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Central Maine Power is owned by Avangrid, which is an 81.5 percent owned subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola. If you Google search the phrase “Iberdrola large shareholders,” the first result will be a page titled “Iberdrola Significant Shareholders” on the Iberdrola website.
Scroll down a bit and you will see listed that the three largest shareholders of Iberdrola are: Qatar Investment Authority, Blackrock Inc, and Norges Bank. Qatar Investment Authority and Norges Bank are financial institutions operated by the governments of Qatar and Norway, respectively, while Blackrock is a large investment fund based in New York City.
The contrasts between Qatar and Norway are quite stark, the former being a monarchy with a persistent, documented history of human rights violations against its citizens and the latter consistently scoring lofting rankings for the quality of life of its citizens.
The point of bringing this up is that people funding the campaign against Pine Tree Power use what I believe to be fearmongering language about a “government takeover” of our electric utility, when that scenario isn’t too far from what already exists. It’s just that the governments benefiting from the profits from CMP aren’t in Maine, or even in the United States.
Timothy D’Angelo
Bowdoinham