Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line
reuters.com
reuters.com
Oh, is your end of the boat not sinking? You're probably fine, then.
Luckily the referendum is being challenged in the courts.
[0]https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/03/science/maine-voters-...
Burning whole tree chips for power at biomass plants is actually pretty big in Maine. Although most of that power was sold on to other New England states that had green energy credits, in the years I was involved.
LOL, good luck with that. Hard to think of more unpopular legislation. You might as well say "When the United Nations High command forces the U.S. to increase its gasoline taxes". I mean, come on, we are not some small nation that can be pushed around.
BTW, this is how the progressive movements always marginalize themselves and get kicked out of any political power. Instead of advocating for R&D and cheaper alternatives that improve people's quality of life, they can't help themselves but bring out the club of eco-masochism paired with tax-sadism.
I pay an extra 10 cents/litre for gasoline but get a cheque for most of $1000 every year. Pretty awesome deal for me and most Canadians.
People really like to hate on getting cheques in the mail.
But 80% of consumers are below average. The average is skewed by people with private jets, et cetera.
Personally, I'm probably above median and below average.
That’s part of the point of a carbon tax. You want people to alter their spending behaviour to consume things which pollutes less. It’s a potentially small impact on their quality of life now to protect them from a drastic impact to their quality of life later.
Of course, the main point remains making local production more viable by actually putting a price on the externalities of offshore production and encouraging research into greener mean of production by shifting the cost/gain ratio.
Now we can ask, why do the progressives constantly adopt this authoritarian messaging on issues, when they know it is a political loser? Or do they think it's a political winner?
It's a good question, and one that will make a lot of people uncomfortable.
But in any case, the United States has its own politics.
You mean like people in DC, which does not have a senator despite having more population, because of a certain political party?
>Now we can ask, why do the progressives constantly adopt this authoritarian messaging on issues, when they know it is a political loser? Or do they think it's a political winner?
The conservatives will deny reality for political purposes till its too late again, just like they did with covid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o
>It's a good question, and one that will make a lot of people uncomfortable.
What? Is this more empty posturing?
Source?
Also, fighting climate needs a 'all of the above' strategy ASAP.
Increasing R&D and cheaper mean of producing green is the main goal of carbon tax. That’s probably the most effective way to do it and is market neutral. I fail to see what any of it has to do with the progressive movements.
With a carbon tax, researching greener way of producing goods has a direct impact on the final price of said goods. That’s make this research a competitive advantage. Without a carbon tax, the sole reason to do R&D focusing on emission is if you are going to get fined by crossing a line. That means that as soon as you are under the threshold doing research is a waste of money.
[0]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90660435/just-5-of-power-plants-...
Maine has the most unreliable power grid in the country, CMP is hated, and the lease was an (illegal) joke. $4,000 a year and no jobs.
You know what’s also bad for the environment, hundreds of thousands of Mainers powering their homes with diesel/propane generators for weeks every year because CMP and Versant are running the most unreliable power grid in the country.
My power is usually out for 4-6 weeks a year. My rooftop solar can cover my needs during the summer, but winter I have to use a propane generator
Quebec even wanted to finance EV charging stations throughout the state. All built and operated locally of course. I guess out-of-state and foreign big oil didn't like this.
Depressing. I guess there's a reason the state is poor...
By state law they'll resolve the tie by drawing lots at the city hall building tomorrow morning: https://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/03/tied-instant-runoff-f...
It would of course be better if they played a round of poker.
Luck seems as good a way as any. Or math problems? I'd love a test of science, but the makeup of that test might be too political and I don't want bible trivia on the next one.
https://twitter.com/randybillings/status/1456263758834069512
"More than three-quarters of the corridor has already been cleared, with about 100 poles installed, Avangrid said last week."
The total area consumed by the corridor will be about 0.014% of the woods.
Don't your power lines look like this?
https://energytransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Wind...
1 pole of maybe... I don't know, 30m by 10m, every several hundred meters? That's a tiny footprint.
Isn't the rest just electrical cables hanging 20m in the air?
https://videohive.img.customer.envatousercontent.com/files/9...
