New Hampshire shouldn’t shut the door on thousands of new jobs, lower electricity rates and an independent, home-grown energy future, but that’s exactly what two bills in front of the Legislature would force us to do.
The most radical legislation, House Bill 575, would have actually made offshore wind a crime, but in a victory for ratepayers and common sense, a majority of the House Committee on Science and Technology recently voted to kill the bill. However, House Concurrent Resolution 4, which also effectively prevents New Hampshire from participating in offshore wind projects, is still alive.
It is understandable that fossil fuel companies want to block the development of wind energy. Wind, unlike coal, oil and gas, is free, clean and there is an unlimited supply. But for New Hampshire, or any other state on the gusty North Atlantic coast, to close the door to wind energy makes no sense. Offshore wind prices don’t fluctuate with war, as is happening in Russia with natural gas, or when tariffs and trade wars make another country increase their price for electricity or cause oil and gas companies to charge families more to heat their homes and fill their tanks. And the jobs that come with building and producing wind energy aren’t in Louisiana, Texas or the Middle East — they are right here in New England.
The waters off New England’s coast are some of the best in the United States for the production of reliable clean wind energy. Port redevelopment and high-paying job creation is already happening in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Turbines are already spinning off New England’s coast and creating electricity to light and heat thousands of homes. And the federal government has leased 440,000 acres of the Gulf of Maine, 60 miles from the New Hampshire coast and carefully sited to avoid fishery damage, for four potential floating turbine projects.
The New Hampshire Department of Energy has estimated that a single 1,200 MW offshore wind project in the Gulf of Maine would generate more than 3,600 jobs and over $840 million in benefits for the state.
Offshore wind not only keeps the jobs and project development costs here, it makes electricity affordable. If New England reaches its offshore wind targets by 2030, a study by Synapse Energy Economics predicts a $630 million reduction in electricity costs for the region.
If theLegislature categorically rejecting offshore wind development isn’t enough, a second bill pushing New Hampshire toward a fossil-fuel only future — House Bill 219 — would roll back the state’s efforts to increase affordable renewable sources of energy like wind, hydroelectric and solar power — again taking away any energy independence for homeowners and potentially killing thousands of new jobs for the state.
There are already more than 3,500 jobs in renewable energy right now in New Hampshire, the bulk in solar power, and the state has an enormous employment upside since it trails its neighbors in renewable energy jobs. HB 219 is a slap in the face to home and business owners who want energy independence and lower bills, and contractors who want more work for their crews.
As the rest of the world is turning to energy supplied by the wind and the sun, these bills would leave New Hampshire excluded from the future, cut off from energy supplied by the sun and wind; energy that in the long term is not only better for our health and our planet, but is inexpensive and is our own: produced by us, used by us, with no fluctuations in cost caused by economic downturns, wars, shortages or price gouging.
Why wouldn’t we want that?
Nick Krakoff is a senior attorney for CLF New Hampshire, where he works in both the Clean Energy & Climate Change and Oceans programs. He lives in Concord.
