Right where it’s coming from now!

Well, what kind of an answer is that?

Federal energy reports show that right now Maine spends $6 billion a year on fossil fuels for energy purposes — vehicular transportation, heating oil, and natural gas. (Coal purchases in Maine are negligible.)

That averages out to $4511 from every man,  woman, and child in Maine.

While that’s a lot of money, the more important thing about that money is that not only do we spend it, but we send it as well —  elsewhere, out of the state, never to be seen again, never to recirculate among us.

That’s just nuts! Especially with all that wind and sun we’re blessed with!

But it gets even worse (actually, it’s better, as you’ll see). If we were to think in that forty-year time frame just advocated,  $6 billion becomes $240 billion, or nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.

That, as they say, ain’t peanuts. That’s the kind of money that makes financiers’ mouths water, that can be the basis for all the huge steps that need to be taken to achieve the energy transformation we need to make, and that once we stop sending it away and start recirculating it in Maine, as all healthy economies do, we’ll be far better off than we are now.  Those are the resources that can enable everything we need — and ought — to do!

That’s worth repeating. An aggregate of nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars! At the end of the transformation an annual allocation of $6 billion recirculating in the Maine economy!

September 29, 2016