Gov Baldacci's Task Force on Wind Power Development

Before Maine created its "Expedited Wind Law", Governor Baldacci created his Governor's Task Force on Wind Power Development.

In December 2015, the former governor would be named vice chair of wind company Avangrid's board.

The following looks at the task force which created a report which greased the skids for the wind industry to run roughshod over Maine.

These are the task force members. Publicover was an alternate.

R. Alec Giffen (Chair), Director, Maine Forest Service
Senator Phillip Bartlett
Juliet Browne, Verrill Dana LLP
Pete Didisheim, Director of Advocacy, Natural Resources Council of Maine
Judith A. Dorsey, Retired Lawyer
Representative Stacey Fitts
Senator Walter Gooley
Jody Jones, Wildlife Ecologist, Maine Audubon Society
John Kerry, Director, Governor’s Office of Energy Independence & Security
Kathleen Leyden, Coastal Program Manager, State Planning Office
David Littell, Commissioner, Dept. of Environmental Protection
Representative W. Bruce MacDonald
Milton McBreairty, Business Manager, IBEW Local Union 567
Patrick McGowan, Commissioner, Dept. of Conservation
Dave Publicover, Appalachian Mountain Club (alternate member)
Steve Timpano, Environmental Coordinator, Dept. of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife
David Wilby, Executive Director, Independent Energy Producers of Maine

Read their report right here:

http://www.ppdlw.org/articles/wind_power_task_force_rpt_final_02140...

or by clicking on: wind_power_task_force_rpt_final_021408.pdf

Be sure to read the Alec Giffen letter to Karin Tilberg on drawing up the expedited wind area:

http://www.ppdlw.org/documents/giffen-memo.pdf

or

giffen-memo%20-%20Copy.pdf

From the report:

"Maine has a significant wind resource that will increase the reliability of the region’s electricity supply. "

Does anyone in their right mind or with a straight face consider wind as something that increases reliability?

This report, creating rationale for the expedited wind law, will be 10 years old in one month. What have we learned since it was assembled? Read it again now with 10 years of learning.

So where are the task force members now, 10 years later? (1/1/18) Perhaps there are some who with ten years of learning might feel differently now. Or for some, perhaps not. As best we can tell:

R. Alec Giffen (Chair), Director, Maine Forest Service

TODAY: 

Clean Air Task Force

The Clean Air Task Force works to help safeguard against the worst
impacts of climate change by catalyzing the rapid global development
and deployment of low carbon energy and other climate-protecting technologies through research and analysis, public advocacy leadership,
and partnership with the private sector.

http://www.catf.us/about/

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Senator Phillip Bartlett

TODAY

Attorney

From the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting:

Baldacci’s statement about dependence on imported fossil fuels – and many others he made both before and subsequently, including one reference to the “tyranny of foreign oil,” one reference to the need to “free ourselves from foreign oil” and two references to Maine’s “dependency on oil” in his final State of the State address – implicitly tied wind energy production to the goal of reducing the use of foreign oil, with its volatile prices as well as its documented contribution to climate change.

Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation.

“Maine uses very little oil to produce electricity,” says Mark Isaacson, a dam owner, a founding member of the industry group Independent Energy Producers of Maine and an active player in the restructuring of Maine’s electric utility industry.

John Kerry, the governor’s energy czar and a member of the task force, acknowledges that oil is used to fuel vehicles and to warm Maine buildings.

“Today we don’t use electricity to run our cars or heat our homes,” said Kerry in a recent interview.

And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.”

So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?

http://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/

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Juliet Browne, Verrill Dana LLP

TODAY

Chair of Verrill Dana Environmental Law Group (has represented the wind industry for probably the full ten years)

ALSO - from the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting: 

Juliet Browne: An attorney at Verrill Dana who heads the Portland law firm’s environmental practice, Browne has guided wind power developer First Wind and TransCanada through the state’s regulatory system. She is married to Rep. Jon Hinck, D-Portland, who at the time was co-chairman of the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee, which unanimously approved the wind power legislation based on the task force’s report.

http://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/

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Pete Didisheim, Director of Advocacy, Natural Resources Council of Maine

TODAY

Senior Director of Advocacy NRCM - a group that often testifies on behalf of wind

NRCM: "Power plants remain the single largest source of global warming pollution in the region."

https://www.nrcm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/windpowergeneration...

Sorry NRCM, but electricity production accounts for only about 10% of Maine's CO2 output while transportation accounts for over 50%!

