Released Nov 14 2023: Our newest report shows how Green Municipal Aggregation, or Community Choice Electricity, allows a municipality to contract for cleaner, more affordable electricity for residents. Green Energy Consumers Alliance serves many GMA programs in MA & RI by providing the additional renewable energy.
Interactive Map of Massachusetts aggregations
Click to see each community's status. Use two fingers to zoom in or out.
Key takeaways from our brand new report:
- Of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, 167 cities and towns currently have an aggregation plan approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU). See our new interactive map above!
*Note that 49 cities and towns receive their power supply from municipal utilities.
- These plans range from including no Class I renewable options (“brown”) to including 30% or more Class I renewable options than are required by state law (“very dark green”), depending on how much renewable content each municipality has opted to incorporate into their program.
GMA comes to Rhode Island
7 Rhode Island cities and towns kicked off GMA programs in May (the first in the state): Barrington, Central Falls, Narragansett, Newport, Portsmouth, Providence, and South Kingstown.
What is GMA?
Municipal aggregation (often called Community Choice Electricity) is the process by which a municipality (a town or city) purchases electricity in bulk from a competitive supplier on behalf of the residents and businesses within the community. The fundamental characteristic that distinguishes GMA from traditional aggregations is that the default electricity supply in a GMA includes more Class I renewable content than required by the Massachusetts Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and Clean Energy Standard (CES).
This process allows for important energy decisions to be made at the local level rather than by an investor-owned utility or by a for-profit competitive electricity supplier.
Green Municipal Aggregation, or GMA, is a model that our organization devised with energy broker Good Energy so that communities could support local renewable energy. When a community decides to enact GMA,
- it undergoes a municipal process to approve and pass GMA,
- it goes out to bid for an electricity supplier and secures a long-term price and a cleaner electricity supply, and
- that supplier replaces the utility's Basic Service on residents' bills, offering a more stable price (usually cheaper in the long run, too), and adding more renewable energy than required by state law.
How do I get my community involved?
If you’re interested in learning more about GMA or want to find out how your community can get started, contact Mikaela@greenenergyconsumers.org
If you want to see if you can switch to 100% renewable electricity via your community's GMA program or through our Green Powered program, start here.
Green Energy Consumers supplies renewable energy to the community electricity aggregations listed below. For a list of all communities with aggregations in Massachusetts (whether Green Energy Consumers is the supplier of renewable energy or not), click here.