On a statewide tour highlighting Maine’s rising energy costs, Maine Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau touted clean energy as a solution to diversify the power grid.
Fecteau, D-Biddeford, appeared at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone Thursday, where he toured a set of municipal solar arrays that cover roughly 70% of the electricity needs of the town and magnet high school within it.
“This is a great example of how communities can take charge and address energy challenges on their own,” Fecteau said.
Retail electricity costs in Maine have risen nearly 80% in the last decade, owing to aging infrastructure and the destabilization of the global gas market in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other conflicts.
Rate increases have disproportionately punished Mainers, who saw the third-highest price hike in the country between 2014 and 2024, and sent lawmakers scrambling for remedies.
Limestone, in partnership with the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, purchased two commercially developed solar arrays on the former base in 2022 for $425,000.
The pair paid off the purchase last year, and this year realized about $76,000 in savings combined. Limestone saved $40,000 in electricity costs, equivalent to a 0.2 mill rate reduction. That offset other budget increases.
“Our mill rate went down this year in Limestone by a tenth of a mill, so if we didn’t have those two tenths, it would have [gone] up,” town manager Ed Pocock said.
The former military boomtown is among Maine’s earliest municipal adopters of solar power. Its quasi-municipal water and sewer district has gotten most of its electricity from the clean energy source since late 2018.
The recently acquired solar arrays, located in a Loring field and parking lot, were constructed by The Power Company, a now-defunct Knox County solar business, under a power purchase agreement with the Loring Development Authority, the agency tasked with revitalizing the former base.
Combined, they produce more than 362,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
The project has drawn the attention of state Democratic leaders before, who have described it as a model other towns can follow to curb electricity expenses and lower property taxes.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hannah Pingree visited the site in 2022 after Limestone received a $50,000 grant to help pay for it through the Community Resilience Partnership, an initiative of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, which Pingree then directed.
In his visit Thursday, Fecteau struck a similar chord.
“I think a lot of people think of the solutions to our problems as only being in southern Maine and that there’s not innovation happening in other parts of our state,” Fecteau said. “Coming to Aroostook County is a prime example of the fact that we have some really awesome things happening in our state all across the state.”
He acknowledged the need to have “community buy-in” for solar projects, as some developments have faced pushback from locals worried about them encroaching on residences or agricultural land.
Several Maine towns and cities have enacted bans or stricter development requirements for commercial solar projects in recent years, including in nearby Presque Isle, as developers have poured in to take advantage of state incentives.
But in a state where skyrocketing electricity prices are squeezing residents, Fecteau contended that responsibly developed solar is one way to address the crisis.
“Solar’s not going to be the solution to all of our problems. It’s not the one silver bullet, but it’s diversifying our portfolio in order to address the challenges we’re facing on the energy side,” Fecteau said.
The House speaker’s “Lower Energy Bills” tour also stopped at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor to see how students are trained for clean energy jobs and a business in Lisbon Falls to showcase an example of the private sector leveraging clean energy.