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Judith A. Dorsey, Retired Lawyer

TODAY

Not sure

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Representative Stacey Fitts

TODAY

Director of Asset Management Novatus Energy, a firm which took over wind projects such as Bingham, Oakfield and Hancock; as Co-Chair of the Maine EUT Committee, he killed 12 citizen initiated wind bills in a single session. While he was Co-Chair, his then employer Kleinschmidt, boasted on their website that one of their engineers in Maine was developing state regulations while sitting on the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force

http://www.windtaskforce.org/photo/kleinschmidtassociatesboastsab-1...

Fitts’ connection to the wind industry has made him an easy target for opponents of wind power proliferation. He dismissed the perceived conflict when asked about it this week.

“Everyone wants to find the conflict, the snake in the grass,” Fitts said. “But every legislator in the building is conflicted if you were take that same standard and apply it to everyone else. It’s the nature of being part-time legislators.”

http://www.sunjournal.com/political-pulse-conflicts-interest-expert...

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Senator Walter Gooley

TODAY

Former Maine senator and rep; otherwise not sure

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Jody Jones, Wildlife Ecologist, Maine Audubon Society

TODAY

Executive Director, Midcoast Conservancy

A quote from Jody Jones in 2010: "Now, as wind turbines are sprouting on Maine’s mountains accompanied by heavy machinery, roads, transmission lines, substations, wells and concrete plants, that certainty is yielding to doubt for some. “I think people didn’t have a good appreciation of this, including us, for what the whole thing entails,” said Maine Audubon’s Jody Jones, a biologist who served on the task force."

“This process was another step to better environmental policy, but there were clearly flaws.”

http://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-...

https://protectmaine.org/maine-epc/

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John Kerry, Director, Governor’s Office of Energy Independence & Security

TODAY

President, John Kerry Energy Solutions and possibly wind project financer Lexden Capital 

http://www.johnkerryenergysolutions.com/about.html

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Kathleen Leyden, Coastal Program Manager, State Planning Office

TODAY

Maine Dept of Marine Resources Coastal Program

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David Littell, Commissioner, Dept. of Environmental Protection

TODAY

Principal, The Regulatory Assistance Project

http://www.raponline.org/blog/the-inexorable-shift-of-the-us-power-...

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Representative W. Bruce MacDonald

TODAY

Former Maine rep; otherwise not sure

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Milton McBreairty, Business Manager, IBEW Local Union 567

TODAY

Director of Renewable Energy at Larkin Enterprises (not 100% sure if current)

ALSO - from the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting:

Milton McBreairty: He was business manager for the electrical workers’ union while on the task force. McBreairty subsequently went to work as director, renewable energies for electrical contractor Larkin Enterprises, which had the contract for electrical power and grounding installations at TransCanada’s Kibby wind farm.

http://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/

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Patrick McGowan, Commissioner, Dept. of Conservation

TODAY

Not sure, but surely someone must know

ALSO - from the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting:

Patrick McGowan: The Department of Conservation commissioner, who left that position to run for governor, had been at the center of a significant controversy over his advocacy for a wind power project while he was commissioner. That’s when he contacted Land Use Regulation Commission member Ed Laverty, in the middle of the commission’s deliberations over the controversial Redington-Black Nubble wind power project, to ask, as Laverty reported, “if I would poll the other commissioners to determine if there was a way to get the majority to vote for the proposed project. I told him as this was an ongoing regulatory process, I felt for me to do so might be improper.” While an investigation by the attorney general’s office determined McGowan’s intervention had not risen to the level of illegal “ex parte” communication, he was required to undergo training on proper procedure by staff in the attorney general’s office.

http://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/

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Dave Publicover, Appalachian Mountain Club (alternate member)

TODAY

Senior staff scientist and assistant director of research at the AMC Pinkham Notch

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Steve Timpano, Environmental Coordinator, Dept. of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

TODAY

Possibly retired

http://www.maineenvironews.com/Home/tabid/97/mid/628/newsid628/1688...

May have been Maine State Wildlife Agency Energy Development Contact

ftp://ftp.manomet.org/WildlifeandEnergy/WAOF_web_files/Manomet%20Ea...

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David Wilby, Executive Director, Independent Energy Producers of Maine

TODAY

President, Wilby Public Affairs; previously VP State Policy at First Wind

http://www.wilbypublicaffairs.com/

Comment

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Comment by Frank J. Heller, MPA on January 25, 2018 at 10:52am

I just might be interested in serving on the new task force; since I bring alternative energy strategies, i.e. small hydro into the supply mix; something that was largely regulated out with the excessive environmental permitting process.

There is a large permitting industry in Maine represented by E-TECH with a vested interest in doing all the tests and studies. They should be involved. 

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 -- Mahatma Gandhi

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Vince Lombardi 

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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