Maine Jury Clears the Way for Mass.-Critical Transmission Project

A Maine jury ruled unanimously Thursday that an electric corridor project once dubbed key to Massachusetts climate goals can proceed a year and a half after voters sought to halt the effort.

Jurors voted 9-0 to clear the way for Central Maine Power, a subsidiary of Avangrid, to resume work on a massive transmission project that will carry hydroelectric power from Quebec to Massachusetts, according to news outlet Maine Public.

“The jury’s unanimous verdict affirms the prior rulings of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) project may lawfully proceed,” Avangrid Senior Vice President and General Counsel Scott Mahoney said in a statement. “Even after repeated delays and the costs caused by the change in law, the NECEC project remains the best way to bring low-cost renewable energy to Maine and New England while removing millions of metric tons of carbon from our atmosphere each year.”

The transmission lines would fulfill part of a 2016 Massachusetts clean energy law, which directed Bay State utilities to procure about 1,200 megawatts of hydroelectric power as part of an effort to green the grid.

Maine voters in November 2021 approved a ballot question retroactively banning construction of hogh-impact electric transmission lines in the Upper Kennebec Region, casting serious doubt over the project’s fate.

In a lengthy legal fight that led to Thursday’s jury decision, developers argued that they should be allowed to proceed because they had already spent roughly $450 million on the work — which had been fully approved by Maine regulators — before the ballot question’s passage.