Last month, Maine lawmakers killed a bill that would have stopped a regressive energy program and lowered energy costs for ratepayers across the state. As a result, Mainers can expect sky-high energy rates to continue into the warm weather season.
An Act to Reduce Electricity Bills (LD 683), sponsored by Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winterport), would have ended Maine’s Net Energy Billing (NEB) system which provides participating ratepayers with dollar credits to their electricity bills when they use private or shared renewable energy sources. This means that ratepayers that aren’t in the NEB are eating the costs through higher rates charged by Versant and Central Maine Power to make up for the lost revenue, rewarding Mainers who can afford to purchase solar energy for their homes and sticking NEB non-participants with the bill. While this may seem like an economical way to encourage a transition to renewable energy, this program ensures that lower-income Mainers who cannot afford to purchase solar energy panels for their homes, subsidize wealthy Mainers who can.
Mainers’ electric bills are already 24 percent higher than the national average electric bill. Electricity and heating costs are still high three months into the new year, with heating oil prices hovering at almost $4.00 a gallon and electricity prices remaining elevated due to cold weather and lower output of natural gas.
Despite these high energy costs, incentives to build solar energy infrastructure have continued to put pressure on Maine ratepayers. Through NEB, some ratepayers are able to lower their individual costs by participating in community solar, small-scale solar farms. But public utilities like Versant Power and Central Maine Power make up the difference of this lost revenue by raising energy rates for remaining customers.
Large-scale solar developers have been building solar farms left and right across Maine, but there’s a catch: Certain solar farms will be restricted in how much power they can generate. These arbitrary restrictions are reflected in the 1,000 solar energy and 23,000 community solar projects currently being built across the state and its Mainers who aren’t connected to those projects who are paying for it.
While wealthy Mainers, who can afford the over $17,000 price tag for a 6 kilowatt (kW) solar system, reap the benefits of lower electricity rates, Mainers that cannot afford to purchase solar energy infrastructure are quite literally left out in the cold. With Maine’s population being disproportionately older, many of whom live on Social Security, older Mainers who cannot afford to purchase solar infrastructure are directly subsidizing wealthy areas like Bar Harbor’s transition to renewable energy.
Supporters of Maine’s renewable energy transition point to the urgency in combating the climate crisis. However, despite the large amount of community solar facilities being built throughout Maine, 88 percent of the companies registered with the state are from outside of Maine. Solar panels also only capture and covert around 20 percent of incoming solar energy, which requires solar farms to have dozens to hundreds of solar panels, occupying massive amounts of space.
The total amount of land for utility-scale solar power sits at half a million acres in the United States alone, and more solar farms in Maine will require service roads, transmission lines, and other foundational infrastructure to function. Mainers who put a premium on Maine’s great outdoors should be concerned that solar farms will dot the landscape throughout Downeast and Aroostook — all with the goal of reducing emissions.
Apart from disincentivizing the spread of solar panel forests across the state, ending the regressive NEB program would have granted low-income Mainers some relief on their electrical bills. Rep. Steven Foster (R-Dexter) remarked that “as NEV projects continue to come online…the expected $220 million per year added cost to ratepayers will be realized and likely surpassed this year or next. The next Legislature will need to address the increasing number of elderly and low-income Mainers who can no longer afford to pay their electric bills. Justifying this [NEB] as a necessary cost of addressing climate change is irresponsible.” As long as Maine Senate Democrats prioritize overblown concerns about climate change, the poorest Mainers will struggle to keep the lights on.
Mainers who can afford to purchase solar power should be able to do so, but not by using low-income Mainer’s money. Maine’s NEB system puts the wealthy ahead of rural, low-income, and senior Mainer’s by making them subsidize solar energy in the state. The fact that Maine’s Senate Democrats continue to let Maine’s lowest-income citizens bankroll the state’s solar energy rollout is reprehensible.
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