Competitive electric suppliers’ offers are too good to be true; Boston CCE is best for climate and wallets
By Sandra Storey / Special to the Gazette
Temptation may come in a business envelope, a marketing call or a friendly visitor at the front door. The private company making contact may claim it charges lower rates for electricity or that it offers environmentally friendlier energy sources or even begins by saying that the recipient has won a contest.
The letter should be put in a recycling bin immediately. The sales calls should end in a hang-up. The in-person huckster asking questions should be shown the door.
Electric bills in Boston show two separate charges that add up to the month’s total: one for Supply and one for Delivery. Delivery is done by the utility company Eversource. Supply can come from one of three sources: 1) Basic Service from Eversource 2) one of dozens of private companies called “competitive” or “third-party” suppliers or 3) from the City of Boston Community Choice Energy (BCCE). BCCE, which began to offer inexpensive, climate-friendly renewable sources here in 2021, is definitely the winning choice.
Anyone in Boston who wants to both pay a lower rate and get environmentally friendly electricity supply needs to choose BCCE and stick with it. If one of the other two types of providers is indicated on a customer’s bill, the customer can and should—for their own and their neighbors’ benefit—ask Eversource to change their supplier to BCCE as soon as possible.
“Greener power at lowest cost,” is what Green Energy Consumers Alliance Executive Director Larry Cretien and co-author Mikaela Hondros-McCarthy said of Green Municipal Aggregation, (GMA), also called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) or Community Choice Energy (CCE), in a blog on the JP-based organization’s website.
Unfortunately, some electric customers in Boston and in other cities and towns are being scammed these days. According to Green Energy Consumers, “Largely unregulated third-party electric suppliers have overcharged customers across the state by $651 million since July 2015.”
Green Energy Consumers “is working with dozens of climate and community groups to get the Massachusetts Legislature to ban these predatory companies,” according to the blog.
A recent solicitation for volunteers to send postcards to legislators supporting such a ban quickly attracted more people than there were bunches of postcards for them to send, Carrie Katan, Massachusetts Policy Advocate with Green Energy Consumers, said in an interview on July 17.
“There is a push on to get the third-party supplier ban, hopefully this session,” Katan said.
GMA was created by the Massachusetts legislature to allow cities and towns to purchase electricity on behalf of their residents and businesses to get lower rates. According the blog post, “Green Energy Consumers Alliance in collaboration with Good Energy, LLC, developed GMA” to make renewable energy a part of the goal of aggregation.
Now 215 of 351 cities and towns, including Boston, have an aggregation plan approved by the Massachusetts Department of Utilities (DPU) making up 70 percent of the total population of the state.
BCCE has been an unmitigated success since it began in 2021. Low rates are charged for renewable energy from what are rated Class 1 renewable sources that originate here in the Northeast US and Canada. BCCE’s supply rate is lower than 36 of 37 private suppliers’ at a little over 10¢ a kWh, as shown in DPU filings.
Most third-party suppliers, on the other hand, charge more for energy that tends to come from farther away. They practice what’s called “greenwashing” by trying to fool people into thinking they offer good renewables and low rates. Sometimes they do, but only at the beginning of contracts they later try to harge customers to get out of.
Some sales reps mention Eversource as though they work for that utility company.
Green Energy Consumers, along with other environmental groups, is supporting “An act relative to electric ratepayer protections, H. 3534 and S. 2255.” That bill in the Massachusetts legislature would prohibit third-party suppliers from signing contracts with residential customers. People are being asked to contact their state senator and state representative to voice support for the bill. With questions or to provide information about officials’ responses, people may contact Katan at [email protected]. It makes sense for the legislature—which approved cities and towns to buy energy supplies in bulk from renewable sources in the first place—to officially disapprove entities that try to fool people into signing contracts to buy worse products from private companies.