Your Electric Bill Will Continue to Rise—Here’s Why

Another week, another boondoggle from the Mills Administration on energy. Now, Mills wants to shift our electricity production from cheaper existing resources to expensive offshore wind.

If you have had sticker shock over the last several months at your steadily increasing electric bill, be prepared for the next few years.

It is only going to get worse.

Maine already has the fifth highest residential electricity rates in the nation. Not surprisingly, states two through six are all in New England, with Vermont at number ten. Since they all belong to and purchase their electricity from the ISO New England Regional Transmission Organization (ISO-NE), their costs are similar. As an example, Maine ratepayers currently pay 46.5 percent more than the national average.

Hold onto your wallets. These rates will not stop rising anytime soon. From May 2022 to May 2023, the average price of residential electricity in Maine rose by 12 percent and the state’s push to convert more of its electrical generation into very expensive solar power and offshore wind will drive prices sharply higher.

To help prepare Maine electricity customers for what is coming and deflect the reality that renewable energy is very costly, both the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and the Mills Administration have been lying to us about the cost of energy.

On January 6 of this year, PUC Chair Phil Bartlett, whose previous job was head of the Manie Democratic Party, announced that his commission had set Central Maine Power’s “standard offer” for residential electricity at a rate 49 percent higher than its already high current rate. Bartlett explained to WCSH6 that the latest jump in electricity rates in New England are largely driven by the price of natural gas which right now is more expensive, “In large part because of the war in Ukraine and the effect that it has had on supply disruptions into Europe.”

That same day, however, CNN reported that natural gas prices in Europe, those closest and most effected by the war in Ukraine, had dropped by 90 percent since August. They fell by 48 percent during December alone. At that time, the price of natural gas in the U.S. reached near historic lows.

During her biennial State of the Budget Address, however, Governor Mills—never one to let facts get in the way of one of her policy initiatives—made the same false claim about natural gas when she declared, “The electricity from our grid, which we share with the rest of New England, is overly reliant on natural gas – and the price of natural gas has shot through the roof, in large part as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

At the very moment that Mills uttered these words, the price of natural gas was sitting at one-third of the price it cost on Christmas Day, having fallen by 66 percent in less than two months. The drop did not stop there. The  Wall Street Journal, nine days following her address, pointed out that natural gas prices had reached historic lows. “In early trading, futures dipped below $2, a threshold that has rarely been breached over the past 20 years.”

This was no off the cuff misstatement by Mills. It was a prepared remark written into a speech that is usually the result of weeks of preparation and rewriting. That no one in Mills’ inner circle bothered to fact check such an important statement in such an important speech, speaks volumes about her “Shoot, fire, aim” approach to policymaking.

“By accelerating our pace toward 100 percent clean energy, we will reduce costs for Maine people,” Mills told us, and “protect us from the ravages of climate change.” This statement is completely false. As to costs, well, just check out your latest electric bill and know that it is going to get worse — and that doesn’t include all the taxpayer-subsidies dragged out of your paycheck to make solar and wind feasible for developers.

As to protecting us, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Maine’s net contribution to the world’s CO2 emissions is .000098. That is one unit out of 10,222. Nothing Maine does will “protect us from the ravages of climate change” unless we can somehow convince China, India, and the rest of the world’s major CO2 emitters to cut back dramatically.

Nothing Mainers do contributes in any significant way to climate change. Forcing them to stop doing it will only punish them for doing nothing wrong. This has become remarkably clear in the fiasco that the so-called “community solar” movement has become in Maine.

When solar fanatics sold this idea to Mainers, they promised it would save us all money on our electric bills. When the opposite occurred, they lied to us by blaming it on what they called the high price of natural gas. When it became clear that natural gas prices were extremely low, particularly in relation to the cost of electricity generated by solar, they finally admitted that solar is costing us dearly and will continue to do so indefinitely. This story was so significant, even Maine’s mainstream media had to abandon their protection of Mills and her policies and print the truth.

Reality has proven that converting to solar power in Maine has significantly raised costs for consumers rather than reduce costs as Mills promised. In 2025, we’re looking at an estimated $220 million in electricity bills thanks to community solar. Reality has proven that converting to solar power in Maine has significantly raised costs for consumers rather than reduce costs as Mills promised.

Now, it’s déjà vu all over again—this time with offshore wind.

This past week , Mills announced  her intention to use offshore wind power as a major part of her efforts to make Maine’s energy grid 100 percent renewable. This new effort, while continuing to push solar, is designed to convert the two least expensive forms of electricity, nuclear and natural gas, into the two most expensive means of producing electricity: solar and offshore wind.

In December of last year, the federal government’s National Renewable Energy laboratory issued a report on the cost of wind power. It showed that the levelized cost of energy from floating offshore wind turbines is $133 per MWh. At the same time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (USEIA) reported that the May 2023 price for natural gas was $17.32 per MWh.

A shift from natural gas to offshore wind, like Mills is proposing, would result in a reliance on energy production that is nearly eight times more costly than that which currently makes up roughly 53 percent of our grid. Research on the costs of various forms of energy production show the enormous cost difference between our current energy supply and the one Democrats are trying to force us into. By shifting chunks of gigawatt hours from the 78 percent of our energy that makes up the two least expensive sources (gas and nuclear) to the two most expensive sources of electricity (solar and wind), the result is obvious—higher electricity costs.

One does not need to be a Ph.D. in accounting to realize that, given the current price structure, the shift to a 100 percent renewable grid will continue to drive electricity rates higher. And, again, the higher price per kilowatt-hour doesn’t factor in the massive taxpayer-funded subsidies that come from state and federal sources.

In addition to driving up the price we all pay our electric company, Mills is trying to add more electric vehicles to our roads than the current grid can handle, thus requiring future upgrades costing ratepayers billions. At the same time, she is committed to adding 175,000 more heat pumps to Maine’s environment with their refrigerant that either depletes the ozone layer or spreads more PFAS “forever chemicals” into more of our homes.

All of this comes with the implied promise that if we all suffer involuntarily via the depletion of our financial resources we will soon see cooler oceans, lower sea levels, and fewer hurricanes, thanks to the easing of global warming. In Mills’ own ridiculous words, “we will protect ourselves from the ravages of climate change” by slightly reducing Maine’s miniscule contribution to the world’s CO2 emissions.

Here’s the problem.

According to the International Energy Agency, despite all of the efforts Mainers have put forth so far, the world’s CO2 emissions rose in 2022 by 321mmt to an all-time high. While Mainer’s suffer in many ways, including drastically higher electric rates, the world’s CO2 emissions grew by 100 times Maine’s total annual CO2 emissions.

Mainers need to be protected not from the ravages of climate change but from Mills’ inept public policies.