Our friends in Augusta seem to have forgotten one of life’s fundamental Rules: To get out of a hole, the first step is to STOP DIGGING!
When it comes to electricity, Maine has dug itself into a serious hole: we use far more electricity than we generate and our electric bills are extremely high. Like a real hole in the ground, we got this deep shovelful by shovelful, including by closing Maine Yankee, requiring CMP and Bangor Hydro to cease generating electricity (called deregulation), reducing hydropower by removing dams, passing the Net Energy Billing law, joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), subsidizing the installation of over 100,000 heat pumps, pushing Mainers to buy EVs, etc. With each shovelful Maine either produced less electricity or used more electricity or increased the cost of electricity. As with a real hole, the deeper you dig, more likely something bad, like a cave-in, will happen. Maine is now in the danger zone.
Based on a recent report by The Brattle Group, Maine’s new Department of Energy Resources (DOER) says they have a plan to get out of the hole before it collapses. Here it is:
· Accelerating clean energy development so that volatile natural gas prices have less impact (on price of electricity)
· Adopting what the report calls “load flexibility,” which means shifting some demand, like EV charging, to off-peak hours when there is a lower demand for electricity
· Continuing the electrification of home heating (i.e. installing heat pumps)
Let’s look at each of these three solutions:
Accelerating clean energy development really means building more wind farms. There may come a day, many years from now, when offshore wind is feasible in Maine. But for at least the next decade, any new windmills will be on land. The problem is the windy places where a new windfarm might make sense are in Aroostook County. But there are no wires that run from The Country down to southern Maine where the electricity is needed. And, any new powerline will face the same NIMBY and tree-hugger opposition that delayed the NECEC for five years. In fact, the first iteration of the Aroostook Country Connect has already been scrapped due to landowner opposition. In summary, solution one is, at best, many years away.
Load Flexibility is just a new name for reducing the demand for electricity (the load) during peak hours. If you are my age, you probably remember “Kilowatt Savings Time” (KST). The idea was that, when demand exceeded supply, the ringing KST alarm clock would appear on the TV screen, signally people to postpone running their dishwasher, clothes dryer, and hot water heater until later at night, when the demand for electricity was lower. Whether you call this strategy Kilowatt Savings Time, or Demand Response, or load leveling, or Load Flexibility, it’s all the same thing. Except, today, the list of things to postpone doing includes charging EVs. I don’t see asking Mainers to voluntarily conserve electricity as a legitimate strategy.
And that brings us to number three: Continuing the electrification of home heating. Or said another way, continue swapping oil furnaces for heat pumps that run on electricity! One of the ways Maine dug itself into this hole was by increasing the demand for electricity by pushing “electrification” without a plan to generate the added electricity needed to power the additional heat pumps and EVs. According to the First Rule of Holes, if you want to get out of a hole, the first step is to STOP DIGGING!
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