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Scott Strom of Waterville is a former state representative.
Maine is facing a growing energy affordability crisis, and one of the root causes isn’t technology or a lack of clean energy resources. It’s policy. Time and again, I’ve seen decisions from the Maine Legislature make energy more expensive for the people and businesses who rely on it.
While utilities and developers are investing to modernize the grid, harden infrastructure, and bring more clean energy online, frequent policy changes implemented by the Legislature often create whiplash across the energy landscape. And that’s making it harder to find real solutions to big problems.
For example, Maine first began trying to import clean hydropower from Canada in the 1980s, but that idea was met with resistance. But what if that strategy had been successful? Today we could have thousands of megawatts of baseload clean energy already flowing into our state and region, and it would have been to the benefit of our homes, businesses, environment and for the widescale deployment of renewable power.
Now in 2025 the New England Clean Energy Connect Project is close to coming online to deliver 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the New England grid in Maine. This project will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, likely lower energy costs, and provide more reliable electric service for Maine.
Yet this project, and projects like it, have been met by fierce resistance, fueled, I believe, by misinformation and political rhetoric, culminating in a 2021 referendum aimed at blocking the project. Though court rulings have since reaffirmed the project’s legality, years of delays have come at a real cost to Mainers, such as higher electricity prices and missed emissions reductions.
Then there’s Maine’s net energy billing program, which enables residents and businesses to offset electricity costs with solar generation. This public policy program has been subject to constant legislative changes, sometimes occurring in the middle of the night, and has resulted in extraordinarily high costs. Instead of building a stable, equitable, and commonsense program designed to attract renewable energy developers to Maine, lawmakers have created a volatile policy that has hurt our most vulnerable.
And finally, there’s the mother of all legislative blunders — the decision to deregulate Maine’s electricity markets. Implemented around the year 2000, the goal of this policy was to increase competition and lower prices by creating new competition. In practice, however, the decision has largely failed.
By removing electricity generation from regulation, Maine handed over control of its energy supply to the volatile and largely unregulated wholesale market. This has left ratepayers exposed to price spikes driven by global fuel costs.
At the same time, the state lost much of its leverage to guide any real, long-term investment in clean, reliable, and affordable energy sources. Instead of fostering innovation and cost savings, deregulation has fragmented accountability and burdened Maine families and businesses with high rates and few real choices.
If lawmakers truly want to reduce energy costs and increase reliability, I think they need to stop interfering with the solutions utilities and providers are trying to put into place.
We need policies that support clean energy infrastructure and transmission development at the lowest cost possible, not politicians who want to obstruct solutions for political gain. We need to stabilize existing programs like net energy billing, and when we implement new ideas, like battery storage policy, they need to be done at the lowest cost reasonable.
And finally, the Legislature, policymakers, and advocates need to stop changing their minds every two years and allow some of the more commonsense decisions already on the books to take root.
Maine’s energy future depends on cooperation — not conflict — with policymakers. Let’s focus on what’s best for Maine residents: lower bills, a stronger grid, and a cleaner energy future. That means removing the legislative roadblocks and letting solutions work.
