Portland Foreside developers want to build a cogeneration plant. What is it and how would it work?
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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...
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Comment by Dan McKay 5 hours ago
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Love it. Free enterprise at work, overcoming and outwitting the political forces. But, I fear Portland might develop it's own power generator carbon tax, although that would put RGGI in the spotlight and perhaps lead to it's elimination, afterall, the law of the land is that C02 is not a pollutant and enhances life on Earth.
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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(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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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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