A step toward Maine’s clean energy future

Maine creates more than half of its electricity from fossil fuels, at our peril. We also use heating oil and natural gas to heat our homes and businesses. In addition to creating air and global warming pollution, these resources are finite and are not found in Maine.

Fortunately, Maine has abundant sources of renewable energy and energy-efficiency resources that we have only begun to tap. Wind, solar, clean biomass and low-impact hydro-energy sources are renewable, create negligible environmental damage and could supply Maine with its future energy demand.

Already, dirty energy causes massive, largely undocumented costs to public health, the environment and tourism industry. Summertime smog chokes the breath of residents and visitors alike, contributing to Maine attaining the highest rate of childhood and adult asthma in the region.

Haze drastically cuts the visibility at Acadia National Park and other recreational and tourism desti-nations. Mercury contamination makes Maine’s fish unsafe to eat for children and women of child-bearing age, and threatens the long-term health of loons and other wildlife.

Additionally, nuclear waste is still stored in insecure, non-permanent facilities at the decommissioned Maine Yankee nuclear plant site. Oil, coal, gas or nuclear power will not lead us toward a clean energy future – and the social and environmental costs of continuing on that path are unreasonable.

Meanwhile, Maine wastes more energy than it needs to and passes up consumer savings in the process. According to studies by several academic and expert organizations (including the Public Advocate Office), Maine has captured only one-fifth of the achievable energy efficiency that could be achieved through various programs, standards and incentives.

In fact, we could flatten and reduce electric demand over the next 10 years by tapping into all of our achievable energy efficiency. Besides the environmental benefits of trimming energy use, the kilowatt that we don’t use is two to three times cheaper than the kilowatt generated by dirty power plants or renewable power projects.

Maine’s reliance on dirty energy sources has started to take a direct financial toll on the residents and businesses of the state. As supplies of fossil fuels get tighter, and infrastructure and political problems get worse in parts of the world where fossil fuels are located and processed, fossil fuel supplies get more costly. The cost to heat households and businesses has spiked for both of the past two winters, while the cost of residential Standard Offer electricity has increased at 15 percent and 25 percent in March 2005 and March 2006. The only thing that kept Maine from having serious energy problems this year (as Texas currently is experiencing) was an abnormally warm winter.

Fortunately, Gov. Baldacci and members of the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee have grasped the problem and taken steps to move Maine in a better direction. The Utilities and Energy Committee recently gave its unanimous approval to legislation that would help reduce Maine’s reliance on fossil fuel-generated electricity and overall electricity demand.

The bill, LD 2041, would put energy- efficiency programs on an equal footing with power plants and set a goal of 10 percent new renewable energy by 2017, among other energy policies. This bill deserves to be passed by the full Legislature.

LD 2041 would take meaningful steps toward promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy. Specifically, it would authorize the Public Utilities Commission to treat energy efficiency as a resource for meeting Standard Offer supply. In other words, instead of negotiating with a power plant to produce a specified amount of power to satisfy demand, an energy supplier would negotiate with Efficiency Maine or other efficiency programs to save a specified amount of power to reduce demand.

The bill also sets a goal of Maine generating 10 percent more new renewable energy generation by 2017 and authorized the PUC to order the utilities to buy electricity in long-term contracts from renewable energy capacity resources in order to meet the 10 percent goal. It would further prioritize energy efficiency and renewables by authorizing the PUC to direct Maine’s two largest utilities to enter into long-term contracts in order to address capacity adequacy.

The bill sets priorities for long-term contracts with energy-capacity resources in the following order of priority: new energy conservation or energy-efficiency resources, new renewable energy capacity, new energy capacity with no net emission of greenhouse gases, and – finally – capacity from any other energy-generation source.

This is a timely bill that deserves to be speedily approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Baldacci. The PUC should follow through with implementation of this legislation. Elected officials also should promote further efforts to reduce the amount of energy we waste and increase the amount of clean energy we produce from renewable sources in our state. Moving Maine toward a clean energy future will avoid environmental damage, diminish public health consequences, lower consumer energy prices and reduce our reliance on imported fuel.

Steve Ward is the Maine Public Advocate. Matthew Davis is an advocate for Environment Maine.