Energy Mosaics

by Kay Aikin and Gerry Runte, Published in the Press Herald, October 6, 2025

Kay Aikin is CEO of Dynamic Grid in Portland and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Grid Wise Architecture Council. Rep. Gerry Runte, D-York, is in his second term in the Maine Legislature, representing parts of Wells and York as well as the town of Ogunquit. He serves on the Energy, Utilities and Technology Joint Committee.Kay Aikin is CEO of Dynamic Grid in Portland and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Grid Wise Architecture Council. Rep. Gerry Runte, D-York, is in his second term in the Maine Legislature, representing parts of Wells and York as well as the town of Ogunquit. He serves on the Energy, Utilities and Technology Joint Committee.

Mainers pay some of the highest electricity bills in the country. Now, Central Maine Power wants to raise those bills by another $35 per month by 2031 to fund infrastructure and workforce upgrades. While investments in reliability and resilience are essential, the proposed increase, on top of recent years’ hikes, has rightly been called “massive and unacceptable” by Gov. Mills.

CMP’s request is a symptom of a deeper problem: Maine lacks a strategic plan for modernizing its electricity grids in a way that ensures affordability, reliability and climate alignment. Without such a plan, we’ll continue to lurch from rate case to rate case, locking in costs for ratepayers while missing opportunities to invest wisely.

Yes, we need stronger poles and more line workers. But we also need a new way of thinking about the grid itself, one that recognizes that today’s grid is no longer just wires and substations. It is more than the sum of its parts; it is a network of homes, businesses and communities equipped with solar panels, heat pumps, batteries, EV chargers and smart thermostats.

These distributed energy resources (DERs) are no longer optional; they are the building blocks of a clean, reliable and affordable energy future. Yet CMP’s proposal focuses on conventional infrastructure, ignoring lower-cost, customer-centered alternatives.

Maine’s regulatory framework has not yet caught up. Integrated Distribution Planning is underway at the Public Utilities Commission; however, the process is currently fragmented and reactive. Utilities file plans in isolation, regulators respond in silos and the long-term vision gets lost. CMP’s rate case is the latest example of a utility advancing costly investments without a clear roadmap for the grid’s long-term future.

Maine needs a better way to make decisions. That’s why we support establishing a long-range grid planning group in law, with the authority and independence to chart a more innovative course and put affordability, equity and climate at the center. This group should:

• Build on existing planning but move beyond piecemeal proceedings.
• Apply principles of Clean Capital Efficiency, maximizing the use of existing infrastructure before building new.
• Map out where DERs and targeted upgrades can reduce costs and improve reliability.
• Develop a 10-year roadmap with measurable performance standards.
• Include utilities, regulators, consumer advocates, labor, DER providers and community representatives — ensuring transparency and trust.

These goals are not radical ideas, but common-sense economic solutions that could delay or downsize major infrastructure investments, saving ratepayers money while making the grid more resilient.

It’s essential that Maine establish a planning group within the Public Utilities Commission to redesign the way we plan, regulate and value distributed energy. This group would:

• Be community-informed, prioritizing equity and rural inclusion.
• Redesign compensation to reward customer participation in grid services.
• Chart a path for utilities to evolve their business models and support distributed energy, unlocking its full value.
• Apply systems thinking to anticipate rather than react to change.

Other countries, such as Australia, have achieved this with great success. Their early investment in systems-based planning has enabled them to become global leaders in DER integration. Maine doesn’t need to copy their model, but we should learn from their method.

CMP’s rate hike proposal should be a wake-up call. Maine must stop treating grid investments as one-off fights. Regulators must ask: Are these projects reducing long-term costs? Are we maximizing the grid we have? Are we valuing the role of customers?

If the answer is no, we need to pause. Mainers deserve a strategy, not another surprise.

Done right, this group will provide lawmakers, regulators and utilities with the evidence-based guidance to make smarter choices. It will replace reactive spending with proactive strategy. It will build public trust that facts, not politics, are guiding our energy future. Let’s create the smarter, more affordable energy future Maine needs — before we lock in another decade of regrets.