EDIT: According to another comment[1], the cut is 75ft wide. That's enough for 6 lanes.
[edit] forgot a word
While not necessarily a huge footprint, it has an outsized environmental impact - this is because it forces and maintains a field ecosystem through the middle of the forest, effectively breaking the forest in two. While it isn't quite as bad as a highway, it greatly disrupts the ecosystem on both sides for 100s of meters into the forest, by bringing in more forest edge predators, vermin, diseases, etc.
Ecologically, the net effect may not be quite as bad as a highway, but it is still basically a kilometer-wide disruption band, breaking a single broad deep forest into two far smaller forests. Contiguous zones, not mere square acreage are turning out to be critical for the biosphere, and this is just another big disruptor.
https://static-35.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/78d2...
But in the end this was doomed by the route. If it were economically possible to go around the north woods it would have had little opposition.
They agreed to sell to Mass. at 0.05$/KWh. I don't think there's anything apart from hydro they can sell at this price (and still make a profit on).
So no, there is no such risk.
I think there are arguments about sovereignty, not being reliant on a foreign country for power that could be made, but saying "what if we get the 1% diesel in the mix" is a terrible one.
The entire New England is going brown by closing nuclear reactors, fighting wind and now this.
IIRC, out of $1BN, about $300M was compensation and pork for local residents
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/02/foreign-m...
Only other stereotype I can recall being told on top of the GP is that it’s very insular and if you’re not a Maine native then don’t expect to ever win an election.
Again all anecdotal but it’s what your neighbors think of you at least
CMP is beyond hated in Maine too.
They need to bring something to the negotiation table IMO.
We have tried (and still are trying) to create a public utility to replace CMP called Pine Tree Power. It was passed in the legislature but vetoed by our governor this year.
There was also a story about the First Nations of Quebec not having their voices heard regarding the transmission lines that pass through their lands.
Maybe Quebec should have just founded a competitor to CMP down there.
> There was also a story about the First Nations of Quebec not having their voices heard regarding the transmission lines that pass through their lands.
There's a tribe claiming they own the whole island of Montreal out there (despite treaties covering it since the 17th century).
I'm sure some lobbyist found people willing to make any claims they wanted in front of the press.
It's definitely in the interest of the United States that this project succeed, as well as in the national interest of Quebec. With the arrival of carbon exchange, this would help the country get a competitive edge.
You don't get to do business like that and expect voters not to see the opportunity to screw you back. People aren't that stupid.
> since hydropower production emits no greenhouse gas emissions.
... that is incorrect. Hydro reservoirs emit a fair bit of CO2 and CH4, especially cold northern lakes with large surface area [1] that have inundated a fair bit of biomass. The emissions can be mitigated, but there is no economic incentive to do so, so it doesn't happen. The total is generally far less than, say, the CCGT equivalent, but not always.
The cost is not strictly proportional to the power output, so it's usually counted a sunk cost... :)
[1] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/11/949/275427... - see supplemental data
Interesting that financing for this research came from the country building the most new coal plants right now, and on an out of control trajectory for emissions.
The other one, of course, has the president that think it's ok to cut down the Amazonian rainforest.
Both of them have a pretty good reason to discredit hydro.
- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
It's in their interest to make Hydro not look so great so they can claim that the west isn't much cleaner than they are.
> But opponents, supported by U.S. power company NextEra Energy Inc (NEE.N), which has competing generating projects in New England, argued that the line would cause permanent damage to Maine’s north woods and hurt the region’s tourism industry.
Also note the line is already 75% completed.
Protip: Don't make your customers hate you if you need their permission to do your projects.
Yep, CMP is terrible to their customers.
That is straight-up opinion.
There is nothing that says all expansion of the grid needs to be large-scale wind and solar. Sure, there are some economies of scale, but there are also structural economies and reliability benefits of locating more smaller sources nearer to the power users.
Utility companies don't just get to do whatever they want, and I'm hoping the efforts to get the state to buy back CMP pan out.
EDIT: I meant to say that I voted 'yes' to say 'no' to the corridor.
https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?re...