Anyone who follows CLF’s work knows about plans being pushed to move oil derived from tar sands in Canada through pipelines that would cut across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  The purpose of the these pipelines is simple and clear: to allow this oil to reach the sea and foreign markets that can only be reached by oil tanker.

It is easy to understand why the Canadian oil industry, and the multi-national petroleum companies with big Canadian investments, want to move the oil extracted from the Tar Sands of Western Canada out to the larger world markets: doing so will mean they make A LOT of money.  The Canadian petroleum industry has explained this for us all very helpfully in an ad found on page 2 of the June-July 2013 issue of the Canadian Public Policy and Politics magazine with the zippy name of “Policy” that we reprint here.

The ad confirms the purpose of the wave of pipeline building being pushed by the Canadian petroleum industry (and ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, the owners of leading Canadian companies like Imperial Oil/Esso and Flint Hills Resources): to raise the price of Canadian oil up to the levels found on many global markets.  As the ad shows, using little prices tags, the price of oil in the North American market hovers around $85 a barrel at times when the same barrel of oil sells for $110 elsewhere in the world. If the producers, refiners and sellers of that oil have access to world markets they can demand that North American customers pay them the higher price if they want to buy this oil.  This reality is especially stark when you look at the fact that oil refining companies with operations in the United States just don’t care if these pipelines get built – they are fully occupied with oil extracted right here at home.  It is just Canadian companies (and the multi-national companies like ExxonMobil and Koch who own Canadian operations) who profit from the push for these pipelines.

So we know who wins if new pipelines carry Canadian oil to reach global markets: the petroleum companies who reap the higher prices found beyond the United States and Canada. But who loses?

The answer to that requires us to think both about the short-term in which we all live our day-to-day lives and the longer-term world in which future generations will have to live.

When we think about immediate and short-term concerns for our families and businesses it doesn’t get any more real than gasoline prices.

Supporters of building pipelines to move Canadian oil to market generally and the highest profile project, the Keystone XL pipeline that would move oil through the middle of the United States from Canada to the Gulf Coast, invoke gas prices as a reason for taking that step, at least implying that the new pipelines will drive down gas prices.

However,  it is well documented in a number of reports and studies that Midwestern drivers would see gasoline prices rise on the order of 42 cents a gallon if that pipeline is built. And this is not surprising – if the oil used to make gasoline is being sold (and bought) at higher prices then gasoline prices will rise.

So in the short term – the losers in this equation? Anyone who buys gasoline or relies upon goods or services that rely on gasoline or diesel fuel that are transported by car, truck, ship or airplane – in short all of us.

And that doesn’t even get into the critical longer term issue: that tapping into the tar sands oil, bringing them to market and burning them would be a large step towards the devastating climate disaster that is unfolding around us and that we need to stop.

There are those who disagree with this assessment. Some politicians argue that tar sands oil from Canada is needed to free ourselves from dependence on oil imported from volatile (and often hostile) nations overseas.  They suggest that these pipelines will simply bring it that oil to markets we, here in the U.S., draw upon, oddly ignoring the stated purpose of the pipelines to bring the oil to higher-priced offshore markets.

And there are thoughtful and detailed analyses that disagree with the climate argument about this oil.  This analysis argues that if the tar sands oil is not brought to market that it will simply be replaced by slightly-easier-to-access Venezuelan oil with a very similar carbon footprint.

That climate impact analysis, and the political argument for building pipelines to tap into tar sands oil, however ignore one important, essential and difficult option: use less oil instead. The advent of electric vehicles, smarter urban development and increases in transit use all converge to show us a way forward and off of oil. The increase in fuel economy standards, a process that is well underway, is a step on that path.

Getting off oil will not be easy.  As the social critic, songwriter and bicycle enthusiast David Byrne has noted, “From the age of the Dinosaurs, cars have run on gasoline.”  Changing something so fundamental will be hard but it is what we need to do; that is what in all of our interests, not laying new pipelines to bring ancient oil derived from the cracking and boiling of tar sands to foreign markets where it will be burned and released into the atmosphere.

