Central Maine Power wants the state to approve two special rate plans for high-electricity users, but green energy groups say other options are better
MAINE, USA — Central Maine Power customers who use a lot of electricity have a few options to spend less on their electricity bill, and the utility company is asking state regulators to approve more.
CMP is asking the Maine Public Utilities Commission to approve two specialty rate plans, one designed for heat pump users and another for homes with EVs, heat pumps, and other energy-intensive technology. However, critics – including clean energy advocates – say there are better options and oppose these plans.
The main gripe, according to Noah Berman at The Acadia Center and Rebecca Schultz at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, is that neither rate plan met the goals – the adoption of heat pumps, EVs and other electric technologies – that it was created to meet.
“Third-party measurement and evaluation of their impact on consumer behavior has demonstrated the rates are not effective,” Schultz wrote. “To the contrary, these rates would encourage demand for electricity during peak times that drive costs across the system, thereby shifting costs to other users and making the entire system more expensive for everyone.”
Berman has similar critiques and believes that CMP’s Time-of-Use rate bills based on usage at peak and off-peak times. On-peak times are 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays, according to CMP.
“The time of use rate offers a lot of the same benefits because heat pumps are a shiftable load. You can heat your house all day up until the peak period, really blast it if you want, and you could still be saving money in the end,” Berman said.
The two rates CMP is proposing don’t encourage Mainers to shift their usage toward off-peak times, says Berman. That is a problem because, as Schultz pointed out, increasing peak demand leads to more strain on the grid, requiring higher-grade infrastructure and subsequently higher rates.
Berman also warns that as summer gets hotter, more people may cool their homes. The heat pump rate, he says, may actually be more costly if summertime usage is higher.
To read the full article from News Center Maine, click here.
CMP says ‘financial pressure’ may force construction delays
Financial pressure on Central Maine Power could force it to delay construction projects aimed at improving reliable electric service and upgrading aging infrastructure, according to the company.
The utility’s warnings come ahead of a Maine Public Utilities Commission decision on whether to grant CMP’s request to temporarily increase customer prices to raise about $70 million dollars.
Some opposing groups, including the Natural Resources Council of Maine and Acadia Center have criticized CMP’s hiring and investment pause and urged the company to meet its obligations to customers.
Noah Berman, a utility advocate with Acadia Center in an interview said he doubted the company’s claim of financial straits.
“I do not believe CMP is accurately portraying its capability in ensuring that Mainers have safe and reliable and adequate service which is its obligation under the law,” Berman said.
The PUC will deliberate whether to permit temporary rates at its meeting Tuesday.
To read the full article from Maine Public, click here.
Healey asks Trump administration to speed up review of planned gas expansion in latest sign of shifting energy politics
Here’s something you probably didn’t have on your bingo card: The Democratic governor of Massachusetts asking President Trump’s administration to move faster in approving a gas expansion project.
That’s exactly what Gov. Maura Healey did on Thursday, imploring Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter to move with a “sense of urgency” in issuing required permits for the project to quickly move forward.
Environmental nonprofit Acadia Center found that despite a sharp increase in the use of natural gas for power and heating in New England since the start of the century, energy prices have only gone up, too. Gas capacity in the region rose by about a third between 2010 and 2024, but prices nevertheless increased, according to the analysis.
To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.
Reliability Projects, Hiring Shouldn’t Be Delayed as Part of Rate Proposal Debate
Acadia Center | Natural Resources Council of Maine
Read the Full Press Release Here
October 1, 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Please Contact:
Colin Durrant (NRCM), (207) 200-4412, cdurrant@nrcm.org;
Noah Berman (Acadia Center), (207) 236-6470 x 107, nberman@acadiacenter.org
October 1, 2026 (Augusta, ME) — Two clean energy and utility accountability groups today called on Central Maine Power (CMP) to stop threatening to delay both new hiring and planned reliability projects, such as replacing poles and upgrading lines, as part of the ongoing debate around the company’s rate increase request.
The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) and Acadia Center, whose experts have intervened and are active in the ongoing rate increase docket before the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), today issued the following joint statement:
“We urge CMP to proceed responsibly to meet its obligations to Maine ratepayers. The company will have a fair chance to press its case for cost recovery in the normal process. There’s no need to freeze hiring and throw up unnecessary roadblocks to projects that have already been approved and are underway.
