Maine House speaker visits EMCC on clean energy tour

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) - Maine Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau and other lawmakers met with Eastern Maine Community College educators as part of a “Lower Energy Bills” tour across the state to promote clean energy investments.

Fecteau got a look at students training in trade programs at the college.

“It is critical that these students learn the skills that are being taught here, the training that’s being provided, because they’re going to go out into the field and work in a career that’s going to serve the people of Maine,” Fecteau said.

Fecteau said a critical part of lowering energy costs is the use of heat pumps.

“Heat pumps obviously offer an opportunity to heat and cool your home efficiently. I think we’ve incentivized adoption. Obviously, Maine families have stepped up to the plate, leveraging those incentives to install heat pumps in their homes. But we know that electricity prices are clearly not stabilized either. We need to do a better job of diversifying the sources of energy generation to make sure that as people adopt more electrification in their homes, primarily through heat pumps, that they’re able to afford that as well,” Fecteau said.

Heat pump installation is one of the skills taught to students at EMCC.

“Our students, they see the work, but they don’t understand the impact. And having the Speaker here to help them understand the impact of what they’re doing, not just their day and the job, their careers they’re trying to build, but the impact on Maine as a whole. And it allows them to have a little piece of ownership in helping us to be more efficient and saving those costs for our taxpayers,” said Julius Edwards, president of EMCC.

Having more students trained can also help lower costs by raising confidence the work is done right, according to educators at the college.

“I think having professionally trained people that understand the installation service and troubleshooting of all the equipment makes it so that someone that has equipment put in, the costs are down because hopefully it gets put in right and you have somebody that can stand behind, support it, and back it,” said Rick Gomm, co-department chair of the Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating department at EMCC.

Senate Republican leader Trey Stewart responded to the Speaker’s visit with a statement.

“It’s rich that Democrats are campaigning on energy costs after years of refusing to fix policies they’ve pushed through that raise costs for every ratepayer,” said Stewart. “For years, legislative Democrats have forced ratepayers to pay more to benefit out-of-state developers behind massive solar projects. It’s clear they’re running scared of their own policies this election year.”

Fecteau also made stops in Limestone and Lisbon Falls as part of the tour.