We need your voice to be heard in order to ensure that Maine’s next climate action plan addresses the climate crisis at the pace and scale that is needed. Help ensure a just and livable future for all in Maine by providing feedback in the Maine Climate Council Survey by September 20th!
Below are some details on the survey and high-level takeaways for you to consider as you fill it out. Each section will ask you to determine how relevant the current draft proposals are to your community. Next, there is a section to add more thoughts, where we encourage you to write the most important strategy for your community. Then, there is one final comment box for each section that says ‘what other ideas should we consider.’ In that box, we encourage you to read our analysis below and then input what you think is lacking in the plan.
Jump to information about:
Equity
Similar to the ‘Maine Won’t Wait’ drafting process, the engagement with priority populations was misaligned with the timing of the drafting process, and the results of the community surveys came in too late to be fully considered and integrated by respective working groups.
Our hope moving forward is that outreach and engagement surrounding the Climate Action Plan becomes systematized to ensure consistent engagement with priority populations over time rather than just discrete feedback opportunities when the Climate Action Plan is being drafted. Community liaisons from each of the identified priority communities should be identified and compensated for their continued contributions to community-led implementation and feedback, doing so would mitigate extractive interactions with priority populations and build relationships with the Climate Action Plan that would increase the plan’s relevance and tangibility for all Mainers. Additionally, we hope to see progress tracked over time with concrete metrics that measure the efficacy of the Climate Action Plan in facilitating an equitable response to climate change.
Transportation
This section does nothing to significantly address emissions in transportation. We are the most disappointed with the solutions in this section.
- Contrary to the Climate Law, the Transportation Working Group’s recommendations essentially give up on reducing emissions from that sector and try to have other sectors make up the difference.
- Using "climate-friendly" practices while still expanding roads is contradictory. Maine should stop highway expansion, including the Gorham Highway, and try other transit methods and land use planning before adding more roads.
- The Climate Council must set targets for increased transit ridership across the state. The current recommendation includes increasing transit ridership generally, but does not commit to specific targets, or to increasing funding for transit, expanding routes, or increasing regularity of existing routes.
- We agree that we need to increase transit ridership by increasing funding, increasing regularity, expanding routes, improving connections and coordination among transit agencies, investing in new and updated infrastructure, making transit easier to use, and supporting transit-oriented development. However, we should be calling for specific amounts of funding, specific ways to coordinate across agencies, and specific incentives for transit-oriented development.
- As Maine grows and develops in the coming years, we must plan to do so in a way that reduces personal vehicle dependence and increases transportation options for all. Modeling VMT for all new capacity expansion projects, including accounting for induced demand, and ensuring a net decrease in annual VMT by investing in VMT offsets will set Maine on the right trajectory to achieve our climate goals. VMT and GHG offsets could include projects to improve public transit, active transportation, electrification, or ride sharing.
- Maine’s 2021 Clean Transportation Roadmap projected that without Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Trucks standards, Maine will fall short of our transportation electrification objectives (the first of which, in 2025, is already out of reach). This plan must call for adoption of these rules and not just give up on addressing emissions from our largest emitting sector.
- The transition to an electrified transportation sector must be equitable. One way we suggest advancing the dual objectives of maximizing greenhouse gas emissions and helping more Mainers access clean vehicles is by targeting EV rebates, education, and outreach to drivers that spend the most on gas each year.
Conservation
We generally support the Natural & Working Lands Group’s updated recommendations, especially securing permanent funding for Land for Maine’s Future—our state’s most successful land conservation program. We support efforts that will help intentionally focus a coordinated strategy to conserve high biodiversity areas, such as a targeted expansion of ecological reserves. In order to holistically achieve Strategy E of our state’s climate plan, we must plan diligently for the long term—looking well beyond the 2030 goals—all of which will undoubtedly require additional capacity.
Furthermore, we adamantly support the call for government-to-government discussions
between the State of Maine and the Tribal Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy as a necessary platform to inform the role, relevance, and contributions of Tribal lands towards conserving 30% of our land area by 2030 and other State goals. For decades, the conservation of land for environmental protection has often failed to prioritize tribal voices and needs, and in many cases throughout history, has actively excluded tribal leaders and citizens from participation or access. Despite these injustices, the Wabanaki Nations maintain spiritual, cultural, and physical connections with these lands and deserve to be able to determine their communities’ futures.
Facilitators and leaders of the Natural and Working Lands Working Group embraced opportunities to solicit input from various sub-working groups, which included stakeholders and individuals outside of the group’s official members. However, we still expect the Maine Climate Council to review and strengthen the recommendations through an equity lens.
Necessary changes to the current draft
- Old growth (older than 170-year old) forests support the largest carbon pools of all Northeast forest types while concurrently supporting the highest biodiversity, but comprise less than 1% of the state’s forests. According to the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Maine Climate Council’s 2024 Update: “Severe disturbances (such as clearcutting or infestation by invasive insects) have the potential to convert forests from carbon sinks to sources at least temporarily depending on the severity and frequency of the disturbance” (p. 17). Given both the scarcity and exceptional nature of this forest type as the best for sequestering carbon, we advocate for including “old growth forests” within the areas listed within the topline statement characterizing Recommendation 1.
- Planning past 2030 will require inter-agency cooperation where innovation and collaboration are core tenets in the work to balance the needs of both our state’s human and wildlife communities in the face of climate change. In addition to the development of Maine’s first landscape conservation blueprint, we urge for 1) more comprehensive review of areas such as the Land Use Planning Commission’s (LUPC) function and form in order to to modernize conservation policies and practices for the unorganized territories and 2) the formal adoption of forward-looking and regionally-collaborative initiatives such as those proposed by the New England-based Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands, & Communities Vision for Land Protection.
