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Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
“Maine voters don’t know what’s good for them.”
That is the gist of the response from some former Pine Tree Power supporters. The quasi-governmental utility proposal was soundly rejected throughout the state this week.
On Twitter, Reddit, and other social media platforms, keyboard warriors lament the initiative’s failure. Several blamed spending by the “No” campaign for confusing voters with “disinformation.”
It’s all sour grapes. You can acknowledge the decent parts of the proposal while still voting “no,” believing the overall bill was wrongheaded.
At a conceptual level, treating wires like roads has some wisdom. When you want to send a package from Kittery to Fort Kent, you can choose between UPS, FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service, and other providers. In this analogy, they are akin to electricity suppliers.
Whichever service provider you choose, they deliver the package via government-run roads. Or, in the electricity analogy, through wires. The roads are the “transmission and distribution” part of the puzzle.
If you were starting from a blank slate, the Pine Tree Power model made sense. But the electricity slate in Maine was anything but blank. Companies had made significant investments in Maine under a regulatory regime that guaranteed them a certain “reasonable” rate of return.
In the case of Central Maine Power, those returns are paid to shareholders. Like the Maine Public Employee Retirement System, or MainePERS. The government employee pension fund has a six-figure investment in Avangrid, CMP’s parent company.
Despite the sour grapes of some “Yes on 3” supporters, the conversation will not end with the ballot box shellacking. Nor should it.
“Electrify everything” is a rallying cry for several left-leaning groups. Part of the motive is to combat climate change. It isn’t a bad idea, even if it is overly simplistic.
Heat pumps are a much more efficient form of heating and cooling when compared to fuel-based systems. Many tools and small equipment work just fine with high-capacity batteries and brushless motors. Electric vehicles aren’t right for everyone, but for some users they are plenty viable.
In order to increase electrification, we need to have electricity to use in our homes and businesses. That begins with generation, such as solar, hydro, natural gas, wind, nuclear, and others. That is a policy area unto itself.
Yet, wherever Maine goes with generation, that electricity gets delivered via the grid. And our grid needs significant investment moving forward. That should be the conversation before the Legislature as it reconvenes in January.
The Pine Tree Power proponents suggested that a government enterprise could access new capital more inexpensively than investor-owned utilities. That is likely true.
There is an opportunity for the Legislature to take some time to find a way to work cooperatively with our utility providers for new investment. The Public Utilities Commission was given greater direction to utilize their “stick” against the utilities. It is time to add a new carrot to the mix.
New major investment in our grid could occur alongside a new effort to access cheaper capital markets. That cheaper capital could then be used to pay our existing utilities for new-and-improved capacity. The utilities could earn a fair return as a service provider, but ownership could still land with some type of public entity.
Doing nothing is untenable. Our utility providers have not done a great job in recent years. That isn’t a secret. They freely admit it and have promised to do better.
Hopefully, they will.
In the meantime, elected officials should look at the reasonable parts of the Pine Tree Power question. Despite the sour grapes of proponents, a “no” vote on the entire package does not preclude a “yes” on specific components.
But that nitty-gritty needs to happen in the Legislature, not at the ballot box.
