 Welcome to our powers day of action co-hosted by the Sierra Club and main climate action now. We're excited to have you all here. Maybe folks from Sierra Club can give us a quick wave. And folks from MCANN, we're really excited to have you all. Just for all of your awareness, you've all been placed on mute for the time being. And you'll have an opportunity to unmute yourself and get a little bit more interactive in some of the coming breakout rooms that we're going to sort y'all into. And just for your awareness, this event is being recorded and will be posted on some of our social media networks following. So thank you all for participating. We're excited to have you. My name is Andrew Blunt. I will be your emcee for this evening. I am the organizing director with our power and am super excited to kick things off with such a great event, a great group of people. So I'll just say that we are really excited that all of you are here to deepen your involvement in the fight for consumer-owned utility in Maine. Now really is the time to get active and let decision makers and members of your community know that consumer ownership is the way forward for Maine's utilities. And we've got an absolutely fantastic lineup here tonight. We've got a few policymakers, folks from Augusta, a few members of the environmental activist community, some artists. We're excited to kind of broaden our message and show you why a consumer-owned is the way forward. So first off, I'd just like to introduce our first speaker. This is Representative Seth Berry of Bowdoinham. He's been working to bring our utilities into alignment with Maine's priorities for years now and is a proud sponsor of our bill in Augusta this session to establish the Pine Tree Power Company. It's great to have him with us here tonight. Kick off our event. Seth, you can take it away. Hey, thank you so much, Andrew. And it is great to see you all. What a fantastic group. I see a lot of familiar faces, many of you who have been on this journey for some time now as well and others who are new. And I think this growing movement that we call our power is frankly just getting started. I'm sensing a huge, huge upsurge of momentum. Certainly felt it yesterday when we declared our independence on the, I believe it was a 246th anniversary of the battle at Lexington and Concord when a group in this neck of the woods declared independence from a foreign colonial power. And we similarly declared our independence yesterday with a group of bipartisan co-sponsors, Senator Rick Bennett, former Republican State Senate president, myself, Representative Grahowski, who you'll be hearing from later, who's from Ellsworth. Also a new Republican representative, Nathan Carlo from down in Buxton. And the four of us, two Republicans, two Democrats and others stood together and announced the bill and act to create the Pine Tree Power Company, which you all will be testifying on, as I understand it. And we are very excited about that because testimony and other forms of direct outreach to elected officials is going to be absolutely critical in this endeavor. And of course, when you write testimony, you can also pretty easily turn that into a letter to the editor or an op-ed. You can send it to the governor. You can send it to other influential people who you may know of in your area. So once you've really written your own pitch for this bill and thought it through, you not only understand it more deeply or are more able to articulate it, but you really become a powerful voice for this effort. And that's what we need. We need all of your voices to make this happen because it's the only way that any good change, any big change ever does happen. So why is our power movement important? Now, I think all of you have some sense of this, but just in case it's not abundantly clear, we are really focused on being the first state in the nation to get to net zero and to do so in a just, inequitable and affordable way. We are also focused on being the first rural state to get to universal, affordable, equitable broadband because those two things are related. The power utilities currently use broadband right now. They have fiber optic lines all over the state and they use them for their own purposes, but they don't share them. And there's a lot of dark fiber that could be lit up in that respect. They own the polls, which are a critical piece and a critical cost driver, a critical cause of delays for our competitive internet service providers when they're trying to get fiber optic lines on the polls. So these two things are related, but being the first state to get to net zero and to do so equitably and affordably is our primary focus. We understand that the monopoly electric utilities have a stranglehold on our clean energy future. We understand that they are literally what stands between us and renewable power for our electric vehicle or renewable power for our new electric, efficient electric heat pump or heat pump water heater or even perhaps a new electrical engine for our factory. These are the things that we need to plug into if we're going to decarbonize. Transportation is 54% of our state's overall emissions. Building heating and cooling is 30% of our overall state emissions and industrial processes are 9% of our emissions. Electricity right now is only 7% because we do have a lot of renewable energy in Maine and when you flip a switch, a lot of it is renewable. But the utilities see an opportunity in having that monopoly stranglehold. They understand that there are