Maine lawmakers will tackle many environmental topics in 2023

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Power lobbyists Jeremy Payne and Tony Buxton are sometimes at odds within the Maine Legislature. Payne is the performing head of the Maine Renewable Power Affiliation, and Buxton is an lawyer with PretiFlaherty who oversees what’s referred to as the Industrial Power Client Group. (Disclosure: My husband can also be an vitality lawyer at Buxton’s agency.) The 2 have been a part of a legislative preview hosted Thursday in Augusta by the commerce group E2Tech.

As Buxton completed remarks on how he hopes the legislature will work to maintain vitality prices low because it tries to encourage renewables adoption, he handed it off to Payne, who joked, “I’ll simply say the precise reverse of what Tony simply mentioned.”

Amongst different issues, the 2 disagree on how web billing insurance policies to encourage solar energy have affected Mainers’ vitality payments. Beside them on the panel, Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-Eliot) joked to the viewers, “See what my life is like?”

Lawrence chairs the legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Power, Utilities and Expertise (EUT), which he estimated could have not less than 200 payments referred to it this session. Most of them will seemingly carry out these complicated, perennial debates about prices, urgency, justice and trade-offs — all important components of the local weather change dialog.

The E2Tech panel featured some anticipated sizzling matters from EUT and the Surroundings and Pure Assets (ENR) committee, which collectively cowl a whole lot of the legislature’s contributions on local weather, ingesting water points, utility regulation and extra. Listed below are three key points with payments to look at for 2023:

PFAS chemical compounds

“Without end chemical compounds,” which the Monitor has lined extensively, have been a precedence for the legislature final yr and might be once more this yr. Lawmakers are in search of to ease the influence of PFAS contamination on farmers, weed out sources of the chemical compounds within the economic system, and offset rising testing and remedy prices.

Panelist Ben Lucas, a lobbyist for the state Chamber of Commerce, hopes to see tweaks made to the state’s new regulation requiring firms to reveal PFAS added to their merchandise and cease promoting them within the state by 2030. The chemical compounds are linked to severe well being issues and don’t break down in nature.

“We’ve all heard the tragic tales, heartbreaking tales which have come up farming neighborhood,” Lucas mentioned. “We need to be concerned to assist clear up that side of it, however simply ensure that coverage is enacted in a means that doesn’t cripple our enterprise neighborhood, our economic system and the roles that they supply.”

PFAS are famously “in every little thing,” from cosmetics and frying pans to clothes and furnishings to Scotchgard and industrial coatings, to not point out the firefighting foam that has contaminated tons of of army websites. This creates large challenges for “supply discount” legal guidelines like Maine’s that goal to establish the place the chemical compounds are coming from.

Lucas mentioned the regulation was “properly meant” however “extra broad than anybody anticipated” with large potential compliance prices for companies. He famous that it’s nonetheless unclear how federal regulators or industries outline the category referred to as PFAS, which might include 1000’s of particular person mixtures of molecules.

Sen. Stacy Brenner (D-Gorham), who chairs the ENR committee, mentioned there was an extended on-ramp to the regulation taking full impact and amendments may very well be coming.

“There appears to be fairly a little bit of concern from the merchandise trade about their merchandise and whether or not or not they’re prepared to report that they’ve PFAS in them,” she mentioned. “I believe it’s prudent for us to ensure that we’re not letting up on the fuel pedal right here.”

Lithium mining

This text’s lead writer Kate Cough broke the story, in 2021, of a large lithium deposit present in Newry, close to Sunday River. Lithium is a part of the accelerating “important minerals race” to gas renewable expertise — and Maine might have one of many world’s largest treasure troves of it.

However Maine additionally has one of many strictest mining statutes within the nation. What this implies for the Newry deposit and others prefer it may very well be on legislators’ plates this session — contemplating moratoria, or different regulatory approaches to mining.

Panelist Pete Didisheim, the interim CEO of the Pure Assets Council of Maine, mentioned he sees many open questions concerning the Newry lithium deposit.

“There’s so much we don’t know. I believe this yr, that might be uncovered in a whole lot of methods,” he mentioned. “I consider we’ve got a wonderful mining regulation in place, and any modifications to that ought to preserve the excessive environmental efficiency requirements in place for any sort of mining, together with lithium.”

Renewable vitality

On the EUT facet, Sen. Lawrence has already come out with a invoice that may have the state of Maine procure a large quantity of offshore wind vitality, and mentioned an analogous invoice is within the offing for photo voltaic procurement.

With that offshore wind proposal comes renewed debate over the wind trade hub the state has proposed in Searsport. Buxton mentioned he hopes legislators will “shut” on that course of, not delay it with additional debate or payments to backtrack.

Buxton mentioned he additionally hopes to see the legislature double down on incentives for electrical warmth pumps. And Didisheim, within the ENR panel, mentioned he’s awaiting a invoice that may create a form of “mitigation financial institution” for wildlife habitats, the place photo voltaic builders may put cash to offset impacts from their tasks’ fencing.

Additionally positive to be within the highlight this session are the most important wind and transmission tasks within the works in Northern Maine. The legislature was the unique supply of the regulation requiring the tasks’ choice. Now, there are already talks of payments to undo the entire course of — in addition to payments to enshrine it additional.

Buxton and Payne mentioned they anticipate web vitality billing tweaks will come up once more within the legislature. The 2019 regulation, which aimed to incentivize photo voltaic growth, has led to a glut of proposals that rapidly outpaced utility and state sources. Legislators have lengthy eyed modifications to handle this, and people modifications may very well be among the many many underneath debate within the coming months.

To learn the complete version of this text, see Local weather Monitor: A have a look at state legislators’ environmental agenda for 2023.

Attain Annie Ropeik with story concepts at: aropeik@gmail.com.