By Michael Shepherd - July 17, 2023
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up.

Maine's climate plan faces new challenges less than three years after it was inked. Vermont's catastrophic floods of last week were followed by a scary few hours on Sunday with tornado watches in a region including southern part of Maine. It highlights the increasing role that quick-developing storms with big effects on smaller areas are having on Maine's weather picture. 

This is also among the challenges for the state's climate plan. When it was released in December 2020, the state and world were confronting an uncertain time at the front end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan set a number of standards that the state looks poised to meet, like those on overall emissions and heat pumps, but it remains woefully short of electric vehicle goals.

Later this year, the Maine Climate Council initially convened by Gov. Janet Mills and the Democratic-led Legislature will begin updating the state's climate plan, which will include accounting for the rise of more severe storms.

It will also give the state a chance to revamp some of the goals, something that will be accompanied by lots of debate. For example, a weekend commentary from Portland Press Herald energy writer Tux Turkel ponders whether the drive for electric vehicles was a policy error, citing the big miss on the goals so far. The state was at just 4 percent of the 2030 goal this year.

Hannah Pingree, the head of Mills' policy office, told the Press Herald she expects a "pulse check" on those goals in the climate plan rewrite, noting the supply chain issues of the pandemic. But supply and price remain major obstacles, making this one place where the plan is ripe for updating.

The last few years have shown the inherent uncertainty in these long-term plans, especially given the unprecedented level of change in the economy during the pandemic. These rewrites are going to be crucial to keep the climate plan from being more than just an aspirational document.