Latest news with #NewEnglandPowerGeneratorsAssociation
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CT joins 19-state effort against Trump opposition to offshore wind energy
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong joined 18 other attorneys general in a lawsuit filed Monday that seeks to prevent continuing efforts by the Trump administration to block the development of offshore wind energy. Trump has moved to shut down renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, as expensive and unreliable, while supporting expansion of fossil fuel development. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits and loans for all wind projects. Since then he has blocked projects off New York and New Jersey. 'This is yet another lawless effort by Donald Trump to enrich the fossil fuel industry and illegally micromanage state business. Connecticut has the right to secure our energy future, and one that makes the most sense for our costs and climate,' Tong said Monday after the federal suit was filed in Boston. New England's power industry supports offshore energy development and opposes administration efforts to block it. 'Large-scale offshore wind development is hardwired into electric reliability planning for New England,' said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. 'I am hopeful that the projects under construction and committed in the market will come online soon to deliver reliability benefits for the region.' 'Every energy source has its challenges, be they cost, emissions, land-use, scale, or technological,' he said. 'Without offshore wind, New England's energy choices narrow significantly over the next decade with difficult future choices as electricity demand continues to rise.' Late last year, Gov. Ned Lamont shocked neighboring states when he decided to step away from a three-state, offshore energy buy as too expensive. He said Connecticut would concentrate its decarbonization efforts, at least over the short term, in solar and energy storage projects. The decision left Connecticut with one offshore wind contract — an agreement to buy power, with Rhode Island, from Revolution Wind, which is under construction south of Block Island by Danish multinational Orsted. The project will provide 304 megawatts of energy to Connecticut and 400 megawatts to Rhode Island, enough energy to power more than 350,000 homes in both states. Orsted, a major player in offshore wind, was a substantial investor in the $300 million reconstruction of the state pier in New London, which was redesigned as a support hub for offshore construction. The attorneys general allege in their suit the Trump executive order hurts state efforts to secure reliable, diversified, and affordable sources of energy to meet their increasing demand for electricity and help reduce emissions of harmful air pollutants, meet clean energy goals, and address climate change. The administration's opposition to wind also threatens significant investment already made in wind industry infrastructure, supply chains, and workforce development — investments the state's claim are already in the billions of dollars. In filing this lawsuit, the attorneys general are asking the court to declare the president's directive illegal and prevent the administration from taking any action to delay or prevent wind energy development. Trump's hostility to offshore wind has exacerbated serious financial problems that predated his election by more than a year. Supply chain and interest rate problems caused delays, steep price hikes and led to project failures. The administration promises to discontinue lease sales, permitting and generous government subsidies has caused the outlook to deteriorate further.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In New England, Canadian hydropower has slowed to an ominous trickle
On March 6, at the start of the still-simmering trade war between the U.S. and Canada, hydropower generator Hydro‑Québec quietly stopped exporting electricity to New England. At a time of year when Canadian hydropower typically supplies up to a tenth of New England's power, the region has instead gone almost a month with virtually no cross-border flow of electrons. Hydro‑Québec leaders say low prices in the New England market — not politics — are behind the decision to suspend sales. The disruption hasn't affected power costs or reliability in the region yet, but some experts say it could if the cutoff extends into the summer cooling season. The situation also highlights a potential risk to state clean energy plans that count on Canadian hydropower to help offset fossil fuels. 