 Hello everyone, I'm starting from the top. This is Nick Lund from Maine Audubon and welcome to the Climate Action Plan. Are we on track tracking progress on climate change in Maine? I am honored to be joined by this panel who hopefully reminds me to do things like record and as otherwise is very much on top of things in general. And we're going to talk today about the progress made in year and a half since the Climate Action Plan was passed in December 2020. Let me do some quick ground rules first. So this is a webinar that means we cannot see you or hear you out there. So if you have comments, please or have questions especially please type them in the Q&A box which is found down along the bottom row. If you have other comments you can type them in the chat which is what some folks have been doing so far. Thank you. We're going to go try to go quickly. We have a lot to cover today so we're going to go as quickly as we can and hopefully conclude with enough time to take as many questions as possible. Again, we are recording it and it will thanks to Anya and we will have it available online hopefully this afternoon if you'd like to share. I think that's all for the technical things. Let me get started by introducing everyone. I'm Nick Lund, advocacy and outreach manager for Maine Audubon. I was joined moments ago in our partner in setting up these three webinars. Nancy Smith from Grossfire at Maine, the executive director over there. Today's webinar is part of a series of three that we're doing over a consecutive weeks. Next week we have a panel with Maine Youth for Climate Justice and the main climate table about intergenerational issues with climate change. It's going to be a very interesting discussion. Then on the 26th we have a webinar with the governor's energy office and some other businesses around Maine talking about how to save money and save the planet by solar panels and heat pumps and weatherization, electric vehicles, all things you can do to combat climate change at home. I hope you join us for those two. Thank you, Nancy, for joining. We also are joined today by Anya Wright, my savior, the legislative and political strategist for Sierra Club. Hello Anya. We have Jack Shapiro, the climate and clean energy program director with the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Hi, Jack. My colleague Eliza Donahue, Maine Audubon's advocacy director. Hi, Eliza. And last but not least, Kathleen Meale, director of policy and partnerships with Maine conservation voters. Hello, Kathleen. All right. So I'm going to get started first by jumping into a little bit about what this is, just a reminder here. Let me get my thing all set up. Anybody see that? Great. So we are here to talk about the Climate Action Plan, which had its origins in the creation of the Maine Climate Council back in 2019. It itself had its origins in climate change, the thing that is affecting the entire planet due to human actions. In June of 2019, the governor and the legislature created the Maine Climate Council, which is an assembly of scientists and industry leaders, bipartisan, local and state officials, and citizens. And the goal was really to figure out ways to reduce our emissions. The state has statutory requirements to reduce our emissions by at least 80% by 2050. That's a big old number. And 45% by 2030, that is coming right up, 80% by 2050, and carbon neutrality by 2045. So we have some big goals in Maine, and we need a plan to achieve them. So that's what the Climate Council set out to do. Climate Council is a big deal. There are working groups with about at least 250 members total coming together to develop this plan, and they separated out into a host of different working groups to figure out different angles and approaches. So that includes buildings and infrastructure, coastal and marine, community resilience planning, energy, transportation, natural working lands. And all of them were sort of helped out by a scientific and technical subcommittee, which provided support. This was largely happening through 2020. So here is a timeline of where we were going through. This is from 2020 here. And long story short, there was all kinds of meetings, all kinds of efforts to develop the plan. And it was presented in December of 2020. Here it is. It's called Maine Won't Wait, a four-year plan for climate action. And it outlined a number of different strategies to tackle climate change. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Here's just a brief overview to give you a summary. They talked about how do we bring the future of transportation to Maine? How do we modernize our buildings? How do we drive innovation to reduce carbon emissions in industrial and our energy sectors? That was ways to sort of reduce our emissions. And then there are ways to sort of prepare for the impacts of climate change that are coming. And that's how do we build resilient communities, right? How do we prepare? How do we have climate-ready infrastructure? And how do we protect our natural and working lands? These were all factors and each of those had its own strategies and various ways to achieve them. I'll stop my share here. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. There are legislative strategies. There are private sector strategies. There are administrative strategies. And there was a climate council meeting today that some folks may have attended, where they laid out the host of stuff that is happening. And it was, by all accounts, a very impressive display of Maine acting quickly. And so that's what we're going to cover today is how are we doing on that plan and are we getting there? So without further ado, I am going to get started there and turn it over to Mr. Jack Shapiro to talk about energy. All right. Thanks, Nick. Really great to be here with you all. Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to join the call on such a beautiful day. I'm going to be talking about energy, which is a big topic and just going to cover some highlights, because as Nick mentioned, the climate council meeting this morning was two hours long. So we have significantly less time and want to leave time for questions also. But I think the key context here is the central strategy running through the whole climate action plan is to move away from fossil fuel use and the carbon pollution associated with it. And we do that by transitioning our end uses of energy towards electrification. And a lot of those end uses are in the buildings and transportation sector, which Kathleen will talk about in a little bit. But functionally, what this all means for the system as a whole is that we're going to be shifting all of this, how we heat our homes, how we fuel our cars and trucks to electricity. And the logical next step there is that we need to serve all of that new electricity demand with clean and renewable energy. So what does main mode weight have to say about this? There are two big things. And the action items in the plan related to the power sector are one, to ensure that we have that adequate and affordable clean energy supply. And two, to initiate a process to transform man's electric power sector. So in that first one, the big piece of this is the state's renewable portfolio standard or RPS. We have an 80% renewable goal in less than eight years by 2030 and 100% by 2050. And according to the governor's energy office, we are on track to meet those 2030 goals, at least with the projects that are planned through 2026. But we will need more renewable projects coming online after that to hit the 2030 goal. And since renewable projects take several years to build, we really need to keep the momentum going now and in the next few years to make sure that we're ready to do that. And so some of that progress comes from our boom in community solar projects, as well as some big procurements from the Public Utilities Commission of larger scale solar and wind projects, which I will note are bringing the absolute lowest cost energy onto the grid that is out there right now, across all of New England, both providing clean energy and lowering wholesale power prices. Another piece of the energy supply part of the plan talks about setting targets for offshore wind, distributed generation, and energy storage. On offshore wind, we don't have a target set yet, but doing so was one of the draft recommendations from the state's offshore wind roadmap process, which is a big stakeholder process mapping out how we're going to develop this resource responsibly here in Maine. That work is very much live and ongoing right now. There's a big federal stakeholder meeting next Thursday on offshore wind, and a bunch of us on this call are actually hosting an in-person press event on Wednesday morning. So if you're in the Portland area on Wednesday and want to show your support for this new supply of clean energy in Maine, please, please join us on the Eastern prom and I will at 10 a.m. and I'll put a little link in the chat in case you'd like to sign up for that. But on those other two pieces, on distributed generation and energy storage, we do have targets for those that we've said as a state, but there are some big challenges, especially with our utilities and interconnecting some of those projects, that is plugging them into the grid and having them provide that energy, which brings me to that sort of second big action item, which is power sector transformation. So big picture, we're in this once in a century reimagining of how the grid works. Going from one way traffic from power plants to customers to a way more dynamic and networked and responsive grid. And one of our recent accomplishments there is to have passed an integrated grid planning bill in the legislative session that just ended LD 1959. So up until this point, grid planning was ad hoc. It didn't take into account this larger view of our state's climate and energy policies and didn't really look at what we needed the grid to do in the energy transition. And this new process requires utilities to develop plans for our grid that are directly tied to our climate energy goals and include assessments of other things like equity and environmental justice. All of that is to say it's putting what main people want and what main people need at the center of our grid planning process instead of just the needs and motivations and profits of the utility. So this is going to have big benefits and result in lower costs for our transition and really speed things up. So what's coming next? There's a lot of work still to do. We're far from the finish line on this. One thing is we need to continue to push for more renewables. We unfortunately saw a big renewable procurement bill, LD 1350 fail in the legislature this year. It included the ability for the PUC to fill in procurements for projects that were procured but didn't get built, which is really important given the economic turbulence that we're all seeing. And it included special consideration for energy storage projects and for building projects on PFAS contaminated farmland, which is just a really smart way to be able to think about land use and renewable energy development. And we need to continue driving towards the responsible development of offshore winds, another big piece of that. And the second thing that's coming up is really diving into this integrated grid planning process to make sure we realize the promise that it has for enabling the goals that we have in the climate action plan in electricity, but also in electrifying and reducing emissions for some of the other big sectors like buildings and transportation, which is what we are going to hear about next. So I will pass it back to you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Jack. And actually, I'm going to ask a quick question that came up in the Q&A because I see we're doing well on time while our habit. Toby asked, how can individuals tap into solar farms? Yeah, I'll try and I'll try and be as brief as possible. But many of these community solar projects work as subscriptions. So it's likely that you're getting marketing materials in the mail to join many of these projects. And the way that works in a nutshell is the solar project will actually provide to the grid an equivalent amount of energy that you use and then will essentially lower your bill, usually by about 10 or 15%. I think one of the challenges we're seeing there is that you aren't going to see those savings until those projects are actually built and they subscribe them in advance of building them. And that's why this interconnection process is so important and making sure that we're really sort of pulling back the curtains on how the utilities are, thinking about all of that. I could go on and on into the technical details, but I won't. