The Maine Climate Council has released the state’s updated four-year action plan, Maine Won’t Wait.
Maine.gov says, the updated plan builds on Maine’s success in fighting climate change and recommends commonsense strategies to advance the state’s work in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, achieving carbon neutrality, strengthening Maine’s resilience to the impacts of climate change, and growing Maine’s economy through new good-paying, green jobs.
The report recognizes Maine’s leadership in climate action, including:
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent since 1990, making meaningful progress towards statutory targets of a 45 percent reduction by 2030 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
- Progressing to meet Maine’s goal of using 80 percent renewable sources for electricity by 2030.
- Exceeding Governor Mills’ goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps statewide and setting a new, more ambitious target of installing 275,000 heat pumps by 2027.
- Reducing Maine’s dependence on heating oil from 70 percent of Maine households in 2010 to just over 50 percent in 2023, including the largest recorded year over year decrease (6 percent) from 2022 to 2023 steadily increasing electric vehicles on the road to more than 17,000 and building electric vehicle charging infrastructure to more than 1,000 ports statewide
growing the clean energy economy to employ more than 15,000 people, more than halfway toward the Governor’s goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs by 2030. - Investing $60 million — the largest investment in state history — to enhance the resilience of Maine communities, working waterfronts, and businesses following last winter’s devastating storms.
The updated plan calls for making Maine homes and businesses more energy efficient through weatherization and heat pump installation, for transitioning to renewable energy sources to reduce Maine’s reliance on expensive and environmentally harmful fossil fuels, and for promoting electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions within Maine’s transportation sector.
More HERE.
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