Les Otten: Energy affordability should be at the center of Maine political debates
July 24, 2026
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Les Otten of Bethel began his work on wood pellet heating after retiring as vice chairman of the Boston Red Sox in 2007.
While the media and many of us are immersed in Maine’s current political contests, we should also be mindful of the very real fiscal challenges facing our citizens come November that demand our attention. We need to address the cost of staying warm, keeping the lights on, and reducing dependence on fuels we do not control. The Bangor Daily News appropriately highlighted this in the recent, well titled article, “Maine has ignored this homegrown substitute for heating oil.”
The numbers make the point. According to Maine’s Department of Energy Resources heating fuel comparison, wood pellets for a boiler cost about $30.23 per million Btu. By comparison, an air-source heat pump runs about $23.88 to $34.83 per million Btu, heating oil about $40.61 to $45.17, propane about $41.39 to $46.57, and electric baseboard heat about $75.23. Prices vary by household and region, but the trend is clear: pellets are a practical, lower-cost option compared with heating oil, propane, heat pumps, and electric resistance heat.
There are two headline questions that need to be addressed relating to electrification: Where it comes from now and where future generation will come from, and secondly what the increased cost will be.
Electricity appears clean at the point you plug in, but it isn’t. We are part of the New England Power Pool and only about 18% of the energy from the pool is renewable with the rest coming from gas, coal, oil, and some nuclear. New renewable generation isn’t being built sufficient to serve the growing demand. According to the Maine Monitor, Maine’s electric price per kilowatt-hour in 2021 was 13.96 cents. By April of 2026, the average cost per kilowatt-hour in Maine was 28.42 cents. With the increased push for electrification, and an economically constrained supply of energy, common sense says that increased demand results in increased kilowatt prices to all homeowners regardless of their usage.
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Comment
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Comment by Dudley G. Gray on July 26, 2026 at 7:07am
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I am not surprised that Les Otten omits any mention of Natural Gas in his comparison of heating costs by product. For myself and my location in a large home deep in the north Maine woods my 1500 gallons of propane @$2.11 gallon for heating, stove top and clothes dryer @ 90% efficiency year after year with a Bosch condensing boiler beat all other options except owner-owned firewood burned in a boiler or furnace. Back in early 1980's I imported and installed all over eastern Maine 100's of H.S. Tarm and Tasso
wood and anthracite coal boilers by the container load from Denmark. Customers loved them because they saved substantially and preserved their incomes. There are more BTU's per dollar cost in hard coal than any of the alternatives. Subsidies for heat pumps don't mitigate their actual cost per KWKH .
It is ridiculous what Maine electric ratepayers have been put through since Angus King's governorship. From 8.5 cents per KWH to the present .32 after hundreds of windmills and millions of solar Panels installed in our fair state we suffer on and on. Our Public Advocates have lied, the PUC has failed ,the Democrat legislature and administrations have screwed us and need to be defeated "en masse".
To quote author Carroll Quigley "Throw the rascals out"
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I would definitely go with Dan McKay's excellent suggestion. P.S. Pellet heaters require electricity in order to function, Mr. Otten.
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Comment by Dan McKay on July 25, 2026 at 8:39am
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Mr.Otten
You say increased demand results in increased kilowatt prices, but Mr.Stoddard of Efficieny Maine, who has probably thrown money gathered from electric customers your way, says more kilowatts lowers the kilowatt hour rate charged by CMP as he assumes CMP duties are base on a fixed cost. You are a businessman. Does Mr. Stoddard's analysis sound like a reasonable assumption ?
If you want to make electricity affordable, here are a few suggestions:
1. Get solar off the grid and out of the Utility distribution grid
2. Stop the PUC arranged long term contracts that have cost Maine electric customers $65,996,299.00 from 2018 to 2025 and is growing. The PUC is a piss poor negotiator on behalf of the ratepayers who pay their salaries.
3. Dump RGGI that adds up to 30% to the wholesale generation costs.
4. Support the EPA's declaration that carbon dioxide gas is not a pollutant which forms the basis for RGGI and the Renewable Portfolio Standard adopted by Maine politicians.
5. Abolish Net Energy Billing.
6. Expend the New England natural gas pipeline capacity which will lower winter electricity costs.
7. No more subsidies for solar or wind, including tax breaks and renewable energy credita
8. Abolish Efficiency Maine Trust, a out of control, ineffective bureaucracy playing favorites at the expense of electric customers.
These are common sense solutions to the current situation of unaffordable electricity
I might add that overthrowing the Democrat Party with voter turnout this November would be top priority for a just electricity market.
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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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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