The Connecticut Mirror | Can New England’s vision for its electric grid survive Trump 2.0?
January 16, 2025
"If Katie Dykes has said it once, she’s said it a dozen times since Election Day. 'I’m not going to conjecture about what the new administration will do.'
Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner will not engage in a guessing game about what a second Trump administration might defund, deregulate or flat-out kill when it comes to clean energy, including plans to modernize and expand power on the six-state New England grid. She is happy, however, to talk about transmission in the grid.
'The New England states have reached a historic agreement about ways to share the costs of transmission for accessing some of these resources that are meeting our public policy goals, growing our energy supply,' she said.
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Melissa Birchard knows a thing or two about that. A recent alum of the Grid Deployment Office during Biden’s term, as well as a one-time climate activist in New England, she is now with the Georgetown Climate Center. She also thinks state action will be critical.
'They’ve seen this before, and they know the playbook. The states are well positioned to continue to lead,' she said. 'I don’t think that there’s any stopping the advanced energy economy at this point, simply because the market is very strong.'”