After a quick visit, these owners placed their home back on the market and it's already reported pending

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9 Hillside Drive, in the Mel Brook’s-inspired Village of Rock Ridge, was priced at $3.2 million when it went on the MLS 37 days ago and is reported pending today. Owners paid $2.995 for it in March 2024.

Nice old 1911 home, but I’ve never been able to get over its location on such a narrow strip of land that’s practically on Lake Avenue; that hasn’t bothered buyers over the years, though, so … meh.

You can't always get what you want

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528 Field Point Road, of Belle Haven but not in it, hs sold for $5.7 million after starting off a year ago April at $6.950. History repeats itself: these sellers bought the place for $6 million in July, 2023 from owners who’d begun at $7.995 million in April of ‘22.

Exclusive to FWIW, two pictures you won’t find on this home’s Internet listing; at least, not exactly.

Lyme Green

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In Lamoine, participating in the movement to mow less helps some people feel like there’s something they can do locally about environmental challenges, according to the town’s conservation commission chair, Larissa Thomas.

The project was so well-received that the town added to it in 2023 by joining the National Wildlife Federation’s Mayor’s Monarch Pledge, a local government commitment to developing habitat for monarch butterfly populations.

[Well-meaning idiots are planting non-native milkweed and killing the butterflies they’re trying to save — just say’n — Ed]

Kumbaya

“People in small towns like Lamoine and in bigger towns and cities across Maine face a lot of challenges, but doing things together like “No Mow May” and Mayors’ Monarch Pledge helps forge and strengthen relationships and generates goodwill that pays dividends as we navigate community life,” Thomas said.

"We're so angry at your president, we're going to cut off our noses!" Canadians vote for more of the same (Updatred)

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After a decade of disastrous rule by Fidel’s love child Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party, Canada is a complete wreck, and plummeting towards the bottom. Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre offered a complete turnaround, and at the end of last year held a huge advantage in the polls. Then came Trump, and so yesterday the Canucks voted to punish themselves and continue on their path to ruin.

“Please, sir, may I have another?” That’ll show the man south of the border.

Conservative Canadian commentator David Solway saw this coming, and said so two weeks ago, when it became apparent that the Liberal Party would retain control of our northern wastelands:

MAiD in Canada: The Canadian Dream Is a Death Wish

David Solway | 3:44 PM on April 15, 2025

Most Canadians are aware, or were once aware, that the Liberal administration of Justin Trudeau effectively destroyed the country. As Conrad Black remarks, “The Trudeau government, partially under the intellectual and Mephistophelean influence of Mark Carney, presided over a dangerous net deficit of over $300 billion of excess capital leaving the country over the amount entering for investment in Canada. We have him to thank, in part, for carbon taxes, the non-construction of pipelines, mountainous deficits, and irresponsible bloating of the money supply. This is Mark Carney’s celebrated ‘experience’: that of being mistaken on every major issue.” 

The moment is now ripe to punish the Liberals for their incompetence and ideological malignance. Yet in record time, the Conservatives’ nearly 30% lead in the polls evaporated, and we now find our new prime minister, Mark Carney, following Trudeau’s ignominious stepdown, either tied with or leading his rival Pierre Poilievre. Mesmerized by his rock-star reputation as a central banker, his aura of international cachet, and his anti-Trump, tough guy shtick, Canadians appear to have flocked to Carney’s gonfalon, embracing him as their savior and redeemer. This, despite the fact that Carney was Trudeau's advisor for 5 years, helms the same hackneyed Party and has retained fully 97% of Trudeau's cabinet. 

It might help if Canadians would actually take the trouble to consult Carney’s 500+ page, 2021 manifesto “Value(s),” though I couldn’t fault their reluctance since the book is a morbidly dull, cliché-ridden, jargon-dense mishmash of globalist porridge, tarted with acronyms: ESG (Environment, Social, Governance), TCFDs (Taskforce Climate-related Financial Disclosures), SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), NDCs (National Determined Contributions), and others that constrict the alphabet into code so that no ordinary person knows what Carney is talking about but is presumably mightily impressed. How could we reject an agenda replete with developing policies, regulations, and incentives and promoting behavioral changes to create a pristine world never seen until Carney and those like him appeared on the scene? Anyone who believes in this gobbledygook seriously needs to be reintroduced to the real world.

