Join us in welcoming our new Energy Equity Fellow, Owen Miller! Owen comes to us through the Greater Portland Council of Governments’ Resilience Corps program.

He will be serving as an Energy Navigator on the Southern Maine Energy Navigator Pilot Program, providing technical and financial assistance to homeowners as they complete energy upgrades to their homes. He is excited to have this opportunity to learn more about sustainable policy and to be a part of a community-based project. Owen attended college at the University of New Hampshire where he graduated with both a bachelor’s degree in Economics: Sustainability and Public Policy and a BA in Philosophy. Owen loves spending time outdoors and has been a hiker since he could walk. He also enjoys cooking new recipes and listening to new music in his free time. 

On February 19th, members of SMPDC’s Sustainability and Resilience staff attended an electric vehicle charging workshop hosted by Biddeford-Saco-Old Orchard Beach (BSOOB) Transit. BSOOB Transit is one of the first transit agencies in the state to integrate an electric bus into their fleet.

The workshop included a tour of the electric bus and an informative presentation about electric vehicle charging and technology. The workshop also included an overview of BSOOB Transit’s recent feasibility study for a microgrid bus facility, which would increase resilience and aid in emergency response by allowing buses to continue to run during power outages.

SMPDC hosted the first Southern Maine Energy Resilience Stakeholder Group meeting in mid-February in Biddeford. The stakeholder group is part of the Southern Maine Energy Resilience Plan Project. The eighteen-month planning process will identify energy reliability challenges, recommend local and regional resilience measures, and propose areas for cooperation and partnership.

The stakeholder group will ensure that the plan is responsive to the needs and priorities of the regions diverse spectrum of stakeholders that provide and use electricity and that respond to power outage events. The discussion included peoples’ personal experiences with power outages, local resilience initiatives that should be considered when writing the plan, and the vulnerability of the region’s critical infrastructure. The stakeholder group will meet four more times to discuss actions that can be taken to improve energy resilience in the region.

Going forward, the consultant team of London Economics International, RLC Engineering, and Consensus Building Institute to coordinate with state resiliency planning efforts, complete an analysis of the region’s grid reliability, and map out community engagement for the planning process. 

At the start of this year’s legislative session, Governor Mills introduced LD1: An Act to Increase Storm Preparedness for Maine’s Communities, Homes and Infrastructure. This bipartisan bill was developed in response to last winter’s devastating storms, which caused significant damage along the coast. If passed, this bill will aim to increase the emergency planning capacity at all levels of government in the state, increase coastal resiliency, and reduce storm-related costs for communities.

The bill features three major parts:

• Establishing the Home Resiliency Program, which provides grants to homeowners for storm resilience upgrades like reinforcing doors and windows, flood proofing, and other reinforcements.
• Improvements to the statewide and regional emergency communications systems by establishing a new state fund to match federal emergency funding and providing training and education for statewide emergency communications. This part of the bill also invests in two new staff positions at the Maine Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) to administer this new fund and implement the communications upgrades, respectively.
• Establishing the State Resilience Office and transferring funding to flood preparedness initiatives in the state. The State Resilience Office is a new office within the Maine Office of Community Affairs (MOCA) that supports planning initiatives that reduce flood and storm related damage, protect infrastructure, and aid public safety.

Private property owners in Wells are using nature-based strategies to protect their sand dunes. Using nature-based strategies like those described below, property owners can restore dune systems and protect them from future damage. Click the video below from NewsCenter Maine for more information!