Laidlaw Energy Group, Inc.(fka LLEG)

[discreet_suffolk]

Clear the way for new transmission lines

November 14, 2008 - 7:04 am



Sources of environment-friendly alternative energy, some as ancient as windmills and others as modern as a photoelectric farm, are needed. And at least until recently, investors were panting for an opportunity to put their money behind them. Exhibit A: oil billionaire T. Boon Pickens's project to build a $5 billion wind farm in Texas.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the expansion of such energy sources, in New Hampshire's jobs-starved North Country and elsewhere, is the absence of enough transmission line capacity to get the power from where it's produced to where it's needed. To paraphrase one electric industry executive, build a power plant and you anger a community. Build a transmission line and you anger 100. Community opposition, however, is not the problem in New Hampshire. Massachusetts is.

New Hampshire is a net exporter of electricity. It doesn't need the power - except to meet Gov. John Lynch's goal of getting 25 percent of the state's power from alternative energy by 2025. But it has ample supplies of wind and low-quality wood that could be chipped and burned to fuel power plants. The electricity produced would be fed into the regional grid. Everyone would benefit, both from a cleaner environment and from having power when supplies might otherwise be short. But who will pay the estimated $200 million cost of building the new North Country lines? That's the rub.

Developers can't convince investors to invest with no guarantee that the power can be transmitted and sold. Utilities won't invest until two main questions are answered.

• If they indeed build the transmission line, will power-plant developers come?

The drive to green energy has been slowed by gasoline prices at or below $2 per gallon and by an economy in intensive care. But both circumstances are temporary, and the Earth's increasing temperature offers reason enough to switch to environmentally benign technologies.

• Can utilities and ratepayers find a fair way to share the cost of building the lines?

Power plant builders will benefit, but they want ratepayers to pay. Utility customers and states striving to meet alternative energy and environmental goals will benefit. But they don't want to give power plant builders a free ride.

Public Service Co. of New Hampshire is in the unique position of being a regulated utility that owns the existing transmission lines. It wants to build a biomass plant of its own. PSNH wouldn't benefit if another developer came in and drove up the price of fuel and used up power line capacity. And no transmission line developer wants to subsidize competitors who come along later.

Most of all, utilities, customers and regulators don't want ratepayers in states that refuse to contribute to the cost of the new lines to benefit from the additional regional capacity. That's where Massachusetts comes in. Utilities and regulators in other states in ISO New England, the regional power grid, are open to finding a way to share the cost. Massachusetts, at least so far, is not. It dreams of meeting its alternative energy goals with projects built within its borders. The issues are enormously complex and, despite the need to act soon, we see no reason for optimism.

Some version of this problem is being played out across the nation. Under the Bush administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has largely taken a hands-off position. But global warming won't wait for countless state and regional battles to be fought and resolved. A federal role, if only as a goad to cooperation, is called for. The next administration should, with the support of New Hampshire's congressional delegation, find a way to fairly apportion the burden of meeting the nation's alternative energy goals when states and regions are unable to do so speedily on their own.

http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081114/OPINION/811140313/1027/OPINION01