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Maine’s solar incentive program has become a political scapegoat for rising electricity prices in the state, but clean-energy advocates say the numbers don’t add up.
Maine utility customers pay some of the country’s highest electricity prices, but the portion of their monthly bills that goes toward buying surplus power from neighbors’ solar panels has actually decreased in recent months, according to one analysis.
Meanwhile, the amount of money utilities are paying for power from fossil fuel–fired plants and transmission represents a far bigger share of the electricity-bill bottom line.
“It’s an easy narrative to say ‘Solar panels are being built in this field, and electricity prices are going up,’” said Lindsay Bourgoine, director of policy and government affairs at solar company ReVision Energy. “But that’s not actually what’s happening when you look at the data.”
Maine Republican lawmakers this session have introduced four different bills calling for the repeal of net energy billing, the system that compensates utility customers for unused electricity they generate and share on the grid. Supporters of the bills have called the program a “job-stealing solar energy tax,” though it’s not a tax: Utilities compensate the owners of solar panels for excess energy sent to the grid, then spread the cost out among ratepayers.
“What’s really troubling in Maine is that there is this growing narrative that the rise in utility bills is directly attributable to solar,” said Eliza Donoghue, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association. “It’s not true.”
The hostility toward Maine’s net energy billing rules is part of a wave of efforts to blame rising power prices on clean-energy and energy-efficiency programs, particularly in New England. In Rhode Island and Maryland, legislators have called for cuts to fees supporting energy-efficiency and clean-energy programs. And Massachusetts regulators last week ordered $500 million to be cut from the state’s energy-efficiency plan, following utilities’ claims that these money-saving programs have been a major driver of rising energy bills.
At a legislative committee hearing last week, Maine legislators testified that small-business owners will be forced to close their doors and low-income households put in dire financial straits by wealthy solar-panel owners imposing the cost of their renewable-energy choices onto everyone else. It is “a nefarious scheme,” said Sen. Trey Stewart, a Republican and the sponsor of one of the bills. “We risk collapsing our entire economy,” said Republican Sen. Stacey Guerin, the sponsor of another.
The numbers tell a very different story, beginning with the actual dollars-and-cents impact of net energy billing on the average consumer.
Maine’s net energy billing program was expanded in 2019, increasing its cost but also spurring new solar development. By the end of 2024, the state had more than 1,500 MW of solar capacity, up from less than 100 MW in 2019.
Statewide, costs attributed to net energy billing now make up a slightly smaller percentage of the average bill than they did in the latter half of 2024, according to calculations ReVision made using information from utility filings. For Versant Power residential customers using 500 kilowatt-hours per month, net energy billing adds between $6.40 and $7.62 to the monthly bill depending on their exact location, according to a spokesperson for the utility. Central Maine Power residential customers pay on average $7.06 per month for costs related to net energy billing, a spokesperson for the company said.
So if it’s not the solar program, then what is causing utility bills to rise? One of the main forces driving electricity prices is the cost of energy supply in New England, more than half of which comes from natural gas–fired power plants. Volatility in the natural gas market, therefore, translates directly into higher electricity rates for consumers. Prices spiked in 2022 and 2023, for example, as the war in Ukraine pushed the cost of natural gas up worldwide. This year, energy supply accounts for 39% of a typical Maine household’s monthly bill — roughly nine times the cost of net energy billing — according to ReVision’s numbers.
“Solar isn’t the problem. Fossil-fuel volatility really is,” Bourgoine said.
The other major contributor is rising transmission costs, which on average make up 51% of electricity bills, up from 37% in the second half of 2023.
There are some commercial cases in which the cost for net energy billing does have an outsized impact on energy bills, supporters of the incentive agree. Commercial power customers are charged a fixed rate based on the specific rate classification their business falls under. This system means some businesses end up with a much larger percentage of their bill paying for net energy billing.
At last week’s hearing, Sen. Stewart testified that potato processor Penobscot McCrum will pay close to $700,000 in public-policy charges this year. Roughly 55% of this charge reflects the costs of net energy billing, according to utility Versant.
Supporters of net energy billing agree that situations such as these are unfair and unsustainable, and a docket is already underway with the state Public Utilities Commission to address that specific issue without repealing the entire net energy billing program, Donoghue said.
“There is a certain amount of customers that, we agree, should be complaining,” she said.
Net energy billing also provides benefits that are hard to see but which offset the costs, supporters said. In 2023, the program cost ratepayers $130 million but delivered $160 million in benefits to the state, according to an independent analysis prepared for the Public Utilities Commission. By adding solar power to the grid, the program helps suppress wholesale electricity prices, for example, and it improves reliability because there cannot be a shortage of “fuel” for solar generation.
More solar generation in the state means more Maine households are getting power produced in or near their communities, lowering the strain on the transmission and distribution systems — and the associated costs. Solar developers also pay for any infrastructure upgrades needed to accommodate their projects.
“Those are investments that utilities don’t have to put on ratepayers,” said Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
Furthermore, eliminating net energy billing would have its own financial consequences for the roughly 110,000 customers enrolled in the program. The abrupt end of all net energy billing would leave these participants — including residents, businesses, and schools – without promised and planned-for savings, Shapiro said.
Opponents in the legislature have passed three rounds of rollbacks to the program. Now they want to go even further.
“If [these bills] were passed, they would actually have some truly disastrous consequences for a lot of people and schools and municipalities,” Shapiro said.
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