How misinformation has become a significant risk in Maine’s energy debates

Designing long-term energy policy is never simple. Planners must account for uncertain fuel prices, changing weather patterns, evolving technology, economic cycles, regulations, and politics. Even at its best, energy planning is an exercise in managing incomplete information and revisiting assumptions as conditions change.

That challenge is not new. What is new is the growing influence of organized misinformation and disinformation campaigns in energy debates. Unlike fuel price volatility or weather uncertainty, this risk is artificial. These campaigns and narratives are designed to shape public perception, harden positions, and overwhelm careful analysis before it can be evaluated.

People’s beliefs influence which facts they trust and Ideology plays a central role. When energy policy becomes entangled with identity or values, evidence alone often fails to persuade. In those cases, misinformation doesn’t need to invent new ideas; it simply reinforces existing ones.

A recent national campaign targeting offshore wind illustrates this pattern. It did not succeed by disproving science. Instead, it aligned its messaging with broader skepticism about government institutions, regulation, and environmental policy. Scientific rebuttals followed, but they were slow, fragmented, and ineffective among audiences already predisposed to distrust the messenger. The narratives of whale deaths, negative impacts on fisheries, and reliability claims took hold well before they were conclusively proven false.

Maine has seen this offshore wind dynamic play out on other energy topics as well, in debates over the NECEC transmission project, Pine Tree Power, community solar, and broader clean energy policy. Strong disagreement is normal and health in a democracy. What is new is how often these debates drift away from shared facts and trusted processes toward competing stories grounded in ideology rather than evidence.

Energy policy is especially vulnerable to this problem because it sits at the intersection of money, land use, climate, and power. People on all sides often believe they are following the facts, yet they rely on different sources, interpret uncertainty differently, and distrust the same institutions meant to resolve factual disputes. The result is not persuasion, but entrenchment.

Consider how demonstrably false or misleading claims have taken root in Maine: that solar policy is the primary cause of high electricity rates; that renewable energy threatens grid reliability; that Pine Tree Power would guarantee billions in savings; that all Quebec hydropower flows only to Massachusetts; or that hydropower is inherently “dirty.” These claims persist because they align with deeper beliefs about markets, government, expertise, or environmentalism.

This is not a problem confined to one political party or ideology. It occurs whenever energy debates become proxies for larger cultural or political battles. Once that happens, additional data rarely changes outcomes—not because people are unreasonable, but because the disagreement is no longer really about facts.

Regulators, courts, agencies, campaigns, and the press all play essential roles. But none are designed to function as neutral referees of public facts once debates turn political. By the time formal decisions are issued or court rulings are handed down, trust is often already lost.

That gap allows uncertainty to be weaponized and competing narratives to flourish unchecked. Policy outcomes then depend as much on how information spreads as on its accuracy.

Energy decisions shape Maine’s economy, environment, and household budgets. Allowing those decisions to be driven by viral misinformation—whether from the right or the left—comes with real costs. That risk is not hypothetical or off in the future – we are now entering a new election cycle where false narratives can sway ballot outcomes, resulting in the election of officials who implement policies with lasting disastrous effects. It’s already happening at the federal level, and not just on energy policy.

Maine does not need unanimity on energy policy. It does need a shared factual foundation. As Garrison Keillor once observed, modern political debates resemble book club meetings where none of the attendees have read the same book. A public or private, trusted, nonpartisan energy fact-checking entity could help restore productive debate—and ensure that Maine’s energy decisions are grounded in reality, not rhetoric.

In many ways, energy supply planning shares many of the attributes of building and managing an investment portfolio because it, too, involves organizing assets – the various types of power plant options to generate electricity. Each of these assets have varying risk profiles, cost structures, and performance characteristics, and are combined to optimize reliability, affordability, and resilience. Following the analogy with an invetment portfolio, solar functions as high-growth daytime equity, wind as an overnight international index fund, hydro as a stable bond, nuclear as long-duration Treasuries, and storage as the options contract that manages volatility. Natural gas serves as emergency liquidity for market shocks. Each asset performs differently depending on season, market conditions, and system stress. Planners are responsible for designing a risk-minimized, reliability-optimized portfolio that ensures stable costs and uninterrupted service. While no portfolio manager would consider investing in a single stock a viable strategy, this approach is sometimes mistakenly accepted in political discussions.

