Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s hopes of expanding natural gas usage in Connecticut appeared to suffer another blow as a result of a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts that blocks a financing plan for a $3 billion regional gas pipeline.
The court decision last week bars Eversource and other Massachusetts utilities from charging electricity customers to pay for construction of the expanded pipeline. Eversource, which supplies energy in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, hoped to use similar financing to pay for pipeline costs in Connecticut.
Eversource officials this week withdrew their petitions for long-term Massachusetts contracts to buy gas from the Access Northeast pipeline project that was intended to expand natural gas supplies for Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
“This is not a reflection upon our commitment to Access Northeast, as we are a partner in the development of the project,” Eversource spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman said in a company statement.
“We, along with our partners Spectra and National Grid, remain firmly committed to our part in solving New England’s energy challenge,” Pretyman said. “The court’s decision provides no solution to the energy cost, reliability and environmental challenges that the New England region faces today. One thing is certain, the status quo is not sustainable.”
Malloy and his administration, along with other New England governors, have been pushing expanded use of natural gas as a cleaner, less expensive alternative to fossil fuels like coal and oil.
“We’ve acknowledged that New England has a problem with inadequate gas pipeline infrastructure,” said Katie Dykes, the Malloy administration’s deputy commissioner in charge of energy policy. She said the administration is continuing to evaluate proposals for solving that issue.
“We’re still evaluating what impact the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision will have on that process,” Dykes said. She said her agency will have no comment on individual projects like Access Northeast.
Claire Miller, of the environmental group Toxics Action Center, said the court ruling and the action by Eversource to pull back on its proposed Massachusetts contracts is “absolutely a blow” to plans to expand natural gas pipelines in Connecticut.
“When [Massachusetts] pulls out, that’s a pretty big dent in attempts for public subsidies for new gas infrastructure,” Miller said. She added that Massachusetts consumers represent about half of all expected consumption of power generated by gas from the proposed pipeline.
In April, the corporation backing another major natural gas pipeline project for New England dropped its support for the proposal. Officials of Kinder Morgan, the nation’s biggest energy infrastructure company and main sponsor of the Northeast Energy Direct project, pulled the plug on its plan because of a lack of assurances that electricity ratepayers would pay for the $3.3 billion pipeline.
Dykes also declined to comment on the apparent demise of the Northeast Energy Direct plan.
The Northeast Energy Direct plan would have included a spur line into Connecticut to bring more gas from the fracking well fields in the Marcellus shale regions of Pennsylvania and New York. The project drew fierce opposition from environmental groups and landowners in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut.
Access Northeast was a project to dramatically expand the existing Algonquin gas pipeline in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The Connecticut section would run through Chaplin, Cromwell and Oxford, and it has also drawn opposition from some environmentalists.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on Access Northeast came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts-based Conservation Law Foundation.
The foundation’s lead attorney for the case, David Ismay, said the state’s highest court rejected the proposal to have Massachusetts electricity customers “subsidize the dying fossil fuel industry.”
The foundation’s statement on the decision said the court declared it “unlawful for Massachusetts to force residential electricity customers to subsidize the construction of such projects … “
