Guest Speaker Rep. Kat McGhee on NH Energy Policy and Legislation

Energy decisions can have enormous impacts on the environment, our monthly budgets, local and state economics, and more.   

Currently the Republican-led NH legislature “isn’t really doing much [on energy],” according to Representative Kat McGhee (Hollis), ranking member on the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee, who spoke at the Amherst Democrats’ public meeting about NH Energy Policy and Legislation on April 23.   

Years ago, McGhee said, she attended a presentation by former Gov. Maggie Hassan’s energy department director, Meredith Hatfield, about what New Hampshire was doing for energy efficiency and to lower emissions. 

“After seeing the presentation,” she said, “I knew what NH was doing.  But under eight years of Sununu — there has been no energy planning; the state has no measurable goals.”

McGhee added, “The [NH] Republican energy policies are counter to innovation, counter to a healthy, functioning market.”  While many New Hampshire businesses are investing in clean energy, especially looking to expanding net metering caps and battery technology — Republicans are aligning with the president’s shift back to an emphasis on fossil fuels — even though US production is down, so this creates greater economic uncertainty and dependence. “Republican leadership is stuck in the last century. We can’t have Republican leadership and have a plan for the future,” she said.

The NH Republican-led retrograde legislative positions include:

·       Studying the state’s withdrawal from ISO-NE, a regional transmission organization that helps manage the electric power system and the wholesale market.

If New Hampshire withdraws from the New England energy grid, consumers and businesses would no longer be able to count on reliable delivery of electricity;  NH would experience chaotic and costly efforts to replace lost supply. 

·       A ban on NH participation in offshore wind projects.

·       Being the only state in NE to have no “goal to get to net-zero”.

·       Climate science treated as a subject that’s still up for debate.

The Democratic members of the House Science, Technology Committee & Energy Committee in Concord have been proposing legislation to support innovation, competition, and efficiency. McGhee said that Democrats work to fill in “gaps in the infrastructure that the state has not been addressing and measuring and bills to “level the energy playing field.”

A few highlights:

·       HB 760 – In the current regulatory “approach,”  the PUC lets public utilities shift risk to all ratepayers, not just their own default supply customers. HB 760, sponsored by Democrats, attempted to prevent utilities from shifting their supply costs to competitive supply customers. Basically, if utilities can recover their supply cost losses from their competitors under the stranded costs portion of the bill, the competitors will have a harder time providing lower prices. 

·       SB 284 – With this 2019 bill, Democrats put the wheels in motion to create a statewide energy data platform to help municipalities, individual customers, businesses and companies developing energy-related services to securely share energy data, allowing us to manage what we will finally be able to measure.

The data platform’s RFP is ready to go and the Cost Benefit Analysis that will then be possible is due this fall. (In April, House Republicans passed a bill to kill the data platform.) The Senate hearing re-committed the bill to the Energy and Resources Committee of the Senate, to allow the Cost Benefit Analysis to be completed. 

·       NH House Republicans killed several bills this year to study climate change impacts on the state’s environment and economy.

New Hampshire’s Democratic House members continue to champion more strategic energy policies, in line with funding programs launched during the Biden administration. McGhee explained that at the federal level, under Biden, ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act), the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), and IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) “protected us economically, down to the town level” with funds for water infrastructure projects and and rebates for major investments in heat pump systems.

Added to House Republicans’ “purposeful neglect” of energy sector management, we face trade uncertainties and a lack of energy resource planning at a scale that is insufficient to meet the moment. You cannot lead from yesterday. McGhee said, “We should be investing in more home-grown energy, to increase energy independence.”