PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 29, 2022
In Maine, we’ve enacted decentralized energy policies such as net metering, nonwired alternatives and integrated distribution planning, and modest “utility accountability.” Yet despite these modest steps, CMP and Versant continue to use your money against you, spending millions on lobbyists, lawyers and lies to keep customers cowed and captive. Not even lawmakers or regulators can change Supreme Court decisions that limit clean energy, energy justice and energy democracy. We can change the utility business model, as Our Power seeks to do. Who should own our clean-energy future? Should it be a foreign, for-profit monopoly, with all expenses paid, plus profits, under a rigged U.S. regulatory system? Or should it be a secure, superior and proven alternative, already serving 28 percent of Americans and 97 Maine communities? ~ Rep. Seth Berry, House chair, legislative Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee