PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 25, 2024
Recently a proposal called for banning the expansion of gas distribution systems in Maine even though natural gas is lower emissions and lower cost than other fuel sources. While I’m relieved the proposal in the Legislature was rejected, it remains troubling. As a farmer, I feed the state, my family, my friends and my neighbors. In 2019, Summit Natural Gas approached us to create one of the nation’s first community dairy digesters at our farm. Today, that digester is providing many economic, energy and environmental benefits by capturing the methane from the manure at our farm and using it to create a carbon-negative gas that takes more emissions out of the air in the form of captured methane than is put back into the air when burned at the burner tip. I hope we can once again lead in Maine’s way by preserving energy choice and making sure the RNG facility at our farm isn’t Maine’s last. ~ Jenni Tilton-Flood, Flood Brothers Farm, Clinton