These considerations should remain nonpartisan and technical. Engineers evaluate energy systems based on objective metrics such as forced-outage rate, marginal operating cost, and locational marginal price, rather than perceived moral value. Energy systems operate according to physical laws, not political ideologies. If a wind turbine or natural gas plant fails, the grid is unaffected by political preferences.

The investment portfolio is constructed to achieve the desired level of risk in the market. How risk is treated in energy supply is where politics enter the picture. After planners develop an optimized resource mix that meets reliability standards and minimizes system-wide costs, society must determine which risks are acceptable and which should be avoided. Some stakeholders view decarbonization as a way to reduce risk and prefer portfolios weighted toward low-carbon assets, while others see intermittent resources as a reliability concern. Some consider nuclear energy a long-term hedge, whereas others regard it as an unacceptable liability. In this context, politics reflects the point at which stakeholders say, “I understand this is the rational portfolio… but here is how I perceive the risks.” These perspectives are not incorrect; they represent qualitative judgments layered onto quantitative models.

Problems arise when political ideology distorts an objective analysis, especially when driven by misinformation. This occurs when individuals hew to a certain political perspective and advocate for an energy grid powered exclusively by renewables, nuclear, or fossil fuels, or reject out of hand other technologies without fully understanding how that source fits within the overall portfolio. A resilient grid, like a resilient portfolio, depends on diversification. It recognizes that each asset has strengths and weaknesses, and that overconcentration is quickly penalized by real-world conditions. Markets reward balance, not ideology. And misinformation can corrupt the outcome.

Ultimately, an energy strategy is neither a moral identity nor a partisan loyalty test. It is a long-term asset allocation challenge conducted under uncertainty, with significant consequences for millions of people. Planners and engineers should be entrusted to construct the optimal risk-balanced portfolio. Once the model provides a recommended allocation, the key question remains: Does this portfolio reflect your definition and perception of risk?

I sponsored a bill that creates a Department of Energy Resources for Maine, LD 1270, which was signed into law on July 1. The following is my floor speech urging its enactment.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House:

I support LD 1270, “An Act to Establish the Department of Energy Resources,” as amended. This bill restructures how Maine develops, promulgates, and implements energy policy. It mirrors language in the Governor’s budget proposal and establishes a cabinet-level Department of Energy Resources by transferring and enhancing the responsibilities currently held by the Governor’s Energy Office into this new Department.

At its core, this bill concerns applying sound management principles to the State of Maine’s approach to energy policy.

Now, we all understand that government and business have different objectives. Corporations measure success by profit and return on investment. Governments, by contrast, are responsible for public outcomes—things like affordability, reliability, and environmental responsibility. But while the goals may differ, the fundamentals of good management—clear accountability, coordinated action, and structured decision-making—are essential to both.

Mr. Speaker – That’s what LD 1270 is all about.

LD 1270 responds to a real organizational challenge. Over the years, we’ve created energy initiatives through multiple pieces of legislation, each assigning responsibility to different agencies. The result is a patchwork of programs—well-intentioned but fragmented. Our energy policy is a sum of many parts, without a clear home or structure to ensure it all works together. This bill would fix that by creating a durable, cabinet-level department with comprehensive oversight, allowing for more coherent planning, clearer lines of accountability, and better alignment of state efforts with regional and federal initiatives.

Like any well-run organization, the Department will operate with a clear plan. The State Energy Plan will serve as the guidepost for everything from electricity procurement to clean energy development and workforce planning. A significant responsibility of the Department is to keep this plan updated and ensure its implementation, incorporating public input and coordinating with entities like the Efficiency Maine Trust and the Department of Environmental Protection. This plan provides the context and direction for all aspects of energy initiatives – grid planning, procurement of clean energy supplies, and management of electricity demand.  

Establishing the Department gives us a better-equipped structure to evaluate emerging technologies, respond to market changes, and deliver on policy goals with greater clarity and consistency. It strengthens the link between planning and execution while keeping regulatory oversight in place.