billions and billions of dollars in profits for them. And that is why you see this globalization, this consolidation in the utility industry at this time, not just in Maine, but all over the world. CMP is not CMP now. It is Avangrid, which in turn is Iberdrola, which in turn is big banks and the countries, the foreign governments of Qatar, Norway and Spain. Those are the folks who are actually driving the decisions and they're not necessarily bad people. They don't care about Maine and they're in it as a business proposition to maximize profit. And that leads to bad decisions that are hurtful when they come down on the ground in our communities. Those are decisions that are very, very inequitable, that are very, very damaging to our ability to drive our clean energy economy forward and to exercise moral leadership in the world. Maine has this opportunity by taking control of our energy destiny to exercise a moral leadership for the United States and in turn for the world. If we are the first state to make an equitable and just and affordable transition, then we will show the way for others. Just as we are inspired in turn by the six communities in the nation that got to 100% renewable electricity first. I think of Georgetown, Texas, Rockport, Missouri, Greensburg, Kansas, Aspen, Colorado, Burlington, Vermont and Kodiak, Alaska, four of the six conservative communities. They have very little in common except they're all served by consumer utilities. And those are the six that made it there first that got to 100% renewable electricity. That's what we're trying to do on a statewide basis. And we can do that with your help. Larger utilities like the Sacramento Municipal Utility District out in California, serving more people than live in the entire state of Maine, 1.5 million customers directly elected board. The same access to low-cost capital that Pine Tree Power Company will have. They plan to get to 100% renewable electricity by 2030. That is 20 years before Maine. And you know what? If they can do it there with their high rates, with their restructured economy, very similar to our regulation approach, then we can do it too. I was just on the phone actually the other day, Representative Groskowski was as well with one of the board members out there. She is directly elected by the people in her part of the, I believe Tri-County area in California that serves Sacramento Municipal Utility District. They have taught us so much and we're gonna continue to learn from their example as well. We've learned also from the examples of, you know, Winter Park, Florida, Jefferson County, Washington, even Long Island, which is a much bigger utility in terms of customers and load than all of Maine. They too have made this transition to consumer ownership. It has in the case of those smaller utilities been absolutely brilliant. They have improved reliability, reduced rates, improved their rate of adoption of renewables and beneficial electrification. Long Island has had some struggles, but you know what? They dropped rates by 20% and that's a pretty big deal if you're trying to get people to plug into EVs and heat pumps, you know, cost matters. We have one of the highest energy poverty levels in the country and the average manor who is earning minimum wage, maybe supporting a couple of kids, maybe a single parent. She's spending a quarter of her income right now on energy and most of that, unfortunately is going to fossil fuels. It's going to gasoline for their family cars, going to oil for their furnace. But if we're going to convert everyone, including those who are most vulnerable, those who are most at the margins to renewables, then we need to make sure that it is done affordably for them. And this proposal will save us $9 billion. That's billion with a B over the first 30 years alone. It will improve our reliability. So the lights are on and so the heat pump is on in the middle of winter. And so the refrigerator is on, it's keeping your grandmothers, you know, medications cold and keeping the food from spoiling. You know, these are the kinds of things that we need to think about if we're going to an all electric economy. CMP and Versand cannot continue to have a stranglehold on the monopoly delivery of the only energy that we're all going to really be looking towards in the future. That is not an acceptable scenario by any standard. I think Republicans understand this as well from a sovereignty perspective. They understand that local control is better. They understand that reliability is better and they understand that cost is important. So if we can appeal to folks on those terms, you know, just like our logo says, local, low cost, renewable, these are things, excuse me, local, low cost and reliable. These are things that we can all care about. You know, some folks might care about renewables, some maybe less so, but local, low cost, reliable, these things matter a great deal. And that's why on our website, ourpowermain.org, you see a lot of emphasis on those talking points. We need to emphasize that this is a utility that is from outside of state governments, it will be set up just like our existing consumer utilities in Maine, we have nine of them. They're outside of state government, they operate independently without the use of tax dollars, without the use of state bonds. This is not a state takeover, this is not government run. Yes, we're gonna elect the board, but it will be a not-for-profit independent corporation called the Pantry Power Company. And so the way we talk about this matters