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jack. And as Nancy put in the chat, too, we will be covering this topic, Toby, on our webinar on the 26th. So please, please join that. And all right, now I'm going to turn it over to Kathleen to talk about buildings and transportation. Thanks, Nick. And thanks, Jack, for starting us off with such a good where does our energy come from? I get to talk about how we use it. So I was honored to or I am honored to co-chair the building's infrastructure and housing working group of the main climate council. So definitely going to talk about buildings. Transportation is a good and natural pair for that, because those are our two most polluting sectors in name. We are looking forward to some new greenhouse gas emissions data coming out soon. But right now, the most current data we have puts transportation at 54% of our state's greenhouse gas emissions. And buildings come in right behind that with 30% of our emissions coming from homes and businesses. So we clearly can't hit those emissions reduction targets that Nick talked about at the very beginning of the webinar without serious work in these sectors. And the other thing that they have in common is at the highest level, the strategies are the same. We want to use less energy. So in buildings, that means increased efficiency, insulation, air sealing, that sort of thing. In transportation, it means driving less through all sorts of ways. So we use less energy, and then we make sure that what we do use is cleaner. So this is where you hear electrification a lot. Maine has the highest reliance in the country on heating oil. And we want to change that, right? We want to switch to high efficiency heat pumps and we want to make the energy that we do use cleaner. So from weatherization and public transit to heat pumps and electric vehicles, we are making great strides in both strategies in both sectors. That is great news for our climate goals. It's also really good news for our pocket books. I don't have to tell anybody on this webinar that gas and oil prices are shockingly high right now. And those high prices make us a really tough time for a lot of Maine families. And it is really clear that as long as we are reliant on our economy, is reliant on fossil fuels, we are not in control. We don't have fossil fuel resources here in the state of Maine, but what we do have are vast renewable energy resources. So while we are making all these great investments and getting closer to our climate goals, we are also lowering our costs for Maine families and creating lots of jobs. So how are we doing? Well, in the state legislature, this session we passed a couple of really exciting bills in the buildings category. LD 2026 approved the adoption of increased appliance standards. So what that means is that the appliances that we buy, whether they're air purifiers or computers or restaurant equipment, have to be more efficient in their use of energy and of water. That bill was sponsored by Representative Ralph Tucker of Brunswick, who is just an incredible environmental champion. He has chaired the Environment and Natural Resources Committee just wonderfully, and we're going to miss him when he is termed out of the legislature. We've got some other really great champs who will still be with us, we hope. Next session, Rebecca Millett of Cape Elizabeth sponsored LD 1656 to make energy efficient affordable housing in Maine. This is a direct recommendation that came out of the climate action plan that we make sure that as we invest in energy efficiency, we don't leave anybody behind. So all Mainers have access to really efficient housing. And what this bill did is it requires that by 2024, any housing project that receives funding from the Main State Housing Authority has to meet high standards for energy efficiency and sustainability. You've probably heard some of the kinds of standards we're talking about, passive house, or if you've seen those little plaques when you go into a new building that says lead on it, that's the green building council's way of certifying that a building is really energy efficient. You may have heard about living building standards where there are green roofs and water capture and all of these cool things. We're going to require some of those standards in affordable housing projects beginning in 2024. It also will require that those affordable housing projects use all electric equipment for heating, cooking, hot water, no more fossil fuels in affordable housing projects beginning in 2024. That's really cool. It will also require that those projects are what we call EV and PV ready. So maybe the electric vehicle chargers are installed, maybe there are solar panels on the roof, but the requirement is that the electric system in those buildings is ready for that, that we are building it out so it's easy to add if it's not there at the very beginning. Super exciting. Homes and appliances aren't the only place our buildings use energy. We have a lot of energy intensive built up businesses in the state of Maine and one of the things that the climate council's climate action plan recommended was that we really get the folks who know about that industrial energy use together to think about how we can reduce energy use in that sector. So Representative Nate Wadsworth from Hiram introduced LD1554, it's climate change transition assistance for Maine's energy intensive buildings, I'm sorry, businesses, and it's really going to help those businesses become more efficient. There's so much more to talk about in housing, but I promise Nancy that I would leave a few of the most exciting housing bills for her to talk about. So I'm going to stop there and talk about some of the federal funding that has been flowing to Maine. You've all probably heard about the American Rescue Plan and about the bipartisan infrastructure law. Here in Maine, the funding that flowed through the American Rescue Plan, which sometimes gets called ARPA, was implemented through what we call the Maine Jobs and Recovery Act. And that act had $50 million for energy efficient affordable housing. 