350MA of Greater Lowell

If Forbes likes it, maybe regenerative agriculture will take hold.

Regenified Is Creating The Framework We Need To Save The Planet Regenerative agriculture offers the best way to rebalance the carbon cycle and restore biodiversity. This company stands to make “regenerative” a household name.

It’s time for Hopkins Academy to replace its heating system. The combined public middle and high school in Hadley, some 20 miles north of Springfield, has used an oil-burning boiler to heat classrooms in the cold winter months since it began occupying its current residence on Russell Street in 1954.

Going with the why-fix-what’s-not-broken theory, the Hadley School Committee decided to replace the broken-down boiler with an updated version of the same oil-burning system. Then they heard about a cheaper and more environmentally friendly option: geothermal ground-source heat pumps.

These systems use the temperature below the earth, which remains relatively constant between 45 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, for heating and cooling. When below-ground temperatures are warmer than the air above, a geothermal heat pump captures heat from below through a ground heat exchanger. And when the ground is cooler than the air, the system can use the temperature difference to cool buildings.

Water and anti-freeze solution are pumped through pipes — normally five to 10 feet underground in a horizontal system or hundreds of feet down when it’s a vertical well — where heat exchange happens. Electricity powers an above-ground compressor, fan, and circulating pump.

Two Massachusetts schools are ditching oil for geothermal heat pumps - The Boston Globe Thanks to incentives from Washington, D.C., two Massachusetts public schools are turning away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy for heating and cooling.

“A quick snapshot of where things stand:�There were 70,689 electric passenger vehicles on the road in 2022. By 2025, the state needs to nearly triple that. And by 2030, it needs 900,000 electric vehicles, according to the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plan, which laid out benchmarks for meeting its climate target.�As to where to plug all those cars in, the state had 6,436 electric vehicle public charging ports as of Nov. 29 — less than half of the 15,000 needed by 2025, and a small fraction of the 75,000 needed by the end of the decade.�When it comes to buildings, nearly 30,000 households had heat pumps installed in the first half of 2023 through the Mass Save program. That’s a boom in recent years, but still less than a third of the 100,000 that’s needed by 2025, and a far cry from the half million needed by the end of the decade. (In Maine, meanwhile, the state surpassed its goal of 100,000 heat pumps by 2025 earlier this year, and decided to up the goal to 175,000 by 2027).”

‘There’s no way to sugarcoat it.’ The state’s first climate report card is out, and the grades are mixed. - The Boston Globe There is a long, potholed road ahead to get to the state’s near-term targets for the years 2025 and 2030.

The president of COP28 is the head of the UAE state oil company. What went on behind the scene to allow this?

Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’

https://www.levernews.com/internal-doc-reveals-us-troubling-climate-summit-plans/

Internal Doc Reveals Biden’s Troubling Climate Summit Plans Government memo suggests the Biden administration is angering allies by undermining strict standards for a new global carbon market.

"This is the logical endgame of an immoral group of men quite willing to sacrifice the planet for their power."

UAE Corruption Beyond Description Means COP28 Is Likely Over Before It Starts It’s difficult to imagine anything much more systemically evil than this latest spate of bids by the oil companies and oil countries to keep wrecking the planet.

““At this point we might as well meet inside an actual oil refinery,” said Joseph Moeono-Kolio, lead adviser to the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Files Suggest Climate Summit’s Leader Is Using Event to Promote Fossil Fuels A leaked document has talking points for the president of the United Nations climate conference, who is an oil executive in the United Arab Emirates, to advance oil and gas deals.

3 million Norwegians cannot be wrong. They have more heat pumps than anywhere else in the world.
So much for the fear that they don't work in cold weather.

‘You can walk around in a T-shirt’: how Norway brought heat pumps in from the cold Device installed in two-thirds of households of country whose experience suggests switching to greener heating can be done

We can fight the gas companies tooth and nail, but if battery storage is cheaper, we can simply kiss them goodby. A little help from government will make this happen much sooner.

Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide.

Let's not argue, just get it done.

Why regenerative farming is taking hold in red America In some conservative pockets of the U.S., farmers are embracing regenerative practices. Just don’t ask them to make it political.

