Permanently Lowering Energy Costs for Maine

More solar in Maine means more money in Maine, for good or ill

Maine’s energy policy is moving in the right direction, away from fuel and toward solar power. Once our economy is fully solar powered, much more wealth will be available in Maine. We should begin preparing for this now and do what we can to mitigate our growing wealth disparity between rich and poor.

During the era of wood and water power, Maine generated sustainable wealth from its forests and rivers. We impoverished ourselves by switching to uranium, gas and oil fuels, all of which we must import. For the past few decades, sending billions of dollars out of our state every year to import fuel has put Maine’s economy under an enormous disadvantage.

Building pipelines to bring more natural gas into Maine simply exacerbates the money outflow. No one sends gas to us unless we send money to them. Wealthy Mainers can afford to buy imports, including energy. But for the average Mainer, and especially for those living below the poverty line, purchasing fuel is an endless burden that gets heavier all the time. Furthermore, our dependence on fuel imports subjects us to enormous risks of cost spikes that are completely out of our control.

Solar power generates sustainable wealth in Maine, returning our economy to a sounder economic footing. We can use the electricity we generate for many uses here in Maine, or we can export it to bring more money into our economy.

You might think that exporting solar electricity and importing money into our economy is a good thing. But any time money supply increases faster than the production of goods and services, prices inflate. The general inflation we are experiencing throughout the United States is a hangover from public policies to manage the pandemic. To save lives and protect livelihoods, those policies increased in our money supply and restricted our ability to exchange goods and services.

Poorly conceived public policies to encourage solar power development will have a similar inflationary impact if they result in more money flowing into Maine and energy flowing out. For example, consider the case of a farmer who decides to take her fields out of food production and put them into solar energy production instead. She signs power purchase agreements with businesses in Massachusetts. Suddenly that farmer will have more income relative to her neighbors, none of whom will have the benefit of local fresh food or access to the energy now produced on her farm since the power has been sold to Massachusetts.

That farmer will be able to afford to pay more for land, a house, a new truck, or whatever she wants. That extra money circulating in Maine will tend to force prices higher, unless we start producing more goods and services to buy.

A better outcome would be for a farm in Maine to install solar power for its own use. If a farmer installed solar panels and used them to power an electric tractor instead of a diesel one, and used that emission-free equipment to grow healthy food for her community, that would increase the amount of goods and services produced in Maine. If the amount of money and amount of goods and services can stay in balance, we can grow our economy without price inflation.

Solar power has the potential to be a net benefit for everyone in Maine. We can increase our energy supply, reduce our cost of energy, prevent pollution, and improve our balance of trade. However, overall, solar will probably provide more and greater opportunities to increase the money supply in Maine in relation to the amount of goods and services we produce. This will tend to have an inflationary impact. In other words, the more solar in Maine, the more money flowing into our state, and the more expensive everything in Maine will likely become.

Since Maine has a citizen legislature, most of the people we elect to write the law don’t have a deep understanding of technical issues and most of the legislation coming out of Augusta is written by lobbyists. Honestly, it’s a complete mess. Nothing makes any rational sense; our statutes and regulations are essentially just a grab bag of favors given away by politicians who pander to the public and seek power in their party.

So, we can’t expect any thoughtful plan to become law. Our best option is to encourage as much solar power to be built as fast as possible, and then work on doing the best we can to get wealthy people to share the extra money that will flow into Maine. If we can elect more knowledgeable and trustworthy legislators, that would be good. If we can’t do that, we’ll have to hire more persuasive lobbyists.

Money for solar power produced in Maine will go mostly to the rich. We can anticipate that and be prepared to join the scrum during the next legislative session. We can hire lobbyists to advocate for the idea that reducing poverty in Maine would be a good idea. We can try to convince our legislators to require the rich to share some of their extra wealth with the rest of us.

If we don’t build more solar in Maine, less money will flow into our economy. If we remain addicted to natural gas, the path that past politicians have sold us down, we’ll continue fighting over a shrinking pie while other states and countries continue to take our money. But if we do build more solar in Maine, we’ll have more money flowing into our economy, less pollution in our air and water, and at least a small hope of creating a better life for everyone.