roberts
Way better to get it right.
James Van Nostrand
Right. With the incentives. Which is where Cara Goldenberg and her team at RMI come into play. Yeah.
David Roberts
Another big complaint of electricity folks, including myself, is the interconnection queue. I think at this point, clean energy folks are familiar with this. Just like build a power plant, you apply to put it on the grid and then you wait for whatever, three to five to seven years. Do you have your hands on that at all? Do you have any control over that, how that works or any way of speeding that up?
James Van Nostrand
We do that. In fact, Secretary Tepper at EEA pretty much said 2025 is the year of interconnection for us. So, we identified at all three levels. I mean, at the power plant level, that's really mostly ISO New England, but we're very much involved in that process. Those interconnection queues to hook up a power plant are largely in control of ISO New England, but our New England states coordinate on that. And that interaction, I think, is working well. But at our level, we've got the integration of solar projects and battery storage projects. And that's where the ESMPs (electric sector modernization plans) come into play because it helps us identify where that infrastructure is going to be necessary in order to accommodate that.
And then we have interconnection just at the local level. So, you know, a home builder comes in and says, "I got this subdivision done. And the utility says they can't hook me up because they don't have any transformers." And so the home builder, "I can't close. Right. I can't get my money because —" you know, and so we're dealing with that too. So at all three levels. And so at EEA we've set up an interconnection task force to attack that at all three levels. Again, just a great team. Mike Judge, the undersecretary, and then Josh Ryor, who works for him.
David Roberts
I'd be really interested to see the outcome of that process because, man, is that a thorny problem.
James Van Nostrand
It is. And it's, you know, with supply chain issues with the transformers. And for us, we've had a process of capital investment project, sort of a cluster study, kind of what FERC was proposing in some of its recent orders. We've been doing that. You know, when you have these upgrades that are necessary to accommodate a solar array, for example, you're also going to be improving the grid to some extent. So, some of those costs should be borne by customers, some of those costs should be borne by the developers. That's a very intensive process to figure out when you do these cluster studies.
But, we've been doing that. We issued a couple of orders this year approving eight of those capital investment projects. Four for National Grid and four for Eversource in the electric sector modernization plan going forward. Then, we have a long-term system planning process as part of that. But, that's where that comes into play is looking at where those DERs, those distributed energy resources, including the battery storage systems, where those are going to be integrated and what kind of infrastructure is necessary in order to accommodate that. So, we're on it.
David Roberts
Right. Well, in terms of figuring that stuff out, the DPU has created a new department within itself called the Division of Clean Energy and Resilience Engineering. Tell us what that is and whether you think other PUCs ought to follow suit.
James Van Nostrand
When we look at what are the things that we've always done and what's going to be different going forward, and so, looking at those work streams, one that really comes to mind is what everybody's calling "integrated energy planning." Where it's, you know, the gas utilities do their thing, the electric division does their thing.
David Roberts
It's all the same thing now.
James Van Nostrand
Here at the agency, we have an electric division and a gas division. But if we're going to accomplish this gas transition, you've got to figure out, "Okay, this is based on leak-prone pipe" or whatever characteristics. "This is an area of a gas service territory that we could potentially decommission. But does the electric company that serves that territory have the capability to take on that additional load?" So, that's a big aspect of what the Clean Energy and Resilience Engineering Division is going to do. And part of the electric sector modernization plan statute requires that utilities make investments that are going to improve the resiliency of the grid, being very mindful of climate change, extreme weather events.
And so, that's another piece of what that engineering team is going to do, is evaluate these electric sector modernization plans to make sure that the investments they're categorizing as resiliency investments really are improving the resilience.
David Roberts
And these are like engineering nerds, right? This is not an economy thing. It's not a prudence thing. This is about nuts and bolts and whether it works.
