I am mad as heck at Central Maine Power’s decades of willful negligence and obstruction of clean, renewable energy in Maine and you should be, too, especially if you think we should do our part to address climate change.

Now Maine’s largest utility wants to break its contracts, admitting it neglected to provide for the 2,000 megawatts of solar power preparing to come online in Maine, while the company worked overtime on its New England Clean Energy Connect power line so it could rake in $2.9 billion helping Massachusetts import 1,200 MW of electricity from Quebec by cutting Maine in two. CMP’s power line would also send $12.4 billion to Canada, instead of keeping jobs and money closer to home.

I take CMP’s failures personally. My grandmother called me “Miss Solar Energy.” In the 1970s, I sold solar collectors in Belfast, wrote the Power Play newspaper column for three Maine weeklies and co-established Maine’s Energy Extension Service. In the 1980s I produced a big solar conference at College of the Atlantic, served as the first executive director of the Maine Solar Energy Association and joined the board of the New England Solar Energy Association. And, for 28 years since 1991, I helped the Natural Resources Council of Maine pass laws to bring Maine a clean-energy future. Yes, we power our home with solar too.

For four decades I have worked for energy efficiency and clean power for Maine and known how practical and badly needed it is too, while CMP has been working against it. They need to step aside. Maine cannot afford to wait.

Judy Berk
Northport

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