Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | October 10, 2016 | Worcester Business Journal 21 W A bold, smart step forward for solar incentive programs The Worcester Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Please send submissions to Brad Kane, editor, at bkane@wbjournal.com. O ur 495/MetroWest regional employer survey this year illustrates several important truths of our regional economy – most importantly, that our employers remain confident, with 70 percent affirming that they expect our economy to improve. Given the importance of our regional economy to the entire commonwealth, with more than $22 billion in annual payroll as a net importer of labor, all of us should share in this optimism for the year ahead. Recent corporate investments such as GE Life Sciences moving its 210,000-square-foot corporate head- quarters to Marlborough, and eClini- calWorks' ongoing expansion in Westborough illustrate the competi- tiveness of our region. Our success is due to many factors, such as committed municipal governments, key location for markets throughout New England, affordability of real estate, transportation infrastructure and, most important- ly, a highly skilled workforce. Workers' educational attain- ment, both those living in our region and those commut- ing into our region, are our true competitive advantage, and the reason our economy is so diversified, with manu- facturing, software development, life sciences, communi- cation and other key industries. When compared to other states and nations, our region's educational attainment – 56 percent with college degrees, and nearly 20 percent with graduate degrees – has fueled our tremendous growth over the last 30 years, going from a $2.2-billion payroll in 1980 to a $22.5-billion payroll in 2015. While our highly skilled workforce is a tremendous advantage in our modern economy, it is one that needs to be carefully nurtured. As our survey results show, our employers feel that their top challenge today is their skilled workforce, and respondents indicated their top workforce need is replacing their aging workforce. On a regional level, our workforce investment board, Partnerships for a Skilled Workforce, is actively engaged in labor market analyses and targeted initiatives on key employment clusters, such as retail and health care. Our state-level legislative delegation saw the need for a formal examination of our regional economic needs and so estab- lished the 495/MetroWest Suburban Edge Community Commission, which has started looking at our industries, our skills gaps and development issues. On a state level, leadership on workforce development is bipartisan, inter-institutional and across usual agency jurisdictions to focus on results. I was honored to serve on the advisory group for Governor Charlie Baker's economic development plan, Opportunities for All, which notes the importance of supporting workforce development strate- gies that close the skills gap. This emphasis on workforce development led the legislature to create a $45-million Workforce Skills Capital Grants program. With this ongo- ing emphasis on employers' workforce needs, there will be much to share on Oct. 19 at the DCU Center in Worcester, when the state convenes an Economic Development Summit aimed at leveraging economic opportunities and growth for all citizens. While maintaining our competitive advantage of a skilled workforce is critical, our government, our workers, nor our employers can succeed alone. Only by working together can we build upon the optimism shown in these survey results and position our regional economy for con- tinued success over years to come. Paul Matthews is the executive director of the 495/MetroWest Partnership. MetroWest must nurture its workforce A t Worcester Business Journal's Massachusetts Energy Summit in September, Tim Roughan – director of energy and environmental policy at National Grid – made a strong pitch to a crowd of industry professionals looking to cash in on the state's latest changes to its energy policy that the time had come for an adult conversation about the cost of implementing all these changes. When residential and commercial customers can offset their electric bills by installing solar panels, it shifts the unrecovered costs onto the remaining customers to pay for the ongoing upkeep of the electric grid – something the solar customers still benefit from. The latest moves by the legislature to integrate 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power into the state's energy generation pool will also come at some premium, and for a state that already ranks in the top five nationwide for highest elec- tricity rates, it can be a hard pill to swallow. While it has been a national leader in driving renewable energy installations, Massachusetts must continue to reassess its programs and incentives and continue to reign in the premium cost of its clean energy programs, while still maintaining the momentum and long-term benefits. When the net- metering caps for solar installations were extended in April, it was with a less generous incentive than in year's past, reflecting the significant cost reduc- tions solar panels have seen over the past several years. The balancing act for Gov. Charlie Baker's administration has been to wean the clean energy industry off of the most generous subsidies while still providing enough state-backing to incentivize further growth and stability. Again, the Baker Administration appears to have achieved a prudent balance. At the end of September, the state unveiled its latest solar incentive program, modeled after a suc- cessful program in New York. This new program would replace the SREC (solar renewable energy credit) program, get rid of the need to constantly raise the net-metering caps, and seemingly do away with the problem of large commercial installations taking up all the available incentives while offset- ting a large portion of their power. This new solar block grant program would dole out solar payments to installations based upon their size, with the largest installations getting the smallest incentives. The program also caps solar at 5 megawatts per parcel of land. It also sets the pric- es to be paid to the owners of the installations at fixed 10-15 year rates, lending some stability to clean energy adopters who have been forced to deal with fluctuating SREC prices. This new program will be good for businesses installing on-site solar, favoring those projects over the large, field-based commercial installations that neighbors find unde- sirable but that proliferate in our region. This new block grant program will be vetted and receive public feedback through the end of October, with an eye on its adoption in early 2017. While all the details have yet to be sorted out, this program appears to be another step toward making the solar industry less reliant on government programs while still offering it an incentive to compete with the more traditional, fossil-fuel-based alternatives. This new program still places a cost burden on ratepayers, and it will soon be time for Roughan's adult conversation on whether the state should continue to rely on utility bills – rather than taxes – to subsidize its clean energy programs. But whether that kind of conversation happens or not at the state level, the latest proposal continues to narrow the gap. The state is clearly moving in the right direction. V I E W P O I N T E D I T O R I A L W O R D F R O M T H E W E B BY PAUL MATTHEWS Special to the Worcester Business Journal PAUL MATTHEWS W Comment of the issue "Glad to see some of the vibrancy of Cambridge/ Somerville hit Worcester proper to serve the student and hobbyist populations. I think it's interesting that the "Makerspace" term is starting to be used by labs (fab labs, prototype labs), too for those of us building products that are intended to scale (be manufactured), once prototypes are com- plete, including sophisticated technology (IoT electronics, etc.) like we do at TechSandBox. We're pretty darn close to Worcester too!" - TechSandBox, Sept. 28, on a WBJ story about how more makerspaces are popping up through- out Central Massachusetts. Tweets of the week "We're #1! We're #1! So excited that @WPI is recognized as the BEST place for integrating teaching & research by the @WSJ and @ timeshighered!" -Worcester Polytechnic Institute President Laurie Leshin (@LaurieOfMars), Sept. 28, on the Wall Street Journal ranking of how well college researchers interact with students "Great redesign, @WBJournal and @ KaneWBJ! -- @lumartinelle" - Nichols College News (@NicholasNewsroom), Oct. 4, on the new looks of the Worcester Business Journal print edition W WBJ

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