As a small-business owner myself, I can understand the financial reasons why Central Maine Power has proposed higher monthly charges for customers who generate power from solar panels and other renewable sources. Renewable energy sources are changing their traditional business model.

But there’s more to energy policy than merely maximizing profit margins. There are so many reasons Mainers have for wanting to develop renewable sources of energy – reducing our reliance on polluting fossil fuels that are contributing to human-caused climate change, and investing in independent, decentralized and sustainable sources of energy.

What’s most alarming is to see that this CMP fee change is part of a coordinated national campaign funded and developed by big fossil-fuel business interests to stop or restrict the development of solar and wind power.

Right now, citizens in Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona are facing similar attacks coordinated by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council and the Edison Electric Institute. (CMP is a member of EEI.)

What is more concerning is that the very same discredited ultraconservative Big Oil-funded organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, which have crafted these policies, have a well-documented history of spending millions of dollars to spread false and misleading propaganda that undermines the growing consensus on climate change.

It is time for us to ask some serious questions about the motivation of CMP to push this out-of-state, Big Oil corporate priority over the wishes of the Maine people and to stop these policies that hamper the development of renewable power in their tracks.

Mark Fruehauf