10 million of that is going to be used for affordable home ownership programs that requires that all new buildings, all new construction under that program use that all electric equipment, the EV and PV readiness. Another 10 million for the rural affordable rental housing has those same requirements, but it's for all projects, not just new construction. You know what? I reversed those. I apologize. The affordable home ownership is new construction, affordable renting. I wrote the same thing down. I've got it mixed up. Sorry. The important thing is the affordable rental housing program has a really great addition, which is every unit must have internet connection and internet access. You are all zooming in today. You know how powerful this is in your own lives. We certainly are all, I think Anya and Nick, I can't tell if you're in the office or at home. I'm at home. Internet access matters. Affordable housing residents should have that as well. Under the Maine Jobs and Recovery Act, there will be another $50 million that goes to support energy efficiency in the hospitality industry, in local government buildings and schools, in manufacturing. Lots of really good stuff happening. The bipartisan infrastructure law allocated, well, nationally, increased funding for what's called the Weatherization Assistance Program to 10 times current funding levels. Here in Maine, that's going to mean $31 million in Weatherization Assistance Program to help Maine families save money on and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That federal funding is really important. Those federal investments are going to move the needle here in Maine and across the country, but we're not done. I actually just got back late last night from Washington, D.C., where I was talking to our federal delegates about making sure that we pass a budget reconciliation package that includes $555 billion of investments in climate, clean energy, jobs, and environmental justice. You'll be delighted to know they're also talking a lot about inflation control measures and pairing that. We're thinking about all of the various crises we're facing together. The good news is that these investments really work. Maine is on track to blow past Governor Mills' ambitious goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps by 2025. When she announced that goal, some of us said we're nibbling on our fingernails a little bit. It felt like a really big ask, and we are going to be able to put a huge check mark next to it. By 2025, we've got the highest per capita heat pump penetration in the country. We are making good progress. We're also making progress on the transportation front. In the legislature this year, we saw LD1579 put lead by example goals into state law to help transition state and municipal fleets and school buses to electric vehicles. It's really cool. It's going to save us money. Don't you love the idea of your kids getting on an electric school bus in the morning? It is reality for some Maine communities, and it will be reality for more of us very soon. Those federal investments that have done so much or will do so much in the housing sector are also showing up in transportation. Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan, which is how we are using that ARPA funding, is going to allocate $8 million to public EV charging, $5 million to workforce transportation pilots. We talked about internet a second ago, but listen to this, $150 million for broadband deployment. This is going to transform living and working in Maine. And why am I saying this under transportation? Because I didn't drive anywhere this morning to get to work. It makes a difference when we reduce vehicle miles traveled. The bipartisan infrastructure law also is allocating 47 or will flow $47 million for public transit in Maine. So maybe you do need to get to the office, but you don't necessarily have to take your own car. We can do better on public transit in Maine. There is so much opportunity there. I could go on forever, but I should probably let other people talk on the webinar. So thank you. I'll turn it back over to you, Nick. Ethylene, thank you so much. There is so much happening in Maine and around the country. For a lot of folks, this is sort of the visible part of the climate change action, right? Things happening to our homes. And so it's great to know that that's so much is happening. Thank you for that update. And we're not done. Because now Nancy Smith is going to jump in and fill in some of the rest. Nancy? Thank you. Yes, I'm happy to follow up on Kathleen's highlights in building and transportation. And also really please, Gross Smart Maine is co-hosting this series with Maine Audubon. Before I dive into what I'm talking about, I want to follow up with Kathleen's reference to broadband. If you're not yet a member of the Maine Broadband Coalition, that's where you're going to get information on how to make sure that you and everyone in your community has this access that is essential even beyond the pandemic, but as we have fundamentally changed the way that we live, work and play. So back to the conversation about how housing fits