I have the impression that most Canadians aren’t even aware that Carney wrote a book in the first place. They would do well to educate themselves, look it up, and make the effort at the very least to skim, given that the book is, admittedly, largely unreadable. But this is Canada. We're passionate about the environment, we hate carbon, we love wind farms, we're so much better than those vulgar Americans, we think Trump is really Hitler redivivus, and besides, books are an outmoded technology and print is dead, so why should we trouble ourselves to accommodate the past, even the immediate past, in ways more reliable and comprehensive than digitized information? 

If they did break the book’s spine, Canadians would find that Carney touts a Communist China-style social credit system in which human behavior will be strictly monitored, surveyed, and controlled. Our money will be digitally tracked; ESG policy will ensure that corporations serve the will of the political administration disguised as saving the planet; technocratic control and the “rule of experts” will replace democratic traditions and individual choice; and salient institutions will be under the sway of foreign entities like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization.

As governor of the Bank of England, Carney’s advocacy and support for the Network for Greening the Financial System proved to be extremely influential and was immediately hailed by the C40Cities Climate Leadership Group as an inspiration and significant spur to action. The organization’s principals write, “As Mark Carney, the Bank of England’s governor, has once again highlighted, climate change poses a key threat to the global financial system. His urge to central banks and supervisors to take bold steps to green the financial system is highly welcome.” 

What are some of these bold steps? If you delve deep enough into the pro-Carney C40 document, you discover that the outfit proposes “eliminating the need for car ownership”; “a 28% reduction in the number of flights over C48 cities”; “a reduction in new items of clothing to as low as 3 per person per year”; and “moving to a plant-based diet.” What’s not to like? “Firms that align their business models with the transition to a net-zero carbon economy will be rewarded handsomely; those that fail to adapt will cease to exist,” pontificates the master of the universe, as he reiterates in the final report of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a company he founded in 2021. The hydrocarbon resources that power our industrial, energy, and agricultural economies will remain “in the ground.” And so, of course, will the country.

“In Carney’s world,” writes David Staples in the Edmonton Journal, “we won’t be focused on efficiency and prosperity, but on asking whether every stock we buy and every purchase we make comes from a company with a stamp of approval from Ottawa’s climate bureaucracy. Regulations, rules, mandates, prohibitions, taxes and subsidies will direct our economy.” This is what Carney in his book calls a “fundamental reordering of the financial system so that all aspects of finance — investments, loans, derivatives, insurance products, whole markets — systematically take the impact of their actions in the race to net zero.” 

….

It's all there in his book. The problem is that, with too few exceptions, Canada is not a nation of readers. But one would expect that Canadians are at least capable of remembering a decade of misrule and observing the social, cultural, political, and economic damage that Justin Trudeau, his shadowy doppelgänger Mark Carney, now his unelected replacement, and a complaisant parliament and Liberal-appointed judiciary have wrought upon the nation. 

But Canadians seem to be all in for Carney, as the latest polls confirm. They may not have bought his book, but they’ve bought the back-cover hype informing us that Carney is “one of the great economic thinkers of our time.” Really? I might have ventured Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Sowell, or Milton Friedman. But Mark Carney? He is not even in the same dismal category as celebrated nonentities like Janet Yellen or Paul Krugman, both journeymen incompetents.

….

Carney has vowed to reverse some of Trudeau’s contested policies, but his dossier and years of published opinions augur otherwise. As MP Todd Doherty, one of many Carney skeptics, writes, “Mark Carney has spent his entire life advancing his keep it in the ground energy policy. Now, on the eve of an election Carney is saying he will build oil and gas projects.” Let’s face facts. Carney is on record stating, “Maybe half as much of oil reserve will stay in the ground.” He is a lifelong proponent of stranded assets. David Staples goes further. “In total,” he writes, “80 per cent of fossil fuel reserves (75 per cent of coal, 50 per cent of gas, 33 per cent of oil) will need to stay in the ground, ‘stranding these assets,’ as Carney puts it.  Other stranded assets will include hundreds of billions in automotive plants.”

The Fraser Institute puts it succinctly:  “Carney is a climate zealot. He may try to fool Canadians into thinking he wants new pipelines, liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals and other hydrocarbon infrastructure, but he doesn’t. Far from it. He wants half the existing ones gone by 2030 and the rest soon after.” 

