iThe Boston Globe reports that a Maine jury has now determined that the developer of the New England Clean Energy Connect project relied in good faith on Maine's prior approval of the project when it spent nearly a half billion dollars on the project before a 2021 referendum attempting to void that approval.
Last summer Maine's Supreme Judicial Court held that the 2021 referendum violated the Maine Constitution if what the Maine jury has now determined to be the case was the case. Some of you might recall that I predicted then that the answer to the question asked by Maine's highest court had to be "yes".
For those of you keeping score at home, this marks the third Maine court decision in favor of the New England Clean Energy Connect project since last summer -- two by Maine's highest court and this one by a Maine jury. That's surprisingly speedy and good news because there is no way Massachusetts can meet its Greenhouse Gas reduction targets without the project which, amazingly, still isn't out of the woods.
That it has now been more than six years since the permitting of this critically important renewable energy project began, and five months since it was supposed to be operating, remains Exhibit A in the case for Congress and the Biden Administration to make our transition to renewable energy much easier. The billions in Federal funds authorized for this transition in the Inflation Reduction Act can't make a difference if years of permitting and then more years of litigation will be necessary to put those dollars to work. Yesterday we heard that the United States Senate may address this challenge.
The Massachusetts Legislature also needs to pay attention to the current roadblocks to renewable energy and resilience projects.
Hopefully our Federal and State Legislators are up to the task because, if one believes the scientists, we're running out of time.
A Maine jury ruled Thursday that construction can proceed on a transmission line that will carry clean, hydropower from Quebec to Massachusetts — bolstering the efforts to shift its electricity consumption away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels. The decision in favor of Avangrid, the Connecticut company building the transmission line, follows a 2021 ballot initiative in Maine, which sought to terminate the $1 billion project and won the support of a majority of voters. The state’s Supreme Court later 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.
