Credible Leadership, Please Step Forward, NOW!

Regarding the completion of transmission lines paid for by Maine taxpayers to accommodate out of State users.

We are in desperate need of leadership. We talk to each other but that is not enough. We have anti Wind organizations in Maine, but none offer leadership necessary to run a campaign to expose abuse of Maine electric rate payers. With leadership from a Maine 501c3 organization, we would easily get hundreds of signers of a petition! The 501c3 gets recognition and exposure they need to build membership!

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Comment by Donald Moore on March 26, 2015 at 11:14am

Google: Wind could supply 35% of U.S. Power

Maine not predicted to be in the top 10 states for wind power.

Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on March 26, 2015 at 9:11am

Kathy, the $4 per REC vs $50 per REC in other ISO-NE states was made in one of my recent video recordings. I believe it was LD 132 at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_qBPQExUFpfF_e8qWiBlAw/feed?activ... or the one below it. 

Comment by alice mckay barnett on March 26, 2015 at 7:16am

The towns used Maine Municipal association as their lawyers to question about WIND in their little towns.   MMA sided with Wind.  Town managers look to keep their jobs?  I do  not know why the selectmen and TM's want wind.  They both obviously do not look to the big future.

Comment by Martha thacker on March 25, 2015 at 10:12pm

Hope when you guys choose leaders and go around talking to people that you will break it down. I have no idea what you are saying. And I am interested in the subject. Most people aren't.

Comment by Kathy Sherman on March 25, 2015 at 10:03pm
Sorry if my questions are unclear. I get that MMA is pro, but sometimes I don't get the power that MMA exerts (your M for Maine or mine for Mass). In Mass they definitely involve themselves into lots of local issues that they have no business in through a 'MMA consultants'. In my simplist worldview most of us would prefer to stay in our world, whatever it is. For me, it has been isolated beach and treasures there, starfish, lobsters, horseshoe crabs and river herring; it turns out that my world of cartway to ancient tree with which I bonded as a youth in CT was one of the most highly polluted. I am glad that I did not know that as I instead contemplated natural vortex rather than computer analysis of chaos.

There is much here that is concrete (to me that includes photo of ridge and vista threatened) and individual.

Back to MMA - what was their source? Do they have a guide for what the appropriate payoff should be? Why does any town care what they say in the first place?

My questions could be do they have 'guidelines' for other massive industrialization, or for protecting rural and wild. It remains why the influence since it seems obvious to be counter to best interest of community.
Comment by alice mckay barnett on March 25, 2015 at 8:25pm

MMA's e-mails to town manager  were WIND.

Comment by Kathy Sherman on March 25, 2015 at 7:27pm
My comment really is that we have a great deal of the talent needed within the 'thousand indians' and what we need more of is organization, cooperation between states, emphasis on issues such as rates that get everyone in the pocket (or billfold), way less politics (given Bush and who invented RPS and market manipulating Enron), hyperbole.
For public disclosure, let's start with the first few lines of this post:
Transmission paid by taxpayers of Maine? or taxpayers - most of this seems to be RATEpayers, and a non-transparent costshift from tax- to ratepayers.

I assume, naive woman that I am, that that cost shift is why Maine Municipal Assoc. loves wind energy, as does Mass Municipal Assoc. How either could forego local control, I don't understand, but I do get that local govts. are hurting/in some places they aka schools/fire/police are the largest employer. So I do get the appeal of 'save a teacher job' and buy a firetruck; I get that local communities are desperate. I don't get where either ME or MA Muni Assoc came up with model by-laws for wind- now Orland, but it seems to be a decade old.

I would love history of Maine Munic Assoc on this, and who came up with model by-law. In Mass it was Conservation Law Fdtn Ventures and their parent has been suing over pee and anyhing else they can think of. That includes how fast MA gets some of its goals on GHG/climate accomplished, and that means BIG wind/BIG utility, and big cost to govt. from fed to local.
Comment by Kathy Sherman on March 25, 2015 at 6:54pm
Eric - do you have documentation of Maine REC value at $4 (per MWhr) and history of price? Actually out-of-state value has been listed even higher than your quote. When it fell, up to 2010, RGGI goals were dramatically upped to drive the price back up - MA isA controlling and Bloomberg Energy had put MA in high 40s vs nation at $0.66/MWhr, and CT about half of MA.

Another question is what counts as tier 1 REC. It seems to vary by state - waste to energy (how very sustainable), etc. And then there is date of service - RECs seem to be designed only for NEW production, and the issue that you identify can really hurt the small and older producer (or individual with distributed on-site generation/sometimes called consumer-owned). I know REC price does not relate to any real value, even undocumented 'carbon savings' and it shows no decline after RGGI was a success and all New England burns little coal or oil for electric generation - because they manipulated the price by upping the RGGI target. From a talk last year by my own little 'aggregator' on Cape Cod that lost a ton by pre-purchasing locally generated RECs, I know that one key is procrastination in the buy and 'spot price'.

It would be very enlightening to know who has long-term contracts for the RECs and who issued them. For example, MA came up with a scheme to finance capital costs/expensive interest-rate construction loans by pre-purchasing future RECs, back in 2003. It was not restricted to in-state, but I don't think took in Maine.

Besides sleuths and lawyers, we need data analysts to examine NEPOOL info.
Comment by Dan McKay on March 25, 2015 at 3:35pm

Eric, The EUT committee is gauging bill worthiness against cost to ratepayers. A note or call as a ratepayer who doesn't want any additional costs or would like to see costs lower on electric bills to EUT committee members could be effective . Pointing out the extra,associated costs with wind power might have traction with this new committee.

Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on March 24, 2015 at 8:17pm

Legislative contact list by town name. http://www.maine.gov/legis/house/townlist.htm tell them to end the REC's in Maine that are only valued at $4 on the market, vs $50 in other ISO-NE states due to the already excess of renewable and green energy. Some on the EUT are questioning whether they should be continued. Now may be the time to give it a Nudge. This would serve to make the financial aspects of creating more not-so-green Wind Energy. 

 

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

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 -- Mahatma Gandhi

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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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