PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 3, 2021
It should be clear by now that a lot of Mainers don’t trust Central Maine Power. The state’s largest electric utility and its owner, the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, are viewed as outsiders bent on extracting profits from Maine. A record of long and frequent outages, low customer satisfaction and a billing fiasco have shaped how Mainers view CMP. The people overruled the PUC and the DEP with their staffs of experts. It should also come as no surprise that Mainers in every part of the state value the Maine woods and don’t want to see it despoiled. To fight climate change, we are going to have to build infrastructure. Grassroots organizations can stop projects, but they can’t build them. It will take government and industry working together to carry out the clean energy transition. Without public confidence in these institutions, nothing can get done.