Hopes for a renewable energy park to be developed appear to be dashed, at least for now.

The partnership hoping to open the park, which had three options on land in town including a 50-acre parcel owned by the school district, has pulled the plug on those options this week.

Josh Levine, project manager for North Country Renewable Energy, a partnership of renewable energy development firms Tamarack Energy and XGenesys Development Corporation, said Friday the venture on hold.

The reason, Levine said, is the transmission lines in the North Country are not able to accept the level of power that would be generated from the venture, which had already been given the name Groveton Renewable Energy Park.

Levine said the project is in line behind two wind generation projects in the approval process as well as for connecting to the power grid transmission system in the region.

The capacity issues, though, make it impossible at this point for a project the magnitude that was proposed to go forward until major, multi-million dollar investments are made to upgrade the transmission system.

Levine said North Country Renewable Energy had spent between $1 million and $1.5 million to develop the Groveton Renewable Energy Park, and cannot continue to dump money into a venture which seems fiscally not possible at this juncture.

He said the firm is hoping that down the road - and sooner rather than later - that the government, including the state of New Hampshire, will forge partnerships to help pay the cost of infrastructure improvements needed to make more alternative energy projects and economic improvements possible in Coos County.

The company had hopes to build a 75-megawatt biomass facility which would be co-located with a biofuels production plant. It had also hoped to bring jobs to the displaced paper workers in the region, which is hurting for decent jobs because of several major plant closures in the past two years, most recently at Wausau in Groveton.

Charlotte Sheltry, president of the Groveton Regional Economic Action Team, said representatives from the company sat down with GREAT officials to share the bad news.

"On Tuesday, we went up and met with the landowners and the GREAT organization," he said of the firm's decision to back out on the three separate land options with the school system and two other landowners.

He said that the cost to upgrade the transmission system is between $50 and $70 million, too much for the company to handle.

Levine said the firm is not totally giving up on the idea - and has met many times with state officials from the Public Utilities Commission and regional officials, and is staying in the queue, hoping that the project may eventually come on line. But not now, not with the current capacity and financial issues looming, he said.

"Our feeling is that there is not going to be a solution that's going to happen in a time frame that can make the project work from an economic standpoint," Levine said Friday. "We're not abandoning the project, but we can't put any more money into this project right now. If something changes from an infrastructure standpoint, we'll be back up there."