Lawmakers have tweaked Maine’s controversial solar subsidy program several times since they launched in 2019, and they are divided over a bill expected to face votes in the next two weeks.
The measure is drawing pushback from some solar firms and clean energy advocates who argue it will slash a program helping around 100,000 Mainers. But Warren and Maine’s ratepayer advocate said it will protect small projects and ensure developers can still earn a fair return but limit steep rate hikes that Mainers have had to bear in recent years.
“We need to keep supporting solar, but we also need to make sure the program doesn’t place unnecessary costs on Maine families and small businesses,” Rep. Sophie Warren, D-Scarborough, the bill’s sponsor, said Friday.
The continued split in the State House underscores the complexity of a policy change that began in a Republican-sponsored bill signed by Gov. Janet Mills at the outset of her tenure. It boosted solar adoption through escalating costs that now top $234 million annually for Maine electric ratepayers, according to Public Advocate Heather Sanborn.
Mills nominated Sanborn, a former brewery owner and Democratic lawmaker, to her position in December. Her predecessor, Bill Harwood, took an aggressive role in warning of the rising costs of the program, prompting a solar group to accuse him of spreading “misinformation” in 2023.
The new public advocate is behind Warren’s amended plan, which makes a long list of changes including capping annual increases in the subsidy program known as net energy billing. The changes would save ratepayers an estimated $1.2 billion over the next 16 years, or about $3 per month for residents, according to Sanborn’s office.
She said it will help Maine reach its climate goals, as the “runaway costs” of the existing net energy billing program may derail ongoing efforts with heat pump adoption and other initiatives. Opponents say it may harm the roughly 15,000 clean energy jobs in Maine, even though the solar industry remains divided on the measure.
Peter Whitney, president of Bold Coast Energy, a Maine-based energy development and consulting firm, believes it “will enable Maine’s growing renewable energy workforce to realign around a successor program, facilitating continued growth in the state into the future.”
But the legislation and retroactive changes may force projects to go into default, said Syncarpha Capital CEO Cliff Chapman, whose New York-based firm owns eight solar projects in Maine with about 5,000 customers.
“Everybody’s going to feel it,” he said.
Leslie Geissinger, who lives in Jay with her husband and two teenage sons, said her family has been a leaseholder for a nearby community solar project since 2021 and added rooftop solar panels last year. She feels it is “an unknown” in terms of what the capped increases in Warren’s bill would do and worries about replacing the existing net energy billing program.
The community solar lease has provided income to help ultimately send her 19- and 16-year-old sons to college and keep her family’s vegetable and livestock farm operating.
“A lease for a solar project is a guaranteed income stream in a very difficult farm economy,” Geissinger said.
This divide is mirrored in the Legislature. Dueling proposals to scale back the subsidy program received plenty of lobbying in 2023, when lawmakers ultimately approved an industry-backed bill from Sen. Mark Lawrence, D-Eliot, to lower the size limit for projects.
The energy committee endorsed Warren’s bill along party lines in late May. Rep. Steven Foster, R-Dexter, cosponsored Warren’s initial bill before leading a separate version seeking to go further in reining in the program. Mills’ energy office is still reviewing the final language before taking a firm stance on it, a spokesperson said. An adviser to the Democratic governor credited Warren’s approach for being more nuanced than Republican proposals in March testimony.
Warren noted that energy prices — particularly for natural gas — have increased globally and following major storms in the past few years. With solar credits tied to those prices, she said payments to “some solar developers have also gone way up” and landed on ratepayers.
Warren told colleagues last month the solar subsidies have resulted in returns for solar developers that “go well beyond” what policymakers intended. She said she ran for office to fight climate change and has witnessed its effects living by Higgins Beach in Scarborough.
“But to fight climate change, though, has always meant to me that I hold values of climate and economic justice together,” Warren said. “I have refused and will continue to refuse to leave one behind for the sake of the other.”
