Fiercely Ignoring Now
Maine has significant challenges and opportunities when it comes to energy production. Both the challenges and opportunities demand our attention, now. So why are we twiddling our thumbs?
Nature has a way of providing us with what we need to live and prosper. Many times, however, it’s not the lack of resources that keeps us from prospering; it’s our own failure to grasp reality.
Take energy resources, for example. In Maine, we are heavily dependent upon oil for our energy needs, and energy prices consume a significant percentage of household income. But, presented with real opportunities to diversify our energy sources and lower our costs, we hasten only to sit on our hands.
In Texas, oil from the Permian Basin and the Gulf is extracted, refined, and shipped globally. Way
back when, somebody had to make the business case for petroleum products and argue for the massive infrastructure investment that would convert crude oil into the foundation of one of the most dynamic business environments in the country.
Closer to home and in our own time, thousands of megawatts of hydroelectricity are exported from Quebec to other Canadian provinces and to the United States, and Quebec is continuing to look for new markets as it sees a continuing need for energy in the northeastern United States. Hydro-Quebec, the province’s state-owned energy generation, transmission, and distribution company, isn’t sitting on its hands.
In Maine, we have extremely promising wind and tidal resources. Climate change, peak oil prices, and environmental concerns make renewable energy increasingly attractive. We have the potential to provide significant amounts of clean, renewable power to Maine people.
It will take time and real money to demonstrate commercial viability and convince investors and policy makers that large-scale renewable energy transmission in Maine is feasible. Yet cost is not the principal impediment to securing a safe and economical energy future.
The real problem is our inability—or our unwillingness—to grasp the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves. Here in Maine, we are loping along, blind to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called “the fierce urgency of now.”
When oil and gasoline prices spiked in 2008, Maine families were spending nearly a quarter of their household income on energy, according to the University of Maine’s Dr. Habib Dagher.
So you’d think we’d be chomping at the bit to get our hands on abundant, secure energy, either from without or within the state. But, as we know, Mainers don’t do bit-chomping.
Several months ago, the governments of Maine and New Brunswick began to explore an energy corridor concept that would facilitate the flow of energy from Canada through Maine and into larger markets in the Northeast. Maine stands to receive big bucks, as well as access to the energy, as it makes its way down to southern New England and beyond.
Of course, presented with this exceptional opportunity, we needed to study it from every conceivable angle. When we’re done studying, we can probably look forward to a blue ribbon commission. That will certainly lower energy prices for Mainers . . . not.
Maybe we don’t feel sufficiently threatened by the high cost of energy, the erosion of our manufacturing sector, and the increasing difficulty of competing globally. Maybe we need to have a little bit less in order to want prosperity a little bit more.
Israel, for example, has no oil, almost no water, and even less natural gas, but they do have a culture of innovation and a relentless drive to survive.
So every home in Israel has a solar collector, and the country is moving toward its goal of eliminating its dependence on gasoline. It is developing the infrastructure that will enable electric cars to plug in at roadside “charging meters,” and to change out batteries at swapping stations. The charging meters will get their power from the sun, and that’s important, since the sun is the one thing—other than intellectual capital—that Israel has in abundance and that her adversaries cannot shut off.
When you lack natural resources, you get the message pretty quickly.
Here in Maine, we’ve got neighbors eager to pay us real money to pipe real energy through our state. We’ve got wind and tidal resources considered to be among the best in the country. Experts agree that low-cost, diverse sources of energy are critical for a competitive business environment.
Yet we continue to wring our hands, allowing the perfect to stand in the way of the good.
Am I the only one who thinks this would be a really good time to open our eyes to the fierce urgency of now? Or will we wait until oil prices spike again, only to discover that those with both natural resources and vision have finally lost patience and found another way to prosper without us.
Perry B. Newman is founder and president of Atlantica Group LLC, an international business consulting firm based in Portland.
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