into this, the connections between housing and climate action with smart growth principles really connecting what are often seen as siloed priorities. You heard Kathleen mention the connections between housing and transportation, economic development and environmental stewardship. These can and should all be coordinated rather than seen as competing interests. As I highlight a couple of bills and a couple of components of the supplemental and highway budgets, I do throw do so through the lens of the four overarching themes and goals of the Maine Climate Action Plan. First, to reduce Maine's greenhouse gas emissions. Second, avoiding the impact and costs of an action resiliency. Third, foster economic opportunities and prosperity and what that means in supporting good paying jobs. And finally equity needs to be a part of what we're doing in our climate action. Now with Maine's strong environmental organizations as we're seeing here today, it allows GrossSmart to focus on the built environment and we connect the two through our program, the Maine Alliance for Smart Growth. I apologize for the dog. I thought keeping her out of the room was going to help. I'm going to ask Nick to put into the chat a connection to an advocacy update that we posted on our website last week and it's from this that I'm referring to various bills and you can have that for your own reference. And before I dive into the five housing bills I want to highlight, I want to mention three components of the supplemental and highway budget that were just passed. In the highway budget, there is $15 million of additional funding for transit. This has to help our carbon emissions as you heard from Kathleen in reducing our single occupancy vehicles as we get to back and forth as we need to. Within the supplemental budget, there's $3 million to facilitate municipal updates for zoning and ordinances in compliance with LD 2003, which I'll talk about in a minute. But this planning capacity is critical to the sustainable outcomes for our communities and certainly touches on the resiliency goals in the Climate Action Plan. And along these same lines in supporting resiliency, there were 10 positions added within the Department of Ag Conservation and Forestry, the Bureau of Information Resources and Land Use Planning. This means more capacity in our organized territories for the Land Use Planning Commission, Land for Mains Future, GIS capacity to be able to track on the ground what's happening, and the Municipal Planning Assistance Program, and more. So getting to the specific bills that I want to highlight, the big one most people have heard about is LD 2003. It's the housing bill that came from the Housing and Zoning Commission. It contains significant changes, I'm sorry, significant changes to the Municipal Land Use Rules and provides that $2.5 million of funding and a half million dollars for two positions for staffing and support in the Housing Opportunity Program at the Department of Economic and Community Development. I see value here in reducing carbon emissions, supporting resilient communities, and ensuring equity. There were contentious discussions in this bill about the sprawl implications of this bill, where the lines between urban and rural settings are blurred and both are weakened. But there were negotiations between the urgent goal of increasing housing options, which would call for more housing units wherever they make sense, versus only putting new housing units in designated growth areas which would have had the best climate impact. And I believe that a proper balance was struck and there were four highlights from that bill. One is that accessory dwelling units are now allowed by right, meaning if you follow the rules they're allowed and you're not required to have a permit. Accessory dwelling units you may know as an in-law apartment. This allows for more affordable housing within existing structures or existing properties where people live. Within designated growth areas where the community wants for there to be growth and where there's public sewer and public water infrastructure, the municipalities now will need to allow up to four dwelling units, again within the regulations and zoning ordinances, to be able to add more housing within the areas where the communities want growth. Even outside of the growth areas municipalities must now allow duplexes where they allow single family housing. And finally there is a density bonus within the designated growth areas for affordable housing and this allows for more units within what's allowed through the land use regulations and it incentivizes affordable housing where there is infrastructure to support it. I think this bill is also significant in making note of because of the outcome but also the process and the multiple amendments to strike that balance between what we want for climate action and what we want for housing and the balance was needed to get that majority vote to have it passed. The next bill I want to highlight is LD 201 which extends the sunset on Maine's tax credit to support the rehabilitation and use of historic buildings which are most often in our village and city centers. The greenhouse implications are strong for this. The reuse of existing buildings with materials that are already on site have significant climate benefits for new construction and the embedded carbon in these buildings continues to serve important climate, economic, social benefits when the buildings are brought back to life. The job creation is within the trades that the percentage of overall costs that's in labor versus materials that were brought in from out of state are significant for these rehab buildings versus new construction. Three more bills I'll touch on quickly. LD 1694 creates the state-wide land bank infrastructure to support municipal efforts to reclaim derelict and abandoned properties. The carbon emission benefits and the economic benefits are similar to LD 201 in that we are using buildings that are already on site and