New England’s clean energy aspirations have survived a tumbling turbine blade, a ballot referendum and a stop-work order from a president who’s hostile to wind power. The question now is whether the region’s green dreams can endure a pivot to natural gas by its political leaders.
Three of the largest clean energy projects in New England’s history are nearing completion after a decadelong push to curb its reliance on gas, bolster its electric grid and slash planet-warming pollution.
But even as the finish line comes into sight, some of the region’s leaders are considering plans that are antithetical to the climate goals that sprung those projects to life. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has openly embraced the idea of building gas pipelines. Massachusetts lawmakers briefly considered, then rejected, a plan to water down the state’s climate targets. And the whole region has effectively pressed pause on offshore wind development.
New England leaders say they are as committed to clean energy as ever. But the political shift highlights how a region that spent almost 10 years building two massive offshore wind projects and a transmission line carrying hydropower from Canada is increasingly focused on cutting electricity prices — not carbon.
“Time is already a non-renewable resource, but then you recognize that the more time it takes to build any of this stuff, the more uncertainty you’re exposed to,” said Ben Downing, a former Democratic Massachusetts state senator who authored a landmark clean energy bill in 2016. “I think that if there’s one consistent theme throughout the last decade, it’s that.”
New England is a bellwether for national climate policy. Five of its six states have committed to achieving deep carbon reductions by midcentury. (New Hampshire, where Republicans have had a trifecta in state government for seven of the last 10 years, is the exception.)
Its efforts to remake its energy system began in earnest in 2016, with passage of a Massachusetts law that directed utilities to buy large amounts of Canadian hydropower and offshore wind. The law paved the way for what would become Vineyard Wind 1, an 800-megawatt offshore wind farm 15 miles from Martha’s Vineyard, and New England Clean Energy Connect, a 146-mile transmission line that will carry Canadian hydropower into the U.S. through Maine. Connecticut and Rhode Island followed with plans to buy power from Revolution Wind, a 715-MW wind project about 12 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.
All three projects are nearing completion, having navigated a series of major setbacks. Vineyard Wind’s permit was delayed during the first Trump administration. It was later approved by the Biden administration, but construction was slowed first by a dockworkers strike and then by an accident that saw a turbine blade detach and crash into the ocean. Half of the project’s 62 turbines were generating power at the end of September.
The hydropower line, known as NECEC, faced a series of lawsuits and a ballot referendum in which Maine residents voted to revoke a permit for the project. The state’s highest court later struck down the vote, ruling that it was unconstitutional for voters to retroactively cancel a project that had received a permit and started construction. NECEC, which is capable of serving 8 percent of New England’s electric load, is set to be energized by the end of the year.
Construction of Revolution Wind was first delayed when contamination was discovered at the project’s onshore substation, which is being built at the site of a former military dump. Then in August, it was dealt a near fatal blow when the Trump administration ordered construction to stop. That decision was reversed in court, and the administration has not appealed. Ørsted, one of two companies building the project, said in a recent earnings call that the project was 85 percent complete and is scheduled to come online during the second half of 2026.
“I think all three projects are coming none too soon in providing real benefits,” said Philip Bartlett, who chairs the Maine Public Utilities Commission.
The projects are expected to help alleviate the region’s reliance on gas, which accounts for roughly half of New England’s power generation and is the leading source of home heating. Yet the region has limited pipeline capacity to serve that demand, leaving the region exposed to spikes in gas prices and leading to fears that its pipelines could become overburdened in a cold snap.
The completion of NECEC, Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind could ease those concerns, said Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. She estimated that the three projects would increase New England’s electricity supply by 10-13 percent, depending on how much hydropower is delivered in a given year.
The results are becoming evident. Even at half capacity, Vineyard Wind is more than twice as big as the region’s largest onshore wind project. (Maine’s Bingham Wind development is 184 MW.) New England’stop 10 days for wind generation have all come since the beginning of October. ISO New England, the regional grid operator, said completing the power line and the wind project would make the region’s electric system well-prepared for winter.
“This is really, really good news for ratepayers in New England and for the reliability of our grid to have so much capacity being added in the near term,” Dykes said.
Yet she acknowledged that the world is different today than it was a decade ago. Lamont has signaled his openness to new pipelines as part of a push to address Connecticut’s sky-high energy costs. The state has also launched a program to assess potential sites for a new nuclear plant, Dykes said.
“If there’s a solution that can help bring costs down for ratepayers and improve affordability that can get developed, there’s nothing that’s off the table,” she said.
Whether other states follow suit remains to be seen. When the Trump administration halted Revolution Wind, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee (D) indicated that he was open to permitting gas pipelines in exchange for keeping the wind project moving.
