LS Power Opinion: Aroostook Renewable Gateway benefits Maine in many ways.

December 7, 2023

BY DOUG MULVEY

SPECIAL TO THE PRESS HERALD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doug Mulvey is a vice president with Missouri-based LS Power Development. He has more than 27 years of project development experience across the U.S. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and master’s degree in environmental engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a master’s in business administration from the University of Phoenix.

EXCERPTS

..........Our core objective is to develop a transmission project that delivers Maine-made renewable energy, powering Maine’s future electricity needs, with as minimal environmental impact as possible and with maximum economic and societal benefits for Maine residents. We can achieve these critically important goals by carefully managing costs and schedule, considering community impacts, and being mindful of the environment while creating economic benefits and balancing effects on ratepayers. If an underground HVDC project that avoids private property and eliminates the need to negotiate with individual landowners fulfilled these core objectives, we’d be more than happy to consider it.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

We know this because LS Power has vast experience dealing with the costs, risks and supply chain challenges of underground HVDC projects, thanks to our work developing such projects on both the east and west coasts. This experience shows that developing underground HVDC would be over five times more expensive to Maine ratepayers and likely have a greater environmental impact because of the need to dig a continuous trench through aquifers, wetlands and sensitive environmental habitats. By comparison, overhead lines provide the ability to strategically locate intermittent structures to minimize environmental and community impacts.

It’s important to acknowledge that an overhead transmission corridor will not be devoid of vegetation. The cleared forest area will be replaced with compatible plantings that will not interfere with our safe and reliable operation of the transmission line. This ensures that carbon dioxide removal by vegetation in the corridor continues. Some may argue that the CO2 impact of tree removal is significant, but it’s important to weigh this against the immense environmental benefits the project offers. The Gateway enables the King Pine Wind project, which will achieve approximately 1.3 million tons of CO2 avoidance per year – roughly the equivalent of removing 260,000 passenger vehicles annually – making it a powerful contributor to Maine’s clean energy goals...............................

.....................Additionally, several local environmental non-governmental organizations have reviewed information about the proposed routes and potential environmental impacts. They support the MPUC in finalizing a contract for the project. This collaborative support reflects an acknowledgment of the valuable benefits our proposed solution offers and underscores the project’s alignment with achieving the state’s climate goals.......................................

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Comment by Dan McKay on December 9, 2023 at 5:02am

The voter rejection of NECEC proved that Maine people will stand behind Maine people who don't want transmission poles and lines within their viewsheds or crossing their land or adjacent to their land, so when LS Power threatens to charge 5 times more to bury the lines to remove the views, they are only burying themselves. Maine people paying that kind of money is as likely as them not standing behind Maine people who reject this project in their backyards.

Comment by Dan McKay on December 8, 2023 at 5:33am

Every damn wind project requires a reliable generator of the same scale. Connecticut can slip a new natural gas plant into the grid and not notice the output from a Northern Maine Wind Development. Intermittent wind generation has no production leverage to natural gas plants. AS Connecticut's and Massachusetts' grids hums along, Maine's grid will sputter without the injection of NG plant output. New England is getting close to an adaption of an old Vegas Motto, the power made here stays here.   

ISO-NE is already maxing out imports from neighboring states and Canada to compensate for the additional wind and solar. They are maxing out oil and LNG on site storage to ready fossil fuel plants for intermittent periods of wind and solar.

The grid is in rapid decline. Maine is approaching a cliff's edge with too much intermittent power and no leverage resembling a counterweight to pull us back from falling over the cliff.

This Northern Maine Renewable Energy Development must not proceed. 

 

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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