Boston Globe article on Maine jury's rule in favor of NECEC

By Mike Damiano Globe Staff, Updated April 20, 2023, 12:57 p.m.

A Maine jury ruled Thursday that construction can proceed on a transmission line that will carry clean, hydropower from Quebec to Massachusetts through the region’s power grid — bolstering efforts to shift the state’s electricity consumption away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

The decision in favor of Avangrid, the Connecticut company building the transmission line, overturns the result of a 2021 ballot initiative in Maine, which sought to terminate the $1 billion project and passed with the support of nearly 60 percent of voters.

The ballot initiative’s backers included environmental groups that argued the project would damage the forests of Western Maine and energy companies with substantial natural gas interests that will face increased competition if the transmission line is completed.

The ballot initiative’s passage forced Avangrid to halt construction.

But last August, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the initiative might have violated Avangrid’s rights because the company had already invested $450 million in the project after it was approved by Maine regulators.

The trial, held in business court in Portland, turned on a narrow legal question. Did Avangrid proceed with construction “in good faith” based on the approval it had received from Maine regulators? Or did the company deliberately accelerate construction ahead of the ballot initiative so that it could claim in court that its rights had been violated?

The jury concluded that it was more likely than not that Avangrid had proceeded in good faith based on the prior approval.

The decision clears the way for construction on the 145-mile transmission line to continue, although Maine officials can still appeal. Avangrid is building the line, known as the New England Clean Energy Connect, under a subsidiary called Central Maine Power.

If completed, the high-voltage line would transmit up to 1,200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 1 million homes.

Amy Boyd, a vice president at Acadia Center, a Maine clean energy advocacy nonprofit, described that amount of power as “freakin’ huge” for a single project. It could account for between 2 percent and 10 percent of New England’s energy consumption at any given moment, she said.

The project would ultimately be paid for by Massachusetts ratepayers and could decrease energy prices throughout New England, according to Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

It would also help Massachusetts achieve its ambitious climate goals. Under a law passed in 2020, the state committed itself to reducing emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. State officials have said the NECEC project is “vital” for meeting that target.

“If we get this transmission line and some other dominoes fall the right direction” Massachusetts could be on track to achieve the 2030 goal, Boyd said. “It would be much harder without the transmission line.”

The Maine trial was the latest flashpoint in a years-long saga that began in 2016, when the Legislature passed a law instructing electric utilities to bring new hydroelectric or wind power into the state. The utilities first tried to bring in Canadian hydropower through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. But New Hampshire official nixed that project.

So the utilities, with the backing former Governor Charlie Baker’s administration, turned their attention to the NECEC project in Maine.

After the Maine project received approval from regulators there, Avangrid started building. By the time the ballot initiative passed, the company had spent $450 million and cleared a 124-mile path for the new transmmission line.

The ballot initiative was supported by an unlikely combination of environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and energy companies with substantial natural gas or nuclear energy interests in New England.

Peskoe said the energy companies opposed the project to protect their business interests.

“That existing asset owners will oppose new entry [into the market] is not surprising,” he said.

The Natural Resources Council has argued that the transmission line would cause irreparable ecological harm and that it would not meaningfully reduce greenhouse-gas emission. Instead, Maine should focus on “home-grown” clean energy sources, such as solar and wind projects, a spokesperson said in a statement.

New in-state projects would produce “verifiable reductions in pollution rather than a shell game that shifts existing energy for maximum corporate profit,” the spokesperson said.

Avangrid did not respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.

Read the entire article at:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/20/metro/maine-jury-rules-1-bil...

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