Rep. Reagan Paul (R-Winterport) sent a letter to Maine’s Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Secretary James Danly on Monday, asking the department to examine and publish the true costs of Maine’s green energy push.

“The persistent claim that wind and solar are the cheapest form of generation makes for an effective talking point, but it does not hold up when customers pay their bills. While utilities are often blamed for rising rates, it is in fact the underlying generation resource choices that are driving these cost increases,” said Paul’s letter.

According to Paul, the DOE energy cost assessments often quoted in policy fail to include a variety of expenses that lead to rising energy costs for Maine consumers.

These costs, often referred to as “system effects” include the costs of compensating for low effective capacity, increased maintenance costs, energy grid upgrades required by intermittent energy production, additional transmission infrastructure, and battery replacements.

While those costs have a very real impact for Maine ratepayers, they do not factor into data cited by left-wing lawmakers, who claim that green energy sources like solar and wind are cheap and effective.

“These are real costs showing up in your electric bill right now — often buried in ‘public policy’ charges, stranded costs, shifting accounting definitions, or spread across ratepayers so politicians can continue claiming wind and solar are ‘cheap,’” said Paul in a social media post.

The letter requests that the DOE issue guidance to affirm the importance of evaluating the hidden costs to assist lawmakers in making informed energy policy decisions.

The letter received support from other Republican legislative members of the Energy, Utilities, and Technology Committee.

In her social media post about the letter, Paul highlighted the recently passed “climate superfund” bill that will use hundreds of thousands of dollars to retroactively come up with a cost to associate with greenhouse gas emissions going back to 1995.