“António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said: “Governments are literally doubling down on fossil fuel production - that spells double trouble for people and planet. Fossil fuels are sending essential climate goals up in smoke.””

‘Insanity’: petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report Plans by nations including Saudi Arabia, the US and UAE would blow climate targets and ‘throw humanity’s future into question’

I have had a lot of questions about heat pumps, but it seems that the research is clear.

Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds Doubts about whether heat pumps work well in subzero conditions shown to be unfounded, say researchers

350MA Greater Lowell 2023 Lowell City Council Elections Survey Results 350 Mass of Greater Lowell is pleased to provide the responses to its 2023 Lowell City Council Elections survey. The survey, which consists of five climate and sustainability-related questions, were sent to all City Council candidates. Responses were received from the following Council Candidat...

We're pleased to provide the results of our 2023 Lowell City Council Elections survey! We asked each Council Candidate five climate and sustainability-related questions. Click the link below to see the responses!

350MA Greater Lowell 2023 Lowell City Council Elections Survey Results 350 Mass of Greater Lowell is pleased to provide the responses to its 2023 Lowell City Council Elections survey. The survey, which consists of five climate and sustainability-related questions, were sent to all City Council candidates. Responses were received from the following Council Candidat...

TONIGHT from 5-7pm, 350 Mass and our allies in the climate justice movement will stand in solidarity with the UAW at their picket line in Mansfield, MA. These workers are fighting for a contract that will increase wages, institute cost of living allowances, and ensure safety standards. Additionally, these workers are fighting for a Just Transition! That means job retention and training as the big three automakers transition their factories to make electric cars.

Stand with UAW as we struggle together for a livable future.

Worker Justice is Climate Justice.

See you on the picket line!

I know this will be behind a paywall for some, but I've copied the text so that it can be read:

(behind the paywall:

the Climate Issue
The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear

Some are stubborn optimists. Others struggle with despair. Their faces show the weight they carry as they witness the impact of climate change.

David Obura with finger coral originally from the southwest Indian Ocean.Credit..

Interviews by Catrin Einhorn

Photographs by Thea Traff

Oct. 26, 2023Updated 9:41 a.m. ET

Amid the chaos of climate change, humans tend to focus on humans. But Earth is home to countless other species, including animals, plants and fungi. For centuries, we have been making it harder for them to exist by cutting down forests, plowing grasslands, building roads, damming rivers, draining wetlands and polluting. Now that wildlife is depleted and hemmed in, climate change has come crashing down. In 2016, scientists in Australia announced the loss of a rodent called the Bramble Cay melomys, one of the first known species driven to global extinction by climate change. Others are all but certain to follow. How many depends on how much we let the planet heat.

The seven scientists here document the impacts of global warming on the nonhuman world. Their work brings them face to face with realities that few of us see firsthand. Some are stubborn optimists. Some struggle with despair. To varying degrees, they all take comfort in nature’s resilience. But they know it goes only so far. These scientists are witnesses to an intricately connected world that we have pushed out of balance. Their faces show the weight they carry.
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Kristin Laidre
Narwhals and Polar Bears
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Kristin Laidre with a polar bear skull.
The skull of a polar bear originally from Greenland.Credit...

Laidre is an ecologist who specializes in arctic mammals, which are especially cornered by global warming.

The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet. I study animals that are inextricably tied to the sea ice, which is disappearing. Narwhals spend most of their time in deep water, in and under dense ice. They need cold water. The other species I study is polar bears. Everything about being a polar bear is tied to the ice. It’s how they move around. It’s how they find mates. It’s how they find food and eat. It’s how they get enough nutrition to successfully reproduce. It’s just their platform of life, basically.
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Vertebrae from a narwhal.
Vertebrae from a narwhal originally from Greenland.Credit...

I’m dedicated to this place, and I work hard to objectively understand it as a scientist. I also have made my peace with being able to personally mourn the damage I’m documenting.

