In order to move New Hampshire’s economy forward, we must reduce energy costs through increased energy supply and/or reduced energy demand.
Reducing demand through energy efficiency is the cheapest way to do just that. That’s why we co-sponsored legislation to advance energy efficiency, including for town and school buildings, and low- to middle-income households struggling to get by. That legislation was included in HB 1660, an energy bill involving interstate gas pipelines.
It failed.
Why? Quite simply, the approach of New Hampshire House Republican leadership on HB 1660 caused it to fail.
It was an approach insisting on language going beyond eminent domain protections to redefining “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
It was an approach insisting on entirely eliminating the bipartisan, fiscally prudent energy efficiency language creating tens of millions in energy savings, drastically reducing energy demand and curbing the case for large-scale energy projects.
It was a refusal to even discuss the bipartisan energy efficiency language, despite discussing the same language favorably prior to the legislative session.
And it was an approach supported by a lobbying group called Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, which has opposed any compromise on energy efficiency. But that approach – an uncompromising approach – is not the approach that typically gets things done.
To be clear, it wasn’t the approach the New Hampshire House Republican leadership took on every bill; unfortunately, they took that approach on HB 1660.
While one of us is retiring from the state Senate, and one of us is running again to the state Senate, we are both hopeful that the members of the next Legislature – conservatives and progressives alike – will be open to working together on energy efficiency as well as advancing alternative energy sources, because the economic future of the Granite State demands no less.
(Sen. Nancy Stiles of Hampton is a Republican representing Senate District 24. Sen. Dan Feltes of Concord is a Democrat representing Senate District 15.)