CMP is back with a huge power project and fresh political problems

August 21, 2026

Regulators revived a massive energy bet by handing the reworked Aroostook County wind transmission project to Central Maine Power Co.’s parent company, and it is already drawing fire from a corner of the Republican Party that helped write the law behind it.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission announced Tuesday that Avangrid will build a 1,200-megawatt transmission line connecting northern Maine to the regional grid, while another developer will build an 800-megawatt onshore wind farm to feed it. The original developer walked away from its 2023 bid amid a pricing dispute with regulators.

It is Maine’s third major transmission fight in five years, and the battle lines are scrambled. Many Republicans, including one of this project’s chief architects, are now raising alarms about cost. The renewable energy industry and environmental groups who feuded bitterly over CMP’s western Maine hydropower corridor are taking a supportive if cautious posture.

The project is years away in the best-case scenario for CMP. Maine’s share of the wind power will be about 600 megawatts, and the commission projects the combined projects will deliver $387 million to $425 million in net benefits to Maine ratepayers, create more than 2,500 construction jobs over four years and generate $2.4 billion in total economic output.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island are sharing the cost of the transmission line, leaving Maine responsible for less than 11% of it as opposed to the 60% under the last project’s design. The estimated price tag for that was roughly $1 billion. CMP also has nearly complete rights to the land, something the commission noted in its release.

Maine Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, was a champion of the 2021 law that created the program putting a new transmission project in his district. But his enthusiasm has since cooled. Stewart last week said his backing hinged on early projections that the project would lower ratepayer costs.

“When those projections changed and it became clear the project would instead increase costs, the Public Utilities Commission should have reconsidered it and, at that point, it lost my support,” Stewart said.

Rep. Reagan Paul, R-Winterport, a member of the Legislature’s energy committee, blasted the selection on social media last week, arguing Maine’s renewable buildout has already cost ratepayers heavily and that the project layers billions more in transmission spending onto the grid for limited winter reliability benefit.

Continue reading at https://www.bangordailynews.com/2026/08/31/politics/state-politics/...

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