WALTHAM — The Vermont Green Line recently announced a new partnership with Citizens Energy Corporation to assist low-income Vermont residents with their energy needs.
By becoming an owner in the Vermont Green Line alongside National Grid, Citizens Energy will finance its share of the line and use its profits, in concert with the project partners, to help working families and others in need in Vermont.
Citizens Energy partners with utilities and developers across the country to develop new high-voltage transmission lines. Under its model, Citizens Energy’s projects — now including the Vermont Green Line — increase grid reliability, unlock access to large quantities of renewable energy and fund charitable programs for people living in the area, all at no additional cost to ratepayers.
The Vermont Green Line is being developed by Anbaric and National Grid, which joined forces in 2014 to develop transmission lines. Their alliance is developing the Vermont Green Line, a proposed 60-mile, 400 mega-watt HVDC transmission line linking wind and hydropower resources north and west of Beekmantown, New York, with New Haven, Vermont, with a cable to be buried along public roadways and submerged beneath the waters of Lake Champlain.
In California, Citizens has used profits from its ownership stake in the $1.9 billion Sunrise Powerlink line to install photovoltaic solar systems on the rooftops of low-income families in the Imperial Valley, the poorest region of the state, at no cost to homeowners. The Solar Homes program has allowed households to cut their energy costs significantly and make air-conditioning more affordable in a region where summer temperatures soar over 110 degrees, and pose health risks to seniors, young children and other vulnerable citizens.