This past Friday, staff from the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission and The Liberty Consulting Group issued the results of their investigation (PDF) into the impacts of PSNH’s failing business model and “ever higher costs” to consumers. The Union Leader and NHPR were quick to quote the report’s damning conclusion:

In summary, the situation looks to worsen, as continuing migration from PSNH’s default service by customers causes an upward rate trend. We find no supportable basis for optimism that future market conditions will reverse this unsustainable trend, especially in the near term. To the contrary, the PSNH fossil units face uncertainties that combine to create a risk of further, potentially substantial increases in costs.

This underlines the benefits of abandoning PSNH’s residential energy service, noting that “PSNH’s default service rate has exceeded [competitive supplier] rates since mid-2009.” As PSNH itself stated in a filing before the NH Supreme Court in May, PSNH energy service ratepayers “have the legal right and ability to avoid payment of PSNH’s default energy service rate entirely by buying their electricity from a competitive electric power supplier.” The PUC staff’s report serves as a call to action for New Hampshire consumers to save money, protect their finances, and improve the environment by buying energy from lower cost and more efficient energy suppliers.

PSNH’s only public response to the report thus far has been to cite the dispatch of their coal units during extreme temperature events this year as evidence that the plants are necessary “insurance” against natural gas price increases. The report itself contradicts this, however, noting that even at this year’s levels of natural gas price spike frequency and severity in New England (due to a cold winter and a late spring heat wave two weeks ago), natural gas price fluctuations “have not served to give the PSNH fossil units enough of a boost to overcome their negative value,” and that PSNH has not offered any data or analysis to rebut this finding. That is, even with the extreme peaks of electric demand felt in the past year requiring their use more often than in the past few years, PSNH’s fossil fuel fired power units still lose ratepayer money.

The report assesses the real financial impacts of PSNH’s past and possible future decisions to invest in their coal units rather than shut them down, and demonstrates that the ratepayer money lost if PSNH’s electricity generation is sold off will be lower than many might fear. The key points raised by the report include:

• Even in a best case scenario, PSNH’s already above-market rates will continue to climb. The investigation calculated PSNH’s energy service rates with a myriad of possible variables, including high natural gas prices and lower coal prices (the scenario that PSNH claims will validate its economic decisions) and a migration rate lower than PSNH reported this April. In all cases, the report found that PSNH’s default energy service rate would climb still higher than their current well above market 9.54 cents per kilowatt hour rate, to 10 or 11 cents per kilowatt hour.
• Customers continue to flee PSNH’s energy service. CLF has been reporting the steep increase in residential customers rejecting PSNH’s high energy service rates for a while now. We’ve also noted that most large commercial customers had migrated away from PSNH years ago. The combination of these two trends led to the report this May that migration across all customers reached half of PSNH’s total load as of the end of April.
• The full cost of the Scrubber Project has yet to be felt by ratepayers. PSNH has started recovering the cost of the ill-founded scrubber installation at Merrimack Station to the tune of 0.98 cents per kilowatt hour on a temporary basis. The report estimates that full recovery of the scrubber’s cost would nearly double that amount, to 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour added to ratepayers’ bills. This, of course, is a cost that competitive energy service providers don’t have to deal with.
• Looming environmental compliance projects as Scrubber redux? PSNH is currently waiting for its new final permit from EPA for cooling water withdrawal and discharge at Merrimack Station. The final permit is likely to require cooling water intake structures (like those constructed at Brayton Point Station in MA), at a price tag of $111 million or more, in addition to other protections for water quality and wildlife. Costs associated with new or impending air quality requirements would require additional compliance at significant cost, and these estimates don’t even take into account the risk posed by CLF’s ongoing Clean Air Act citizen suit.
• Potential ratepayer costs from divestment of PSNH’s electricity generation would be minimal. If PSNH’s generating assets are sold, New Hampshire state law allows PSNH to recover from ratepayers costs that are not covered by sale proceeds (“stranded costs”). The report roughly estimates that potential energy service rate increases to cover stranded costs would be no more than 0.9 cents per kilowatt hour and possibly much less, given the high value of PSNH’s hydro generation units.