James Van Nostrand
And they help us analyze the capital investment projects in terms of that allocation of cost between the developers and the ratepayers. But no, it's basically all our engineers. And I think it's a tough market for higher-end engineers. I think that's going to give us a little bit of, "Hey, we're doing the cool new stuff here at the DPU. Come join us and work with this great new division for a few years." We're excited about it.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's a pretty cool job opportunity. And it really highlights to me one of the important things about the PUC discussion generally, which is just that, you know, it's not the sexiest topic, but just resourcing them adequately is, you know, you get a lot of what you want out of them just by resourcing them adequately, which I don't think most states do. The fact that you're starting teams of engineers suggests to me that maybe you are actually getting the support you need.
James Van Nostrand
The Healey-Driscoll administration has been very supportive because the legislature gives us these assignments. The electric sector modernization plans, as is a good example, the new siding and permitting bill. And now we've got to hire the people to implement that. And there's a recognition that, "Hey, we're giving you additional things to do and now we got to support you in your budget requests and personnel requests to make sure that you have the bodies to get this stuff done." The electric sector modernization plans, we had seven months from January to August to basically review probably 1500 pages of filings with the three initial and issue an order.
David Roberts
Yeah, you just need bodies, bodies in chairs to do that stuff.
James Van Nostrand
Right.
David Roberts
Another cool thing that Massachusetts did, that I don't think got really enough press, is that Governor Healey signed into law a bill that reforms siting and permitting. So this is, you know, the subject of immense angst among clean energy people nationally. Does that bump up against you at all? Are your hands on that at all? Does that help you at all?
James Van Nostrand
Our Siting Division here at the DPU pretty much serves as the staff for the Energy Facility Siting Board. So, we're going to be staffing up considerably because there's a recognition and electric sector modernization plan certainly highlighted that with the number of additional substations that need to be built and all the infrastructure and it's a sense of urgency about getting it done. And so, we need to streamline the process. So, the Governor appointed the team that's looking at the clean energy infrastructure siting and permitting process that met for months and months and months and came up with a consensus piece of legislation that got passed.
But it puts us on a stricter timeline for getting these things done. It's kind of a one-stop shopping thing in terms of not having to get local permits, but it's put a lot of pressure on us to hire enough people to process these things more quickly. Another exciting piece of it is the public engagement aspect of it because I think citing energy infrastructure projects kind of gets a bad name. It's like, "Oh, we've decided we need to build this substation and we're going to put it here. Now let's meet with the community and ask them what they want from us in order to put it there."
We need to move that process up in terms of public engagement. It's about doing things faster but also doing things better in terms of public engagement. So, we've got a new division of environmental justice and public participation that's really going to help that process.
David Roberts
It's just a good reminder that we don't have to wait for national action on this.
James Van Nostrand
We are not, not in Massachusetts.
David Roberts
States can do a lot of stuff on their own. Slightly random question, but you recently approved what's called the New England Clean Energy Connect, which as I understand it, is just a big fat power line bringing Canadian hydropower down to you. A, say a word about that. But B, what I actually was wondering most is, do the tariffs affect that? Because I feel like that's a big pipeline of cheap power that's going to be very helpful to you in keeping costs down.
And are you worried at all that it's not going to be as cheap as you thought?
James Van Nostrand
Yes, yes, we are. I mean, that's a good example of depending upon where the tariffs end up landing. But I think it's 10% on energy from Canada, but no, it's bringing 1,200 megawatts of electricity of cheap hydropower down from Canada over a 20-year period and that could be a 100 to 200 million dollars a year increase from what the price otherwise would be. Just because, guess what, that's energy coming from Canada. So it's going to be subject to a tariff. So it's something that will reduce costs and it will flow through the lower rates. But that benefit will shrink if those tariffs take effect.
David Roberts
I saw you had a ruling on what are called municipal aggregators. So, for listeners' benefit — I think I've done a podcast on this a few years ago — but basically, the idea is if a town wants to, it can basically opt out of utility procured power and procure its own power. Generally, I think it's done — well, generally right now, people can get cheaper and cleaner power by doing it. I don't know how long that's going to last. But how do you think about — you know, the worry in California, the worry I always hear from utility types in California is that like if all these towns are opting out, they're also opting out of the fixed grid costs.