- In order to help ensure that staff at our natural resource agencies are adequately supported and encouraged to consider the intersectional interests and steps needed to achieve our conservation goals, we recommend convening a diverse group of stakeholders to periodically review the state of our forests; help develop public policies and management strategies that focus on protecting and enhancing biodiversity and forest carbon sequestration; and provide input into the decadal update to the State Forest Action Plan.
- Bringing together people with different expertise and points of view to tackle complicated issues is a time-honored strategy—and exactly the one that Gov. Mills, Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future’s (GOPIF) Director Pingree, and the Maine Climate Council employed in order to help our state develop and implement strategies to address climate change in Maine. The current and future health of Maine’s forests is of tremendous interest to all of us. Yet many complex dynamics threaten the forest: invasive insects and disease; drought and increased risk of forest fires; development and conversion pressures; changing markets for wood, a shorter harvest season, and multiple pressures that make logging and timber harvest—the foundation of the forest products industry—more precarious than ever before.
- Establishing a diverse group of stakeholders to take on this essential work is one of many important steps that could help Maine keep our forests as forests, mitigate and adapt to climate change, ensure a future home for both rare and common species, and protect and enhance overall biodiversity—all while supporting a thriving forest-based economy. The woods of Maine are an incredibly unique and valuable resource, comprising the bulk of the largest intact temperate forest block in North America and having nourished and supported communities, both human and natural, for thousands of years. Additionally, at least 15 other states have similar advisory entities, including neighboring New Hampshire.
- We have a responsibility to the wildlife, communities, and businesses, in Maine and beyond, to think critically about policies that keep our forests healthy, intact, and productive by using the best available science and convening a broad range of voices and expertise in setting stewardship and management policy and supporting natural resource agency staff in their work to help our State achieve our climate and conservation goals. To implement the recommendations (with or without our improvements), it is clear that the State needs more people and resources to plan for the future.
Energy
Some decent progress here, but we encourage you to add more in the survey:
Maine must make energy-saving programs and renewable-energy options available to low-income households who otherwise could not afford the costs, and Maine must deliver these programs with broad public outreach and with plain and simple online interfaces that anyone can understand and use. Maine must commit to follow the state's Pathway to 2040 which aims to make our electricity supply be 100% from renewable energy sources by year 2040. Maine must implement some forms of demand management and battery storage that will lessen the task of achieving 100% renewable energy on the grid and must weigh the costs (both environmental and economic) of supplying endlessly more energy to modern society against the benefits. See more here.
Buildings
Improve: Continue the progress on making homes and businesses more energy efficient by investing in weatherization and heating systems.
- We support the current recommendation’s call to adopt new building codes to reach net-zero carbon emissions for new construction in Maine by 2035, and recommend an interim goal of defining a net-zero-emissions stretch code by 2028.
- The call for expanded retrofit resources and expertise are an integral piece of an equity based plan for the future and we urge the Climate Council to explicitly call for supplementing existing home repair programs as part of its commitment to increasing access and participation in energy efficiency programs for renters, low-income, and rural residents.
- The commitment to increasing weatherization and heating systems should also explicitly recognize the resilience and equity benefits of these strategies, which include reducing operating costs and extending passive survivability, and include concrete steps to partner with and identify funding sources for community-based “energy navigator” programs, potentially though cross-departmental bundling of currently siloed funds.
- We recognize the significant greenhouse gas contributions of Maine’s industrial sector, and the critical role of this sector to Maine’s economy. We therefore emphasize the importance of a thoughtful transition to decarbonized technologies, and strongly support the working group's recommendation to promote emerging energy efficiency technologies in the industrial sector, including new heat pump applications
- “a roadmap for the scaling of retrofits of existing should be developed by [name your date- six months?] Goals to be tied to health, equity and carbon reduction and grid load data.
Land Use
Identifying land use planning as a critical piece of the climate conversation was a big positive step forward this year. In particular, one recommendation rose to the top that encompasses an overarching principle that should guide our climate response moving forward:
Promote smart growth and compact development.
Materials
G.2. should be strengthened with language to explicitly remove the use of REC credits that incentivize waste to energy (WTE) and landfill gas to energy (LGTE) as renewable sources of energy. We should require investments from large landfills and waste processing facilities to capture emissions and prevent the release of methane and GHGs and provide financial assistance to municipal and state projects that improve capture, but allowing the incineration or landfilling of resources to qualify for renewable energy credits and compete for investments in solar, wind, and other truly renewable energy sources should be highly discouraged.
In earlier discussions within the Materials Management Task Force, there was mention of establishing a dedicated task force to study the climate and emission reduction potential of specific policies related to materials management, but this has since been removed from the overall recommendations. The establishment of a designated task force would be a concrete step to advance policies related to sustainable materials management, and we recommend that the Climate Council consider recommending a dedicated task force. We would also suggest that the Climate Council recommends a statewide “skip-the-stuff” policy to transition to disposables only upon request, and supports policies for reuse requirements for on-site dining to prevent the use of unnecessary single-use products. As emphasized in the introduction of these recommendations from the Materials Management Task Force, preventing and avoiding the creation of waste addresses emissions reductions all along the supply chain in addition to reducing emissions at the point of disposal.
One missing component within this recommendation is the need to address the use of single-use plastics as a misguided solution to prevent wasted food and food spoilage. We suggest that explicit language be added to provide stronger best practices that allow consumers to purchase loose produce and dry goods in desired quantities as a means of preventing overconsumption rather than pre-packaged and plastic-wrapped perishable goods, a practice which frequently results in wasted and spoiled food at both the retail and residential level.
To further support this recommendation and reinforce this critical need for technical assistance in materials management issues, we recommend that materials management be incorporated into the newly established Office of Community Development to provide a secure avenue for municipalities, regional planning offices, and similar entities to receive this critical support.