if we're gonna convince everyone in the whole state and bring everyone along, I think we all have, you know, a lot of environmental values here, a lot of progressive values on this call, but we need to make sure that we're appealing to everyone in order to get this done. And we're convinced that we can do that because we've done it already. You know, we have a great bipartisan coalition. I'm sure you saw some of the news coverage yesterday. We're very excited about how that went and about the momentum that we have so far. You're gonna help us to bring this thing across the finish line and to convince the governor and legislators to get the job done and support this bill now in the legislature by June. We wanna have a vote by the end of June, and that's now. So we're looking at a public hearing as soon as late April. It could be the 29th of April, I think, but more likely we'll be the first week in May or so. It gives you a little more time. I know we talked about the 22nd, but, you know, in college I always asked for an extension and now I'm giving you an extension. On your homework assignment to do your testimony. So it gives us all a little more time to get ready. And but we will hold the hearing soon. And so a big part of today is getting ready for that. I'm thrilled to be with you. Thank you all for joining us. And I'll stop there, but it looks like we have a great evening planned for talking about how best to advocate, how to use your voice and a lot of experience as well on these Zoom screens that can share great ideas about how to do that. So back to you, Andrew, or whoever's up next. Yeah, great. Thank you, Seth. I think that was a fantastic intro and you're 100% on the mark that, you know, making a COU, a reality in Maine relies on the voices of all of you here today and the voices of other Mainers across the state. And I'm really glad that Seth brought up our website, ourparmain.org is a great source of resources, a great resource in terms of what you can do to get involved and will consistently be a good source of news updates on where you can plug in and get the information that you need to advocate for this change. So with that, we are going to shift gears a little bit to why you all came here tonight to take action. So in that regard, we've got two youth-led breakout rooms tonight for you to choose from to help you amplify the conversation around our powers efforts to establish consumer utility. The first will be by calling or emailing legislators and the second breakout room will be dedicated to how to write letters to the editor or write an op-ed to your local paper. So our facilitators are going to provide you all with basic guidance and gives you the tools that you need to take these actions, either tonight or in the near future and bring your involvement in this fight to the next level. They are also great, welcome back everyone. Hope that y'all had a good time and learned something about what it means to take concrete action steps to either build community support or build support in the legislature or perhaps with the governor about how to build support in those places for the COU. This, so now we'd like to, well, well, actually before we move on, I think I speak for all of us at our power when I say that it's very important to start these conversations and to build these relationships and to keep the conversation moving, right? So really maintaining the connections that you make with your legislator to help build support for this bill and other important initiatives that you might come across that these relationships are really valuable and really are what helps to build our movement and others like it. So becoming a community champion in that way will really help our cause, it's great. So next up is Emily Rookford. She's a student at Unity College and employee at Revision Solar and a youth climate activist who has really committed herself to Maine's energy future. She's gonna give us a couple of words on why a COU is important to her. Go ahead, Emily. Yeah, thank you, Andrew. So it is really good to see everyone here and everyone that came out and are ready to take action. And it's really good to see a lot of young faces as well. So young people or youth generally make up about 20% of the global population, but they're 100% of the future. So I think that's really powerful, especially that you all are taking action because this is your future. And a lot of us, we're already seeing the effects of climate change today. We're all here because we believe that that's a really powerful issue that's affecting our lives and the lives of the next generation. And that can be really depressing. It can be also very easy to kind of focus on those negative aspects to look at all the hurt that's happening in the world, to look at these issues of injustice, both climate injustice and social injustice and really just kind of dwell on the negative things in the world. But there's a lot that we can do with that and we can take that instead of just dwelling with it, we can do something about that and turn that into passion and into action. So I think especially, just looking at the energy economy in Maine, we want it to be cleaner and that's for an environment. We want it to be just. We want to speak to everyone, not just those who can afford to put expensive solar on their group because it's not for everyone right now. And a way that we can do that is with the consumer own utility. As Seth kind of mentioned earlier, all these places that aren't the richest places in the