The legislation lays out a transparent framework for how the Department will conduct competitive solicitations, guided by the State Energy Plan, to ensure adequate energy supply while controlling energy costs and building Maine’s energy economy. This procurement framework includes clear criteria for bidder eligibility, a defined process for evaluating proposals, requirements for public input, and coordination with the Office of the Public Advocate. These are not symbolic gestures—they are functional requirements designed to ensure that ratepayer benefit, not speculation or preference, underlies procurement decisions.

The bill also carefully maintains a strong role for the Public Utilities Commission. The Department will conduct solicitations for energy resources, but the Commission must ultimately approve those contracts. This separation of responsibilities is essential. It ensures that energy procurement remains grounded in a regulatory process that puts ratepayer value first. The Department can identify opportunities; the Commission must confirm that those opportunities are in the public interest.

In addition, the bill outlines workforce and equity standards that apply to selected projects. It maximizes employment opportunities for Maine residents, including those from disadvantaged communities. These standards are realistic, not aspirational. They reflect existing practices in state-funded infrastructure and align our energy investments with broader economic goals.

This bill is not about creating something new for its own sake. It is about organizing what we already do more effectively so that policy goals are implemented through a clear, coordinated, and accountable structure. This bill is merely the application of basic organizational management principles.

For those reasons, I respectfully urge you to vote “ought to pass as amended.”

Thank you.

In June, Maine enacted LD 1868, “An Act to Advance a Clean Energy Economy by Updating Renewable and Clean Resource Procurement Laws” The following are my remarks to the House in support of this bill.

I rise today in strong support of LD 1868, which is a necessary evolution in how we define and pursue our clean energy goals in Maine.

Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, was adopted in 1999 to support hydro and biomass generation. In 2007, we expanded it to include wind and solar, setting a 10% renewable energy goal by 2030. In 2019, we raised that target to 80%. We ultimately established a goal of 100% zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

These were all important milestones. This year, with the release of the State Energy Plan, we were able to take a more expansive perspective on how we achieve our goals.

 LD 1868 adds Clean Energy Standard sources to our target at 1% per year, beginning in 2031, with an additional 1 percent each year until it achieves 10% of our portfolio by 2040.

The reality is this: while the terms “renewable” and “zero GHG” were once treated as interchangeable, we know that not all renewable sources are zero-emission, and not all zero-emission technologies are renewable.  Biomass, for example, is renewable, but its greenhouse gas profile depends on the feedstock. On the other hand, advanced thermal processes or clean hydrogen fuel cells may produce near-zero emissions, but they don’t qualify as renewable under our current rules.

This leads us to the logic behind LD 1868 and the Clean Energy Standard, or CES.

Mr. Speaker: Rather than limiting ourselves to a fixed list of technologies, as we do under the RPS, the CES asks a different question:

Does the electricity source reduce greenhouse gas emissions?  If the source can meet the test of being zero or near-zero GHG and clean, determined by verifiable performance criteria to be established by the DEP, it can qualify—whether it’s fusion, advanced geothermal, hydrogen, or next-generation nuclear, or even technologies that haven’t been commercialized yet.

We are planning for a future more than a decade away. We know there are multiple ways to reach our emissions targets.  e challenge is we don’t yet know which mix of technologies will get us there most efficiently or economically.  The technologies we’ll rely on in 2040 or 2050 may not even be fully developed today. A technology-neutral standard gives us technology diversity, the flexibility we need, and a much greater likelihood of success.

LD 1868 is a smart, measured step in the right direction. It gives us the structure and vision to expand what’s possible without abandoning the progress we’ve already made.

Mr. Speaker, LD 1868 is not about abandoning our commitment to renewables. It’s about aligning our tools with our goals, ensuring that as we move forward, we stay focused on what really matters: affordable, reliable, and low-carbon energy for Maine’s future. It gives us the structure and vision to expand what’s possible, building on the progress we’ve already made.

I urge you to join me in voting ought to pass.

