PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 19, 2024
Maine is making substantial progress toward reducing carbon emissions through the strategy of becoming reliant on a single source of energy: electricity – and distributing that electricity from the main energy corridors to homes and business through a highly vulnerable network of wooden poles located right next to our roads. In the past 10 years the amount of weight being carried by these poles in many parts of the greater Portland area has increased by close to 50%. This 170-year-old technology is no longer capable of providing Maine with secure and resilient energy. If every federal and/or state-funded transportation project included matching funds and technical assistance for grid relocation and redesign, Maine could, project by project, ensure that we are able to rely upon electricity when it becomes the only game in town. ~ Peter Ryner, research faculty member, University of Michigan, and planning director, University of Southern Maine’s Coastal Zone Laboratory