I think a lot about the Indigenous communities I work with, who rely on these animals for subsistence. I feel anger and sadness for those communities. I think about the future a lot. I wonder what the future will be like for my young friends. But I try not to dwell on it. Because if I did, it would be pretty hard to do my daily work. Nature is beautiful and brings me joy. I try to focus on that.

Keith Parker
Salmon
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Keith Parker holds a salmon.
A Chinook salmon from the Lower Klamath River in Northern California.Credit...

Parker is a senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe in Northern California. Across the West, salmon stocks have been devastated by dams, water diverted for agriculture and climate change.

I grew up fishing on this river. I remember massive amounts of fish that used to come in, salmon in particular. It would be so noisy, you would actually hear it. They would leap into the air, splash and fin. Finning is when they break the surface with their dorsal fin. As they made their way upriver, it was amazing to see hundreds of salmon backs finning together.

We are known as salmon people, like all the tribes in the Klamath River Basin. Salmon and the Klamath River are the lifeblood of our culture and our community. Unfortunately, since the late ’90s, we’ve seen this gradual decline. The state and federal agencies closed the fishery this year, based on the low predicted returns. Our Yurok Tribal Council also closed our fishery for the year.

I think it was the right decision, but it’s devastating to our community to not be able to harvest salmon. I notice that when we have really good salmon runs, people are happy. And years like this, where we have a closed salmon fishery, we see increases in drinking, domestic violence and a lot of detrimental things.

The loss of the size of the run has hurt not only people, but Mother Earth. All those fish were breaking down and being absorbed into the forest. That’s how you get ocean nutrients in trees hundreds of miles upriver.

All the terrible things I’ve seen, all the detrimental changes to the environment, all the impacts of climate change — I use it to fuel my motivation to be a better scientist, to be a better human being, to be a better steward of the land. And honestly, part of it is anger. That’s fuel, OK? I get mad, and I turn that anger into fuel that motivates me.
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Andrés Rivera
Mountain Glaciers
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Andrés Rivera holds a rock.
A rock collected in Antarctica.Credit...
Since Rivera started studying glaciers in the 1980s, a series of globally monitored glaciers have gone from losing almost seven inches a year to losing almost three feet a year.

The first time I saw a glacier, I was 15. It was 1982, and I traveled to Western Patagonia. The trip was like an initiation. I felt overwhelmed by witnessing something so remote, wild and unknown to me. I was shocked by the force of nature. The contrast of colors was incredible, since the dense evergreen forest extends down to the ocean, with trees growing very near the blue and white glacier. I felt like at any moment a dinosaur was going to appear through the morning mist.
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Rivera holds a piece of ice.
A piece of ice from a Patagonian fjord.Credit..

Then I saw a number painted at the margin separating the trees from the glacier: 1979. It was a mark painted by a scientist indicating the position of the glacier three years before. The glacier was retreating. It was my first clue that something was going on. Now the glacier is about three kilometers farther away than it was in 1982.

I’m a skeptic about the world’s capability to deal with the climate crisis. But I’m a professor, and with my students I try to be objective. I tell them what’s happening, that we are the cause. I say, Let’s work with what is feasible: trying to teach people to adapt, to use less water, to reduce pollution

Hanna Mounce
Hawaiian Forest Birds
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Hanna Mounce with Kiwikiu.
Kiwikiu, also known as the Maui parrotbill, originally from eastern Maui.Credit...

Mounce leads a team trying to save forest birds on Maui, where warmer weather is expanding the range of mosquitoes that transmit bird-killing avian malaria. Her main focus is a species called the kiwikiu. Only about 130 are left.
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When we used to go into the forest, as soon as the helicopter would disappear, the forest was full of birdsong. You would hear kiwikiu when you woke up in the morning. You would hear them in the forest. It’s a trailing song, “chewy-chewy-chewy-chewy,” and it’s pretty loud. Now when we go out there, you might hike half a day before you encounter one of the birds.

Our office sits up above 3,000 feet. When I started working here, we didn’t have mosquitoes. And now they’re in our office every single day. The birds used to have refugia up in the higher elevations. We used to describe it as this invisible mosquito line around the forest, where it was too cold for mosquitoes. But that line is moving farther and farther up the mountain, and this disease is being transmitted all the way to the top of the mountain in some instances. We’ve run out of mountain.