I sponsored a bill, LD 1726, “An Act to Enhance the Coordination and Effectiveness of Integrated Distribution Grid Planning” which was signed into law on June 12. The following is my presentation to the House:

The process for planning our local electric distribution grid is one of the most important tools we have to meet Maine’s goals for electricity affordability, reliability, resilience, and climate.  This bill aims to achieve a higher level of coordination among multiple agencies and initiatives that influence the grid planning process.

A distribution grid plan is a blueprint for building and maintaining the local grid, determining the optimum way to serve our growing needs for electricity, whether through new infrastructure, reducing demand, or adding local generation that avoids the need for new power plants. It also seeks to optimize how that grid operates, minimizing new investments, allowing the grid to operate more like a network and permitting far higher utilization of the wires that are there, ensuring that the grid operates at maximum capacity.

Every single one of these factors directly impacts what customers pay for electricity.

Over the last 6 years the state has begun multiple initiatives and strategies that impact grid planning, conducted by several state agencies, such as electrification, energy storage, demand management, and new energy procurements. They all tend to be managed as distinct programs, sometimes without formal coordination.  Many have a direct impact on grid plans

This bill does not alter the current planning cycle but applies to future cycles. I see this bill as a “tune-up” of the process to better coordinate and manage future planning.

Consistency of forecast methods. The forecast of load is an essential element to grid plans. 

The bill ensures that forecast methodologies used by the grid planning process and state agencies are consistent with the Energy Plan when possible.

Integration of new technologies improving efficiency of grid operation. There are now technologies that improve the efficiency and reliability of the grid. With them we can get more power to consumers using the existing grid reducing the need for new power sources. For example, the Governor’s Energy Office is pursuing a program that uses software and hardware to enhance grid stability, regulate voltage, and increase transmission capacity on existing lines. Additionally, the bill encourages the incorporation of grid monitoring measures through the use of sensors checking for power quality, reliability, state of the infrastructure, and distributed generation output. The bill promotes their use and incorporation in grid plans.

Coordination of grid plans into power procurement decisions. When procurements of local power sources are conducted in isolation from the grid planning process, unintended consequences can occur.

Maine has already experienced this in its solar program through procurements that did not optimize project location to minimize infrastructure investments. While some level of coordination among agencies that direct procurement does occur, there is no formal requirement for close linkage between the attributes of these procurements and grid plans. The bill ensures such coordination occurs.

Review of Non Wires Alternative Program. In the 129^th, legislation established a “nonwires alternative” program, requiring proposals for new infrastructure to serve demand to consider alternatives such as meeting that demand with local power sources or managing that demand through load control and efficiency measures. Nonwire alternatives and demand management are in fact essential tools used to formulate a grid plan. Currently the PUC is in charge of the planning process, the lead for non-wire alternatives is in the Office of Consumer Advocate, and the lead for demand management is Efficiency Maine. The bill requires the three agencies involved to assess the current situation and develop recommendations on how that process could be improved.

As to arguments that greater coordination between the State Energy Plan and grid planning erodes the independence of the PUC- Its independence is preserved through its quasi-judicial function. Infrastructure investment, and new technology introduction, as well as energy procurements, are policy-driven questions, and it is appropriate that our legislatively mandated energy plan guide that direction. And they all directly impact grid planning.

By integrating the energy plan into the planning process, we ensure that grid investments are not made in a policy vacuum or create costly unintended consequences, as what happened in the disconnect with early solar procurements and infrastructure planning. The energy plan itself is subject to public input, legislative review, and regular updates, offering transparency and accountability. In contrast, a purely utility-initiated planning process can lack clear public priorities or coordination across sectors.

Increased coordination with the state energy plan enhances—rather than compromises—the quality and legitimacy of grid planning. It grounds utility decisions in a broader public interest framework, while preserving the PUC’s neutral role in reviewing and approving those decisions.

In summary, LD 1726 is a collection of measures to improve the grid planning process and strengthen the coordination between Maine’s energy agencies and the planning process by strengthening its governance by establishing more formal linkages to activities that have a direct impact on, or perhaps should be subject to, the findings of a grid plan.

LD 1726 is just good management. I urge a vote for “Ought to Pass.”