ACTT Endorses Pine Tree Power
On November 7, Mainers will vote on a statewide ballot question to create a consumer-owned utility called the Pine Tree Power Company. A Climate to Thrive has formally endorsed Pine Tree Power.
Today’s clean energy transition provides the opportunity to develop renewable energy systems that are more resilient, equitable, reliable, and affordable than our current for-profit, investor-owned grid infrastructure. Much of A Climate to Thrive’s work seeks to harness these opportunities through responsible project siting, genuine community ownership, and targeted grid strengthening to build local energy resilience and independence as climate challenges worsen.
Successfully navigating the clean energy transition in a way that prioritizes Maine communities requires partnering with many stakeholders. Our local utility companies are among the most important of these partners. Through their control of the poles and wires that distribute electricity, our utilities can either significantly accelerate – or hinder – the transition to renewable energy. Additionally, the utility can plan and prioritize in a manner that ensures that the transition is beneficial to all ratepayers, or they can deprioritize planning, ensuring that ratepayers suffer increased outages and higher electric bills. Deprioritizing the transition to renewables harms ratepayers in at least two major ways: they miss out on opportunities created under a well-planned and supported energy transformation, and they are forced to rely on an outdated grid that hinders renewable energy development and is unprepared for extreme weather events that climate change is already bringing.
When the Maine Public Utilities Commission considered ENMAX, Versant Power’s parent-company’s application to purchase what was then Emera Maine, A Climate to Thrive intervened, after we had conversations with ENMAX during which leadership spoke enthusiastically about planning for the grid of the future. As an intervenor, we supported the application while calling on the utility to prioritize planning for the renewable energy transition in order to harness the abundant opportunities that lay ahead for Maine ratepayers.
This type of planning on the part of a utility requires innovative thinking, flexibility, and a strong commitment to consumers first. While the work involved is beneficial for all ratepayers, it is not always the most immediately beneficial pathway for investors. For example, supporting distributed generation of renewable energy, the type that is most likely to be owned by communities, requires upgrades to the local distribution system. These types of upgrades provide significant benefits to local ratepayers, as they ensure a cleaner, more reliable distribution system that is less costly to maintain. However, these types of upgrades are not as beneficial to investors, who receive a much higher return on investment to more costly upgrades to larger transmission lines.
Over the years since our intervention in Versant Power’s purchase of Emera, we have worked with the utility to try to partner around the type of planning and projects that would significantly benefit ratepayers. Unfortunately, to date, we have not seen the utility rise to this occasion with the vision, innovation, or priorities required. Instead, we have seen Versant Power repeatedly block or stall the interconnection of renewable energy projects, including many smaller-scale and community-owned projects, by either denying interconnection applications or saddling projects with insurmountable interconnection costs. We have seen the utility show up to integrated grid planning conversations with a significant lack of vision or motivation to change.
There have been moments of effective partnership. We have been grateful to Versant Power for letters of support in grant applications, for their work promoting heat pumps, and for engaging in conversation and listening to our concerns. However, actions are more powerful than words, and, to date, we have experienced a disconcerting lack of action on the part of Versant Power when it comes to transitioning reliably and affordably off fossil fuels.
This lack of action has fed our growing concern that Versant’s service territory will not effectively transition to clean energy and that its ratepayers will correspondingly suffer higher costs and less reliability. We cannot delay this transition any further. We need a utility company that champions transforming the electricity grid through the following actions:
Prioritizing the interconnection of distributed renewable energy sources through a transparent, efficient, affordable, and cooperative process;
Releasing dynamic hosting capacity maps that allow communities and contractors to strategically and responsibly site renewable energy projects;
Prioritizing the distribution upgrades that are necessary to build toward the interactive, two-way grid of the future;
Prioritizing and efficiently implementing energy storage and smart grid technology pilot programs to more effectively manage electricity demand;
Building a robust workforce of innovative thinkers capable of effectively planning and executing the clean energy transition;
Advocating for public policies and a regulatory framework that will enable this transition to unfold in a manner that benefits all Maine ratepayers; and
Actively educating and preparing ratepayers to participate effectively in the transition to renewable energy, beyond heat pump installation (an important step, but just a step and one that primarily serves the interests of the utility by increasing electrical use).
We know utilities can do all of this. We see positive examples of leadership elsewhere, including at Green Mountain Power in neighboring Vermont.
Consumer-owned utilities are not a new concept. In fact, there are thousands of consumer-owned utilities throughout the country in the form of non-profit electric cooperatives and municipal utilities. And they often overlap with lower-cost power, more effective management of the transition to renewable energy, greater resiliency, and far more citizen input and control. In fact, the first six communities in the United States to reach 100% renewable energy all operate consumer-owned utilities: Greensburg, Kansas; Georgetown, Texas; Kodiak Island, Alaska; Rock Port, Missouri; Aspen, Colorado; and Burlington, Vermont.
It is for these reasons that, after careful consideration, A Climate to Thrive has decided to endorse Pine Tree Power, Maine’s citizens’ ballot initiative to create a statewide consumer-owned utility. We have been impressed with the thoughtfulness with which this initiative has approached planning for a consumer-owned utility and the dedication to both Maine ratepayers and climate solutions. Pine Tree Power, as a consumer-owned utility, would be less-costly to operate, with far more attractive financing options for grid-of-the-future technologies (due to the utility’s nonprofit status) as well as the simple fact that there would no longer be the need to send a significant percentage of the profit to corporate shareholders. Maine economist, Dr. Richard Silkman, estimates $9 billion in savings to Mainers just over 30 years
As part of our endorsement, we want to be sure community members have the opportunity to learn more about Pine Tree Power – and to ask questions – before the vote in November. We will be hosting several educational events to provide this opportunity. The first will take place on Wednesday, September 13 from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. at the Jesup Memorial Library with the options to attend in-person or to join virtually. The second will take place virtually as our October “Climate Chat” on Friday, October 6th at 12:00 PM.
In closing, we share the following quote from the folks working on the ballot initiative and encourage readers to turn to the Pine Tree Power website for more information.
On November 7, Mainers will vote on a statewide ballot question to create a consumer-owned utility called the Pine Tree Power Company. When we win, we’ll get a nonprofit utility company owned by and for Mainers. It will save Mainers $367 a year, bring local control to our electric grid, and reduce outages. Most importantly, Pine Tree Power is Maine's most impactful move to meet the unique challenges we face in moving to a decarbonized society.
Our campaign will be won by the dedicated labor of thousands of Mainers knocking on doors, making calls, and talking to their neighbors about the importance of voting YES on Question 3 this November. Join us virtually to learn more about the campaign and help us win by signing up for our Monday Movement Calls.