world, they've reached 100% renewable energy and they've done that through consumer own utilities. So this is a proven, it's a clear way that we can take action and we can make change, physical change in our world that affects people and it affects the environment and doing it in a way that's economically accessible for everyone. So yeah, taking action, like you all just learned about and these breakout rooms, talking to your legislators, like Andrew just mentioned, really forming a relationship with them as well, not just letting this be a one-time thing for consumer and utilities. And while that's important, moving forward with that as well and kind of pushing them and holding them accountable to this passion and the change that you wanna see in the future. So that's definitely something, building those relationships, writing letters to the editors and writing op-eds using your voice. Every single person in this call right now has a unique story and you all have different aspects of your life and experiences that you can really pull and kind of make that meaningful message your own. So I think really just not being afraid to take that step into passion and use whatever is frustrating you, whatever is driving you to be here today to take action and make something happen. So back to you, Andrew. Thank you so much, Emily. That is absolutely right. Well, I particularly liked what you said about caring for members of our community and how this issue is about, it's about our communities, it's about local control and it's about putting how we power our future into our own hands. So now we're gonna shift a little to the creative side. I think we can all get behind the intersections between art and protest through history and we have a really excellent clip from a main-based dance group, many of whose members are youth and adult climate activists in their own right and so they've provided us with an amazing performance that I hope you all enjoy. Matt, you wanna go ahead and cue that up? Great. Yep. Hold on one second, sorry. I gotta do it one more time. Yeah, it was muted there. Thank you so much to Nevea for that performance. Yes, round of applause for a while. So I think that message to Joy at the end there really speaks to why we're engaging in this work, uplifting our communities, building a better future together. And next up to speak a little bit to that is Jess Cooper, a youth climate activist based in Western Maine and a member of that dance group that we just saw who can offer us a piece of spoken word poetry. Take it away, Jess. Awesome, thanks, Andrew. Yeah, before I gave a little bit on this spoken word, I just wanted to say yes. Thank you so much for addressing how creativity intersects with climate change. Creativity and art and artivism can really make a difference. So yeah, that was a really fun video to take part in and to dance in. This has been a learning experience for me writing this short spoken word piece because I think it's really taught me more about the consumer-owned utility as I wrote it and thought about it and thought about how it applied to my life. So yeah, I hope that it can do the same for you a little bit. When we listen to the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of this land, we are reminded of the ways that we can work hand in hand with nature, each other, our friends and neighbors close by. So why? Why is it that we have turned this blind eye to how disconnected our connection is to the grid on which we all rely? Transmission lines lace the sky and hum with power and a reminder that this energy doesn't necessarily come from nearby. When we pay more for something we all use to the profit and into the pockets of companies overseen overseas, we lose and so much more than just money. We can choose a consumer-owned utility and relabel ourselves as a community powered on resiliency. With our power, we can break free from an outdated system that we no longer need. One that feeds the greed that squeezes every dollar from folks like you and me, just trying to make ends meet and our planet a better place to be. Until you've had your light shut off because the cost was just too much, you can't imagine choosing between paying for your bills or for your child's lunch. So what do we do? Well, this idea isn't new, a COU, a utility, a useful thing that's used and owned by you, the consumer, the member and the owner too. Here's your chance to stand in your power, to stand up and choose a clean energy future shining a light for the way through to mains liberation from for-profit utilities long overdue. It will require all of us from York to Oxford to Piscaticus to tell our stories, to build back better and with equity. We're here today calling on the 16 counties to join together to make ripples and waves, sending our energy to every part of the state. There's a saying that Maine feels like one big small town. Well, if we're looking to all stay connected, this is a sure way how. Make some noise for our power and let us take action here and now. Thank you. Woo! Awesome, Jess. Good job. Wow, thank you, Jess. That was amazing. That was really amazing. I had shivers. Yeah, that's just spoke so well to the principles of justice and unity that we're really pushing for here with this proposal. And yeah, I'm a bit speechless. Thank you. Wow, next up is our another co-sponsor of the bill that we have in the legislature to push for the Pine Tree Power Company. Rep Nicole Grohowski of Ellsworth has been a champion of utility reform in Augusta this session and