We saw an interesting fight recently in Massachusetts where the local power company, Footprint, saw to replace a six decade old coal power plant with a natural gas plant that took up a third of the space. But a conservation advocacy group went to court to block the building of the new plant, arguing that the plant would prevent Massachusetts from meeting its carbon emissions limits goals under state legislation.

The end result? A settlement that required the natural gas plant to cut its emissions starting in 2026. Think Progress reports:

To get there, Footprint could install carbon capture technology (admittedly an iffy prospect), cut its hours of operation, or invest in offsetting renewable energy projects.

So the agreement takes the “bridge” metaphor quite literally, setting a hard limit — written into the language of the plant’s permit — for how much time it can span. Another possibility could be combining this sort of agreement with “hybridization” — using natural gas and renewables in one interlinked power-generating system. The renewables guard against price swings for natural gas, and the natural gas ensures a reliable electricity supply on days when sunlight or wind is intermittent. Standardizing the end-date for natural gas use would create an incentive to ramp up the renewables over time until they could take over entirely. Since Massachusetts currently gets very little of its electricity from renewables, that could be a good practical approach to building that capacity and meeting the requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

I think carbon sequestration is incredibly unlikely due to the state of the technology and the cost, though much could change between today and 2026. I’d bet rather that if the utility gets more creative than just purchasing carbon offsets, we’ll begin to see the dawn of natural gas renewable energy paired systems where software is used to effectively toggle between the two technologies to stabilize electricity flow to the grid.

Massachusetts is a unique case because it actually has climate legislation that focuses not just on renewable energy generation but has hard greenhouse gas emissions limits. But still, it would be interesting if we start to see some drivers for combined natural gas renewable energy systems.