Right. Which is just leaving fixed grid costs on a lower and lower number of customers. Do you worry about the utility death spiral? Do you worry about that getting out of hand? How do you think about the role of municipal aggregators?
James Van Nostrand
I know in California, I mean, it's still a vertically integrated state, so you've got the utilities who still own their power plants, right? And they're looking at, "Hey, we procured all these resources in order to serve a certain amount of load and now that load is disappearing." We don't have that problem being a restructured state in Massachusetts because the EDCs (electric distribution companies) are still going to be delivering the electrons. And it was just giving the municipalities the procurement ability to manage that supply themselves. And if they want to procure a higher percentage of renewables.
But it's a local control aspect of it. And it was a huge problem when I got here. I mean, literally, even before I started the job, I did kind of meet and greets with the two chairs of the utility committee on the telecommunications, utility, and energy committees. And they said the first thing they hit me, "You need to solve this municipal aggregation issue. Because we had applications that had been languishing for up to two and three years and —
David Roberts
Oh, "solve" just means like "Hurry it up."
James Van Nostrand
Yeah, and I just signed off on one today. We are now doing it and we've committed to do them in less than 120 days. And we just approved one today that we're two weeks ahead of the 120-day deadline. We're now issuing four-page letter orders instead of 45-page orders, but we've cleared the backlog.
David Roberts
Am I right that most of them are getting cleaner power? Is that generally the motivation you see?
James Van Nostrand
Well, it's up to municipalities. They can decide to offer power that's more aggressive in terms of clean energy goals than basic supply. So, we still have a customer in Massachusetts who has three options. They can do nothing and just get the supply from their utility. They can do municipal aggregation through the municipality. I live in Cambridge, for example, they have a very good muni AG program. And then there's also competitive suppliers. We have vendors that will do —
David Roberts
Right. You have retail.
James Van Nostrand
we have retail suppliers, which has been sort of problematic. The administration would like to stop retail suppliers in the residential sector. But, so long as it's there.
David Roberts
Really, do you want to unwind that restructuring and just undo that?
James Van Nostrand
That's the position that the administration is in. I mean, as long as it's there, as long as an option here at the DPU, I think we still have an obligation to protect customers and make sure it works. But there's just been a lot of abuses out there. The Attorney General has issued a couple of reports that just show some bad actors out there that just take advantage of customers.
David Roberts
And I don't — I mean, this is just me editorializing — but I've never seen any data or reports that really convince me that there are large savings to be had here. Like, it's the promise, the original promise of it doesn't seem to have particularly paid off.
James Van Nostrand
I think the savings are there, but it takes a lot of time to sort that out. You can do the analysis when you first sign up. Where customers are getting killed is in these automatic renewals. You get this teaser kind of a thing for a year or two and then that rolls off and all of a sudden you're paying 30, 40, 50 cents a kilowatt hour.
David Roberts
Just the same way you ended up subscribed to Paramount Plus, or whatever.
James Van Nostrand
Exactly.
David Roberts
You signed up for the cheap month, and then they —
James Van Nostrand
Exactly. So, actually, our competitive supply team here at the DPU has got an idea in mind. And so, we're going to be rolling that out within probably about a month from now to see if we can try to solve it. But there's also the legislative solution, which is just, "Let's just pull the plug on competitive supply in the residential market." But either way, we've got to address it.
David Roberts
That's really interesting. So, you know, last year I interviewed the head of Connecticut. The relatively new head of Connecticut, Marissa, who's awesome, has come in and really shaken things up. She told utilities, "The cushy free ride is over. You have to actually —" you know, she actually turned down a few requests for rate increases. And the reaction of the utilities in Connecticut, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say, is hysterical. They have lost their minds. They're suing right and left. They're writing cease and desist letters.