The report ultimately recommends that the PUC initiate a proceeding to solicit formal feedback on the report and its conclusions. This proceeding would likely result in firmer value estimates for PSNH’s assets, interim steps that could be accomplished through the PUC’s existing authority, and more detailed recommendations for legislation.

As CLF and the Empower NH coalition have repeatedly noted, promoting and advancing competition in New Hampshire’s energy service markets yields only benefits for the state’s electricity ratepayers in the face of PSNH’s “ever higher costs” to ratepayers. While the PUC and the Legislature decide how to implement the recommendations of this report, ratepayers should continue to vote with their feet and leave PSNH’s energy service.

Hardly a day goes by at CLF that we don’t think about how to describe the work we do more simply and clearly. The issues we work on are complicated; the solutions often complex and nuanced. But the need to help people understand our role and theirs in protecting New England’s environment is critical to our shared success.

This week, we launched something completely different to help educate New Hampshire residents about how their choice of electricity supplier can save them money and help the environment. The multimedia campaign, called EmpowerNH, is the creation of a newly formed coalition of retail electricity suppliers, trade and consumer groups and CLF. The coalition grew out of a common interest among this diverse set of stakeholders in promoting a competitive electricity supply market in New Hampshire. As CLF Scoop has been reporting, PSNH’s state-sanctioned practice of charging sky high rates to keep its old, dirty coal plants in business has prompted tens of thousands of residential customers to switch to competitive suppliers, who are are currently offering better rates for cleaner power. The EmpowerNH campaign aims to inform consumers about their power to choose an alternative to PSNH, and make it easy to access information and compare offers from competitive suppliers.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a short video that uses whimsical drawings and stop motion animation to tell the story of electric supply competition in New Hampshire. Take a look, and let us know what you think. And if you like it, please share it with your friends!

(photo credit: flickr/crschmidt)

With the Northern Pass “new route” drama entering its third year (Northeast Utilities executives once again failed to announce any progress on last week’s investor conference call), it’s important to remember that all we’ve been talking about is the northernmost forty miles of what is a 180-mile project that stretches from the Canadian border to southeastern New Hampshire.

The “new route” will not change one of the proposed Northern Pass project’s most troubling segments: approximately 10 miles through the White Mountain National Forest, within the towns of Easton, Lincoln, and Woodstock. It goes without saying that the Forest is one of New Hampshire’s most treasured public assets: a vast and magnificent wilderness that is among the most accessible and visited natural wonders in the nation and the cornerstone of the state’s tourist and recreation economy. The Forest is an awe-inspiring place, and its ongoing stewardship is one of those things that make me profoundly proud of this country.

Project affiliate Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) has a “special use permit” from the United States Forest Service for an existing transmission line, built in 1948, which is largely comprised of H-frame wooden poles standing about 50 feet tall. Northern Pass developer Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT) is now seeking a special use permit to remove the existing line and build two new sets of towers (one carrying the new Northern Pass transmission line and the other carrying the existing line) with a “typical” height of 85 feet.

Proposed Northern Pass tower design (existing towers in background)

You can read NPT’s permit application here (PDF) and download its attachments here. The project’s construction would impact important wildlife habitat and ecologically sensitive high-altitude wetlands, and the new more prominent towers would cross the Appalachian Trail and impact a number of the Forest’s other signature hiking areas and viewsheds. It’s also worth noting that the project’s failure to provide meaningful greenhouse gas emission reductions falls particularly hard on the Forest, where climate change is already shifting seasons, reducing snowpack levels, and disrupting mountain ecosystems in significant ways.

It will be up to the United States Forest Service – and specifically the supervisor of the White Mountain National Forest  – to decide whether to approve NPT’s permit application. In particular, the Forest Service must determine whether granting the proposed use is “in the public interest” and consistent with the current management plan for the Forest, which includes special protections for the Forest’s most important natural and scenic resources. This decision will follow the United States Department of Energy’s environmental review of the Northern Pass project as a whole, which CLF has been fighting to improve since the project was first announced in 2010.

