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New England’s wholesale electricity prices would have been 11% lower last winter if some offshore wind projects that had been contracted but not built were finished, according to a new report.

The report, published last week by consulting firm Daymark Energy Advisors, found that if a handful of projects off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — totaling about 3,500 megawatts of capacity — had been online by the winter, they could have produced enough energy to power more than 560,000 homes for a year while reducing the wholesale costs across the region by roughly $400 million.

Wholesale electricity includes power bought by distribution utilities to then be sold to ratepayers, so while that figure does not directly reflect prices on electricity bills, the savings could trickle down to ratepayers.

Those cost reductions could equate to between $1.32 and $2.68 per month for customers of Eversource, which serves customers in Boston. The report did not calculate what the cost savings could have been for Maine ratepayers.

The study comes as the Trump administration is rolling back offshore wind development, including by terminating a slew of offshore wind projects last week and, in August, halting a nearly completed project off the coast of Rhode Island.

Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy program director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, criticized federal attempts to undermine offshore wind and other renewable energy sources.

“Undermining clean energy development takes money out of the pockets of Maine people and keeps it flowing out of state to pay for expensive fossil fuel power,” Shapiro said in a written statement Thursday.

Maine does not have any large-scale commercial offshore wind in operation. A number of projects were put on ice earlier this year, including a proposed wind farm in the Gulf of Maine.

The federal government sold five offshore wind leases in the gulf in October. In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order halting new offshore leases and ordering reviews, which could lead to amendments or terminations of already-inked leases.

Daniel Kool is the Portland Press Herald's utilities reporter, covering electricity, gas, broadband - anything you get a bill for. He also covers the impact of tariffs on Maine and picks up the odd business...

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