Cdn. renewable energy may have Massachusetts market

A request by the state of Massachusetts for a supply of clean, renewable electricity could give a boost to proposals to carry Canadian renewable energy to southern New England via proposed transmission lines in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

There are a handful of proposals across the three states designed to help energy-hungry states Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut make use of the renewable energy available in Canada and experts say the Massachusetts request gives a huge boost to those efforts.

“This one feels real,” said Kerrick Johnson, vice-president of the Vermont Electric Power Company, which manages the electrical distribution system in the state.

For years, the southern New England states, faced with the need for new sources of clean power, have been looking for sources of renewable electricity.

As part of that effort last summer, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signed a law requiring the state to solicit long-term contracts with offshore wind farm developers to bring at least 1,600 megawatts of wind energy, enough to power about 240,000 homes, to the state and 1,200 megawatts of renewable energy, including hydropower, onshore wind and solar power.

A number of Canadian utilities have hydro-electric, wind and solar projects that can produce electricity that they would like to sell to the southern New England states and New York. But the challenge has been to get that power from Canada to those areas.

There are a handful of transmission proposals in the three states that could carry that power south.

On March 31, five Massachusetts electric utilities and the state’s Department of Energy Resources issued a request for proposals for projects that would provide the 1,200 megawatts of power.