To be honest, we cry a lot. At the end of 2019, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t give a single presentation. We turned down every media request, because we could not give people any hope.

At least right now we have a tool that we’re pursuing. The easiest way to explain it is kind of like mosquito birth control. It’s not guaranteed that it’s going to work.

But what I told my staff is that if we lose kiwikiu, it’s not going to be for lack of trying. If we lose them, at least we’ll know that we did everything in our power.
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Dee Boersma
Penguins
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Dee Boersma with penguin skulls.
Skulls from Magellanic penguins originally from Punta Tombo, Argentina.Credit..

For 40 years, Boersma has studied a single colony of Magellanic penguins in Argentina’s coastal desert, documenting a decline of about 1 percent a year.

My study site is about halfway down the Argentine coast. When I first went there in 1982, I was overwhelmed with the number of penguins. It was just throbbing with penguins. It’s still throbbing with penguins, but it’s half of what it was.

Penguins nest in deserts because chicks don’t do well if they get wet. They haven’t grown any of their juvenile plumage, which is waterproof. We get more rain now than we did 40 years ago. After a rainstorm, you go to a nest, and both parents are away foraging for food. Often the chick is on its back with feet up in the air, totally wet. You can go from nest to nest, and they’re all dead.
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Boersma holds a flipper.
A flipper from Magellanic penguins originally from Punta Tombo, Argentina.Credit....

Penguins die from heat strokes too. A couple of years ago, we had the hottest day we’ve ever recorded, 111 degrees in the shade. The best way for the penguins to get cool is to jump in the ocean, but some of them have to walk more than a kilometer to get there. We had 264 dead penguins just littered over the colony. Some were within five feet of the water, but they just couldn’t make it.

My view is that the penguins have a right to exist. I think we have too many people for the Earth’s resources. Overpopulation and overconsumption.
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David Obura
Coral Reefs
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Obura holds coral.
Finger coral originally from the southwest Indian

Obura has been studying coral reefs since 1992. During that time, the world’s oceans have lost perhaps a quarter of their coral.

In 2000, I got the chance to go to the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati. The good reefs had 80 percent coral cover, really vibrant and colorful and bright. And the fish were incredible. There were highways of fish swimming up and down the reefs, sharks everywhere and dolphins. We thought, OK, these reefs are so far away from everybody, we can help protect them. And then there was a mass bleaching event in the Central Pacific.

By the time we could go back, a few years later, they had been completely hammered by warming. They were just decimated. The corals were all rubble and broken up by the waves. It was all brown with algae. Fish were still there, but not the same coral-dependent fish. It was so much more bland and drab. Of course, intellectually I knew that nowhere would be safe from heat stress and bleaching and climate change. But this was a place that had been safe so far from everything else. And yet it wasn’t immune. To me, that was a wake-up call.

I’m working really hard to point fingers at what we need to do. What’s driving the decline of coral reefs is carbon dioxide and fossil fuels and overconsumption. The consumption levels in the top 10 percent are so high and capture so much of the planet’s resources. Energy is not the primary thing; it’s just a facilitator. It facilitates this desire for consumption: for fashion, for burgers, for products. In real physical terms, we need to shift how we consume on the planet, because we have exceeded the limits.

Patrick Gonzalez
Trees in the Sahel

Gonzalez is a forest ecologist and climate-change scientist who studies tree deaths in the Sahel region of Africa.

In 1993, I was in a sparsely inhabited part of the Sahel, a savanna south of the Sahara. I stood at the foot of a tree called yir in Wolof, the local language. Normally yir has a moist green crown of leaves. But this tree was gray and lifeless under a beautiful blue sky. It had no ax marks or insect tracks or signs of disease. No signs of death by local human hands. And it was one in a stand of dead trees. Villagers told me that many trees like these had died.

Species that had fruits — fig, jujube — were the ones that died first, because those need more water. The thorny species were left.

The people consistently told me how much they missed a more verdant past. The death of trees has, by their own account, reduced people’s well-being both materially and emotionally.

