Maine BEP wrestles with fees for solar, wind impacts

By Kate Cough
November 1, 2024

Northern and downeast Maine should be excluded from aspects of rules intended to protect large undeveloped tracts of land from the development of solar, wind and high-impact transmission lines, members of the Board of Environmental Protection recommended at a meeting earlier this month.

The rules are part of new fee programs being developed by the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry that would require certain large-scale energy projects to pay for impacts to high-value habitat or large swaths of undeveloped land in an effort to direct development away from those areas.

“I’m not sure we gain anything by defining large, undeveloped habitat blocks — for this purpose, for the purpose of renewable energy — when the likelihood of, you know, tens of miles of transmission lines going into some of these places seems very remote to me,” said board member Robert Marvinney.

“I’m more concerned about how we approach this in southern and central Maine, where more of the pressure is for this kind of development.”

In directing DEP staff to remove northern and downeast Maine from part of the proposal, board members also reasoned that the state already has mechanisms in place to compensate for impacts, such as for alteration to wetlands under its in-lieu fee compensation program.

Central Maine Power paid more than $2.5 million under that program as part of its development of the New England Clean Energy Connect project; large solar projects have paid fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to state data.

A number of large landowners and renewable energy developers have pushed back against the changes proposed by DEP. Solar developers argued that the additional fees could make developing utility-scale solar in Maine “almost impossible” while large landowners say they were blindsided by the proposal and that the changes penalize forest owners who have been responsibly maintaining their lands.

“When we account for the compounding effect of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s (“DACF”) parallel rulemaking, it is hard to see a future for utility-scale solar in Maine,” wrote Robert Cleaves of Dirigo Solar in comments to the board.

Most new utility-scale projects will be large enough to require compensation under the new rules, Cleaves wrote, and the fees “are likely prohibitive to solar projects.” The protected areas account for nearly 80 percent of the forested land in Maine, Cleaves wrote.

“Ultimately, identifying feasible sites near remaining interconnection capacity that do not impact these areas will be very challenging, if not impossible.”

York County landowner Nathaniel Sewell said the proposal penalizes landowners who manage forestland “for the generations of hard work and sacrifice that have gone into preserving and adding to their land.”

Continue reading at https://themainemonitor.org/bep-impact-fees/

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