The federal government has awarded Maine several grants over the past two months to boost energy production. The grants make important investments in green technology, but the total bill is starting to add up to a large sum of money.
Here to tell us more is an investigative journalist from OpenTheBooks.com, Jeremy Portnoy.
Question 1: Let’s start with the largest of the recent climate grants, which is going to the manufacturing company Form Energy. Can you tell us more?
Last month Form Energy got a
$147 million grant from the Department of Energy to build what they’re calling the “world’s biggest battery” in Lincoln (right near Bangor). $389 million for New England overall.
The battery is able to store clean energy from wind or solar power when excess amounts are being produced and then use it later to power the local grid for up to 100 hours. The batteries Maine uses now can only do that for five hours.
They’re not kidding when they say the world's biggest. One charge is enough to power 9,000 average American homes for an hour. (one charge holds 8500 megawatt hours of energy). No battery plant in the world can do that.
And there’s no lithium in the battery, just iron and water. So it can’t catch on fire like has happened
six times in Maine the past two years.
Question 2: Maine also got money for energy-efficient heat pumps. How much is that grant worth?
The Environmental Protection Agency is giving $450 million to New England to help families buy heat pumps. Up to
$72 million will go to Maine.
It’ll place heat pumps in low-income homes, which can heat and cool the house and are better for the environment than burning oil. Heat pumps move heat instead of generating it; they bring in heat from outside in the winter and push heat out of your house in the summer.
The New York Times reported that Maine is actually installing heat pumps in houses at a faster rate than any other state. They’ve added 115,000 since 2019.
The goal of this grant is for heat pumps to make up 90% of heating/cooling units sold in New England by 2040.
Question 3: Then just a few days later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded almost $600 million for climate-related projects around the country. What’s that going to be used for?
In July the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave Maine a
$69 million “climate resiliency grant.” That’s part of $575 million nationwide.
Climate resilience means protecting people and property from extreme storms and the other effects of climate change.
This grant is a little more vague and it’s going to be up to Gov. Mills and her staff to decide how it gets spent. They said they’re going to give out money to local construction projects and possibly form a new state agency to help other agencies with their climate practices.
Question 4: So put it all together for us Jeremy. How do these grants fit into Maine’s overall spending from this year?
If you add up just those three grant programs, we’re talking about $288 million for Maine out of nearly $1 billion for New England.
About one third of the total New England money went to Maine, with two thirds split amongst the other five states.
That’s consistent with a trend we’ve seen this year in several federal laws. Maine got almost $600 million in federal earmarks this year, the fifth-most in the country. They got funding for eight different “clean construction” projects under the Inflation Reduction Act; that’s the third-most in the country.
Most of it’s going towards important initiatives, but don’t forget that every cent is borrowed against our national debt.