if they need to be demolished continuing to have new construction within the growth areas. LD 1240 is an additional study for land use regulation barriers to affordable housing and offering guidance for municipal regulation of short-term rentals which directly compete with year-round housing both rental and ownership. The economic and the equity benefits there I think are clear as we look to increase workforce housing. Finally, there are occasions where we celebrate the demise of a bill. LD 1884 would have eliminated or as amended weakened provisions for Auburn's farmland zone which required that any new housing be for families that earn a certain percentage of their household income from farming. The economic impact is of course because farming is an economic driver in Maine and reducing those emissions by reducing sprawl with having additional sprawling housing growth out that direction is important as well. So as you can see smart growth is about connecting and balancing all of these priorities and I appreciate being able to share those thoughts with you all this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you Nancy so much for that again a lot going on. Let me speak for the panelists and I think all the attendees in saying good boy good boy a girl back there it's not a proper zoo unless we get some pets on there. She thinks that she's saving me from attacks so yeah. What a sweetheart. So I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues Eliza and Anya I did want to remind if folks have questions please type them down below in the Q&A box and it looks like we're going to have time to get to them so without further ado Eliza. Thanks Nick happy to be here today. Once again my name is Eliza Donhew I am director of advocacy of Maine Audubon and I'm really happy to have the opportunity to share progress as well as action needs on the natural and working lands elements of the climate action plan. I'm really proud proud to sit on the natural and working lands working group of the main climate council that's a group of folks who are experts in the field to help advise the elements of the climate action plan and work in implementing the climate action plan having to do with that topic area. But before I dive into kind of the successes and the things that need to happen in the future to progress those elements of the climate action plan I'll talk about what do we mean by natural and working lands and why are they a part of the climate plan. So natural lands are undeveloped lands that contain important wildlife habitat for example and are relatively free from human influence. Working lands are lands that are farmed or managed for forestry for example and protecting these lands from development maintains their ability to draw back carbon from the atmosphere. Mains forests for example alone sequester 60 percent of the state's annual carbon emissions and in addition to storing carbon these lands provide really important co-benefits including supporting our natural resource industries providing clean drinking water and wildlife habitat and helping to moderate flood flood event events for example. Now as a wildlife conservation organization Maine Audubon has particularly focused on advancing the strategies in the climate action plan that support and conserve wildlife habitat noting that those strategies not only serve to protect biodiversity but also help to mitigate climate impacts. So I'll start with a handful of successes on those fronts. First Governor Mills past budget included an unprecedented 40 million dollars for the land for maids future program. Funding from this program has been used since 1987 to conserve natural and working lands both forest and farm. This funding which often draws significant federal funding into Maine is really critical to achieving the CAP strategy that calls for increasing the total acreage of conserved lands in the state to 30 percent by 2030. A second big success this past legislative session is I worked along with a few folks on this webinar today to pass a bill that increases the size of Maine's ecological reserve system. Ecological reserves are a subset of Maine's public lands that are managed or are not managed really specifically to protect biodiversity and the wide variety of ecosystems across the state. Increasingly the amount of acreage or increasing excuse me the amount of acreage in the system will help us achieve another CAP strategy which is to focus conservation on high biodiversity areas. And then finally on the success end of things the CAP calls for expanding technical assistance to help forest owners especially owners of smaller acreages to manage their forests to maximize carbon storage and sequestration. The recently passed supplemental budget includes additional positions at the Maine Forest Service to help provide that support to private landowners. And of course for the sake of our job security there is still work to be done. Maine Audubon worked on a bill this session that would codify a few strategies to help balance solar development and agricultural land conservation. This bill secured the votes that it needed in the House and in the Senate but ultimately it did get funded which means that bills are not going to come to fruition. That was a big disappointment but we're committed to continuing to work to achieve the climate action plan strategy of minimizing impacts on natural and working lands from renewable energy projects. Also though the $40 million secured for the land for means future program is a huge win. Work needs to be done to spend that money but moreover I'm already looking ahead and many of my partners in the conservation community are already looking ahead to how to keep that funding stream flowing perhaps by codifying a permanent funding source for mainland conservation. We've got to continue if we're going to reach the 30% by 2030 goal and perhaps even more than that continue to conserve areas that are critical for biodiversity and avoiding habitat fragmentation