Maine ratepayers deserve a functional, reliable energy system. As Maine’s largest utility monopoly, CMP has a responsibility to build and maintain a safe, reliable electric grid. Smart planning and budgeting decisions and investing in a well-paid union workforce clearly fall under that responsibility.
CMP could do all the infrastructure spending that it’s proposing to do for $62 million cheaper—if the company took regular Wall Street returns, instead of its request for more profit. With spiking heating oil and gasoline prices, Mainers can’t afford another rate hike.”
Additional Background:
If approved, CMP’s latest bid to hike rates by $189 million would increase its profits by about 36%.
CMP’s request to raise rates comes amid heightened affordability concerns and a growing body of evidence that utilities nationwide are allowed to earn billions more in profits than they need. Experts who testified before the PUC in this case agreed that in today’s market with zero market risk premium, investors don’t require returns higher than 30-year Treasury bonds.
CMP’s recent decisions to freeze hiring and delay the Baldwin Resiliency Project appear to be in retaliation for a recommendation from PUC staff earlier this week to deny CMP’s request to fast track a rate increase.
NRCM and Acadia Center reiterated that regulators need the full allotted time to carefully scrutinize CMP’s spending request to make sure all investments are needed and properly paced to balance the impacts on affordability.
Is it time to rethink the Northeast’s cap-and-trade system?
Twenty years ago, a group of Northeastern states signed on to a plan to reduce the greenhouse gases spewing from power plants by making generators pay for the carbon they release. Since then, the region’s power sector emissions have dropped by half, and states have reaped more than $10 billion in revenue to invest in energy programs.
By these numbers, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, looks like a success. And plenty of clean energy advocates say the program has produced both direct and indirect benefits for the climate and residents’ utility bills.
RGGI’s carbon price likely helped drive that decrease, experts say. However, there were other contributing factors, including state climate regulations and the economics of trading coal generation for plants that use lower-priced, cleaner-burning natural gas.
“I don’t think you can realistically attribute it all to one mechanism,” said Paolo Moncada Tamayo, senior policy and data analyst for climate nonprofit Acadia Center and a strong supporter of RGGI.
Then, after 2020, emissions stopped falling and even started trending back up slightly, once the low-hanging fruit of the coal-to-gas transition was largely gone. Since that time, it’s been a lot harder for RGGI to have an impact, say supporters and critics alike.
“The earlier RGGI era was easier and cheaper,” Tamayo said. “We’re at a point where it’s not as easy and not as affordable to decarbonize.”
Others, however, say that the emissions and economic impacts made by investing RGGI revenue are inarguable and invaluable. The investment of proceeds from 2024 alone are forecast to avoid 4.3 billion short tons of carbon emissions over their lifetime — roughly the amount of carbon released by burning 440 billion gallons of gasoline.
These investments also produce savings for consumers, largely through energy-efficiency measures, but also by supporting cost-cutting electrification and direct bill assistance, Tamayo said. In New England, the investment of RGGI revenue from 2025 should result in $1.3 billion in lifetime savings, according to her analysis.
“We can’t lose sight of that just because of a moment of high prices,” she said.
To read the full article from Canary Media, click here.
The Long Game on Energy Affordability
As the war in Iran drives up energy prices and as heat waves blanket much of the country, Americans’ electricity bills are rising. Energy efficiency improvements are some of the most cost-effective tools available to help make homes more comfortable and lower household energy costs.4 But while these improvements save households money over time, their upfront costs make them an easy target for policymakers seeking to lower consumers’ energy bills in the short term. In many states, utilities finance these investments through energy efficiency programs, reducing household energy use while making it easier to plan for and meet growing electricity demand without overbuilding new generation and grid infrastructure. When states fund these programs by tacking higher utility charges onto consumers’ bills, policymakers facing pressure to deliver immediate bill relief may target them for cuts—especially if the savings are not immediately apparent.