'This shows the potential for the region to be vulnerable to manipulations of the supply,' said Phelps Turner, director of clean grid for the Conservation Law Foundation. Hydro‑Québec's main transmission line into New England, known as the Phase II line, stopped exporting any meaningful amount of power two days after President Donald Trump's tariff on Canadian imports went into effect. Last March, by comparison, anywhere from a few hundred megawatts to more than 1,200 MW flowed along the line at any given time, making up between 5% and 10% of the region's electricity use on average, Turner estimated. The longer that New England needs to replace the absent hydropower, the more often it will call on natural gas or oil power plants to fill the gap with dirtier and more expensive electricity, particularly as demand increases in the summer and again next winter. 'Electrically, this is pretty much the most boring time of year, and certainly a much easier time of year to have a source go away or be on pause here,' said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. 'There is going to be both a cost and environmental consequence if we see this be a really durable situation.' In an email from a company spokesperson, Hydro‑Québec attributed its lack of exports to market conditions, saying milder spring weather has lowered demand and thus prices. Others have theorized the move is also a show of power aimed at the Trump administration. Hydro‑Québec has been sending signals for a while that it might be moving away from delivering power to New England at its historic levels. Last year, 5,560 gigawatt-hours of power traveled into the region over the Phase II line, less than half the amount exported in 2022. And in the last two forward capacity auctions run by grid operator ISO New England, Hydro‑Québec did not take on any obligation to provide power for 20 of the 24 months covered. This pullback is likely due, at least in part, to ongoing abnormally dry and drought conditions in much of Quebec, which mean less water flow to power the company's generators. Hydro-Québec, therefore, faces choices about what to do with the power it can generate, whether that means holding out for higher prices on the New England market or selling it domestically to meet the province's own growing demand as it too electrifies in pursuit of climate goals. 'Hydro-Québec is proactively managing its energy reserves in the context of low runoff and, as such, will continue to limit its exports as it did in 2024,' said company spokesperson Lynn St-Laurent. The lack of exports from Hydro-Québec coupled with the specter of fluctuating tariffs and counter-tariffs brings into focus the need for the New England grid to develop more stateside power resources and expand the infrastructure required to get energy where it's needed, experts said. 'We're going to need all the supply we can find, and part of that is going to come from Canadian hydro,' said Jeremy McDiarmid, managing director and general counsel at clean energy industry association Advanced Energy United. 'We also need to be building things: We need to build transmission lines. We need to build new generation.' Some are also concerned that ISO New England is not properly accounting for the declines in Canadian hydro supply. The grid operator's planning process still uses the assumption that neighboring regions — mostly Quebec, Dolan said — will be willing and able to send 2,000 MW into New England at moments of exceptionally high demand, an expectation Dolan said 'doesn't strike me as responsible or appropriate reliability planning,' given the trend in the Canadian firm's exports. The situation has also raised questions about the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, a 145-mile project designed to import 1,200 MW of Hydro-Québec power into New England as part of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Massachusetts utilities. The line is expected to be operational starting in 2026, and a Hydro-Québec spokesperson said the company plans to deliver the power promised. Recent circumstances, however, have those in the industry combing over the contracts to determine how solid Hydro-Québec's commitment to deliver that power actually is and how tariffs might affect the terms of the deal. One promising sign, they said: The company is still sending electricity into the U.S. over a second, smaller transmission line that ends in Vermont, which has an agreement to buy power from Hydro-Québec until 2038. 'That does seem to suggest that [Hydro-Québec] is performing under existing contracts,' Turner said. 'But every contract in every situation is different.' In the meantime, the region will just have to wait and see what Hydro-Québec does next, without much information to go on. 'It's hard to say what's motivating the decision' to cut power flow, Turner said. 'We just know it's happening, but we don't know why it's happening.'
