New Hampshire

New Hampshire’s Energy Landscape in 2025 – Concord Monitor

Published

3 months ago

December 22, 2025

New Hampshire’s Energy Landscape in 2025 – Concord Monitor

The biggest national news in 2025 often involved energy — how to make it, who gets to use it, who is going to need it. New Hampshire has sidestepped most of those questions so far but still saw plenty of energy news.

Goodbye, coal

The closing of the Merrimack Station power plant in Bow sounds like New Hampshire’s biggest energy news of the year and got a lot of national coverage along the lines of “New England shuts down coal!” but to be honest, it didn’t make much difference. The plant had been winding down for years, having run for fewer than 30 days in 2024, and would almost certainly have shut in a year or so because it lost what is known as capacity funding.

The more interesting question is what will replace it. Granite Shore Power President Jim Andrews has long touted plans to turn Merrimack Station, as well as the long-closed Schiller site in Portsmouth, into 21st century power plants using batteries and solar power, with perhaps some offshore wind assembly on the shores of the Piscataqua River.

But Donald Trump was elected and promptly began to trash wind and solar power, yanking subsidies and throwing up regulatory roadblocks. Granite Shore now says it is looking at all possibilities.

Both sites have excellent connections to the power grid, which makes them very valuable.

We need more electricity

New Hampshire, like New England in general, have not been swamped with proposals to build massive, power-hungry data centers for bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence. Those proposals have led to forecasts that national demand for electricity will spike by a quarter or more within a few years.

ISO-New England, the group that runs the six-state power grid, projects an 11% increase in electricity demand over the next decade, largely driven by the electrification of heating and transportation. That’s a lot, especially after years of stagnant demand, but it’s not panic-inducing.

Sidestepping regulation

New Hampshire is set to become the first state to allow energy providers to skip most utility regulation if they don’t connect to the grid. Supporters say it adds much-needed flexibility to the hidebound energy industry while critics call it a sop to very large energy users, such as data centers. It’s not clear how much it will be used, but it’s an interesting experiment, at least.

Community solar OK, wind not so much

The Republican-controlled legislature isn’t quite as anti-solar power as President Trump but it shows a lack of enthusiasm for renewable energy. They passed a bill loosening stormwater runoff rules for solar arrays but tightened the Renewable Energy Fund and as the year ended, they were looking to make severe changes to the Renewable Energy Portfolio.

On the other hand, there’s community solar. Thanks to a series of bills over the past few years, arrays up to 5 megawatts can share production with multiple customers, making big projects that opened or are being built in Exeter, Bedford, Derry, Warner and now Concord financially feasible. It seems likely that 2026 will set a record for the most solar added to the grid in New Hampshire. If the legislature would let private companies be community-solar customers, we’d do even better.

As for wind power, legislators echoed Trump’d hatred of the industry. Gov. Ayotte agreed to shorten the name of the Office of Offshore Wind Industry Development and Energy Innovation to simply the Office of Energy Innovation as part of removing virtually all support for wind power on land or in the sea. Not that we gave much support to begin with.

Ironically, this month saw New England receive a record amount of power from wind turbines — more than 1,600 megawatts at one point — as the Vineyard Wind offshore farm finally got up to speed.

What about natural gas? Nuclear? Heating oil?

As has been the case for many years, natural gas was the fuel to supply about half of New England’s electricity in 2025 and heating to about one-fifth of New Hampshire’s homes.

Many politicians are making noises about building more pipelines to bring in more natural gas from New York or Pennsylvania; Gov. Ayotte expressed support for bringing the proposed Constitution Pipeline, which was killed in 2020, back to life. Many argue that such work would be prohibitively expensive and make the region even more dependent on a single type of fuel.

Natural gas has traditionally been very cheap compared to other types of fuel but its price is increasingly affected by global patterns because of an increase in exports.

A separate question is whether the push to electrify the region’s heating can cut into our use of heating oil. Northern New England is by far the national leader in using that dirty fuel for heating; switching to electric heat pumps is almost always cheaper and definitely cleaner. New Hampshire is one of five states in the New England Heat Pump Accelerator, which looks to spend $450 million from Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to encourage more heat pumps.

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New Hampshire

Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters

Published

11 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters

As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.

“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.

“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”

Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.

“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.

He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”

Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear speaks with voters in Keene, New Hampshire, on March 7, 2026.

Anne Bryson

For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.

“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”

Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.

CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.

On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with political commentator Jack Cocchiarella at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 5, 2026.

Anne Bryson

Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.

29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.

“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.

While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.

“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,

“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.

“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.

Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.

“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.

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New Hampshire

Mass. man nabbed after allegedly driving over 100 mph in N.H.

Published

23 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Mass. man nabbed after allegedly driving over 100 mph in N.H.

Local News

Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.

A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.

Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.

The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.

The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.

He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.