He is now proposing to “build a new Canadian economy,” which echoes his “build back better” and Trudeau’s failed “Green” transition, and he is also fine with Trudeau’s censoring — aka “regulating” — online content. Absent an electoral miracle, Canada is cooked. There isn’t much we can do about it except to sound the alarm. Caveat suffragatores.

UPDATE: “NO NEED FOR YOUR HELP, WE’LL DO IT ALL BY OURSELVES”

"Green Energy" woes, cont.

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Maine’s clean electricity goals face unpredictable costs, availability

By Tux Turkel

It’s a straight-forward problem with a complex solution.

Maine spends more than $4.5 billion a year on out-of-state fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. The fix is to power our economy with electricity from local, renewable energy sources.

The latest Maine Energy Plan sums it up: “While the electrification shift will increase Maine’s overall electricity use over time, total energy costs will decrease as Maine people spend significantly less on costly fossil fuels and swap traditional combustion technologies for more efficient electric options.”

But this solution, referred to as beneficial electrification, faces mounting obstacles. It assumes oil and gas costs will rise, electricity will be more affordable and new generation sources will be available on a schedule aligned with target dates.

For instance:

Northern Maine is a large, untapped source of wind power. Planners have been trying for decades to bring that power south. But the latest attempt to build a 1,000 megawatt wind farm connected to a $1 billion transmission line in Aroostook County failed in 2023, largely due to public opposition to the line and the inability to nail down the costs. Now the Public Utilities Commission is seeking a new proposal.

Transportation produces half of Maine’s greenhouse gas emissions. In response, Maine has aggressive goals for a rapid switch from gas-powered to electric cars. They include 150,000 electric cars on the road, five years from now. Maine has 1.2 million registered light-duty vehicles. Battery vehicles total 19,448, split almost evenly between all-electric and plug-in hybrids, according to the latest Recharge Maine figures. Together, that’s only 1.6 percent of the fleet, at a time when political and market forces beyond the state’s control are putting the targets farther out of reach.

In 2019, the Legislature approved ratepayer subsidies to attract commercial solar development. They worked so well that the state’s goal of developing 750 megawatts of “distributed generation” has already been exceeded. But the growing subsidies are becoming so costly to electric customers that lawmakers have been ratcheting back the program.

Do goals matter?

Many of Maine’s goals are laid out in recently-updated versions of the state’s climate action plan, Maine Won’t Wait, and the Maine Energy Plan from the Governor’s Energy Office.

They include generating all of Maine’s electricity with clean energy by 2040 and reducing oil use by 30 percent in 2030. Despite the progress Maine has made in cutting oil, petroleum still accounts for half the total energy consumed in Maine, chiefly for transportation and home heating. 

“They almost don’t matter,” Rich Silkman, the former CEO of the Competitive Energy consulting firm in Portland, said of the various targets. “There’s no way we can meet those goals. We aren’t getting anywhere near where we need to be.”

“But heat pumps will save us!”

Rising electricity prices can make the targets harder to hit. Heat pumps are an example. The state celebrated the installation of 100,000 units in 2023, two years ahead of its goal. Rebates from Efficiency Maine helped offset the cost to property owners, and will be instrumental for reaching the latest goal of installing 275,000 heat pumps by 2027.

But as heat pump penetration grows, Silkman said, so will electricity demand in the winter. Heat pumps only make sense if the electricity comes from cleaner sources and is less expensive.

While the state’s generation mix has been getting cleaner, that hasn’t been the trend for prices. Maine’s electric rates have risen sharply since 2021, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Heating oil, meanwhile, has settled from the invasion highs, roiling heat pump economics.

In 2020, a home customer of Central Maine Power paid roughly 16 cents/kWh for electricity. The annual cost of running ductless heat pumps that year was $1,997, according to Efficiency Maine’s online calculator. Today, with electricity supply costs closer to 27 cents/kWh, the cost is $2,696 — a $699 price increase (unless the home’s on a special heat pump rate, which has limited availability.)

It’s still cheaper than burning oil at $3.60 a gallon in a boiler, which pencils out to $3,043.

