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Committee hears debate on Community Choice Aggregation bill; advocates cite Massachusetts experience, utilities warn of billing costs and bad‑debt risk
Summary
LD 2112 would permit municipalities to opt‑out enroll residents into community choice aggregation programs to procure electricity; supporters said many Massachusetts towns saved money, while utilities warned purchase‑of‑receivables and billing changes could be costly and shift risk to other customers.
Representative Jerry Ronte (presenting remotely) told the committee LD 2112 would give Maine municipalities a regulated pathway to aggregate residential and small commercial electric demand and competitively procure supply on behalf of their communities while leaving delivery, billing and reliability with the incumbent transmission and distribution utilities.
"CCA is not a mandate," Ronte said. "It is an option — available only if a municipality chooses it by local vote and the plan is approved by the Public Utilities Commission. The municipality can design a program to prioritize price, stability or renewable content, and customers retain the right to opt out."
Heather Sanborn, the public advocate, said her office supports CCA with caveats. The OPA praised CCA’s potential to curb aggressive marketing practices and to let smaller towns join together for purchasing power, but stressed concerns about sections of the bill that require investor‑owned transmission and distribution utilities to purchase receivables and assume collection risks. "Those provisions could shift costs to nonparticipating ratepayers," Sanborn said, and she asked the sponsor and utilities to work through purchase‑of‑receivables design in the work session.
Proponents included municipal and nonprofit groups, consultants, and electricity suppliers who cited Massachusetts and New Hampshire experience. Rebecca Schultz of the Natural Resources Council of Maine pointed to surveys showing most participating Massachusetts municipalities saved money (average about 0.88¢/kWh in one survey) while increasing renewable content in many program defaults. Peter Whitney and national suppliers argued CCA reduces consumer exposure to door‑to‑door marketing and enables professionally managed procurement strategies.
Utility witnesses and billing vendors cautioned the committee about operational costs. James Cody (Versant Power) and Kathleen Bowman (CenturyLink/CMP) said implementing purchase‑of‑receivables or creating new default supplier categories could require substantial billing system changes and multi‑million‑dollar investments, and they proposed an alternative model that would treat CCA providers as competitive electricity suppliers subject to existing systems, rather than a new default supplier category.
The PUC and DOER testified neither for nor against and urged careful rulemaking to avoid adverse impacts on standard offer pricing or low‑income customers. Deirdre Schneider (PUC) suggested initiating rulemaking early to design procedures to minimize rate impacts and ensure consumer protections. The committee took no final action and scheduled a work session to reconcile design details including the purchase‑of‑receivables mechanism and opt‑out protections.