Earlier this year, a diverse coalition of conservation organizations, including CLF, along with a grassroots group, several Forest communities, and the regional land use planning commission wrote to the Forest Service, urging the agency to take all available steps at its disposal to ensure comprehensive and rigorous scrutiny of the Northern Pass project and a full analysis of all reasonable alternatives, especially those alternatives that avoid or minimize impacts within the Forest.

Our letter (PDF) highlighted the Forest Service’s stewardship obligations and the special and stringent standards for granting a special use permit. We explained that the Northern Pass project, as proposed, is very different from an ordinary utility transmission line constructed to extend service or improve system reliability; the project is much more like a private commercial development, with no specific policy or law encouraging or requiring its development. We suggested that it was critical for the Forest Service to take these features into account as it weighs whether the project would be consistent with the “public interest” and the Forest’s management plan. Finally, we recommended that the Forest Service avoid relying on data collected by the first contractor hired to conduct the federal environmental review of the project, which was withdrawn by NPT after a public uproar, and that the Forest Service exercise its prerogative to order Forest-specific studies and to scrutinize and question all data and analysis presented by the current contractor team, the objectivity of which is in serious doubt.

Oddly, the federal environmental review of Northern Pass seems to be moving forward even as the project is stalled and the northernmost route has not been disclosed. As field work, studies, and analysis proceed, the Forest Service is hearing from many voices registering strong opposition to Northern Pass’s special use permit application, through efforts like ProtectWMNF.org and this recent citizen-generated petition. If you are concerned about the impacts of the Northern Pass project on the White Mountains, you can add your voice through those resources or by filing a comment with the United States Department of Energy.

Earlier this week, I brought a message from New Hampshire to a gathering of major players in the Northeast’s energy industry in lower Manhattan, the Platt’s Northeast Energy Markets Conference.

(photo credit: flickr/Mathew Knott)

Remember Northern Pass, that novel Northeast Utilities transmission project that would import 1,200 megawatts of large-scale hydropower from Hydro-Québec?

The project, as it was conceived and pitched to the region and the industry, Northern Pass version 1.0 if you will, is dead.

I ran through the key financial elements of the original proposal, what I called the Northern Pass gambit:

• $1.1 billion to build a new transmission line, funded wholly by Hydro-Québec.
• A generous “return on equity,” or guaranteed profit on project costs, of 12.56% for project developer Northeast Utilities, paid by Hydro-Québec.
• Easy and inexpensive siting approvals for the line, which would be located solely in New Hampshire, mostly in corridors controlled by Northeast Utilities subsidiary Public Service of New Hampshire, the state’s largest and most powerful electric utility.
• Ample profits that would cover all Northern Pass costs and much more for Hydro-Québec, which would sell its hydropower in New England’s lucrative wholesale electric market, where energy prices were, in 2008 and 2009 when Northern Pass was conceived, orders of magnitude higher than Hydro-Quebec’s costs of generating power.
• Unlike New England-based renewable projects, no public or ratepayer subsidies.

These elements looked good to investors on paper. But they have, one by one, fallen apart, and they no longer add up. I took the audience through the Northern Pass reality:

• Years of a stalled siting process, as Northeast Utilities tries to purchase a new route for the northernmost 40 miles of the project, where PSNH has no transmission corridor, with repeated missed deadlines for announcing the new route and restarting the federal permitting process.
• Increasing costs – an estimated additional $100 million in project costs already, even without accounting for any new route, mitigation commitments, or any underground component.
• Growing doubt (even more pronounced than a year ago) that Hydro-Québec can recover Northern Pass development costs and its hydropower costs (which will only increase as costly new dam projects continue in northern Québec) through energy exports, given that wholesale energy prices in New England are now much lower.
• Opposition by the vast majority of communities affected by the project, 33 at last count, local chambers of commerce, political leaders, and a diverse, well-organized grassroots movement of residents.
• No support from any New England environmental group.
• Mounting risk to NU’s lucrative return on equity, with the underlying deal expiring in 2014, and any renewal subject to federal regulators’ recently more skeptical view of such incentives.

