Long Islander's Blog (3,023)

EXCERPT

Renewable Energy Policy Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is designed to promote the development of new, local, renewable energy resources that stimulate jobs, increase tax revenues, and strengthen Maine’s economy with low-polluting energy sources.

https://www.nrcm.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2018legislativepriorities.pdf

The action would be a major pullback from state law requiring that utilities must obtain a quarter of their energy from renewable sources by 2025................. The higher standards “will cost millions of dollars,” said Rep. Michael Harrington, R-Strafford “and that costs jobs. Every time you raise the cost of electricity you lose jobs.”

But it is not just the money, he added. People could pay more to use renewable but haven’t. Instead, the state was “forcing people to…

“Maine’s moratorium is part of much bigger picture or wider movement,” said Droz. “What happened in Maine is a continuation of a broader movement of concerned citizens taking place in numerous communities across the country.

“Increasingly, citizens are raising objections to new wind turbines out of concern wind turbines can adversely affect the health of nearby citizens and reduce the value of their property,” Droz said, citing a 2011 study by the Institute for Noise Control…

“The Maine Public Utilities Commission is out of control,” the Natural Resources Council of Maine said in a prepared statement. “Today the PUC decided Maine is closed for business and intent on destroying jobs in America’s fastest-growing job market.”…

CMP’s “New England Clean Energy Connect” Transmission Line Proposal - February 21, 2018

EXCERPTS:

Maine and New England need to increase the use of renewable power to further reduce fossil fuel burning and meet our critically important greenhouse gas reduction goals. However, there are many ways to achieve that objective. First and foremost, we should look to new renewable energy…

BDN

On Friday, the Maine Renewable Energy Association, an Augusta group representing wind and other renewable energy producers, sued LePage in Kennebec County Superior Court. It followed a January suit in a state court from the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation.…

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Maine: A proposed law amending wind energy regulation

Maine bill would gut wind energy streamlined permitting process

Research into mountain wind projects: major risk to visitor economy

End of federal wind industry handouts is long overdue

Wind projects are disrupting our way of life

Wind project under criminal investigation for bat and eagle deaths

Nebraska: A proposal to…

But those industries are fighting to turn Maine into a place that supplies green energy to wealthy states south of here that do not want those towering turbines in their back yards. He says Maine should be the “Saudi Arabia of wind power.”

Maine is lagging New England in job growth by 28,000 jobs. He says 1,560 of these jobs are filled by wind and/or solar here in Maine. He got his report from the “Economic impacts of wind energy construction and…

Massachusetts chose a $950 million project headed by Maine utility Central Maine Power to be its backup option for a massive clean energy procurement that appeared headed to New Hampshire before regulators nixed it last week.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources said in a news release Friday that the New England Clean Energy Connect will be the alternative if the Northern Pass project in New Hampshire fails to win approval by March 27.…

If you think that the massive wind lobby–led by the $18 million American Wind Energy Association–is not going to push to get more subsidies from President Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion infrastructure improvement plan, think again.

https://www.masterresource.org/cre/texass-crez-transmission-line-wind-powers-7-billion-subsidy/

Related: …

Some gems:

• Studies have shown that wind farms can actually be a boon to tourism, if local tourism agencies market them as a tourist attraction.
• Wind power-related avian deaths are less than those associated with other forms of energy, and much less than those associated with the average house cat.
• Rural communities that are host to a turbine can see an increase in the tax base, as the potential for income from the land is realized.
• There is no need for…

Here's a 21 minute audio interview with windy Hallie Gilman dated 3/7/16. The reporter, Tory Ryden, hopefully won "Softball Pitcher of the Year" for this interview where Ms. Ryden terms wind turbines as "majestic" and pejoratively refers to opponents as NIMBY's. 

http://wgan.com/podcasts/030516-hallie-gilman/

and…

I haven't yet watched but look forward to doing so this evening. Hopefully fact checkers can review and comment if warranted.

THE MAINE EVENT

Wind Power in Maine

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Aired: 02/11/201827:.

Gov. Paul LePage recently imposed a moratorium on new wind energy projects in Maine. Discussing the issue are renewable energy…

In 2010 NRCM's Dylan Voorhees suggested that by 2012 it would be possible that wind power could be supplying 20% of New England's electricity needs. Don't take our word for it. Simply scroll to the 24 minutes and 45 second mark at the following link. …

The new year has brought only bad tidings for the future of wind energy development in Maine: The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is reconsidering an offshore pilot, Gov. Paul LePage is seeking to limit new development, and Maine wind failed to succeed in Massachusetts’ recent clean energy request for proposals (RFP). Below is a recap of the latest wind power developments so far this year.…

Angus King's 22 Record Hill Wind Turbines from atop Mahoosuc Land Trust's Rumford Whitecap Property

The Maine Land Trust Network has a piece in the Portland Press Herald today talking about the importance of tourism. See the link to this piece at the bottom of this post.

One would hope that the Maine Land Trust Network…

To build the new $27 billion gas export plant on the Arctic Ocean that now keeps the lights on in Massachusetts, Russian firms bored wells into fragile permafrost; blasted a new international airport into a pristine landscape of reindeer, polar bears, and walrus; dredged the spawning grounds of the endangered Siberian sturgeon in the Gulf of Ob to accommodate large ships; and commissioned a fleet of 1,000-foot icebreaking tankers likely to kill seals and disrupt whale…

Lock up the carbon in wood products Maine can sell rather than fecklessly  attempting to avoid CO2 emissions by desecrating Maine with wind turbines.

• Wood: The only fully renewable heavy duty building material. No waste in production of CLT products.
• A growing forest absorbs 1.4 tons of carbon for every ton of wood produced, and harvested trees sequester carbon in its solid form. A building constructed with 100m3 of CLT offsets the equivalent annual…