MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • June 13, 2021
Electric power – how it’s generated, what it’s used for – is going to play a more important role in the lives of Maine people as the world responds to the climate crisis. So Maine voters should have a chance to say on what that future will look like. That’s why we support L.D. 1708, An Act to Create the Pine Tree Power Company. The bill now before the Legislature would ask the voters in the next election whether they support replacing two investor-owned, regional monopolies, Central Maine Power and Versant Power, with a single consumer-owned, nonprofit utility overseen by a democratically elected board of directors. This structure would bring into a public forum debates over the once-in-a-century investments that will be needed in order to pull off the twin transitions of climate response: electrifying the economy while generating power from renewable sources instead of fossil fuels.