Under the agreement, ISO New England will project regional power needs three years in advance and hold annual auctions to buy power resources, including new and existing power plants. Incentives would encourage private operators to respond to power system emergencies, and operators that don't make extra capacity available would face penalties.

A Portland-based environmental group hopes to convince Maine’s political candidates to pledge support for alternative energy and conservation. The group, Environment Maine, plans to collect petition signatures and approach state and congressional candidates with a proposed energy platform it says would reduce dependence on foreign oil and reduce global warming pollution. “Our nation desperately needs to change its course on energy,” said Jennifer Anderson of Environment Maine.

Baldacci, LaMarche and Merrill agreed that nuclear power has no future in Maine and that wind power does, although Merrill was alone in endorsing the Redington Wind Farm, which Maine Mountain Power LLC wants to build in western Maine.

``The problem we're having with all these wind farms is . . . they're proposing to put them in all the worst places," said Thomas W. French , assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. ``If they could do what the Russell Biomass plant did, which is to find a preexisting, historical industrial district, we'd be applauding them." As part of the ongoing state permitting process for the plant, French's division worked with its developers to reroute proposed power lines to reduce their impact on wildlife.

On wind power proposals, Baldacci sidestepped taking a position on any particular project, saying only that he has proposed increasing renewable energy supply by 10 percent by 2017 and "development of wind energy facilities in Maine holds much promise." One wind project, in Mars Hill, is already under construction. State regulators are considering plans for another, the 90-megawatt Redington Wind Farm, near Sugarloaf Mountain, a project critics see as a blight on western Maine's mountain vistas. Others are being proposed.

WORCESTER— Absent interest in lower-priced fuels, New Englanders should brace for continued high electricity prices, the byproduct of a regional system heavily dependent on oil, natural gas and coal, the head of the region’s power grid said yesterday.

AUGUSTA -- A week before hearings on a controversial wind farm project are scheduled to begin, an influential environmental group is calling for deep changes in the proposal. The Natural Resources Council of Maine on Wednesday asked Maine Mountain Power, which has applied to erect 30 turbines on two Franklin County mountain ridges, to drop plans to use the Redington Pond Range.

Unlike the wind, tides are predictable. Also, water's greater density means fewer turbines are needed to produce the same amount of electricity as wind turbines. And since they're under water, tidal projects don't come with aesthetic issues like those associated with wind farms.

AUGUSTA (May 25): The Maine Legislature, enacted a bill Wednesday, May 24, designed to promote the development of wind energy in Maine.

Lee also warned that renewable energy sources, though desirable, were not a "silver bullet" solution. "It does leave an environmental footprint," Lee said, noting that wind energy and solar energy take up large areas of land, making it difficult to find a place to put them, especially in densely populated parts of the world.

If New England's nuclear energy plants had to be replaced by other non-emitting sources of electricity to meet the RGGI goals, the region would be looking at large-scale wind projects, with weather-dependent output, spread over some 650,000 acres of land or water at a cost of more than $10 billion.

AUGUSTA -- A bill that allows the Maine Public Utilities Commission to pull Maine out of the New England power grid won endorsements from several large manufacturers at a legislative hearing Wednesday, but opponents warned that it could hurt Maine consumers in the long run.

The number one item in his energy bill may be ambitious: increase the amount of renewable energy being generated in the state by ten percent in the next ten years. Baldacci told reporters some of it is happening already.

There's more to determining the value of wind power than knowing which way the wind blows -- or even how hard. MIT researchers studying winds off the Northeast coast have found that estimating the potential environmental benefits from wind and other renewables requires a detailed understanding of the dynamics of both renewable resources and conventional power generation. Data show that wind-energy facilities would generate far more electricity in winter, because that's when winds are strongest. But the need for electricity is greatest in summer, when air conditioners are going full blast.

NEW YORK – Seven northeastern U.S. states have signed the country's first plan to create a market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants, New York Gov. George Pataki said Tuesday.

After briefly wavering, Governor M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut yesterday agreed to sign onto a multistate greenhouse gas pact that Massachusetts and Rhode Island rejected Wednesday.

BREWER - As wind power begins to blow into Maine, state regulators on Wednesday considered its potential to squeeze increasingly expensive - and less environmentally friendly - fossil fuels out of the region's energy mix.

The head of New England's biggest natural gas utility promised yesterday that homes and businesses across the region will face no shortage of gas for heating this winter.