Order puts state’s economic growth at risk

ENERGY STANDARDS

From the White Mountains to the Seacoast, companies and consumers across New Hampshire increasingly recognize that the measures we need to reduce pollution are not just about protecting the climate or air quality. They also represent real opportunities to cut costs, improve everyday life and create new jobs.

Just look at New Hampshire’s energyefficiency standards, which for years have helped consumers and businesses cut back on wasted energy, saving on utility costs while better heating their homes, and putting contractors to work across the state.

That’s what makes the recent decision by the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission to let the state backslide on energy efficiency so baffling.

In November, the PUC rejected a proposal from the state’s utilities to bolster the state’s energy-efficiency resource standard. The proposed resource standard would have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into energy-efficiency improvements and the popular NHSaves program over the next three years. The PUC is instead proposing a return to funding levels that are years out of date and eventually eliminate the programs entirely.

At greatest risk are the consumers who will have less access to the NHSaves program that helps them reduce energy use in homes, the businesses across the state that will face higher costs as energy waste increases, and the energy-efficiency contractors who will lose business. Already there are reports that hundreds of jobs are at immediate risk, to say nothing of the thousands more New Hampshire residents who are employed in energy efficiency and whose jobs will be at risk if the PUC order is fully implemented.

What’s more, the entire state will also face greater public health threats and climate risks due to the added pollution from the PUC’s decision.

It’s critical to understand that strong energy-efficiency standards don’t just benefit those who take advantage of programs like NHSaves. In fact, these standards deliver value to every consumer and business. By reducing the total power needed to keep the lights on across the state, utility customers benefit from lower transmission and distribution costs.

Cutting energy waste also helps make the grid more reliable, which lowers costs by reducing the need to use dirty, expensive power plants during periods of peak demand.

The more ambitious energy-efficiency resource standard that the PUC rejected had significant backing from New Hampshire businesses. In 2020, the Ceres BICEP Network, representing more than 70 major organizations, wrote to the PUC in support of the proposal.

What’s more, that standard also reflects the New Hampshire Clean Energy Principles that were signed by more than 120 Granite State businesses in 2019 and call for strong state programs to “increase the efficiency of energy consuming or producing resources, because energy efficiency is the most cost-effective energy resource available.”

These companies understand that reducing energy waste has a direct, positive impact on their bottom lines. Indeed, the utilities’ modeling had shown that their proposed resource standard would lower electricity bills for the majority of New Hampshire’s commercial and industrial customers.

These savings would create more resources for companies to reinvest back into their business, employees and local communities.

Instead, the PUC has made a shortsighted decision that fails to account for the widespread benefits that robust energyefficiency standards bring to New Hampshire. It must be reversed.

John Carlson is manager of state policy at Ceres, an organization that works with businesses in New Hampshire on sustainability issues.