Seeing those dead trees in Africa and the hardships of the local people motivates me to work even harder to take action on climate change, to cut my own emissions, to encourage others to live more sustainably.

I live a car-free life. I eat a plant-rich, meat-free diet, specifically to keep my carbon pollution low. Every kilogram of carbon you avoid helps.

The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear Some are stubborn optimists. Others struggle with despair. Their faces show the weight they carry as they witness the impact of climate change.

Lowell - check your voter registration! Every day is a good day to be a climate voter 😎

Worker Justice is Climate Justice! 350 Mass will be joining the picket on Thursday, October 26 in Mansfield with the UAW in their fight for increased wages, cost of living allowances, and safety standards. Click the link below to sign up!

Solidarity! Join the UAW Picket Line Thursday October 26th at 5pm, 350 Mass and our allies in the climate justice movement will stand in solidarity with the UAW (United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America) at their picket line in Mansfield, MA. These workers are fighting for a contract that will increase...

Interested in the Make Polluters Pay Massachusetts legislation? Check out the recording of the recent MPP Webinar!

Make Polluters Pay Webinar | October 22 2023 Oil and gas companies are poisoning our world while making record profits. We're fighting back: our campaign to Make Polluters Pay will force these climate v...

Sewage can overflow into Mass. waterways when it rains. Fixing the problem isn't cheap As climate change brings heavier storms to the Northeast, cities with combined sewer overflows will see more sewage water discharged into water bodies. There are ways to fix the problem, but they're not simple or cheap.

The turn to heat pumps is a huge part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There must be something to learn here.

After Maine Surpasses 100,000 Heat Pump Goal Two Years Ahead of Schedule, Governor Mills Sets New, Ambitious Target | Office of Governor Janet T. Mills White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi joins Governor Mills to announce milestone at heat pump workforce lab at Kennebec Valley Community College Fairfield, MAINE – Governor Janet Mills today announced that Maine has – two years ahead of time – surpassed its goal of installing 100,000 ...

How gas utilities used to***co tactics to avoid gas stove regulations.

How gas utilities used to***co tactics to avoid gas stove regulations Gas stoves emit potentially harmful pollutants, but utilities and their trade group avoided regulation with tactics perfected by the to***co industry to cast doubt on science showing health problems.

This is a wake up call. Your own garden may have suffered in the last few growing seasons, but you may not have seen it in a larger context. Climate change is now seen to be about our food.

‘No normal seasons any more’: seed farmers struggle amid the climate crisis Floods, freezes and heatwaves threaten seed production as farmers scramble to produce strains that resist climate chaos

Decentralizing power supply would save utilities many billions of dollars a year, as well as protecting the grid from outages, and soaking up renewable, intermittent , sources of supply.

(behind the paywall:
Vermont Utility Plans to End Outages by Giving Customers Batteries

Green Mountain Power is asking state regulators to let it buy batteries it will install at customers’ homes, saying doing so will be cheaper than putting up more power lines.

By Ivan Penn
Oct. 9, 2023
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Many electric utilities are putting up lots of new power lines as they rely more on renewable energy and try to make grids more resilient in bad weather. But a Vermont utility is proposing a very different approach: It wants to install batteries at most homes to make sure its customers never go without electricity.

The company, Green Mountain Power, proposed buying batteries, burying power lines and strengthening overhead cables in a filing with state regulators on Monday. It said its plan would be cheaper than building a lot of new lines and power plants.

The plan is a big departure from how U.S. utilities normally do business. Most of them make money by building and operating power lines that deliver electricity from natural gas power plants or wind and solar farms to homes and businesses. Green Mountain — a relatively small utility serving 270,000 homes and businesses — would still use that infrastructure but build less of it by investing in television-size batteries that homeowners usually buy on their own.

“Call us the un-utility,” Mari McClure, Green Mountain’s chief executive, said in an interview before the company’s filing. “We’re completely flipping the model, decentralizing it.”

Like many places, Vermont has been hit hard this year by extreme weather linked to climate change. Half a dozen severe storms, including major floods in July, have caused power outages and damaged homes and other buildings.