And finally, I gave the eulogy for the key financial element of Northern Pass 1.0 – the one that attracted so much interest in regional energy circles, was the project’s key distinguishing feature from New England renewable energy projects, and continues to reside within the project’s discredited and misleading media campaign: the promise that the project would not require any subsidies.

In the last several months, as CLF predicted, Northeast Utilities, Hydro-Québec, and their allies have launched a major initiative to secure out-of-market subsidies of one form or the other for Canadian hydropower.  These efforts are now raging in the legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island and are simmering in other New England states. CLF is deeply engaged in protecting our state Renewable Portfolio Standard laws from this incursion and in turning back any long-term deals that will supply Canadian hydropower to these states at above-market prices or in a way that threatens renewable deployment in New England.

To us and to others, the false urgency associated with these proposals seems transparently calculated to advance a “Northern Pass 2.0,” just as Northern Pass 1.0 falls apart.

What would Northern Pass 2.0 look like? On the ground, whatever the “new route” New Hampshire continues to wait for, it will almost certainly look the same as Northern Pass 1.0, suffering from many of the same failings. But there will be some key differences, as the project’s underpinnings shift to accommodate a new economic reality. It will rely on public and/or ratepayer subsidies that will mean that New England will pay an above-market premium for the power or will provide an out-of-market gift of long-term energy price certainty to Hydro-Québec, in part to finance the associated transmission. In addition, many in New Hampshire’s North Country believe that the project will need to be sited on public land that is legally off-limits to circumvent the strong, ongoing efforts of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests to secure blocking conservation easements – in effect, another public subsidy for the project that will face overwhelming pushback in New Hampshire. (Clearly, Northern Pass’s dogged legislative fight to secure an ability to use eminent domain for the project, which it lost in resounding fashion in 2012, was only a preview of coming tactics.)  

As CLF has consistently said, there may be appropriate alternatives to Northern Pass that strengthen New England’s access to Canadian hydropower resources, but only if those alternatives are pursued through well-informed, fair, and transparent public processes, provide meaningful community and ratepayer benefits, displace our dirtiest energy resources, and verifiably result in carbon and other emissions reductions. It does not appear that the emerging Northern Pass 2.0 – buoyed by a set of special deals and no discernible improvements – would do anything to advance these basic common sense principles, which should guide the region’s transition to a resource mix that will power New England’s clean energy future.

With few signs that Northern Pass’s sponsors have learned lessons from their missteps so far, Northern Pass 2.0 looks to have an even tougher path in New Hampshire than the dead end road that Northern Pass 1.0 has traveled. This was a message from the Granite State that the world of energy industry insiders and analysts needed to hear.

Northeast Utilities (NU) tells investors and the public that it is will announce a new northernmost route for its Northern Pass transmission project by a certain date. The date arrives. A “project update” appears on the website of NU subsidiary and project developer Northern Pass Transmission LLC, saying that it isn’t ready to announce the new route just yet.

What’s behind the curtain, Northern Pass? (photo credit: flickr/Nick Sherman)

Sound familiar? It happened at the end of 2012. As reported in the Caledonian Record, it happened again last week, a mere month after NU said – in writing to investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that it would announce a new route by the end of March. This is the fourth self-imposed deadline that Northern Pass’s developer has failed to meet since last summer. You’d be forgiven if you started asking yourself whether Northern Pass’s route is the transmission equivalent of vaporware.

For whatever reason, NU has repeatedly misled the public and its investors about the Northern Pass project, and not just the project’s schedule.

• Its claims regarding the climate benefits of the project are based on the demonstrably false assertion that large-scale hydropower has no greenhouse gas emissions. The other New Hampshire benefits that NU ascribes to the project are little more than overblown talking points that do not withstand scrutiny.  
• Last November, NU’s CEO misled investors by falsely claiming broad support for Northern Pass among environmental groups, New Hampshire’s governor, and the regional operator of the electric grid; a corporate spokesperson then misrepresented what he said in an attempt to cover up the misstatements. 
• While it continues to insist Northern Pass-transmitted hydropower needs no subsidies, NU has been openly lobbying to obtain special treatment for large-scale hydropower from Connecticut officials and the Connecticut state legislature.

