Avangrid asserts that NextEra, the largest electric utility company in the world, has been “sabotaging Avangrid’s development of a transmission line that will bring significant amounts of lower-cost, clean electricity to Massachusetts” by abusing the regulatory and judicial process, misleading voters with dark money campaigns, and obstructing electric infrastructure improvements.
“NextEra has used these anticompetitive and tortious tactics to line its own pockets by excluding lower-priced competition for electricity supply in Massachusetts from Avangrid’s New England Clean Energy Connect project (NECEC),” reads part of the lawsuit, filed by counsel for Avangrid, Central Maine Power Company (CMPC), and NECEC Transmission LLC.
NECEC is a $1 billion 145-mile high-voltage transmission line that would carry up to 1,200 megawatts (MW) of hydropower from Canada to the New England grid via CMPC’s Lewiston, Maine substation. The project, co-bid by Avangrid and Hydro-Québec, was authorized by the Massachusetts Legislature, which made it a core pillar of the Commonwealth’s transition to renewable energy.
“Thus, NextEra’s actions have not only damaged Avangrid, but have also postponed Massachusetts’s clean energy transition and forced consumers across the region to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more for their electricity to NextEra and other power generators in the region,” the suit alleges.
This week, the Massachusetts State House passed its long-awaited clean energy bill, now awaiting the Governor’s signature. The Commonwealth intends to generate at least 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Last year, the legislature tried to jump-start NECEC by including language in a spending bill that would renegotiate how the project would be payed for.
“Completion of the NECEC line is important for Massachusetts customers,” said Lauren Diggin of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources at the time. “This project will help stabilize our electric rates, provide clean, reliable winter energy supply, and reduce the state’s emissions.”
