SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts — A seven-year, multistate courtroom and public relations fight between the nation’s top developer of green energy and backers of a proposed $1.5 billion power line through Maine has landed in Springfield.
At stake, says New England Clean Energy Connect and its parent company, Avangrid, is access to lower-cost, clean electricity to Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Legislature solicited bids for the best project to bring clean electricity to the state. New England Clean Energy Connect won this competition in 2018, and NextEra was one of the losing bidders, according to the lawsuit.
Avangrid said the project promises development of a transmission line that will bring what it calls lower-cost, clean electricity to Massachusetts. Proposed is a 145-mile transmission line linking Canadian hydro plants with hungry markets in Massachusetts and other parts of New England.
But in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court here plaintiffs Avangrid and New England Clean Energy Connect allege that defendant NextEra Energy — the largest electric utility company in the world based on market capitalization and worth more than $152 billion — has stymied plans in court, by misleading Maine voters in two referendums.
The motive, according to published reports, is that NextEra wants to protect its turf and keep Canadian hydropower out.
Neither Avangrid and New England Clean Energy Connect nor NextEra responded to phone messages and emails sent Wednesday.
Avangrid and New England Clean Energy Connect also allege that NextGen physically blocked it from attaching to the power grid by allowing the breaker protecting NextGen’s Seabrook nuclear power plant to age and then not creating a new breaker that would allow Avangrid to hook in.
ISO New England, which runs the regional power grid, could not allow any significant new power source project to connect to the grid unless and until NextEra upgraded the breaker, according to the suit.
ISO New England is based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the reason this suit landed in Springfield’s federal courthouse, according to court papers.
ISO New England does not have a comment on this lawsuit, according to an emailed response from spokeswoman Mary Cate Colapietro.
The courts recently cleared a stumbling block for New England Clean Energy Connect and Avangrid. In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and told NextEra to install the circuit breaker at Seabrook.
A May 2023 ruling by a Maine jury had already allowed construction to restart with a substation in Lewiston. Work halted in 2021 following legal challenges and a Maine referendum rejecting the project.
This most recent lawsuit seeks an injunction blocking NextEra from interfering with the power line project and money damages, trebled pursuant to law, plus interest. But there is no dollar amount.
Story by Jim Kinney, MassLive.com.
