We take great pride in protecting our environment. We believe it is our duty to maintain a safe and healthy ecosystem; in fact, this is one of our core values. Building a safe, reliable transmission system which has a minimal impact on the environment is a key goal for the projects we undertake. That means using the most advanced land and vegetation management practices available along our rights-of-way.
New England is challenged to meet the growing need for electricity for our customers. Increasing the grid's capacity to transmit power is one way to meet the growing need and enable renewable generation. Upgrading transmission lines connects customers to modern, state-of-the-art generation plants, while reducing the need to run older, less-efficient power plants.
Cleaner environment
New power lines reduce air emissions including nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) by connecting customers to power plants that may:
- generate renewable energy
- use clean natural gas as the modern fuel of choice; and
- apply the best emission control technology available today to reduce stack emissions
Transmission rights-of-way vegetation management
NU manages nearly 1,900 miles of transmission rights-of-way in Connecticut, western Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The company embraces a strong environmental ethic, which drives best construction and vegetation management practices in these rights-of-way. In addition, NU targets only a small list of plant species for treatment or removal to ensure the safety and reliability of our transmission lines. Our vegetation management group selectively applies herbicides at an average of seven-tenths of a pound per acre. Both the herbicide products and the application methods are environmentally sound and provide the optimum level of control of targeted plant species, while protecting and preserving the natural habitats on the rights-of-way. The products we use, in many cases, are also approved for vegetation management projects around public water supplies.
