Maine Voices: Maine’s construction industry is ready to build our clean energy future

The economic system is the highest concern of Maine voters, in keeping with the Spring 2022 Crucial Insights on Maine ballot. Most Mainers imagine it will worsen earlier than it will get higher. That’s not a shock. Maine ranks within the backside half of all 50 states when it comes to financial development. Whereas the pandemic-related employment disaster is correcting itself, the nationwide inflation disaster has brought about too many households to fall behind. The explanations to be optimistic appear to be slipping away.

Maine wants a plan; one which creates certainty within the job market, one which creates jobs right here in Maine, one that provides working Mainers an opportunity to get forward.

It’s no secret that ABC Maine and plenty of commerce organizations – each union and non-union store alike –  help the New England Clear Power Join (NECEC). All of us imagine that the NECEC represents an answer for Maine and New England’s ever complicating power drawback. NECEC would have created 1,600 good-paying development jobs right here in Maine, for Mainers. Opponents of the challenge preferred to say these weren’t “everlasting” jobs, they have been development jobs that will “go away” when the challenge was full. Ask anybody within the trades and they’re going to let you know that’s true of all our tasks. That’s the character of the development enterprise. As soon as the home is constructed the job is finished.

Our economic system – and the trades that assist kind its spine – want giant scale, multi-year tasks like NECEC. That’s why teams just like the AFL-CIO and the IBEW Native 104, and commerce organizations like ours and others endorsed the challenge. They know huge tasks imply Maine households are being fed and clothed.

300 and sixty NECEC jobs had already been created in Somerset County final yr. The everyday Mainer engaged on this challenge was making $38 per hour plus advantages. Think about if it had been allowed to flourish.

As a substitute, voters declined to approve the challenge final November. Whereas I at all times respect the voters’ selections, on this case I fear they have been misled by vocal, well-funded opponents of the NECEC. Opponents who had rather a lot to lose out of their again pockets if the NECEC have been to be constructed.

The challenge promised just a few key investments for Maine: $200 million to improve Maine’s utility grid; $15 million for fiber optic and broadband enlargement in Somerset and Franklin Counties; one other $15 million to assist Maine construct out its electrical automobile infrastructure.

Every of those investments would have introduced jobs. They’d have put Mainers with households to work. General, the Maine Heart for Enterprise and Financial Analysis estimates NECEC would add over a half-billion {dollars} to Maine’s economic system.

Rural Maine would have benefited particularly from this challenge. Host communities would have obtained $18 million per yr in new tax revenues. And over $10 million was to have been invested in financial improvement and regional tourism promotion in Western Maine.

Listed here are some troublesome info. Maine’s power infrastructure is getting older. And it’s taking place at a time after we as a society have dedicated to transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable power sources. NECEC provided us a ready-to-go power provide of fresh hydropower from a pleasant neighbor to interchange no less than a few of our power derived from fossil fuels. It was absolutely funded – Mainers didn’t need to pay a cent. Initiatives of this dimension and scope, providing this many advantages to Maine, merely don’t come round fairly often.

Maine’s basic contractors are prepared and capable of begin constructing our clear power future. Sadly, we’re nonetheless ready.

— Particular to the Press Herald

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