But the narrowing gap worries Jim LaBrecque, a refrigeration expert who founded FlexWare Control Technology in Bangor. He convinced former Gov. Paul LePage to install heat pumps in the Blaine House in 2014.

“People who had a damn good return on investment with their heat pumps, that return has diminished,” LaBrecque said.

If electric rates rise, heating oil prices remain stable and financial incentives erode, LaBrecque doubts the state can meet its goals.

“The heat pump program is going to be damaged by these high electric rates,” he said. “You’re going to see sales falling off.”

Where will beneficial electricity come from?

…. Policy makers also are looking at other sources to meet Maine’s growing electricity demand, but some appear to be non-starters.

Canadian power has contributed to New England’s energy mix for decades. The New England Clean Energy Connect line, set to be completed this year after overcoming legal fights [ [12 years spent overcoming those opponents: suits, appeals, voter resolutions until, finally, the Maine Supreme Court ended it —Ed], will bring 1,200 megawatts of new capacity into the region.

But the tariff chaos, a recent drought in Quebec and growing demand for electricity in the province suggest Maine can’t count on greater levels of exported Canadian hydro power in the near future.

In Maine, hydro power has long been a source of reliable electricity, accounting for roughly half of the state’s renewable energy production. But these dams are aging. Conservation interests see many of them as impediments to fish passage and healthy ecosystems, and want them removed. In any event, there are no big opportunities to expand hydro in Maine.

A planned revival of nuclear power in the United States is sparking interest in Maine. Utilities here closed Maine Yankee in 1997, after finding it was no longer economically viable. Today the focus is on small modular reactors. But while there are many designs and proposals, only a few are operating in the world, none are in the United States, and the cost of power is unknown. 

Clean energy advocates often note that many of Maine’s goals are codified in law. But that doesn’t assure they all can be realized. Land-based wind energy is a case in point.

A 2008 Maine law set a goal of installing 2,000 megawatts of onshore wind capacity by 2015. That didn’t happen. Even 10 years later, capacity is stuck at roughly 900 megawatts.

Related to the story of Europe’s power collapse posted below

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Who expected this? An objective news article on “renewable” energy. Its author, Tux Terkel, tips his hat to the goals of the greenies (it wouldn’t surprise me if he were one himself) but then delves into the actual reasons behind Maine’s difficulties — reasons that are applicable to many other states, in fact.

Maine’s electricity prices grew at the third fastest rate in the country, analysis shows

Between 2014 and 2024, the average retail price for electricity in Maine increased by the third highest rate in the country, according to an analysis by The Maine Monitor, surpassed only by California and Massachusetts.

The average retail price of electricity in Maine during the 10-year period rose from 12.65 cents/kWh to 19.62 cents, according to data collected by the federal Energy Information Administration. That’s an increase of 55 percent. 

At the same time, the average retail price of electricity in the United States rose from 10.44 cents/kWh to 12.99, or 24 percent.

Maine’s rate of increase, then, was more than twice the national average. But it was considerably less than California, which saw its average price grow from 15.15 cents/kWh to 27 cents, a 78 percent jump.

In New England, Maine was followed by Massachusetts, which climbed from 15.35 cents to 23.98 cents, or 56 percent. Rhode Island grew at more than 54 percent, going from 15.41 cents in 2014, to 23.85 cents last year.

As electricity demand grows, affordable power is critical to a viable energy policy. But Maine’s energy policy is under fire: in Washington, the Trump administration is moving to withdraw most federal financial support for clean electricity in favor of boosting oil, coal and natural gas. It also has begun to challenge state efforts aimed at slowing global warming.

…. Against that backdrop, why did Maine’s electricity prices grow so fast, and what might it mean for the quest to make electricity more affordable in the future?

Promoted by Gov. Janet Mills, Maine has set a goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2040. This aggressive target aims to blunt the impacts of a warming climate, largely by cutting the harmful emissions from burning oil and natural gas. But this goal is juxtaposed against another primary objective of the state’s updated energy plan: “Deliver affordable energy for Maine people and businesses.” 

A key way to achieve both objectives, state energy planners say, is to shift the way we fuel our cars and heat our buildings to efficient, electric-powered technologies powered by renewable energy sources. This strategy is called “beneficial electrification.” Measures include heat pumps for air and water, battery-powered vehicles, solar and wind generation and energy storage. 

