In the first week of March, the Trump administration imposed a 10% tariff on all Canadian energy products, poised to impact electricity imports that New England is seasonally reliant on.
In response, New Hampshire’s regional energy sector providers and advocates say there are a lot of unknowns surrounding the move, but one thing is certain:
“I don’t think anybody’s going to be without natural gas or fuel oil, but it will get more expensive as the result of tariffs,” said Donald Kreis, the state’s consumer advocate within the independent Office of the Consumer Advocate.
Data from ISO New England (ISO-NE), a nonprofit organization that manages the region’s electric grid, including connections to Canada, shows that roughly 9% of New England’s annual electricity was imported from Canada in 2024. That power chiefly comes from New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, but Kreis said Quebec is the Granite State’s primary trading partner for electricity and Alberta for natural gas.
New Hampshire, like neighboring states, has historically bought from provincial public utility Hydro-Québec, but ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Canada have fractured what has for decades been a free trade of energy.
“One unknown is how much of the tariff the suppliers on the Canadian side of the border might be willing to absorb for the continued opportunity to do business with purchasers in the U.S.,” Kreis said. “There’s some possibility that Hydro-Québec might say, ‘We’ll eat some of that,’ but I don’t think they will.’”
That’s because while the eastern Canadian province imported nearly 65% of last year’s total imports, Kreis said there are signs that Hydro-Québec’s “era of abundance” has ended.
“(It’s) a pretty loud signal to folks like us down here in New England that we can no longer depend on them as a ready source of relatively cheap electricity,” he said.
ISO-NE’s data seems to indicate similarly.
The organization determined that imports of Canadian energy met 5% of New England’s demand in 2024, down from about 11% in 2023, spokesperson Matthew Kakley wrote in an email to NH Business Review.
“This decline was largely attributed to drought conditions in Canada,” he said.
A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that New England is most reliant on Canadian imports in the winter. The region imported over 2 gigawatts of power during peak demand hours ranging from Dec. 22 to Jan. 17.
ISO-NE’s current position is that it doesn’t expect reduced imports to cause significant reliability issues in other seasons; however, Kakley said they could pose issues during these peak months.
“It’s possible that under very cold winter conditions, supplies in New England could become tight, but that would hinge on many factors that are difficult to project this far out,” he wrote. “If imports were reduced, we would anticipate calling on more generation within New England.”
With that said, Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH, has pondered whether there might be a greater incentive to generate more power domestically through new development projects.
But infrastructure is a long-term investment, and Evans-Brown said he feels the situation would ease before reaching that level.
“There’s no guarantee that these tariffs are actually going to be longstanding policy,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to drive any investors to make any decision to build more things here locally unless there’s some measure of stability we start to see developing over the next number of years.”
Still, he said tariffs could be “a windfall” for existing power plants because “higher costs for consumers means more revenue for the generators.”
Local utility providers told NH Business Review that it’s too soon to predict whether tariffs on Canadian imports will raise their consumers’ energy bills. Eversource External Communications Director William Hinkle said the company’s rates are locked in from Feb. 1 to July 31 and then recalculated based on market conditions on Aug. 1.
Unitil’s Alec O’Meara, director of external affairs, likewise said its electric rates will remain unchanged until the start of August but that the situation could differ for gas rates.
“There is some flexibility for supply rates to be adjusted mid-season when there are outside factors that occur,” O’Meara said. “If a tariff were to go into effect on April 2, the soonest any change to gas supply could take effect would be May 1. However, gas rates for heating customers typically drop off (then).”
Irving Oil, a New Brunswick-based company, exports the majority of the 80% of Canadian imported gas and diesel supply in New England, according to the New England-Canada Business Council. A company spokesperson did not take questions but shared a statement published on Irving’s website on Feb. 2.
“This tariff will result in price increases for our U.S. customers and have impacts on energy security and the broader economy,” a portion of the statement read.
“Given the importance of safeguarding the energy supply chain, we urge all stakeholders within government and industry to come together and work toward a resolution as soon as possible.