Boston Globe
03-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Trump's proposed tariffs on Canadian energy could wallop New England, especially the north
With Canada supplying a significant portion of the electricity, refined petroleum, and natural gas used in New England, many experts agree that consumers will likely bear the brunt of Trump's tariff. Customers who live near the border are particularly dependent on Canadian energy, while farther south in Massachusetts, ratepayers are dealing with soaring utility bills that the tariffs would only exacerbate. 'We are interconnected, integrated, and Canadian resources are an essential and vital part of New England's overall energy supply system,' said John Gulliver, a retired energy attorney from Maine who serves as president of the New England-Canada Business Council. Advertisement 'When the system works well,' Gulliver said, 'you don't have to think about where it comes from.' Trump While he While officials said the tariffs would not threaten the reliability of New England energy supplies, uncertainty over how they would be implemented is itself destabilizing, said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, which represents most electricity producers in the region. Advertisement 'There are still way fewer answers than we would like less than a week before these potential tariffs go into effect,' he said. The impacts of an across-the-board, 10 percent energy tariff would vary considerably by industry, by state, and by utility or distributor. For example, it would likely take months or longer for most electric utilities to recoup those costs through rate increases; gasoline prices, on the other hand, would likely go up immediately. Some parts of New England would be hit much harder: Maine gets nearly all its gasoline and home heating oil from Canada, and some remote communities there and in Vermont also get electricity directly from the power grid in Canada. 'A 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy imports would have a significant and widespread impact on Maine people and businesses,' said Dan Burgess, director of the Maine Governor's Energy Office. Perhaps the biggest unknown is how the Canadian government and businesses would respond to US tariffs. Some Canadian leaders in response, which would amplify the pain from the energy tariffs. But a 'first phase' of countermeasures the government Putting all that uncertainty aside, industry leaders and analysts expect tariffs to affect key energy products in northern New England in various ways. Petroleum Much of the gasoline burned in New England — particularly in the northernmost reaches — comes from two large facilities in Canada: The Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick and a Valero refinery near Quebec City that sends gasoline by pipeline to terminals in Montreal. Advertisement That's where R.L. Vallee, Inc., usually gets gasoline for its 48 Maplefields stores in Vermont, New Hampshire, and upstate New York. But if tariffs drive up the wholesale costs of gasoline from the Valero refinery by, for example, 25 cents a gallon, 'that terminal is no longer competitive,' said chief executive Rodolphe 'Skip' Vallee. Instead, he might send his trucks twice as far, to a terminal in Albany. Matt Cota, a Vermont lobbyist who represents fuel and propane dealers, said the additional transportation costs from getting supplies from elsewhere in the United States can be prohibitive, while smaller distributors have less flexibility to switch. 'It's six one way, half a dozen the other,' added Percy, the general manager of Fred's Energy. 'You're either going to pay the tariff or pay for transportation.' Tom Kloza, an analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, expects tariffs to add 10 to 15 cents a gallon to the retail price of gasoline in northern New England in the short term. Over time, as new sources of refined petroleum come online, those higher prices could abate. 'This is going to be an annoyance,' he predicted. 'But it's not going to be a sea change.' Natural gas Unlike fuel dealers, companies that import natural gas by pipeline can't easily switch. 'We take nearly 100 percent of our gas from Canada,' said Neale Lunderville, CEO of Vermont Gas Systems, which connects roughly 58,000 customers in northwest Vermont to a Quebec pipeline. 'That's the bottom line.' Advertisement Other pipelines bring natural gas from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec to Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Since the networks are interconnected, Canada also imports some natural gas from the United States. For those who rely on natural gas to heat their homes, the tariffs could pack a punch. Vermont Gas residential customers, for example, could see their bills jump by 4 to 5 percent, Lunderville said. Electricity Northern New England imports more Canadian electricity than any other region in the United States, according to Dolan, largely from massive hydroelectric facilities near James Bay, Quebec. Hydro-Quebec, owned by the provincial government, sells about half its electricity exports to New England. About one-quarter of Vermont's electricity comes from Hydro-Quebec, the single largest source of power to the state. Kerrick Johnson, Vermont's public service commissioner, is hopeful those contracts might be excluded from Trump's tariffs because they are technically between the state and a US subsidiary of Hydro-Quebec. Others point to vague language in 'Historically, electricity hasn't been subject to tariffs,' Bartlett said. 'So we're in uncharted waters.' The border regions of Maine and Vermont are particularly exposed. Maine's lightly populated Aroostook and Washington counties aren't even connected to the New England power grid, with most of their electricity coming from New Brunswick. Vermont Electric Cooperative, which serves about 33,000 members in the northern part of the state, gets about 42 percent of its electricity from Canada, according to chief executive Rebecca Towne. Towne said the tariffs could translate into a 2 percent increase in rates this year. Advertisement Another wild card is that much of the electricity generated within New England comes from natural gas-burning power plants, according to Dolan, of the New England Power Generators Association. So although fluctuations in oil and gas prices are common, tariffs would make any spikes more painful, Dolan said. Towne hopes cooler heads will prevail. 'Canada, Hydro-Quebec have been such important partners for us, and they're literally our neighbors,' she said. 'Keeping those good ties and those conversations and that relationship open and working, even as we navigate the tariffs, is important.'