But a corollary to beneficial electrification is that electricity has to be affordable. Otherwise, residents and businesses have little incentive to switch. 

Here’s the dilemma. At the same time Maine’s cost of electricity has been rising steeply, some of the proposed pathways to an all-electric future are facing unexpected challenges, both in terms of cost and availability. Examples include offshore wind, electric vehicles, heat pumps and new transmission lines. 

RELATED STORY:   Maine’s clean electricity goals face unpredictable costs, availability

Blaming natural gas, but it’s complicated

First, why did Maine’s electricity prices rise at such a fast pace?

Harwood and other energy experts blame three main factors — natural gas availability and price, a too-generous solar incentive program and recovery costs from recent violent storms.

Natural gas is the leading cause, but the reasons are more complicated than they may appear. 

More than half of New England’s generating capacity comes from gas-fired power plants. This status dates back 25 years, as the region sought to phase out expensive and polluting oil generation.

Public opposition to more nuclear plants eliminated that carbon-free option. But new gas supplies in Canada and the Marcellus shale fields in Pennsylvania during the 1990s led policy makers and investors to back generators that promised cleaner air and lower prices. They were also quick to build. Several new gas power plants went up, including ones in Westbrook, Rumford, Veazie and Bucksport that benefited from two new gas pipelines from Canada.

But because these power plants respond daily to changing electricity demand, they aren’t able to secure the lowest gas prices through long-term contracts. As more businesses and homes converted to gas, the region’s pipeline system didn’t have enough capacity on frigid winter days. In response, developers sought to build new lines, including one through western Massachusetts. 

A plan for Maine electric customers to help pay for some of the new capacity was championed by Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican. But new pipelines drew stiff opposition from local residents and some Democratic politicians.

Environmental groups also said new gas capacity would lock in the region’s dependence on fossil fuels for decades. Following legal actions, the projects were largely abandoned, including the $3 billion Northeast Energy Direct in 2016 that would have added to Maine’s supply. 

Maine pays more for natural gas

This left New England electric customers at a disadvantage, according to Rich Silkman, an economist and former head of the Competitive Energy consulting firm in Portland. Pipelines carrying gas into the region from Pennsylvania face a pipeline constraint beyond the Hudson River, causing wholesale prices to rise significantly on the coldest days. This, in turn, caused electricity prices to soar.

Maine suffers the greatest impact, Silkman said. Gas from the Marcellus region must head first into the Boston area, before being delivered north into Maine and Atlantic Canada. This adds to the wholesale cost of gas for generators here, meaning that they run only at costly times to meet peak demand. On top of that, Burgess pointed out, the region depends on expensive, overseas shipments of liquefied natural gas in the winter to supplement domestic supply.

Over the 10-year period, electricity supply has been the single biggest share of a home’s monthly power bill. It has ranged from roughly 6 cents/kWh for Central Maine Power and Versant Power/Bangor Hydro customers in 2015, to more than 16 cents in 2023, following the spike in global energy markets tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These supply costs made up between 45 percent and 59 percent of a total bill.

It’s easy to blame natural gas price volatility for higher electricity costs. But Silkman said natural gas opponents also should acknowledge that Maine’s higher than average electric rates are partly self-imposed, through public opposition and public policy.

“Maine tried to get a gas pipeline built,” he said, “but it had to go through Massachusetts. We could have easily expanded the gas pipeline and that would have solved our winter pricing problems.”

….. “The bogeyman here in New England is that, except for a couple of volatile years, natural gas is the fuel of choice for generation,” [Barbara Alexander, a consumer energy consultant] said. “So either make gas cheaper or replace it. Neither of those things has happened.”

…. But one element that colors the debate over how solar policy contributes to high electric bills is, literally, perspective.

By law, the PUC must annually study the costs and benefits of net energy billing. The latest analysis featured three “perspectives,” on the value of the program — for society in general, for Maine specifically and for electric ratepayers. The study’s primary focus is on the general society perspective.

By that measure, the 2024 program costs were $202 million and the societal benefits were $194 million. This calculation included $53 million of benefits for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, the ratepayer benefits were only $80 million. A bottom-line perspective: Reducing climate change emissions is good for the planet, but so far, has done little to lower your electric bill.