When it comes to the cost of utilities, Mainers can’t catch a break.

This week, the Maine Public Utilities Commission announced new rate hikes to subsidize Gov. Janet Mills’ green energy transition. The new rates will have consumers paying an extra $15.50 a month to keep the lights on. With many Mainers already stocking up on winter heating oil – which remains priced at $3.00 to $4.90 per gallon – and interest rates reaching the highest levels in a decade, the rate hikes could not have come at a worse time for Maine ratepayers.

Maine’s climate action plan, “Maine Won’t Wait,” earmarks billions of dollars for clean transportation, clean energy, climate resilience and other schemes like developing “climate-friendly building materials.” This most recent rate increase will go directly to pay the $179.3 million owed to solar developers – a 47% increase from the previous year.

Though companies like Central Maine Power blame their increasing rates on market volatility, the primary factor of these high rates is the governor’s requirement that utilities purchase power from solar projects at a fixed rate. The MPUC blamed a previous price hike in 2022 on fossil fuel market volatility, despite the government’s price fixes being in their second year under a Democratic majority. Even more telling, energy developers, manufacturers, renewable energy companies and the Maine Renewable Energy Association all opposed the latest rate hike, pointing out to regulators that the latest rate increase would be unfair to ratepayers.

To reach Gov. Mills’ goals of carbon neutrality by 2045, energy companies need to target the 91% of greenhouse gas emissions that come from energy consumption in Maine. That means Mainers will pay more for basic household functions like staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Similar climate schemes to attract more clean-energy jobs to the state by developing offshore wind power alongside inefficient solar power – despite opposition from the state’s well-known lobster industry – show that ratepayers will be the ones hurt the most from these policies. It’s telling that the only parties in support of this week’s rate hike are government agencies like the Office of the Public Advocate and Efficiency Maine Trust, the latter of which exists to “lower the cost and environmental impacts of energy in Maine.”

Instead of subsidizing solar power and burying ratepayers under crushing costs, Maine needs cheap, reliable sources of energy. The United States’ emissions peaked at 6,000 million metric tons of CO2 almost 20 years ago. Residential and commercial emissions are lower than those from electric power, transportation and industrial sectors.

Yet Maine, which is ranked in the bottom 10 states in the U.S. in terms of population and population density, is placing the financial costs of the state’s climate plans on its own residents’ utility bills. Maine’s contribution to national U.S. emissions is minuscule at best. Expecting Mainers to believe that by having the state achieve carbon neutrality, damaging storms will end and the planet will be saved is just not true.

Maine could become carbon-neutral tomorrow and still it would have no impact on worldwide climate change. Sticking Maine ratepayers with a higher bill to achieve a climate goal will not prevent more damaging storms from hitting Maine. Further increasing the cost of living will only drive younger Mainers from the state in search of more affordable places to live with better job opportunities.

When the clean-energy companies oppose rate hikes that will go to paying their own costs, it’s a sign that this rate hike is misguided. If basic utilities continue to significantly add to the cost of living, ratepayers will begin to look for cheaper places to live, to the detriment of Maine and its clean energy development.

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Isle au Haut, Maine — If you take a ferry to Isle au Haut, an island community way off the coast of Maine, you can visit a gift shop and general store. And that’s it, because there are no other businesses on the island.

“People who live out here are resilient, they’re creative,” Bob Olney, president of the Isle au Haut Community Development Corporation, told CBS News. But there aren’t enough of them, Olney said.

The island’s population fluctuates between 45 and 50 people. “It’s essential that we continue to attract families,” Olney said.

Last year, this community put a post on social media and on the island’s official website hoping to woo a new family.  They were careful not to oversell the place.

“Though it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, who knows, it may very well be yours,” the post read.

And they got a taker: a young family from central Massachusetts. 

Dakota and Hannah Waters, and their children Flynn and Amelia, moved here a few months ago.

“Our whole family thought we were psychotic,” Hannah said. “They’re like, ‘A remote island in the middle of the ocean?’”

And yet here they live, the newest members of a dying breed. At one point, there were about 300 communities out here on Maine’s most isolated islands. Now there are just over a dozen. And keeping the communities alive will require attracting people who seek a different lifestyle, people who value solitude over Starbucks, and really don’t mind a little adversity.

“People have traded the good life for a convenient one,” Hannah said. “And convenience isn’t always the best.”

To that point, the Waters raise some of their own food and work multiple jobs. Dakota does plumbing, lawn maintenance and even works on a lobster boat. As for the children, Flynn was one of just two students attending school on the island’s K-8 schoolhouse.

The place is just that small. But Dakota says the tininess is more blessing than curse.

“We have so much more bonding time with the kids,” Dakota said. “It’s indescribably wholesome.”

Hannah plans for the family to stay.

“I’m not moving my stuff off this rock again,” Hannah said. “It was too hard to get it here.”

Maine officials on Friday asked a state judge to dismiss a lawsuit by environmentalists accusing the state of failing to meet targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by not adopting a policy to boost the sales of electric vehicles.

The Department of Environmental Protection is not required by law to adopt a policy expanding electric vehicle use and its “alleged failure or refusal” to adopt the policy is discretionary and not subject to judicial review, the state said in its response to an April 22 lawsuit by the Conservation Law Foundation, Sierra Club and Maine Youth Action.

The lawsuit, filed in Cumberland County Superior Court, also said that the environmental groups’ accusation that the DEP has failed to adopt rules required by Maine’s statute regarding greenhouse gas emission reduction should be dismissed because the groups do not have legal standing to make such a request.

In addition, the state said the DEP has not failed to comply with climate change legislation and that the lawsuit asks the court to to breach Maine’s constitutional separation of powers.

Emily K. Green, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Maine, said the state “would be better served by spending its time and resources to implement our climate law, rather than attempting to dismiss our lawsuit before we get a day in court.”

Environmentalists said in their lawsuit that the DEP and Board of Environmental Protection, which provides oversight of the DEP, are responsible for implementing Maine’s Climate Law that requires greenhouse gas emissions to be cut at least 45% from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.

The environmentalists have asked the court to order the board to adopt rules that comply with the state’s climate law, with a priority for transportation on or before Nov. 1. They asked the court to order the agency to adopt EV rules or an alternative rule by the same date. That date is one month before the Dec. 1 deadline for the Maine Climate Council to update the state climate plan.

This story will be updated.

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