we're going to need to continue to conserve lands and conserve lands doesn't necessarily mean absolutely cutting them off from human influence. A lot of the funding that comes from the land for means future program actually goes to support conservation easements that support working forests and working farms as I said earlier and on that note related to fragmenting wildlife habitat we need to think about policy mechanisms to help avoid that fragmentation wildlife whether it's fish, birds, mammals, you name it they need to be able to move across the landscape to breed to feed to otherwise be the critters that they are that need to move may change dramatically as our changing climate causes habitats to shift and main Audubon along with our other conservation organization partners as named in the climate action plan are focused on thinking about how to strategically locate development to avoid creating landscape scale wildlife roadblocks many of the pieces of legislation that Nancy mentioned and also the work that that Grow Smart does generally really is in line with that thinking about how we can achieve some of the issues in our state have to do with housing but then the really the very real impacts that climate has and where we're locating development that all feeds into this late larger theme of how we can avoid fragmenting habitat that will likely be shifting across the landscape as our climate warms. So I'm going to leave it at that lots more to say of course but we've got more to say and a little time. Thank you Eliza we have one last speaker on you to close it out. Sounds good. All right I'll try and be quick so we can get to as many questions as possible but so I'm going to chat with you all a little bit about strategy H of the plan which is all about engaging main people and communities about climate impacts and program opportunities and so two or two maybe three exciting things that came about this last session was first the climate core bill which establishes a program similar to other AmeriCorps programs that will jumpstart a climate core and support hiring positions to help our state meet its climate mitigation goals assist towns and neighborhoods with climate resiliency projects and most importantly to me allow new generations of Mainers to serve Maine and our country and really start to work on that workforce development piece. So that's exciting and then the second bill I wanted to talk about briefly is the climate education bill LD 1902 which will establish a pilot program to encourage climate education in Maine public schools and this will fund professional development for teachers in K through 12 schools and looking at climate change in an interdisciplinary way and providing professional development on interdisciplinary climate change education so not just for our science teachers but for our math teachers for social studies teachers every every type of teacher because as we all know climate change is something that you know is not just related to science but will really impact all of our students lives in many different ways moving forward and then the bill also funds for partnerships between schools and community organizations which will allow schools to get support from organizations like the ones that are on this webinar today in training teachers and developing curriculum so that's really exciting and then a third thing that just might be worth touching upon is that the governor's office jump started their climate resiliency partnership this past session which helps to support local communities all over the state in climate resiliency projects through grant funding which is really exciting and I think I'll leave it there I think you know one thing that I've just been thinking a lot about as I've been listening to my fellow panelists is you know I think I feel a constant tension between like what's scientifically necessary and what's politically possible and I think you know we made a lot of political progress this past session both in the short session and the session before and I think you know it's so important to celebrate that and really you know take some time to fill gratitude for all that's been done but then you know we're facing a new IPCC report that says you know we're on track for for kind of worst-case scenario situations you know we're facing you know increased resistance at the federal level to climate action and and too while the main way plan is awesome still there's holes in it and there's more that needs to be done that's then is just in the plan so hope folks feel like excited by what they heard today but also want to encourage folks to get right back at it and stay involved in the climate movement that we're building in Maine because the work is certainly not done but I think that's it thank you Anya thank you everyone yeah the work is not done we have a lot to do but but I'm proud that we're doing it you heard a lot of actions today that were outlined in the plan that are you know that are being worked on across the spectrum federally in state and it takes a lot to do it you know not every state gets a hold of a webinar like this because they're not making the progress that we are and it takes an administration and lawmakers that are willing to take on these issues it takes folks like us on the call who are you know willing to push the issues and help educate the public and it takes you folks listening at home and watching and taking time out of the most beautiful day ever to vote and to listen and to make yourself heard and to push for climate action you know I think that when it comes down to it you know the question of the webinar are we on track I think we are on track for the climate action plan there's a lot to do and there's a lot more to do outside of the plan but I think we're on track which is which is I'm proud to be able to say that so let's get to some questions we have about eight minutes left I know we have some hard outs as they say in the in the game I want to start with one question