This comment captures it all

reposting an excellent letter from Josh Kercsmar

This comment was posted to the Northern Maine transmission line docket 2024-00099, and beautifully reflects the issues we face with trust and transparency.

October 28, 2025
Ms. Amy Dumeny
Administrative Director Maine Public Utilities Commission
State House Station 18
Augusta, ME 04333-0018

Re: Request for Information for Renewable Energy Generation and Transmission Projects Pursuant to the Northern Maine Renewable Energy Development Program, Docket #2024-00099

To Ms. Dumeny and the Maine Public Utilities Commission:

The great crisis in Maine’s energy politics isn’t about power lines or rates. It’s about trust. Ordinary people hear one promise after another from those who hold power, then watch those promises melt away. When the process that governs public utilities no longer reflects public will, it breeds a cynicism that no infrastructure project can repair.

We saw this story begin with LD 1710 (2021), the law that created the Northern Maine Renewable Energy Development Program. Lawmakers promised a Maine-focused initiative that would strengthen our grid and support renewable generation in the North. The PUC followed that direction, ran a competitive process, and in 2022 selected LS Power and Longroad Energy as the winning developers. But when LS Power later demanded a higher price than it had bid, the deal collapsed. The public watched as another large corporation walked away unscathed, while the process started over at public expense.

Now, the Commission has reopened the program and wisely requires joint proposals for generation and transmission. That step makes sense. Yet the decision to move ahead before completing the transmission studies required by LD 197 (2025) and the ISO-New England Long-Term Transmission Planning process, both due in 2026, defies logic. Those studies were meant to guide future grid planning and prevent exactly the kind of premature, piecemeal decisions that waste money and undermine confidence. Why sow before the soil is ready? Why promise to “study first” and then act before the study is done?

The same pattern repeats across Maine’s energy politics: those in power say one thing and do another. Lawmakers told us that LD 810 (2023), which overturned the 2021 Question 1 referendum banning certain transmission corridors, was necessary in spite of what voters said. But voters meant exactly what they said. They wanted accountability, restraint, and transparency. To overturn their will is to tell Mainers that democracy itself is a misunderstanding. Every time that happens, trust in government dies a little more.

Developers, too, play their part in this theater of broken promises. LS Power bid low, won the contract, then tried to raise the price. CMP and Versant have done much the same, promising modernization and reliability while pushing new rate increases that burden the very ratepayers they claim to serve. These examples reveal a deeper flaw in the system: it rewards size, secrecy, and political access, not honesty or community benefit.

At the root lies a failing paradigm. We keep paying vast corporations to build massive infrastructure on the promise that a trickle of prosperity will flow back to local people. But the wealth flows in only one direction: upward – out of small Maine towns and into the hands of CEO’s who are already rich beyond belief. Every new transmission line built under this model becomes another pipeline for money leaving the state.

Meanwhile, the Commission tells us this process is “transparent,” yet key filings sit under protective order and public language grows ever more arcane. True transparency is not a password-protected PDF. It’s the ability of any citizen to understand how decisions are made and who benefits from them. When the people can no longer see how their money moves, they stop believing that their voice matters.

This moment offers the Commission a rare chance to break that pattern. You can insist that Maine’s planning processes actually inform its projects. You can make pricing commitments binding and public. You can ensure that our energy future is built by and for the people who live here, not by distant investors whose loyalty ends at the quarterly report.

If Maine wants renewable energy to renew more than its grid, it must renew the public faith that government can still mean what it says. Measure twice, cut once. Wait for the studies you ordered.

Show the people what you see. Hold every developer to the promises they make.

Respectfully,

Josh Kercsmar