Maine was served by home-grown electric utilities for over a century. Today, CMP and Versant are for-profit foreign corporations that sent $187 million in profits out of country last year. They have fossil fuel interests in Spain, Canada, Norway, and the Middle East and are so afraid of losing these profits that they are spending in excess of $30 million of endless inflammatory advertising on TV, the internet, and direct mail.
Mainers should control our electric grid for both environmental and economic reasons. Pine Tree Power will be a non-profit Consumer Owned Utility (COU) owned by us and managed by a board of citizens that we elect. The consumer owned utilities already serving 98 Maine communities get rave reviews from their customers, with rates that average 49% lower than the for-profit corporations.
The factual distortions touted by corporate advertising are easily refuted:
1) The claim: The buy-out will cost $13.5 billion. The reality: The utilities’ own financial filings with the Maine PUC value their combined assets at just $5 billion.
2) The claim: Electric rates are higher in consumer-owned utilities. The facts: The rates of land-based Maine consumer-owned utilities are all lower than CMP and Versant (their ads use examples of island-based utilities that, of course, have higher rates).
3) The claim: The buy-out costs will result in higher electric rates. Just the opposite: CMP and Versant electric rates have almost doubled since 2008 but the rates of Maine locally-owned utilities have stayed flat. As a regulated utility, Pine Tree Power will be able to borrow money at 2% or 3%, compared to corporate profits that average 10% to 15%.
4) The claim: Taxes will go up. Huh? Consumer owned utilities don’t levy taxes on anyone.
5) The claim: It is a risk to create locally controlled utilities, like we had for a century. Really? The current CMP and Versant have dismal customer service and among the lowest grid reliability ratings in the US. Their management decisions are made in foreign board rooms to protect their profits, not to protect our grid.
6) The most illogical claim: “Politicians” that manage Pine Tree Power will be “controlled by oil and gas interests”. Oops, they meant to say that CMP’s parent company Iberdrola is owned by oil and gas investors in Spain, Norway, and Qatar. Versant is owned by the city of Calgary, the oil and gas capital of Canada.
7) The most outrageous claim: Pine Tree Power can’t meet Maine’s climate goals. Unfortunately, everyone knows that the for-profit corporate utilities have resisted solar power at every opportunity. CMP was asked to hook my house up to community solar in April. It’s November and I’m still not hooked up. CMP and Versant are beholden to their oil and gas interests, not Maine’s renewable energy goals.
8) The most unsubstantiated claim: Pine Tree Power has no operating plan. The reality: Pine Tree Power will hire the Mainers who already work for CMP and Versant because they know how to get the job done. The operating plan will stay the same, only the ownership (us) and management (Mainers elected by us) will change.
Vote yes to protect our grid, to lower our electrical rates, and to stop foreign corporations that are resisting Maine’s climate goals. Let’s return our electric grid to local control, managed and staffed by Mainers, as it was with Bangor Hydro (1889-2002) and Central Maine Power (1899-2008).
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