Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor and columnist for 41 years. His biography of Gov. Ken Curtis, “Transformational,” is now available. He welcomes comment at [email protected].
If all goes well, Maine will host a gigantic wind farm in southeastern Aroostook County by sometime in the 2030s, producing electricity for the New England grid and advancing the shift to renewable energy the world desperately needs to stave off the worst effects of now-inevitable global warming.
Last month, Maine Public Utilities Commission Chair Phil Bartlett announced the selection of San Francisco-based Clearway Energy to build a 800-megawatt wind farm. That follows a failed 2023 effort by New York City-based LS Power for a similar contract, following legislative approval of then-Senate President Troy Jackson’s bill authorizing it in 2021.
LS Power ran into difficulties when it tried to secure landowner agreements for transmission lines two years after Maine voters approved a 2021 referendum to block construction of a western Maine power line to convey power from Hydro-Quebec’s James Bay dams to Massachusetts.
The 60% majority came even though Massachusetts ratepayers were paying the entire bill, and Maine stood to benefit by $500 million. The line was ultimately built only because Avangrid, parent company of Central Maine Power, had done enough work to create “vested rights,” the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled.
Further muddying the waters, Maine voters considered, and rejected, a 2023 referendum to turn over CMP’s transmission operations to a new cooperative, Pine Tree Power. Suffice it to say the atmosphere for large new Maine utility projects is far from tranquil.
In the latest round, the PUC is seeking to avoid controversy by routing transmission largely — though not entirely — through existing utility corridors. The prospective Aroostook line would be also be built by Avangrid, which has had more success in construction than in managing CMP, whose previous missteps drew consumer ire reflected in the referendum bids.
This would be a mammoth transmission project, comparable to the 1,200-megawatt Hydro Quebec line. The PUC plans to deal with its demands by making it a New England-wide project.
It’s big. Avangrid bid $2.2 billion, and while Clearway’s costs haven’t been determined, they’ll easily exceed $1 billion; by comparison, the Hydro-Quebec line cost $1.5 billion. This would be among Maine’s largest-ever infrastructure projects, doubling its wind energy capacity.
Maine would pay 11% of the total costs — but receive only 11% of the benefits. And that could be a problem.
Despite their other disagreements, Mainers seem united in resentment against large corporations and bigger states directing the future. Across New England, Maine has the lion’s share of capacity for new wind and solar generation; citizen and landowner opposition is just too fierce in densely populated southern New England.
The major alternative, ocean-based wind, was shut down by the Trump administration, and even when construction resumes, it will cost far more than land-based generation, an important consideration amid an “affordability” crisis.
So if Maine has most of the viable sites, why shouldn’t it not get more of the rewards? The PUC’s reasoning is that Maine is too small to finance such ventures, and in relying on bids from private developers, that’s true.
But Maine has an alternative. Other states siting large new generation facilities have created public power authorities — to plan, operate and in some cases own these assets. Voters considered, but rejected a public power authority back in 1973 after intensive lobbying by CMP, but the idea could be viable now.
Maine hasn’t created anything this ambitious in recent decades, but that wasn’t always so. In the 1940s, lawmakers authorized the Maine Turnpike Authority as only the second state to build an interstate-style toll road, and the MTA remains a model for effective financing and operations. A Maine power authority would answer a comparable need.
Major decisions await the next governor. Phil Bartlett has resigned as PUC chair less than two years into his second six-year term. The Department of Energy Resources, moved from the Governor’s Office to the Cabinet in 2025, has yet to have a permanent commissioner.
With so much at stake, it’s only common sense to study the prospects for public power, so beneficial elsewhere and so rare in New England; Maine has only one small electric cooperative in Washington County and a few municipal departments.
The advantages could be compelling. A public entity can borrow at lower interest rates thanks to tax-free bonds. It requires no profit or rate of return — an oft-criticized feature of private utilities like CMP.
And unlike the rejected 2023 referendum requiring wholesale replacement of a century-old company, this power authority would break new ground and create new assets for Maine and its people. It’s too good an opportunity to ignore.