They're hassling the governor to fire her. They're just like, it's a full-on tantrum. Which, I think, one of the things it reveals is that they are very used to what I think is still probably the general state of things, which is regulatory capture, which is like utilities have a hold on utility regulators. Either it's financial or just in many cases, they used to be employed. You know, they're trading employees back and forth. There's a lot of different ways the sort of regulatory capture works. And it looks like losing those privileges in Connecticut has driven them crazy.
So, I'm sort of wondering. Now that you're in this position, you probably have a clearer view of it. I wonder if you could just say a little bit about how you think regulatory capture works, how you try to avoid it, and whether, like for instance, Eversource is the utility in Connecticut — that's one of the Connecticut losing its mind — it also operates in Massachusetts. Is it also threatening you in Massachusetts, suing you, and trying to get Healey to fire you? Like, talk about all that.
James Van Nostrand
There's a lot there, David.
David Roberts
I know, I know. Sorry to drop that on you with five minutes to go.
James Van Nostrand
I think we strike the right regulatory balance. I think we've got consistency. I was in this business for 40 years. I spent 22 years in Seattle.
David Roberts
Your family was in the business.
James Van Nostrand
My father was a regulator in the state of Iowa, and I represented utilities in the northwest for 22 years. I also represented an environmental NGO and environmental non-governmental organization in New York. So, I've worn a lot of different hats. It's a complicated job. We really are balancing the interests of the utility, which has a fiduciary obligation to its shareholders to maximize profits. But our job is to — I like to use the term, I think I stole it from John Rhodes, who is the former chair of the New York Commission: We are the stewards of the ratepayer dollar.
Our job is to protect the ratepayers and strike that balance so the utilities can still raise capital on reasonable terms, but customers can still get rates as low as possible, consistent with reliability and—
David Roberts
Then, decarbonizing also in the midst of all that.
James Van Nostrand
Yeah, and I think we strike that balance in a little bit different way. I mean, it is troubling for me that the credit downgrade that Eversource is suffering in Connecticut is affecting Massachusetts ratepayers. That's not ideal for me because that does affect me and I didn't have any control over that. I don't think we're not regulating Eversource in a way that says that the credit risk is greater. But different regulators have different philosophies. But I think I bring to bear the years of experience I have. We've got two other great commissioners that work with me. We've got a great staff.
I think we're striking that balance in the right way. We're implementing performance-based regulation and we have done so for years. I think we've got a pretty good track record of continuity and I think that serves ratepayers in the long run; that consistency. The financial community knows. They pretty much know what they're going to get from Massachusetts regulators. I think we have a good relationship with the utilities, but we have candid conversations. We certainly don't have regulatory capture in Massachusetts. I think there's a pretty healthy dialogue and I can have some pretty candid conversations when there are things going on that I'm not particularly happy about.
But I think overall, we strike a pretty good balance.
David Roberts
All right, well, then final question. How long do you anticipate serving at the DPU? And are there big, like the Future of Gas thing, is big. Are there other big things you want to check off your list before you're done there?
James Van Nostrand
Well, my term on the commission is coterminous with Governor Healey, so that's through like January of 2027, and my term as chair is two years. And I don't have any reason to think I'm not going to be reappointed as chair. So, I'm going to serve that till January 2027. I tell you, the two big things are a lot right now. The Future of Gas and the electric sector modernization plans and this clean energy buildout. Those are very complicated. Yeah, it's really a lot to keep me busy. I think we're still making some progress just on transparency.
We've had a lot of customers expressing confusion about reading their bills and trying to figure out what's going up and why. I think we have accomplished a lot more in terms of public engagement and transparency, and just having more of our proceedings open to the public. I think we've come a long way on that, but there's no shortage of things to do.
David Roberts
All right, James Van Nostrand, thanks so much for coming on. It's fascinating getting a peek inside utility commissions and all the many, many, many things you're busy with. So thanks for walking us through it.
James Van Nostrand
Thank you, David. It's been great.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
