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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 17 A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 6 out of the state's Expedited Wind Permitting Area, an option the Legislature created in 2015 that gives residents a greater voice in what would otherwise be a streamlined permitting process. He characterizes wind power "as an extravagant waste of money" that isn't worth "ruining the hills and mountains" of Maine. e reason, he argues, is that Maine's wind resource is both intermittent and unpredictable, making it a poor substitute for the 3,000 megawatts of baseload power being lost with the closures of Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim Station and coal- and oil-fi red power plants like Brayton Point in Somerset, Mass., and Salem Harbor. "You can't replace all that power with 2,000 or 3,000 wind turbines, because at best their actual output is one-third of their nameplate capacity," O'Neill says. " e redundancy and its resulting cost-shifting is unsustainable." Exporting a resource Proponents of the state's wind energy include Maine construction contractors such as Reed & Reed and Cianbro, as well as businesses in the supply chain that benefi ted from $532.5 million in wind power invest- ment from 2006-14, according to a December 2014 report economist Charles S. Colgan. e economist estimates there's an additional $745.1 million in con- struction planned for the next few years, excluding the costs of turbines, blades and electrical gear purchased outside of the state. Colgan's nine-page report for the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Southern Maine states that since 2014 wind energy has accounted for 6% of all construction jobs in Maine. e vast majority of the yearly average of 1,560 jobs created or supported since 2006, he writes, are in rural areas of western, eastern and northern Maine. Alan Richardson, Emera Maine president and chief operating offi cer, sees the Maine Renewable Energy Interconnect proposal as a "regional solu- tion" to "a big regional challenge." "None of this would be possible if the southern New England states hadn't gotten together and decided to act together to procure a large amount of renewable energy," he says. "If you do it piecemeal, you get a small wind farm connecting to a small transmission line and another small wind farm con- necting to another small transmission line. It's not the most effi cient way to do it. So it's very smart, I think, for the region to do it this way." Among MREI's benefi ts outlined by Richardson: ¡ $250 million average annual increase in New England's GDP Over The Years, Banking Has Changed Tremendously. Our Commitment To Maine's Financial Institutions Has Not. 1-800-564-0111 | eatonpeabody.com Augusta | Bangor | Brunswick | Ellsworth | Portland We represent all types of cooperative, mutual and stock financial institutions and their a‹liates and subsidiaries. We provide corporate, operational, regulatory and governance advice and assistance, including mergers and acquisitions, complex compliance matters and sophisticated commercial lending. C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E » P H O T O S / JA M E S M C C A R T H Y Patrick Woodcock, director of the Governor's Energy offi ce, top, and Alan Richardson, president and chief operating offi cer of Emera Maine, were among those speaking about the New England Clean Energy RFP and its potential economic benefi ts for Maine at the E2Tech forum that was held in Hallowell on March 11.

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