Maine considers pulling CMP corridor’s permit after court ruling puts route at risk

AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday that it may pull its permit of the $1 billion hydropower corridor through western Maine after a judge’s contested ruling that put the project’s route at risk.

Commissioner Melanie Loyzim told the Central Maine Power Co. affiliate overseeing the corridor’s construction that the department may suspend or revoke its permit after a Superior Court judge ruled this week that the Bureau of Parks and Lands did not have the authority to grant 2014 and 2020 leases on public lands in rural Somerset County.

The decision is the first major regulatory setback for the corridor. Absent a valid lease or an alternative that has not emerged, the Central Maine Power Co. affiliate constructing the line has no viable route through western Maine, putting the state permit and others at risk with an anti-corridor referendum in the 2022 ballot ahead of the estimated operational date of mid-2023.





Judge Michaela Murphy ruled Tuesday that the state needed to conduct further analysis of whether the corridor would substantially alter public lands. The Maine Constitution requires any project that does so on state lands needs a two-thirds vote by both chambers of the Legislature.

Loyzim alluded to the importance of the public lands lease, calling it a “small” but “necessary” part of the overall project that, if lost, would prevent the corridor from bringing electricity from the Quebec province through Maine into the New England grid. David Madore, a spokesperson for the department, said the license would have to be amended if a new route was proposed but none have been proposed yet.

The CMP affiliate is allowed 15 days to ask for a hearing on the potential suspension. The company on Friday filed a notice saying it will appeal Murphy’s decision, as did the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. If a permit suspension came, it would last until the appeals process finishes and could be lifted if the lease is restored, a new lease is granted or CMP rerouted the corridor.





The notice followed a Wednesday request for a stay on all new clearing and construction from lawyer James Kilbreth, who represented challengers to the lease including the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Kilbreth told Loyzim and the Board of Environmental Protection that a delay was necessary so the public would not be “irreparably harmed” by construction in an area that might not be allowed. He requested a stay by Monday.

The article continues at:

https://bangordailynews.com/2021/08/13/politics/maine-considers-pul...

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Comment by Willem Post on August 23, 2021 at 5:25pm

Ireland

 

When it is windy in Ireland, wind electricity is sent to the UK and France.

 

The Irish government, after several years of public pressure, finally launched a forensic investigation of the electric system operating data, which revealed (to the public; energy systems analysts already knew the answer) the counteracting inefficiencies of the CCGT plants, because quantities of imported gas had not decreased with increased wind, as predicted/promised by RE folks, based on their false/feel-good assumptions, such as “one MWh of wind offsets the CO2 of one MWH of dirty fossil fuel”. 

 

After the EU in Brussels was informed, it provided Ireland with funds to build strong connections to the UK and French grids, which are much larger than the Irish grid. 

 

The solution of grid disturbances and counteracting inefficiencies, is to spread those disturbances over a large area, so they become invisible; Iowa does the same with Illinois. The result was:

 

1) The Irish wind variations disappeared in the noise of the UK and French grids

2) The Irish CCGTs regained their efficiency, from 45.6% to about 50%

3) Ireland could build more wind turbines to meet EU RE goals, fight climate change, etc.

4) An EU PR problem was “solved”.

 

Prior to all that, on an annual basis, 17% wind on the Irish grid, resulted in a 52.6% effectiveness of CO2 reduction, instead of the 100% promised by RE folks.

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-con...

Comment by Willem Post on August 20, 2021 at 2:17pm

Go to the URL to read the rest of the article, which shows, with numbers, the outrageous cost of wind, solar, and batteries in New England.

Maine should concentrated ONLY ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY of buildings and vehicles.

EXCERPT

HIGH COSTS OF WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERY SYSTEMS IN NEW ENGLAND

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-costs-of-wind-sol...

 

The turnkey capital cost to implement the Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan, CEP, would be in excess of $1.0 billion/y for at least 33 years (2017 - 2050), according to a 2015 Energy Action Network, EAN, annual report. If updated to 2021, the numbers would be about $1.25 billion/y for 29 years (2021 - 2050). See URLs.

 

http://eanvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/EAN-2015-Annual-Report-... 

https://outside.vermont.gov/sov/webservices/Shared%20Documents/2016...

 

Spending on government energy programs, including Efficiency Vermont, has averaged about $210 million/y from 2000 to 2015, a total of at least $2.5 billion, but Vermont CO2 emissions increased from 9.64 million metric ton in 2000, to 9.54 MMt in 2015, a decrease of 1.0%.

https://dec.vermont.gov/sites/dec/files/aqc/climate-change/document... 

 

That means, on average, these RE programs:

 

- Have been expensive underperformers for 15 years

- Led to higher energy prices, and higher other prices, than they would have been without those wasteful programs.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-is-going-to-hel...

 

Giving the same RE folks six times as much money per year, to implement the CEP, per mandate of the unconstitutional Global Warming “Solutions” Act, GWSA, would be very far beyond rational.

 

Vermont’s CO2 is about the size of a dot at the end of a sentence. See Image and URL

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/16/eia-u-s-co2-emissions-declin...

 

WORLD 2021 ANNUAL ENERGY REPORT

https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-wm-aem/global/pb/e...

 

WORLD AND US PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CAPITAL COST

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-con...

Comment by Stephen Littlefield on August 15, 2021 at 7:27pm

This is what is called "The dance of the educated idiots" they are all up in arms about the widening of the existing corridor, yet ignore the thousands of acres cl;rear cut for solar farms (which use chinese solar panels) and destroying mountain tops all over the state for chinese windmills which require acres of access roads and more acres of clear cut for their transmission lines. All at the expense of taxpayers that pay for these basically useless projects, then subsidize the cost of the electricity with more tax dollars because it's not economically viable! It's all a fraud!!

Comment by Paul Ackerman on August 14, 2021 at 11:03am

This judge's ruling is absolutely without merit and is nothing more than a political hit-job by the green-new-deal -socialists running the government. They think they're untouchable now and can throw a monkey-wrench into anything that means more efficient power sources. 

What the judge interprets as a detrimental impact to "public lands" is a typically broad brush approach to suggesting "we just want to drag this out as long as we can to cost you so much money that you give up..." If the current filings do not already explain what minimal public lands--that would hardly ever be utilized by the public anyway, if at all-- then this judge probably is ignoring the facts of the filings or cannot read.

With gas and diesel prices going up every week, and food prices climbing in tandem --all tied to the insane economic policies of the current frauds in DC ,their "solution" after shutting down every pipeline project in the works, and denying permits like this one, is to have Biden ask OPEC to produce more oil to "stabilize" the market ! Nothing like suggesting that Russia ( a heavily armed gas station) is OK to build a natural gas pipeline into western Europe ,but we cannot build pipelines (or transmission lines) here to bring abundant, and cheaper, fuels to the American market.

A just dessert for them would be for CMP et al to shut off all power to their offices and homes. Fuel companies ought to refuse to sell them fuel oil or gasoline.

They think they want to have solar and windmills running the whole state (and country) ,go ahead...make my day, have at it but without the benefit of existing fuel sources you are denying everyone else. 

 

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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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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