ENERGY NEWS NETWORK • April 17, 2023
How hard could it be to bring more carbon-free power to New England, a region with a professed dedication to tackling the climate crisis? It hasn’t been easy or straightforward for the New England Clean Energy Connect, a long-running effort by Massachusetts to import 1,200 megawatts of electricity produced by hydropower from Quebec. Instead, the project’s storyline resembles the unrelenting mishaps of Odysseus’ journey home from Troy. The transmission line is on trial this week in Maine. A jury of nine Cumberland County residents in Maine’s Business and Consumer Court will now decide if the billion-dollar project can move forward. But the missteps and setbacks in Maine offer lessons for all the other places where more clean-energy transmission lines are needed to clean up the grid — and that’s pretty much everywhere.