BOSTON – September 14, 2026 – Recently, the New England for Offshore Wind coalition, spearheaded by its Transmission Working Group, submitted public comments in response to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2026 Draft Transmission Needs Study.

Led by Erin Smith, Energy and Grid Policy Director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, 18 New England for Offshore Wind member organizations submitted comments advocating for thoughtful transmission planning that expands interregional transmission, considers offshore transmission configurations, and accurately accounts for offshore wind in its resource adequacy analysis. Through their comments, members demonstrated the essential role of responsibly built transmission to modernizing the New England electric grid and efficiently delivering energy where it is needed, when it is needed most.

The comments focus largely on ensuring New England and New York’s shifting load growth and resource mix is acknowledged in the final study. Both systems over the course of the next few years will shift to a winter peaking grid and will need long term transmission and resource planning that adequately meets this shift.

“DOE’s Draft Transmission Needs Study correctly found that increased interregional transmission between New England and New York would have been among the nation’s most valuable links for reducing transmission congestion. But a study grounded in data that ended in 2023 cannot fully capture the future transmission needs to accommodate the Northeast’s rapidly changing resource mix, including nearly 1.5 GW of offshore wind that has come online since 2024,” said Erin Smith. “DOE’s final study should include a forward-looking assessment that considers offshore transmission configurations capable of delivering offshore wind to shore and of strengthening transfer capability between the regions. NE4OSW submitted comments to DOE to elevate the importance of the grid solutions capable of delivering the winter reliability and resource adequacy benefits of offshore wind across the Northeast.”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Draft Study is based on historical data that ends in 2023, and does not consider the contribution of active offshore wind projects to grid reliability, which, as argued by the Working Group, ignores an important and sizeable fraction of supply of energy, since offshore wind performs best in the winter months.
Members also suggested that offshore transmission configurations are necessary to both bring energy to shore as well as unlock additional interregional transfer capacity.

With ISO-New England and NYISO both facing increasing electric demand, enhancing each region’s ability to share resources during periods of grid strain is an imperative part of future transmission planning. New England’s load size alone is expected to double by 2050 and with New York’s offshore fleet expected to grow over the course of the next decade, there must be systems in place to bring those resources to the grid and disperse them interregionally.

Not only does this reduce resource curtailment but reduces the cost of building new transmission structures for one region when that cost could be shared across state and regional borders.

The group is strongly aligned with the Draft Study’s goals of identifying needs for additional regional and interregional transmission for better accommodation of load growth and maintained resource adequacy. Members assert, however, that these goals cannot be realized without their suggested amendments to the study.