“We don’t have a gas line. But I’m with Gov. Lamont. It’s like, we’ll open up those conversations to make that happen for an all-in strategy,” McKee said at a September press conference. A spokesperson for McKee did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the biggest questions relates to Massachusetts. State lawmakers floated a plan to make the Massachusetts 2030 climate target an aspirational goal. Current law calls for halving emissions from 1990 levels. Lawmakers later walked back the proposal to water down that target, but it’s unclear how the state will meet its goals. Massachusetts officials have talked up plans for tapping into onshore wind in Maine and importing offshore wind from Canada.
At the same time, Gov. Maura Healey (D) has opened the door to new gas infrastructure. In September, she said she supported a plan to increase the capacity of an existing pipeline into the region.
“I’ve said we need energy from all sources. You know, wind, solar, gas,” Healey said at a press conference last month. She pledged to work with lawmakers to lower energy costs, saying “we know it’s a struggle for residents and our businesses, and that’s why I’ve continued to make energy affordability, lowering your bills, a priority.”
It’s unclear what that means for the state’s climate goals. Massachusetts already faced a steep climb toward meeting its targets. Its emissions were 28 percent below 1990 levels in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. That means it would have to cut its emissions an additional 22 percent this decade to meet the goal.
New England overall has hit a carbon wall in recent years. Climate pollution from the region’s power plants fell 57 percent between 2005 and 2019, according to EPA data. The decline was driven by the closure of aging coal- and oil-fired plants in favor of cleaner burning gas units.
But power sector emissions have climbed steadily in the years since, reaching 27 million tons last year — an increase of 5 million tons over 2019 levels. The region has struggled to replace the carbon-free generation that was lost with the retirement of Pilgrim Nuclear Station in 2019. There are also no more coal plants to close following the shutdown of Merrimack Station in New Hampshire earlier this year.
The road ahead is even more challenging, with electricity demand projected to rise 11 percent by 2035 due to electrification of heating and transportation. That marks a reversal for the region, where demand has declined since 2005, thanks to energy efficiency measures and rooftop solar installations.
New England leaders had traditionally looked to offshore wind and Canadian hydro for new infusions of power. But it’s not clear if those sources can offer future electrons.
Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind were conceived as the first of many offshore wind projects in New England. They are now likely to be the only two that are built in the region this decade, and maybe the next. The Trump administration is seeking to revoke permits for two projects, New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind, which had received preliminary power contracts from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Deadlines for finalizing those contracts have been repeatedly postponed.
Meanwhile, a historic drought in Quebec has stopped the flow of Canadian power into the U.S. — and even reversed it. In October, New England exported 30 gigawatt-hours of electricity to Quebec, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. That is the first time since at least 2019 that New England has been an exporter of electricity to Quebec on a monthly basis, according to a review of federal data by POLITICO’s E&E News.
“Hydro resources of Canada were considered inexhaustible in many state capitals in New England. And the reality is that for pretty much this entire fall, New England has been an electricity exporter to Canada for the first time I can ever remember,” said Dan Dolan, executive director of the New England Power Generators Association, a trade group representing power plant owners in the region. “That is a fundamentally changed circumstance for resource additions and the overall energy mix in the region.”
Hydro-Québec, the provincial utility, said it has enough power to fulfill its contract obligations for NECEC. It is also building out the province’s onshore wind resources. The company hopes wind power can provide more domestic electricity, leaving hydropower available to be shipped south, said Serge Abergel, chief operating officer at Hydro-Québec Energy Services.
But he acknowledged that the drought has altered Hydro-Québec’s thinking. The utility has long sold large amounts of power in New England’s spot market, but going forward it could choose moments when New England power prices are high because of waning solar and wind generation. It may even import power from New England during periods with large amounts of wind and solar.
“I think that the future will be more dynamic as we see more price fluctuations because of the intermittency factor in the market,” Abergel said.
Much of the region’s hopes now rest on a plan to build new transmission lines into the rolling farm fields of northern Maine, which boasts New England’s best onshore wind and solar resources. ISO New England recently announced it had received six bids to build new transmission capacity linking Maine to the rest of the region.
The effort represents a significant shift in the region’s approach to clean energy. NECEC was a project spearheaded by Massachusetts and built in Maine. The opposition to that power line convinced the region’s leaders that more collaboration was needed to share the costs and benefits of major infrastructure projects, said Bartlett of Maine’s Public Utilities Commission.
“I think a big important lesson from that is if we’re going to build big energy infrastructure in the region, I think it’s important that all the states kind of be at the table,” he said.
The last decade showed that the greatest barriers to clean energy are bureaucratic and political, said Downing, the former Massachusetts senator who now works at the Engine, a nonprofit clean energy incubator supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last summer, Downing went on a family vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. They drove out to the tip of the island, where they could see the towering turbines of Vineyard Wind on the horizon.
“It’s a beautiful thing, and that’s after everything that they’ve had to go through,” Downing said. “The fact that we’ve done it at all shows that we can do it. And, yeah, it’s nowhere near the straight line that we thought it was. Nowhere near that. But that isn’t a reason to say, ‘Well, take a right turn when we thought we were going straight. The thing’s over.’ No way, no way. We got to come up with a new plan to get back online.”