is going to speak to us about what it means to be a member of the community, a citizen advocate in public hearing and how getting involved through testifying is a really good way to make your voice heard. Go ahead, Nicole. Thank you so much. It is such an honor to be here with you all. You have so many other places you could be, but you chose to be here with us and it's so hard to follow such beautiful art. I felt like I was already so passionate about this project, researching it for a couple of years now and that just moved me to double down on my own effort. So I hope you feel the same way and thank you to everyone for being a part of this. So as Andrew mentioned, we'd love to encourage you to come and be a part of our public hearing, to come and testify about the importance of this legislation. It is so important that the voices of real people, our future as we heard from Emily of our youth, of the folks that have seen how we got here to come and share your stories because we have a tough battle ahead of us, to be honest. CMP and Bursinger out there every day, spinning their own versions of this story, telling you this is gonna be a government takeover and it's scary, it's gonna cost a gazillion dollars, numbers that I don't even know where they come from. They're not numbers they pay taxes on to us, that's for sure. So we really, really just need everybody's voices to overpower them, to take back our power and say, we're here, we're speaking the truth and this is such an important effort. I don't wanna go into too many details about what that might look like because I know that we're gonna have a separate breakout session to talk about this but I really would encourage you if you've never done it before, this is hopefully an easier year to participate. You don't have to drive hours and wait in long lines to come testify. You all obviously know how to use Zoom. That's how we're testifying this year so you can use that skill to be a part of our action on the day of the public hearing. As Representative Berry mentioned, hopefully in the next few weeks. But I encourage you to participate. I myself had never been to the state house and a couple of years ago, I testified about rank choice voting because I felt very passionate that that was an important democracy reform and one thing led to another and people nudged me and said, hey, you seem to care about our future. Why don't you run for office? So here I am, you just never know what can happen. Don't let that scare you off from coming and participating. You don't have to run for office just because you came in and participated in a public hearing but it can be such an eye-opening and welcoming experience. So I really hope that you'll consider joining and if you can stick around for the next 10 minutes we'll have some breakout sessions to help you prepare for that exciting adventure of having your voice heard to the people who represent you. No, it is their job, it is our job to listen to you. So you need to come and speak to us. Otherwise it's the high paid lobbyists. As Barry told me when I got on the Energy Utilities and Technology Committee, everybody there has shiny shoes. They're very fancy people. They're paid a lot of money. They fly here from all over the country to tell us that they know better that their way is the best way and you all know that that's not true. So we need all of your dancing shoes and your clogs and your Birkenstocks and whatever coat your slippers. I'm in my slippers every day in public hearings. Bring those shoes and let's get to work. Yeah, you can hold up our shoes. Shiny shoes don't matter anymore in this day and age. No. Well, thank you, Nicole. That is absolutely right. I for one am barefoot at the moment. So I hope I don't need fancy shoes to come to the UT committee. And I don't think any of you do either. We are now gonna break off into two breakout rooms where for those of you interested in testifying, you can speak to either Rep Setbury or Rep Nicole Gruhavsky and ask some questions about what it's like to testify and get some guidance on your own testimony and how to share stories as a concerned citizen in support of the COU. Well, I just wanted to bring everyone back in the room. I know we're a few minutes over, but just to give one last round of thanks to all of you for coming out, it was great to see how many people showed up to learn a little bit more about and take action for the fight for consumer agitility and the fight for the Pine Tree Power Company in Maine. And like I said before, now is really the time to get active in our communities to educate folks on the issue and to spread the word that consumer ownership is the way forward, the way to power our future. So a huge thanks to everyone here. Special thanks to folks at MCANN and at Sierra Club Maine, who've been great co-sponsors and please stay in touch. I just put a link to our Take Action page in the chat. You can subscribe to our Action Alerts, find links to our social media and that's how you're really gonna hear the newest news that our power has to offer. That's how we'll be communicating about the public hearing. It's how we'll be letting you know really what's what in the fight for a consumer agitility. So like I said, please stay in touch and feel free to leave me an email. I'm popping that in the chat as well. If you have any questions or would like to follow up about anything you heard tonight, always happy to chat with people. Thanks a lot. Have a great night, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.