Community power faces another delay – New Hampshire Bulletin

The Public Utilities Fee was scheduled to suggest long-awaited guidelines for neighborhood energy Tuesday. As an alternative, it introduced that the foundations wouldn’t be launched till July 27, additional delaying the beginning of neighborhood energy, a brand new initiative by which cities and cities purchase their very own power.

Amid skyrocketing power prices, proponents of neighborhood energy, together with the state’s client advocate, say the method may assist present a less expensive possibility for ratepayers, whose payments are set to extend by round 50 p.c in August. It might additionally enable municipalities to decide on renewable power.

However even cities and cities which have already secured native approval for his or her plans can’t transfer ahead with out approval from the utilities fee. The fee has rejected all plans which have come earlier than it, indicating they are going to be authorized solely after guidelines are finalized.

An e-mail from the commissioner’s workplace on Tuesday morning stated the assembly scheduled for that day was postponed “as a result of a scheduling battle.”

Client Advocate Don Kreis expressed incredulity in a tweet Tuesday. “When you purchase the reason, then you can also personal an East River crossing designed by John Roebling (1806-1869),” he wrote, referring to a con involving the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Proponents of neighborhood energy have expressed frustration at ongoing delays within the regulatory course of, stopping communities from transferring ahead.

“The delay is extraordinarily unlucky, notably as a result of communities are able to offer price reduction by means of neighborhood energy applications and that price reduction has been delayed by the obvious dysfunction of the state’s Public Utility Fee,” stated Henry Herndon, an power advisor affiliated with the Neighborhood Energy Coalition, a nonprofit that helps cities and cities pursue neighborhood energy.  

This isn’t the primary delay. Neighborhood energy plans have been approved in 2019 however placed on maintain when a invoice was launched in 2020 that might have made important modifications to it.  

“The state has had 2.5 years,” Herndon stated. “There’s no cause they need to proceed to delay the method.”

As soon as the foundations are printed, they may want further approval from the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Guidelines. Communities can then submit their plans to the fee, which may have 60 days to assessment them. Neighborhood energy advocates beforehand estimated that the applications could possibly be underway by spring 2023. That timeline will likely be pushed again given the PUC’s delay.