Securities regulators should take note of this pattern of behavior and insist on honesty and transparency from NU, just as Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley did when NU recently balked at revealing its CEO’s 2012 compensation package. As we’ve said before, investors, the public, and our energy future depend on accurate information and forthright disclosures from energy companies. That’s not what we’re getting from NU on Northern Pass.

The New Hampshire legislature is being asked to impose a moratorium on wind power projects in the Granite State. In written testimony, CLF and other environmental groups, like the Nature Conservancy, are urging the legislature to reject this proposal. Our position is simple and clear – the wind siting process in New Hampshire may not be perfect but slamming on the brakes with regard to the largest and most immediately available source of truly zero-emissions electrical power available to New Hampshire and New England would be a mistake. Indeed, it would be contrary to New Hampshire’s codified Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements, which seek to increase the amount of wind energy in New England.

CLF, and its allies, are strongly on the record favoring refinement of the New Hampshire energy facility “site evaluation” process, including in joint written testimony filed last week. All major energy projects sited in New Hampshire should be subject to a meaningful, open, and rigorous public review and should directly benefit the state, and wind projects that generate property taxes and lower emissions, if properly sited and planned, will do that. Transmission line projects like Northern Pass should be held to the same standard.

As we increasingly understand the peril our planet and welfare are facing, and the unconscionable harm being imposed on people worldwide by human-induced climate change, we must advance policies and “real projects” to reduce emissions in accordance with the climate and energy goals dictated by science: near complete decarbonization of our energy system. Increasing renewable generating capacity is a core element of decarbonizing, and we should not be delaying projects that help achieve that goal to the benefit of communities and the environment.

Lempster Wind Power Project seen from Pillsbury State Park (Washington, NH)

How are PSNH’s coal plants like Mark Sanchez? (photo credit: flickr/TexKap)

Earlier this week, the Concord Monitor published a must-read editorial addressing PSNH’s future. Much like an earlier widely-printed op-ed on the subject, the editorial correctly describes the PSNH death spiral of escalating costs, fleeing customers, and dirty inefficient power plants kept alive by massive ratepayer subsidies.

The editorial also points out one key reason why PSNH’s argument that its plants are an insurance policy against high natural gas prices is increasingly off the mark: it ignores the damage that those plants do to the climate and to the environment. In 2012, despite not operating for much of the year, PSNH’s plants were nonetheless collectively the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in New Hampshire.

As time goes on, PSNH’s “insurance policy” argument only gets more specious. Relying on inflexible power plants that take many hours to start up and shut down is diametrically at odds with the dynamic and advanced electric grid that will help New England move toward a clean energy future and address concerns around the region’s increasing use of natural gas. We know what we need to do: the region needs to reduce energy demand through cost-effective energy efficiency investments, to deploy clean renewable technologies like wind that displace fossil fuel use, and to optimize the rules of the wholesale electric market to ensure smooth operation of the grid. Indeed, regional grid operator ISO New England’s recent market design efforts will almost certainly make poor-performing, inflexible power plants like PSNH’s less competitive, not more.

Propping up outdated physical assets – with high fixed maintenance costs – in the hopes that they will someday become competitive again is not “insurance.” It’s the kind of backward thinking that no competent manager or economist would endorse.

As a matter of policy, PSNH’s strategy enacts the classic economic mistake of “throwing good money after bad” by placing too much emphasis on “sunk costs,” an unfortunately common problem that James Surowiecki recently discussed in The New Yorker in describing the irrationality of sports teams’ commitments to ineffective players, like the Jets’ Mark Sanchez, after years of poor performance and bloated salaries.

