photo credit: Witthaya Phonsawat

With the Northern Pass project on the table, as well as other looming projects and initiatives to increase New England’s imports of Canadian hydroelectric power, the region’s energy future is coming to a crossroads. The choice to rely on new imports will have consequences that endure for decades, so it’s critical the region use the best possible data and analysis to weigh the public costs and benefits of going down this road. To date, there have been almost no objective, professional assessments of the ramifications.

Today, CLF is making available to the public a technical report prepared by Synapse Energy Economics addressing a crucial issue: the potential effects of new imports on the region’s own renewable power industry. 

The report, Renewable Portfolio Standards and Requirements (PDF), explains how the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) of each New England state and New York address hydropower and then examines the potential effects of allowing Canadian large-scale hydropower to qualify for incentives by allowing such power to count toward states’ goals for renewable power under RPS programs.

Vermont is currently the only state that allows Canadian hydropower to qualify for its (now voluntary) RPS. If Vermont elects to use Canadian hydropower to fulfill all or most of its RPS goal (which is contemplated by pending legislation that would make Vermont’s RPS mandatory), there would be a modest but important reduction in the incentives available to new renewable projects in the region. The report concludes that there would be a much more significant impact if the RPS programs in other states were changed to allow Canadian hydropower to qualify (as was proposed in New Hampshire and Connecticut earlier this year and is being discussed right now in Massachusetts). In that scenario, imports from Northern Pass (or import projects of similar size) would swamp the market, taking up 45% of the region’s mandate for new renewable power and deeply undermining the viability of new renewable development in the Northeast.

This finding is a new illustration of why CLF opposes changing RPS laws to count large-scale hydropower toward the region’s renewable goals, a result that would both harm local renewable projects and send incentives funded by New England ratepayers out of the country to suppliers that do not need them.

For their part, Northern Pass’s developers have downplayed any risks to local renewable energy but have refused to refrain from lobbying for and securing the very changes to the RPS laws that Synapse predicts would, when paired with new imports through Northern Pass, cut the legs out from under renewable energy based in New England. It is no wonder that it’s not only CLF sounding the alarm on this issue:  electric industry veterans like Cynthia Arcate and the trade association of New England’s competitive electric generating companies have also expressed concern.

The bottom line for CLF: any plan to increase imports will need a robust and comprehensive set of enforceable commitments – which are completely absent in the current Northern Pass proposal – for the region to ensure that New England’s own renewable energy industry will prosper and grow into the future. 

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northernpass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

Map of Northeast Energy Link (potential route in yellow)

Earlier this week, National Grid, Emera, and First Wind announced preliminary plans for a major new transmission project between northeastern Maine and Massachusetts – the Northeast Energy Link (NEL).  The financing structure for the project, known as “participant funding,” is similar to the structure that federal regulators approved for the Northern Pass project in 2009.  NEL would consist of 220 miles of underground, high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, apparently to be sited in existing rights of way and transportation corridors, that would deliver 1,100 megawatts of power from future wind projects in northern Maine, as well as additional imports from Canada, to southern New England. National Grid and its partners have apparently found a way to make the economics of burying lines in already disturbed corridors work.  This development deeply undermines the continued refusal of the proponents of the Northern Pass project, despite CLF’s and others’ repeated requests, to consider the same approach.

NEL is an intriguing proposal, particularly because it emphasizes New England-based wind resources. As with Northern Pass, the proposal warrants thorough review through robust, comprehensive permitting processes.

More immediately, the proposal underscores the urgent need for the regional energy study CLF and others are requesting within the Northern Pass permitting process.  There simply is no comprehensive plan in place addressing the best approaches for facilitating imports of Canadian power, if needed, and for adequately connecting homegrown renewable resources in remote areas to customers in southern New England.  With no plan, all we can do is react, piecemeal, to each private proposal that comes along.  Our energy and environmental agencies should be assessing the need for new transmission projects and then should consider only the best approaches that prioritize energy efficiency, minimize environmental impacts, reduce our reliance on the dirtiest power plants, and provide real public benefits. 

The recent delays in the Northern Pass review mean that the U.S. Department of Energy has a golden opportunity to help develop a regional plan, along with other stakeholders in the New England states and elsewhere in the Northeast.  CLF-NH Director Tom Irwin and a number of the other organizations that joined our motion to DOE seeking such a study make the case on the op-ed page of today’s Concord Monitor.  You can access the op-ed here.