Those calamities and concerns about the rising cost of electricity helped shape Green Mountain’s proposal, Ms. McClure said. As the company ran the numbers, it realized that paying recovery costs and building more power lines to improve its system would cost a lot more and take a lot longer than equipping homes with batteries.

Green Mountain’s plan builds on a program it has run since 2015 to lease Tesla home batteries to customers. Its filing asks the Vermont Public Utility Commission to authorize it to initially spend $280 million to strengthen its grid and buy batteries, which will come from various manufacturers.

The company expects to invest an estimated $1.5 billion over the next seven years — money that it would recoup through electricity rates. The utility said the investment was justified by the growing sum it had to spend on storm recovery and to trim and remove trees around its power lines.
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The utility said it would continue offering battery leases to customers who want them sooner. It will take until 2030 for the company to install batteries at most homes under its new plan if regulators approve it. Green Mountain says its goal to do away with power outages will be realized by that year, meaning customers would always have enough electricity to use lights, refrigerators and other essentials.

“We don’t want the power to be off for our customers ever,” Ms. McClure said. “People’s lives are on the line. That is ultimately at the heart of why we’re doing what we’re trying to do.”

Green Mountain would control the batteries, allowing it to program them to soak up energy when wind turbines and solar panels were producing a lot of it. Then, when demand peaked on a hot summer day, say, the batteries could release electricity.

Under the proposal, the company would initially focus on delivering batteries to its most vulnerable customers, putting some power lines underground and installing stronger cables to prevent falling trees from causing outages.

Hurricanes, winter storms and wildfires have highlighted the growing vulnerability of electric grids in recent years. To many people they have also reinforced the importance of quickly shifting away from fossil fuels, the primary cause of climate change.

Utilities are spending tens of billions of dollars on strengthening grids and switching to cleaner forms of energy, often with the help of federal and state incentives.

But critics of the industry say utilities are not being particularly innovative in investing in their systems. Utilities are spending a lot on new long-distance power lines that can take years or even decades to build because of environmental reviews and local opposition.

A May report by the Brattle Group, a research firm based in Boston, concluded that utilities could save up to $35 billion a year if they invested in smaller-scale energy projects like home batteries and rooftop solar panels that can be built more easily and quickly.

Green Mountain’s proposal seems to recognize that reality, said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It really is the model, especially if you’re worried about power outages,” she said. “It really could become the example for the rest of the country.”

Ms. McClure said the high cost of large-scale power projects threatened to raise electricity rates so much that many customers might struggle to pay for energy.

Electricity customers in New England pay about $270 a month, on average, for a home that uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, compared with the national average of about $160, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s the third-highest rate in the country, behind Hawaii and California. Vermont’s rates are the lowest in New England but still about 29 percent above the national average.

Electricity rates nationwide increased about 25 percent in the last five years and are expected to continue to rise sharply as utilities seek to strengthen the grid and build new renewable energy projects.

Emily Fisher, executive vice president for clean energy and general counsel at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade organization, said Green Mountain’s proposal aligns with discussions throughout the industry about ways to respond to climate change and the results of extreme weather.

“I think it’s innovative,” Ms. Fisher said. “I don’t see it as a change in the business model but a way to harness the business model. You’re going to have to show that it has systemwide benefit.”

Power outages cost utilities in the United States about $150 billion a year, according to analysts at Sprott, an investment firm. And modernizing U.S. electric grids could cost “well into the trillions of dollars,” according to Sprott’s estimates.

In addition to the roughly $20 million to $25 million that Green Mountain spends each year on managing trees and other vegetation around its power lines, the utility said, it spent about $55 million on storm recovery this year. It spent an average of less than $10 million a year after storms between 2015 and 2022.

Those kinds of storm recovery costs can increase rates by as much as 7 percent over time because the utility is allowed to recoup that spending from ratepayers.

“If you are leading a utility anywhere in the country you have to get on a path to stop the madness, relative to rates,” Ms. McClure said.

Vermont Utility Plans to End Outages by Giving Customers Batteries Green Mountain Power is asking state regulators to let it buy batteries it will install at customers’ homes, saying doing so will be cheaper than putting up more power lines.