Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

When he took office in 2011, Gov. Paul LePage seemed ambivalent about the wind energy projects being constructed around the state, chiefly in Washington County and western Maine. They were set in motion by legislation signed in 2003 by his predecessor, John Baldacci.

LePage soon turned against them, however, and no more turbines were approved.

Maine didn’t achieve the 3,000-megawatt goal Baldacci had set, and the state now has 923 megawatts in place. Turbine developers instead shifted their resources to the Great Plains, with major installations from the Dakotas south to Texas. Nonetheless, wind accounts for about a quarter of the electricity produced in Maine.  

Now, Maine has the opportunity for a giant leap forward in windpower, more than doubling its capacity. It’s called Aroostook Wind, which at an initial size of 1,200 megawatts equals Hydro Quebec’s contribution to the Massachusetts grid that has flowed through Maine since January. Turbine technology has greatly improved since the earlier models installed here, with enormous towers expected that are far more efficient and can operate in lighter winds.

Aroostook is especially well adapted to these advances, since windspeeds are particularly strong at night — when solar arrays, which have seen substantial expansion in Maine over the past decade, are not producing.

All the New England states except New Hampshire have renewable energy mandates, and Maine’s is the most ambitious — 100% carbon-neutral electricity by 2040. Aroostook Wind and other potential projects are by far the cheapest and fastest way of meeting those requirements, coming in at about one-third the price of recent projections for offshore wind.

Yet only a small fraction of these enormous public benefits will be realized under the current RFP (request for proposal) put out to bid by the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Following an earlier RFP where the bidder withdrew because of escalating costs, the PUC has decided the project won’t be owned by Maine, but will effectively be shared throughout New England.

The specific provision requires that Aroostook power be offered to all participating states under exactly the same terms and pricing as Maine. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that most of the electricity will flow to Massachusetts and Connecticut, which together have nearly 10 times the population of Maine. Former State Planning Director Richard Silkman has accurately described this PUC decision as “regulatory malpractice.”

Control of our own energy infrastructure was exactly the issue that led to the near-defeat of the NECEC line carrying Hydro Quebec power south to Massachusetts, with 60% of voters rejecting it in a 2021 referendum, even though Maine will receive about $500 million in benefits. Only the timing of the referendum, after construction had begun, saved the project, with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling that its builders had “vested rights.”

When the news spreads that the Maine PUC plans to export most of Aroostook Wind’s power without significant benefits to the state responsible for hosting the turbines and transmission lines, public reaction is likely to be equally fiery and negative. Even as an economic proposition, it makes little sense.

If Maine takes full control of Aroostook Wind and future projects, it can meet its own needs first, and sell the surplus at whatever premium the market commands — and all indications are that it will be considerable. There are no offshore leases for the Trump administration to cancel, and no comparable alternative sites in all of New England.

Maine may not be, as Sen. Angus King once dubbed it, “the Saudi Arabia of wind,” but it can make a huge contribution to clean energy in New England and set an example for risk-averse states where opposition to any and all large development proposals is all too prevalent.

And if Maine can create an in-state turbine fabrication operation, as unsuccessfully proposed by the Mills administration for Sears Island, it will have a leg up when offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine comes of age, as it inevitably will.

All advanced energy projects are complex and multifaceted, but the bottom line here is clear: Maine needs a good chunk of the energy produced by Aroostook Wind, and should be in full control of any power sold elsewhere.

Doing so will require an overhaul of how the state now plans and builds key projects, and a shift away from sole reliance on the PUC, which is demonstrating more and more why it should stick to its regulatory role, and not attempt to define Maine’s energy future.

Next week, I’ll look at how that can be accomplished, and what needs to be done to put the necessary tools in place.