Aroostook wind project should spur new public power authority | Douglas Rooks
I see this as one of the major decisions awaiting Maine’s next governor.

9/17/26
Douglas Rooks

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.................................

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.


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.