A Plug for Electric Vehicles
Our family got an electric car two years ago and I have one major regret: I wish our previous cars could have been electric. Recalling years spent contending with the expense, pollution, noise, mechanical...
Category: Economics
Are Maine’s Electric Utilities Prepared for Climate Disruptions?
In the wake of Ida, a hurricane intensified by the warming climate, more than a million electric consumers in Louisiana and hundreds of thousands more households across the eastern U.S. lost power. It was...
Lending Support to Climate Action
In a summer awash with climate catastrophes, stories of creative solutions float like lifeboats. One Maine example is particularly heartening: an unusual partnership between philanthropists and state policy leaders that has directed more than...
Getting to the Grid of the Future
The U.S. electricity grid is a dinosaur, a huge, unwieldy relic of the past. Built with an expected lifespan of 50 years, much of its infrastructure is now more than 60 years old. Its...
Investing in Place
The balance of deposits in Maine’s financial institutions is roughly $45 billion. That figure raises an obvious question to experts in socially responsible investing like Scott Budde, who runs Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union:...
Launching a Sustainability Accelerator
As the Maine Climate Council concluded work on its climate action plan last November, one legislator issued what Sen. Anne Carney (D-Cape Elizabeth) recalled as a “plaintive plea: ‘We have to figure out how...
Don’t Bet Your Boiler on Natural Gas
Amid a torrent of public comments at a recent Rockland City Council meeting to discuss a proposed Midcoast natural gas pipeline, a teenager’s honest expression of bewilderment stood out: “I am surprised by this...
Maine Needs Major Utility Reform
Central Maine Power’s most recent debacle, attempting to charge solar developers millions more for grid interconnections despite signed contracts, was shocking but not surprising from a utility that has sought for decades to undermine...
