This past Thursday, Eversource, the company attempting to building Northern Pass as a way to funnel electric power into the New England electric grid finally threw in the towel and issued a statement indicating they were removing the project from the table, after the New Hampshire State Supreme Court upheld the project’s 2018 rejection by the state Site Evaluation Committee.
Now does this mean the project is a dead duck? Probably not. Like the undead from a bad movie sequel, Northern Pass may get revived some time in the future under a different name and return once again in an effort to uglify New Hampshire. But for now it has bit the dust.
Eversource really has no one to blame but themselves. Watching their perpetual efforts to ram the project through, in spite of the vehement protests by residents in the northern half of the state, it was clear this was strictly a project for the benefit of the shareholders, not for the benefit of anyone who actually lives here. All too often residents’ efforts for their concerns to be heard were treated as a minor nuisance, soon to be overcome in the name of ‘progress’. Demands for the line to be buried received a token nod at best.
One of their selling points was the ‘need for abundant energy.’ They touted the project as being the most advanced project to bring low cost clean energy for their customers. The customers in question were for the most part not people in New Hampshire but residents of Massachusetts. No one up here in northern New Hampshire wanted to see huge transmission towers marching through the countryside delivering little if any benefits to compensate for the disfigured landscape.
But aside from the pros and cons of Northern Pass, the issue that never really gets addressed is whether or not this project is really the clean energy it’s touted to be or even if it is really needed. Efforts to reduce energy usage are certainly doable and save money in the long run. Shutting lights off when not needed, constructing houses which are smaller and energy efficient, using cold water for laundry, all these nickel and dime efforts add up over time, particularly if everyone does them.
Was the project sustainable? Not really. Our ongoing mania for interconnectivity has turned the electric grid so many depend on into a ginormous interlaced network that is tricky to maintain and is highly vulnerable to hackers or just plain breakdown. The recent massive black out in South America which affected at least three countries clearly reveals the domino effect that can occur when failure happens in part of the network. Interestingly Tierra Del Fuego was not affected as it was not connected to the grid. If this isn’t a big hint from the Fates, I don’t know what is. We’ve clearly overbuilt to the point the systems we create are too fragile to last for long and keel over at the least excuse.
Like it or not, we are going to need to swallow the bitter pill of downsizing as resource shortages make these projects harder to build and nearly impossible to maintain for any length of time. Let’s keep our projects small, local and easy to maintain. Instead of waiting until we’re hitting the wall and forced to make these changes, in a panic, in hysteria, let’s do it now while we have a bit of wiggling room and have time to see what’s workable and what isn’t.