Rhode Island almost walked into a similar trap. Last year, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission approved Rhode Island Energy’s proposal to reduce the state’s electric energy efficiency budget from roughly $82 million in 2025 to $62.9 million in 2026. The Acadia Center estimated that the nearly $20 million reduction could have eliminated more than $46.1 million in benefits for Rhode Islanders, including lower long-term energy bill savings and more than 400 fewer clean energy jobs. The cuts in Gov. Dan McKee’s (D) FY 2027 budget proposal were even more severe, proposing to cap Rhode Island’s energy efficiency program at $75 million annually—down from the previously approved $95 million—as part of a broader affordability package that also included related energy efficiency reforms. This proposal came despite Rhode Island’s efficiency programs having historically delivered about $3 in benefits for every dollar invested. In June, the state legislature rejected the governor’s efforts and preserved the state’s energy efficiency funding and the savings it will deliver.
To read the full article from the Center for American Progress, click here.
New England Affirms Faith in Wind Energy’s Future
Second time’s the charm?
On Aug. 25, Maine’s Public Utilities Commission selected winning proposals in a years-long effort to turn more of northern Maine’s howling winds into energy that can power population centers in the southern part of the state and region.
The PUC selected one developer to build 800 megawatts of new onshore wind energy in Aroostook County—enough to power over 300,000 homes—and another to build a new transmission line capable of carrying up to 1,200 MW of power to Southern Maine and New England. Six hundred MW of the first tranche of power are reserved for Maine.
Advocates of renewable energy cheered the move.
To read the full article from Inside Climate News, click here.
Maine power line interruptions spark legal battle between Hydro-Quebec, Mass. utilities
Hydro-Quebec and a trio of Massachusetts utilities filed dueling lawsuits in federal court last week, alleging contract violations stemming from service interruptions this winter on a high-voltage power line through western Maine.
Eversource, National Grid and Unitil allege that Hydro-Quebec stopped delivering electricity over the New England Clean Energy Connect line just a few days after it went into operation this January.
Joe LaRusso, manager of the clean grid program at Acadia Center, an energy nonprofit, said that despite service interruptions this winter and over the summer, the transmission line is largely delivering clean power to the New England electric grid.
And even though Quebec is still importing power from New England that is largely generated with polluting natural gas power plants, those imports are outweighed by the power coming down the NECEC line, LaRusso added.
“That clean power is not only reducing the amount of emissions, but also the cost of electricity here in the region,” LaRusso said.
To read the full article from Maine Public, click here.
Mass. utilities and Hydro-Quebec sue each other over missing hydropower
Three Massachusetts utilities are suing Canadian energy giant Hydro-Québec after it failed to deliver promised hydropower for several days during a cold snap this winter. Hydro-Québec, in turn, is suing the utilities for withholding payment for power that was delivered.
The dispute is the latest in a string of challenges surrounding hydropower imports into New England. It centers on 12 days in January and February when temperatures plunged well below zero Fahrenheit in Québec. Electricity demand surged in the region, leading the Canadian company to largely stop exporting power along the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) transmission line, which began operation on Jan. 16.
“What is at stake is essentially an argument regarding the remedies that are due to the parties under the power purchase agreements,” said Joseph LaRusso, manager of the Clean Grid Program at climate nonprofit Acadia Center.
Environmental advocates are nonetheless confident that NECEC will help New England achieve its emissions goals, as well as rein in high energy costs.
“NECEC is making a material difference to the grid here in ISO New England,” said LaRusso. “And I don’t see these contract disputes altering that.”
To read the full article from Canary Media, click here.
For Healey, a delicate dance with the utilities emerges during election season
In the throes of what would become Massachusetts’s coldest winter in a decade and looking for a tangible win at the beginning of a reelection year, Gov. Maura Healey announced a plan in her State of the Commonwealth address this past January to provide relief to residents struggling to pay their high energy bills.
Healey’s pitch was to offer modest but concrete savings during February and March, using $180 million in state dollars to cover 15 percent of residents’ electricity costs. The utilities during those months would defer an additional 10 percent of electric bills and 10 percent of gas bills to be collected throughout the rest of the year.
“What we are seeing emerge is a pattern of blaming everything but the real cause of rising costs, which are significant increases on transmission and distribution,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at environmental nonprofit Acadia Center. “However, the utilities aren’t speaking about reining in spending there, and I don’t think it’s a leap to say that’s where they make the majority of their profits. So, of course, they are going to want to rein in costs on things that don’t make them as much money.”
To read the full article from Commonwealth Beacon, click here.