Powering the Future: Why Transmission Planning in New England Matters for Consumers and Communities
This blog is a follow-up to the Acadia Center and National Resource Defense Council’s joint blog from September 2024, available here.
The New England region needs to plan the power grid of the future and build new transmission lines, which carry power from power plants to our homes, schools, and businesses. New transmission lines will help New England meet peak energy demand—which will double in the next century[1]—by allowing new clean energy resources to plug in to the grid and delivering low-cost power across the region. The rate of transmission build-out needs to double by 2032 to achieve a clean energy future.[2]
Not all transmission is created equal, and New England has a problem with too much of the wrong thing: ballooning costs for small, local transmission projects are eclipsing larger, multi-state, high-voltage projects. These small projects slip through regulatory “gaps” and have minimal oversight, costing millions just to maintain the existing system – and with little to no eye toward optimizing rebuilds for the future we need.[3] In contrast, well-planned, large regional lines can address multiple needs at once, saving consumers money. Maintenance of the existing system is important, but it can’t discourage the region from pursuing larger, multi-value projects (i.e., bringing reliability, economic, and public policy benefits).
The New England states realized the importance of large regional transmission, coming together with the regional grid operator, ISO New England (ISO-NE), to create the new “Longer-Term Transmission Planning Process”[4], or LTTP. This process is well underway, and ISO-NE just issued in late March 2025 its first solicitation[5] for transmission solutions that will unlock renewable energy in northern Maine and fix longstanding bottlenecks between northern and southern New England. In Northern Maine, there is critical renewable capacity from onshore wind and solar waiting to be unbottled from existing transmission constraints – which would provide reliable, affordable renewable energy that would flow to ratepayers in Maine and the rest of the region.
A winning project will be selected based on its “benefit to cost” ratio, which must be greater than 1—in other words, benefits must outweigh costs to New England residents. The good news: the six states have already agreed on a means of sharing costs of any LTTP transmission investments based on load allocation, making it a valuable deal for any individual state. Proposals will be published in November 2025, and the ISO and states will move forward with a final selection by September 2026[6]. The ISO and New England states are showing strong leadership, sprinting ahead of other regions to achieve state goals and build transmission that will benefit the region for generations to come.
Transmission projects need meaningful community engagement
Like any big infrastructure project, transmission lines need to consult and engage with the communities they pass through. Insufficient community engagement can exacerbate environmental justice harms and community impacts and cause projects to fail: analysis from the Niskanen Center and the Clean Air Task Force shows that local opposition has contributed to nearly 1/3 of U.S. transmission projects being delayed and/or cancelled.[7] And, 15% of counties nationwide have passed bans, moratoria, or other regulations that effectively limit clean energy;[8] clearly, with these sentiments on the rise, both transmission and other energy infrastructure projects are at-risk without meaningful plans to address community sentiment and preferences. New England is not immune to these trends: community opposition arose as an acute challenge during the last major procurement for new transmission lines in the region (Massachusetts’ 83D procurement in 2018)[9]. Simply put, projects will not be successful without top-notch community engagement.
While ISO-NE’s solicitation states that it will evaluate and credit applicants who submit a community engagement plan, the RFP falls short by not requiring all applicants to submit such a plan. The ISO should solicit projects that are following best practices for community engagement. There are already examples for New England: the Northern Plains Connector project worked with local community foundations to create a community-led philanthropic distribution process[10], and the Vineyard Wind project hired a trusted translator who spoke fluent Portuguese to communicate with the affected community.[11]Without requiring projects to submit robust community engagement plans, the LTTP process risks falling short of its important and meaningful transmission goals.
Other Considerations
Additionally, other important elements are included within the LTTP RFP but could be bolstered, like provisions for grid-enhancing technologies and using existing rights of way. Grid-enhancing technologies encompass multiple software and hardware technologies, but currently the RFP only specifies dynamic line ratings. Grid-enhancing technologies are low-cost and high-efficiency technologies that can make existing and new transmission lines more efficient; including them and incentivizing them more, as well as integrating them with forward-looking weather projections, would make this process even more beneficial for ratepayers. There’s a similar line of thinking for rights of way – utilizing existing rights of way like highways or existing transmission corridors can streamline new transmission permitting, and the RFP could be strengthened by showing in Part 2 that project applicants will be evaluated favorably if they can show the use of an existing right of way (with a potentially faster in-service date).
Conclusion
In sum, the LTTP process is important and is worth paying attention to for the region as it moves along. Bids for the LTTP RFP will be submitted by September 2025, and a summary of the bids will be posted publicly by November 2025. It will be critical for stakeholders to pay attention to the bids selected and see how these hopefully multi-value, robust transmission proposals create a resilient and affordable energy future for the Northeast.
[1] The Energy is About to Shift – Acadia Center and Clean Air Task Force Report. The Energy is About to Shift – Acadia Center
[2] Princeton University, Zero Lab Analysis – Electricity Transmission is Key to Unlock the Full Potential of the IRA. Sept 2022. REPEAT_IRA_Transmission_2022-09-22.pdf
[3] Claire Wayner, Kaja Rebane, and Chaz Teplin, Mind the Regulatory Gap: How to Enhance Local Transmission Oversight, RMI, 2024, https://rmi.org/insight/mind-the-regulatory-gap
[4] Lang-Ree, Claire and Poplavska, Anya, Bridging the Gap: New England’s Transmission Planning and Order 1920. New England’s Transmission Planning Opportunity, September 2024
[5] https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/100021/2025lttprfp_postingannouncement.pdf
[6] Note that some potential flexibility is allocated before and after depending on 1) the number of proposals received and 2) what proposal the states prefer
[7] A closer look at the role of litigation and opposition in transmission projects undergoing federal permitting – Niskanen Center; this analysis examined 37 total projects nationwide according to key criteria
[8] Weise, E., Beard, S., Bhat, S., Radilla, R., Procell, C., & Zaiets, K. (2024, February 27). US counties are blocking the future of renewable energy: These maps, graphics, show how. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/02/04/us-renew able-energy-grid-maps-graphics/72042529007/
[9] 83D – Massachusetts Clean Energy
[10] Community Benefits Snapshot: North Plains Connector Transmission Line Community Engagement and Benefits | World Resources Institute
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