EXCERPTS

The plant would be built next to the densely populated Munjoy Hill neighborhood, raising concerns about emissions, exhaust stacks and other environmental impacts.

March 14, 2026

Portland officials learned this month that the developers of the city’s eastern waterfront — a 10-acre project that’s been in the works for over a decade — plan to build a natural gas-fired cogeneration plant to provide electricity, heat and hot water to the property.

The plant wasn’t part of the master plan that the planning board approved for the Portland Foreside Development Co. in 2023, but it was licensed by the state Department of Environmental Protection last summer.

On Tuesday, the Maine Public Utilities Commission will begin reviewing whether the plant should be regulated as a public utility.

In written comments to the PUC, Barbara Vestal, a former planning board chair who lives near the development, called the plant a “major deviation” from city-approved plans. Others have expressed concerns about emissions from the plant’s exhaust stacks........................

......................The plant would be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and make up 63% of the city’s carbon footprint within a few decades, according to Bill Weber, a spokesman for the Portland Climate Action Team, an arm of Sierra Club Maine.

Portland’s climate action plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, when they would measure about 168,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. Weber calculated that Portland Foreside’s power plant would generate as much as 106,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.

Weber also noted that Maine enacted legislation last year to move the state’s power grid toward 100% clean energy by 2040.

“Allowing a major development to generate their own power from fossil fuel negates the benefits of a green grid,” Weber said in written comments to the PUC.

Read the full article at https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/14/portland-foreside-developers-want-to-build-a-cogeneration-plant-what-is-it-and-how-would-it-work/

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