Green Municipal Aggregation

Green Energy Consumers is a 501c3 non-profit. Residents of communities that source their renewable energy through Green Energy Consumers may be eligible for a federal tax deduction. Residents on the default or opt-up rates can request their tax receipt from Green Energy Consumers starting January 31st.

If you live in one of the communities listed, fill out this form to request your receipt. You will need a recent copy of your electric bill. We will deliver your tax receipt via email within two business days.

Key takeaways from our 2022 report

Savings for consumers

• Green Municipal Aggregation programs saved National Grid customers $78 annually.
• That number can be extrapolated to infer that aggregation programs have save Massachusetts residents $208 million per year collectively.
• On May 20, Eversource announced that its residential Basic Service rate for eastern Massachusetts communities (July 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022) would be at an all-time high of 17.871 cents per kWh. This will compare to the average aggregation rate for the same period of approximately 11 cents per kWh. The difference of almost seven cents per kWh amounts to $35 per month for the consumer using 500 kWhs per month, or $210 for the six-month period!

Support for renewable energy

• By 2023, GMA programs will account for 1 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy demand. That's enough to support 300 wind turbines.

Municipal aggregation 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).

As of June 2022, Green Energy Consumers Alliance serves several GMAs by supplying them with renewable energy over and above the amount required to meet the state mandates: Arlington, Bedford, Brookline, Dedham, Fairhaven, Gloucester, Hamilton, Medford, Melrose, Millis, Milton, Rockland, Somerville, Stoneham, Waltham, Westford, and Winchester. Green Energy Consumers Alliance also supplies additional renewable energy for consumers in these communities who opt-up to 50%, 65%, or 100% renewable energy content.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island state laws allow a city or town to choose the electricity supplier for residents and businesses within that municipality. This is called municipal aggregation or community choice aggregation. It 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 we devised with energy broker Good Energy that adds more Class I or "new" renewable energy to residents' electricity at a competitive price. When a community decides to enact GMA, it goes out to bid for an electricity supplier and secures a long-term price and a cleaner electricity supply. That supplier replaces the utility's Basic Service, offers a more stable price (usually cheaper in the long run, too), and adds more renewable energy than required by state law.

We estimate that by 2023, aggregations will be supporting 1 million MWH of clean energy above and beyond Massachusetts requirements. Executive Director Larry Chretien gives an update on the impact of GMA in this 2 minute video.

By the end of 2022, we expect aggregations to be in operation in these Rhode Island cities and towns: Barrington, Central Falls, Newport, Portsmouth, Providence, and South Kingstown.

These communities are making significant progress in their quest to implement Green Municipal Aggregation (also referred to as Community Choice Aggregation or CCA).

• In May, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) unanimously approved the first four aggregation plans in the Ocean State for Providence, Central Falls, Barrington, and South Kingstown. We expect the aggregation programs for these pioneers in Rhode Island to launch by early 2022.
• In July, Portsmouth filed its plan with the PUC. We hope it will get approval before the end of the year so that it may also launch its program in early 2022.
• Newport is currently finalizing its aggregation plan and we expect it will file with the PUC in early fall.
• Narragansett has passed a resolution enabling aggregation and is currently exploring the development of an aggregation plan.

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.

Here is a list of participating communities: