This story was originally produced by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an independent local newsroom that allows NHPR and other outlets to republish its reporting.
Two proposals to allow New Hampshire utilities to take a more active role in producing power for the grid were endorsed by their respective chambers last week.
The bills are among others put forward this session as a way to bring down New Hampshire’s high energy costs. But what they propose has polarized lawmakers and energy experts: While some say the move would reduce costs by incentivizing the development of flexible power in New Hampshire, others say it would restore a partial power-market monopoly to utilities, sending bills soaring higher.
Senate Bill 447, from prime sponsor and Nashua Republican Sen. Kevin Avard, includes a package of energy proposals, including one that would open the door for utilities to own “advanced” nuclear reactors up to 300 megawatts in capacity. It passed by voice vote on the Senate floor Thursday.
Meanwhile, House Bill 1775, from prime sponsor and South Hampton Republican Rep. JD Bernardy, proposes allowing utilities to own fossil fuel and nuclear generators, though it also includes a 5 megawatt cap. It passed the full House for the second time Thursday, 198-153.
Each bill will now cross over to the other chamber for hearings, debate, and at least one more vote. Debate so far has touched on the history of how power is produced and sold in New Hampshire, and whether changing that paradigm will help or hurt ratepayers’ wallets.
Utilities were barred from owning the means of power generation in New Hampshire beginning in 1996, after the construction of Seabrook Station nuclear power plant, initially a project of Public Service Company of New Hampshire (now Eversource), went billions over budget.
Ratepayers were left with that bill. So the idea to separate public utilities from potentially expensive generation projects was intended to “take the business risk associated with facilities like that off the backs of ratepayers, residential ratepayers in particular,” said New Hampshire Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis, commenting on HB 1775 earlier this month.
The proposal would amount to “walking back restructuring and letting the utilities rebuild their vertically integrated public utility empires,” he said then.
During floor debate on the bill last Thursday, Lebanon Democratic Rep. Thomas Cormen said, “This bill moves the risk back to the ratepayers.”
If utilities are allowed to build generators, they can recover the cost through the rates charged to New Hampshire ratepayers. Cormen said this guaranteed cost recovery would allow utilities to enter the power supply market without risk, giving them an unfair advantage and adding a burden to ratepayers.
But advocates for both HB 1775 and SB 447 say utilities are already allowed to own some generation from renewable sources under 5 megawatts in size, such as moderate wind or solar arrays. (The only utility that has, so far, taken the state up on that is Unitil, which owns a 4.9 megawatt solar array in Kingston.)
Critics of wind and solar argue they are intermittent sources of power that rely on environmental conditions, as opposed to gas or nuclear, which are referred to as “dispatchable,” meaning they operate on-demand. During floor debate on HB 1775, Rep. Carol McGuire, an Epsom Republican, said electric rates were rising because the regional power supply was becoming less reliable overall as the resource mix evolves.
But others argue that prioritizing renewable energy is key to lowering costs in the long and short term while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. An analysis released this year by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that offshore wind power, which New Hampshire has taken pains to distance itself from, will help make the New England grid more reliable, particularly on high-use days in winter that tend to coincide with high-wind-speed events like winter storms.
McGuire also said that generating more power locally would reduce transmission costs, something proponents of distributed renewable generation tend to agree with.
But Kreis said allowing utilities to own gas and nuclear generation is far different than allowing them to own wind or solar.
“Nuclear and gas generation is sort of a different animal altogether,” he said.
This is not the first time the topic has come up.
SB 447 mirrors the Senate’s proposed amendment to a House bill from last year, House Bill 710, which failed after the House rejected some of the Senate’s proposed changes. The amended version of HB 710 also sought to allow utilities to own “advanced nuclear resources,” including small modular reactors, up to 300 megawatts in capacity.
That’s in line with the projected capacity of the “small modular reactor” designs currently in development in the U.S., though none are yet approved or commercially available here.
SB 447 also contends that facilitating more reliable, base-load electricity generation in New Hampshire would help lower rates. As approved by the Senate, the bill also includes measures that would benefit some solar producers, including a proposal to raise the cap on the total amount of projects that can qualify as low-moderate income solar projects in a given year.
It also seeks to extend the ability of utilities to enter into multi-year, rather than shorter-term, energy contracts of up to 20 years, a market change first implemented in 2023. That enabling legislation expired in 2025; SB 447 seeks to extend it through 2040.
The contracts are specific to new generators, or additions to existing generation. The idea was initially billed as a way to support the development of new renewable energy projects and stabilize consumer prices by allowing utilities to lock in contracts with new generators, according to reporting at the time from InDepthNH.
On Thursday, Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, a Democrat from Nashua, said she was worried that long-term contracts would harm ratepayers by locking them into unfavorable terms if market conditions change unexpectedly.
“If New Hampshire enters into a bad deal, ratepayers will be stuck for decades,” she said, comparing such a circumstance to the prolonged impact of Seabrook Station on ratepayers.
But Sen. David Watters, a Democrat from Dover, advocated for the bill’s passage.
By extending the enabling legislation and adding advanced nuclear to the types of power sources that utilities could use it to pursue, the bill “reflects a productive, a proactive strategy to stabilize energy prices and increase energy reliability in our state,” Watters said.
Both HB 1775 and SB 447 will now receive hearings and debate in the next chamber.
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