With the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s recent vote to proceed with submitting an application for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on tribal lands at Pleasant Point near Eastport, the topic of whether a new industrial energy facility is appropriate for the Maine coast is back in the headlines.
When the Island Institute’s Board of Trustees voted to oppose the siting of any LNG facility in Casco Bay, they elected at that point not to address the question of the organization’s response to other siting proposals in Penobscot Bay, where a proposal had surfaced for using Sears Island, or elsewhere. The overriding issue of LNG in Casco Bay was and remains its likely devastating impact on the bay’s year-round island communities and fisheries, especially lobstering, that are critical to the economic survival of Casco Bay’s islands and established working waterfronts. Proposals for other bays of Maine where the remaining 15 year-round island communities are located are likely to be received with equal concern and skepticism.
The question remains whether an LNG plant, either onshore or offshore, can be located anywhere along the Maine coast, but additional information has been assembled and disseminated that adds substantially to the public discussion on the subject. A great deal of information with reports on safety and economic impacts is available on Save Casco Bay’s website (www.savecascobay.org), an organization that was formed in May of this year to oppose LNG in Casco Bay. The presentations from an educational forum that the Island Institute helped co-sponsor on July 29 are also available online at www.clf.org. (See related stories in both this month’s and previous months’ WWFs)
So what have we learned from the intense public discussion over LNG to date? First, many, many people along the Maine coast appear to agree that the way LNG siting is being debated is short-sighted, divisive and negligent. It is ludicrous to assert, as the Maine Sunday Telegram editorialized on August 15, that LNG siting decisions should primarily be made at the local level. (This also seems to be Governor Baldacci’s default modus operandi).
Yes, Maine has a strong political culture of local control, but siting a major industrial facility with undeniably wide regional impacts should be done in a broader process. The Governor has failed to convene any process to rigorously address the costs and benefits of an LNG facility on the Maine coast and where and how, if the state truly needs this source of energy, regional stakeholders can be included in the deliberations. In the absence of such leadership, we are left with the disheartening spectacle of LNG prospectors going from town to town looking for a local leader to invite them into town in a disturbing vacuum of surrounding interests.
Second, we learned, or at least I did, that Maine is already much more dependent on natural gas than I had the least notion of. In the deregulated energy environment of the mid to late 1990s, power suppliers and industrial customers switched in large measure to natural gas from oil and nuclear energy sources, especially after the closing of Maine Yankee. This has been unquestionably good for air quality and other environmental concerns, but we made that change while the long-term supply picture for LNG, according to at least one energy industry expert, Matt Simmons, who addressed the LNG Conference, is highly questionable at best. Thus, we face the very real prospects of supply shortages and price hikes, to pay for the natural gas from LNG or pipelines we already use.
Finally, we also learned that Governor Baldacci has proposed a new strategy to diversify the state’s energy mix to encourage the use of energy from renewable and recycled sources. As recently as a decade ago, something like 40 percent of Maine’s energy came from such sources, in contrast to a substantially smaller percentage today. But none of us who have been so concerned about LNG this summer came to support this enlightened approach. As a result, the narrow, self-interested opposition from major industrial users and suppliers carried the day and the proposal was defeated in the legislature.
If we want an energy future that is not dependent on new LNG facilities, then we are all going to need to keep involved in the discussion over where and what kind of energy we do want and where it will come from.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute, one of the sponsors of the July 29 conference on LNG at Bowdoin College.