At least sports teams suffer the consequences of their choices – they lose. With guaranteed profit and regulator-approved rates to recover its costs, PSNH and its parent Northeast Utilities have continued to win, even after a decade or more of terrible investment decisions. Unless of course PSNH can be made to pay for the mess it has created.

The key paragraph of the Concord Monitor’s editorial argues precisely this same point:

[L]awmakers must ensure that the lion’s share of the loss is incurred by investors in PSNH’s parent company, Northeast Utilities, not by New Hampshire ratepayers. That includes the huge cost of the mercury scrubber. It was investors, after all, who gambled that it made sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep an old coal plant running. They could have said no. So it’s investors who should lose if that gamble doesn’t pay off.

As PSNH looks for opportunities to spread its costs to the New Hampshire businesses and households that have escaped PSNH’s high rates, this is timely advice for New Hampshire policymakers. They should heed it.

New Year's Eve in Times Square (photo credit: flickr/Mondayne)

The ball and other ceremonial objects have dropped, and 2013 has arrived. Although we mark the turn of the year with champagne, Auld Lang Syne, and a bevy of news stories and year-end blog posts, there’s not much genuinely “new” about the New Year. We hang a new calendar and start writing 2013 on legal briefs and checks (as the case may be), and life goes on.

Here in New Hampshire, the developer of the Northern Pass transmission project celebrated New Year’s Eve without any year-end changes. As revelers made their way to New Year’s Eve parties, in a classic “news dump” to minimize attention, Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT) posted a cryptic “project update” to its website. The update stated:

[W]e have identified a new route in the North Country that we will submit to the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Commission [sic] in the future for consideration and review.  We are in the process of finalizing this new proposal and will soon be prepared to announce its specific details….

We also recognize that while we are communicating with local citizens, stakeholders and public officials across New Hampshire, there is still much that can be done.  We believe this communication and dialogue is critical to the ultimate success of the new route and the project overall and felt it was necessary to take some additional time to continue these efforts before we publicly announce the new routing proposal.

In other words, NPT and its parent company Northeast Utilities (NU) had nothing new to announce, and the public will continue to wait for actual details and updated regulatory filings. And it’s not the first time Northern Pass’s developer has failed to deliver on its promise of a new route.

In May, NU set an August deadline for a route announcement; in July, NU set a September deadline; and throughout the fall, NU promised to finalize a route and file an updated Presidential Permit application with the U.S. Department of Energy by the end of the 2012, even going so far as to say that it had already obtained 99% of the land it needs. In this context, the Concord Monitor aptly reported on the New Year’s Eve “update”: Northern Pass misses deadline to unveil new route.

While NPT’s non-announcement wasn’t a surprise to CLF or others following the project closely, it was an important moment. It was, most of all, an embarrassing setback – the latest blown deadline after a series of blown deadlines stretching back to April 2011, when NPT decided to seek out a “new route” for the northernmost portion of the project.

NPT has been banking on its capacity to pay above-market land prices for a transmission corridor in the North Country. So far, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, its supporters from more than two hundred New Hampshire towns and cities and also from around the region and country, and a number of courageous landowners unwilling to sell at any price have achieved remarkable success in blocking NPT’s efforts on the ground, property-by-property. It would appear NPT’s confidence was misplaced.

For NU executives and investors, Hydro-Québec, and Northern Pass enthusiasts in southern New England, the project’s latest blown deadline should be a wake-up call.

It’s not working.

Not NPT’s back-room strategy to assemble a serpentine series of parcels for a new transmission corridor in the North Country, without any meaningful changes to the project’s design or the southern 80% of its proposed route.

Not NPT’s attempts to game the federal permitting process in its favor.

Not NPT’s bogus claims of environmental and economic benefits for New Hampshire and of wide support for the project.

Not NPT’s campaign to discredit affected citizens in the nearly three dozen communities that have declared opposition to the project and the entire New Hampshire conservation community as “not in my backyard” types and “special interests.”

In the New Year, Northern Pass’s developers should recognize that half of the “dialogue” they are promising is listening. The latest blown deadline should signal, loud and clear, that the current Northern Pass proposal won’t be successful, new route in Coös County or not.