BELFAST, Feb. 21, 2021 - In a major blow to the aquaculture industry, the Office of the Public Advocate and the Efficiency Maine Trust are urging the Public Utilities Commission to deny Central Maine Power’s request for a $63 million power grid upgrade needed for the Nordic Aquafarm here.
In strongly worded findings released Friday, the two agencies stated that CMP’s request failed to “adequately demonstrate the asserted need.”
While their findings are non-binding, they put great political pressure on the PUC to deny the request. The upgrade to the grid known as Section 80 south of Belfast has been contemplated since 2007.
But CMP pushed the PUC to make it a priority item and for it to be paid by ratepayers because Nordic Aquafarms will need 28 Megawatts to pump huge amounts of water though its plant.
Their findings also shine a light on the enormous need for power and fresh water to drive these proposed projects in Downeast and whether the rural infrastructure can handle the load.
EMT is a quasi-public agency and manages programs to improve energy use and reduce greenhouse gases. The public advocate negotiates rates and services on behalf of utility customers.
“CMP has failed to document that the proposed capacity upgrade is necessary to meet the needs of the Midcoast region. With the litigation delay to the construction of the Nordic Aquafarm facility, better data will be available to assure there is actual need for the Section 80 Rebuild before new load materializes.
“Implementing the project without quantifying the need using the most up-to- date information would result in a costly investment that is not responsive to actual conditions.
CMP also “failed to incorporate the beneficial impacts of existing and known Distributed Energy Resources projects in its analysis of the Midcoast region.” DERs are small power plants which can generated up to 10 megawatts, such as solar panels, wind turbines, electricity storage, and natural gas-fueled generators.
The proposed American Aquafarm in Frenchman Bay will also have significant power needs and it’s not clear whether upgrades are needed in that region.
AA plans to use diesel generators to power the net pen operations in the bay.
But once the fish matures and are transported to a processing plan onshore, the AA production volume will be about 90 percent of the Nordic plant which pumps 650,000 gallons of groundwater per day,” said Henry Sharpe, president of Frenchman Bay United.
“As I understand it, the largest production volume at the Maine Fair Trade facility (Gouldsboro) was 10 million pounds of fish a year, six to seven times smaller than AA's annual fish processing volume,” Sharpe said.
“You might expect the electrical load for the AA processing plant (not counting the hatchery) to be much higher than ever before.”
Of the five aquafarm projects in various stages of approval in Downeast, two already have shown signs of distress. The owners of Aquabanq have given up on a fish farm near the Penobscot River in Millinocket.
Similarly in Bucksport, Whole Oceans, which has won state permits for a land-based salmon farm, is in the middle of a legal battle with a former consultant.
Bangor Daily News reported its parent company, Emergent Holdings, is being sued by GNP Consulting, an Indiana-based firm that Emergent brought on to aid with aquaculture projects and later terminated. The firing came, in part, because the firm allegedly underestimated the cost of the planned farm by $150 million.
Town folks in Bucksport say the site of the former paper mill is showing no signs of activity.
That leaves the Kingfish plant in Jonesport which has received a conditional permit from the state but still needs local planning board approval. It too is drawing local opposition. It too will need enormous power.
The American Aquafarms proposal for Frenchman Bay is the only in-water fish farm among the five. State Marine Resources policy chief Dierdre Gilbert testified two weeks ago her department is not well staffed enough to handle review of complicated applications like that of AA.
Foreign investors are no doubt assessing the risk of whether to pursue any of these ventures in Maine.
(Please read QSJ’s previous blog post relevant to this post).
The state should require financial disclosure that these prospectors have committed investors before issuing permits
Apologize for the typo in the dateline