Maine treads lightly amid AI data center expansion
Whether data centers drive up electricity prices or not, the fact is that Maine starts off with very high prices due to costly "renewable" energy and its requisite new transmission, as well as being choked off from badly needed new gas pipelines. Therefore if data centers (and any jobs they might provide) can't be built in Maine due to their potential effect on electricity prices, or the fact that electricity is too expensive here to begin with, those persons, politicians and groups pushing "green" energy will be to blame.
By Chris D’Angelo
Published on: December 19, 2025
EXCERPT
Leading the administration’s defense of energy-hungry data centers is Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior and the chairman of President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council.
“Newsflash: There is no correlation between data centers growing in states and higher electricity prices,” Burgum declared — falsely — in an interview with Fox News last week, going on to point the finger at states moving toward renewable energy.
In a separate interview on Fox & Friends a few days later, Burgum invoked Maine to defend his position.
“Let’s just take a look at the data, if you want to talk about data centers,” he said. “The highest electricity prices in this country are places like Hawaii and Maine. There’s no data center activity going there.”
Maine’s rising energy costs are largely tied to volatile natural gas prices and cleanup costs from devastating storms in recent years. They have nothing to do with the build-out, or lack thereof, of data centers, according to Maine Public Advocate Heather Sanborn.
“To date, there has been very little data center development activity in Maine, and nothing related to data centers has had any impact on Maine’s electricity prices yet,” she wrote in an email to The Maine Monitor.
Full article at https://themainemonitor.org/maine-treads-lightly-data-center-expans...
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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
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(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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