Portland neighbors, activists raise alarm with plan for gas power plant
Maine Public | By Peter McGuire
Published March 16, 2026 at 7:42 PM EDT
A planned 10 megawatt, gas-fired power plant to provide electricity and heat to a major redevelopment on the Portland waterfront is stoking opposition from neighbors and climate activists in the city.
Barbara Vestal, who lives on Fore Street near the proposed development said she and others were shocked and surprised to learn about developer PF Land LCC's plans for the power plant. The company has requested that Maine Public Utilities Commission rule its facility will not be regulated as an electric utility.
Vestal said the proposal is a major deviation from a master plan for the $1 billion housing, retail, office and hotel development on the 10-acre site of the former Portland Co. approved a decade ago.
"It's bringing a major source of emissions, and noise and vibration to this neighborhood," Vestal said.
The proposed plant may not even be allowed under zoning rules around the Portland development, Vestal added. Installing the power plant would include four 114-foot-tall emission stacks according to its state license, a facility never included in the developers' earlier plans, Vestal added.
"Those are major changes that need to be reviewed, and it seems like they're just envisioning this happening without applying to the city for any permission to do this," Vestal said.
Maggy Wolf, another neighbor of the Portland Foreside development said the development conflicts with climate goals adopted by Maine and Portland to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Even though it's considered a transition to clean energy, it locks us into fossil fuels whereas the state is going to be renewable by 2040," Wolf said.
The Portland Climate Action Team also weighed in against the project in a letter to the Public Utilities Commission. Building new fossil fuel burning generators will set the city back of its target to reduce 80% of its emissions by 2050, team members Bill Weber and Joey Brunelle said in the letter.
Keep reading at https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2026-03-16/portland-neighbors-a...
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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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