that was asked earlier of Jack Erica asked former governor of the page was against net metering and he still is if he becomes governor governor again and tries to repeal net metering do you think he'll succeed and would those who already have net metering be grandfathered in jack could you share your answer to that yeah absolutely um you know as I said uh nrcm was involved in along with many many others was involved in fighting those efforts when they when they came around the first time and we would absolutely do so again um I think that the um sort a few things that may may few things that have changed and a few things that haven't what one thing that hasn't changed is solar energy has incredibly high levels of public support um far more than you might might think uh in listening to some of these policy conversations oftentimes it pulls in the 90s um and with the increasing urgency and visibility that we're seeing around climate impacts um I think uh a frontal assault on solar is going to be difficult um I think one one example that comes to mind is that there was a bill to roll back rooftop net metering in Florida where Governor DeSantis who is not progressive on these issues vetoed the bill citing those sort of increased costs that it would have on on people that have gone ahead and deployed in top solar there so um so I I mean I think it's certainly possible that that that comes along um we're certainly anticipating in the in the sort of political season that's upcoming and nrcm is a is a non-profit organization that does not engage in electoral activity at all but we're certainly anticipating attacks on um certain clean energy technology sort of as part of the campaign whether that's offshore wind or electric vehicles or or other things despite what we know about uh their ability to both um have important impacts on the climate but also on on people's costs and exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices and on health and and and all the equity implications that go into all of those things too so excellent thank you Jack another question uh for Kathleen this is from Toby uh she says I got a great rebate for installing a heat pump water heater but none no rebate for my home heat pump how do we push for more rebates uh for this and for solar panels and electric cars etc thank you um it's a great it's great to hear Toby that you got that that heat pump water heater rebate efficiency main does have rebates available for for air source heat pumps so I don't know what what happened there but I think it is really important to think about uh making sure that we keep those those resources flowing through efficiency main and as I mentioned our federal investments are a great source of that funding for the state also Ernie asked about you know what what are what are some of the challenges and I think one of the things we all can can do today and tomorrow and and the next day is to talk about the success that we've had you know if you have heat pumps at home and you're happy with them let the world know um there's a great article I'm going to drop into the chat right now um and it's just the the the headline is heat pumps work in the cold Americans just don't know it yet well we here in Maine are perfectly positioned to change that because we can talk about cold winters and of course when we pair efficiency and heat pumps we get get even more better results jack talked a little bit about elections in a very appropriate way for for a c3 organization main conservation voters does engage in electoral work so I can go even further than that and say that who we elect matters and uh main conservation voters every year puts out a legislative scorecard where we will will identify some of the most important climate and environment bills of the legislative session and report out to you all exactly how your state representatives and state senators voted and I would challenge you to say if they didn't vote the right way should they really be representing you in Augusta because they are the ones who will make those decisions about where the resources flow what gets included in the state budget and and how we leverage the resources and support that we get from the federal government so cold folks accountable for uh for the work that they do or don't do we know where we need to go as a state and we need elected leaders who will take us there thank you Kathleen and I see that Toby said that she used less than one tank of oil due to the heat pump so if that doesn't convince you then I don't know I don't know what it takes only have time for I think one more unfortunately Stephen had asked early in the presentation about food um his question specifically was is promoting a whole food plant-based diet part of the climate action plan and Ani is food addressed in the plan at all? Yeah sure um so what I can say is that there is a whole strategy around um our natural and working lands um and you know working on taking a closer look at food consumed in Maine and there there is a goal within that to increase the amount of food consumed in the state um which is now at 10 percent um to 20 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030 through the through local food system development um so there are our goals to to have more local food there's nothing in the plan about um you know um supporting one diet over the other and that could be an example of of you know something that's not in the plan that that we should push for um but certainly food and and natural working lands is addressed within the plan. Thank you and I see 12.59 and I am proud to bring this in on time all that information out there in an hour I want to thank you all for attending I want to thank Eliza and Nancy and Jack and Anya and Kathleen for joining and for all the work that you do to make these things a reality thank you so much stay tuned because we have a lot more work to do and hopefully we'll be hosting more of these in the future um thanks for joining and have a great afternoon