Gov. Chris Sununu’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission are being pennywise but pound foolish. Or maybe not even pennywise, but just plain foolish. And the governor is letting them.
The PUC’s miserly actions could shutter some businesses, cause many New Hampshire workers to lose their jobs, increase the risk of rolling electrical blackouts in winter, and hamstring efforts to reduce costly energy bills. All to save a few bucks upfront, supposedly, but even that’s debatable.
Here’s what happened. On Nov. 12, the PUC rejected a three-year energy efficiency plan and decided to cut state funding for energy-efficiency programs back to 2018 levels, then cut more. These are programs that give small rebates and other incentives to home and business owners who are willing to pay the bulk of the cost of adding insulation, heat pumps, LED light bulbs, or other energy efficiency measures to reduce their buildings’ use of gas, heating oil or electricity.
They thus help reduce the cost of running a business. They help people stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. By reducing their use of energy, they help the remaining energy supplies stay more available and affordable for everyone else. It’s a win-win. And that’s on top of the benefits they provide in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But the PUC appointees are looking only at the ledger in front of them, not the bigger picture. And their vision even there may be blurred. Department of Energy officials have questioned the PUC’s claims of short-term fiscal benefits. The PUC’s action sparked protests from an unusually diverse spectrum of New Hampshire organizations. All of the state’s utilities joined advocates for ratepayers, environmentalists, clean energy groups, and others like LISTEN Community Services to warn the PUC that it is making a big mistake. Energy efficiency companies said the PUC move will lead to layoffs and put many of these companies out of business.
Liberty Utilities, for example, said the PUC is causing “irreparable harm.” Though the PUC and Gov. Sununu claimed they were protecting ratepayers from electrical bill surcharges to fund the energy efficiency programs, which would have cost homeowners an average of $30 more per year, Liberty Utilities pointed out that the energy efficiency plan rejected by the PUC would have saved the utility’s gas customers a collective $12.7 million per year and its electricity customers $13.3 million per year. Instead, the PUC’s actions will increase gas customers’ costs by $4.4 million and electric customers’ costs by $18.3 million in 2022 alone.
Meanwhile, the head of the New England Independent System Operator (ISO), which oversees the region’s power grid, warned that we may face rolling electrical blackouts if severe weather coincides with snags in the supplies of natural gas this winter. Energy efficiency programs reduce the demand for power and thus the risk of blackouts, which financially hurt businesses and put homeowners in harm’s way. And increasing energy efficiency would make it easier for the ISO to shut down the polluting coal-fired plant in Bow, which wastes millions of dollars in ratepayer-funded subsidies just to run a handful of days a year. Funding energy efficiency programs makes sense.
The diverse outcry around the PUC’s actions generated formal requests for the PUC to reconsider, but the PUC refused. Others took the issue to court in a lawsuit filed against the PUC by the nonprofit organization Clean Energy New Hampshire along with energy contractors, the Town of Hanover, and state housing authorities. Now there’s talk of state lawmakers passing a legislative fix. In November, voters can elect a different governor who won’t saddle us with such extremist appointees.
There’s no time to waste. If Sununu’s misguided misers on the PUC don’t change course soon, good jobs and businesses will go under. And we all will pay the price.
(Sherry Boschert of Lebanon co-founded the national electric vehicle advocacy group Plug In America. Rebecca Beaulieu of Dover s the communications director for 350 New Hampshire. These views are their own and do not represent the organizations listed for identification purposes only.)