Late last week Biomass energy plants asked the New Hampshire State Supreme Court for a solid. Please force New Hampshire ratepayers to pay 54% above market rates for electricity. If you don’t, we’ll have to shut down.
Eversource says the PUC has to make them buy the power at that rate but there’s no actual deal with the Biomass plants. Without a deal, the PUC says its hands are tied. The Rent-seekers are asking the Court to force the PUC to make Eversource charge you above-market rates for electricity.
Because you are not paying enough already.
But they say it will save jobs and protect economic activity.
Sure, jobs and economic activity that can’t survive without charging 54% above the wholesale price of electricity. If the court intervenes there what’s to stop it intervening in the interest of any economic sector incapable of competing in its market?
You Want Jobs? I’ll Give You Jobs.
If you’re all that fired up about jobs and economic activity why not build some energy infrastructure to get cheaper natural gas into the state? We’d create jobs to build it, and the added capacity would require more jobs. The money saved from lower electric rates would free up capital for investment (which creates jobs), and better wages and benefits – in parts of the economy where people want to spend their money.
Natural gas infrastructure would demonstrate a long-view on energy stability that would also attract more job creators to the state. Or are you suggesting that burning woodchips is the future of energy? Even environmentalists like natural gas better.
And as I noted here, “if Timber or biomass need the legislature to launder 20 million a year out of the economy to keep it viable, they are not viable. Those jobs need to become jobs the economy needs.”
And getting a court to screw ratepayers to prop up your scheme doesn’t legitimize it. The same goes for education, by the way.
| NHPR