With support from the Julia R. Brown Education and Research Fund, Chelsea Moody (MAS Climate Science and Policy 2026) traveled across Maine to meet with more than 50 stakeholders working at the intersection of clean energy, affordability, and climate resilience. These conversations—from state energy officials to students and community leaders—helped shape her capstone research on how virtual power plants and other small-scale energy systems could reduce emissions while lowering costs and strengthening local resilience. Her findings will inform a report for the Maine legislature on pathways toward a more coordinated and sustainable energy future.
My capstone focuses on how the state of Maine can use coordinated, small-scale clean energy systems to reduce emissions while also lowering energy costs and strengthening climate resilience. On this trip to Maine, I was able to meet with over 50 stakeholders throughout the state, from folks focusing on clean energy implementation at the Maine Department of Energy Resources (DOER) to high school students interested in climate and clean energy. These meetings helped me gain a better understanding of Mainer’s energy concerns, ongoing solutions, and share how my research fits into a sustainable energy future for Maine. Four major themes emerged from my stakeholder conversations: coordination, capacity, cost, and natural/built environments. These themes are now helping me shape a report for the state legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee on how Maine can encourage greater development of virtual power plant programs to coordinate small-scale clean energy.
Coordination
Coordination challenges came up on two main levels: organizational coordination and technological coordination. Multiple stakeholders remarked on the fact that despite Maine’s small population, there are many organizations involved in the state’s energy space, including multiple levels of governments, nonprofits, utilities, private sector actors, and more. In some ways, all of these organizations must coordinate in order to make progress. However, while there are many organizations, Maine is still a fairly small place – meaning actors across sectors have many opportunities for interaction and can form strong working relationships. Additionally, it can be technologically challenging to coordinate so many small energy resources.
Capacity
While Maine’s small population can allow for close relationships among energy actors, it also came up as a constraining factor in rural and island communities interested in improving energy resilience. Small community life means leaders often take on multiple roles. For example, on an island community the town manager might also be the chief of the volunteer fire department as well as one of the island’s few mechanics. Energy issues are complex, and tackling grid challenges can require both engineering knowledge and an understanding of the regulatory systems in place. If your town doesn’t have a fire department, it probably doesn’t have the budget to hire a consulting firm for an energy audit, cover the upfront costs associated with distributed energy installation, or send advocates to the Public Utilities Commission. This is an area in which Maine’s diverse set of organizational actors can and do step in to help. For example, the Island Institute is the regional coordinator for the federal Department of Energy’s Energy Technology Innovation Partnership Project (ETIPP), which provides technical assistance and strategic energy planning for remote communities. Island Institute connects energy experts with communities that don’t have the capacity to make improvements on their own.
Cost
Cost and affordability came up in nearly every conversation. Cost topics included the general cost of electricity in Maine, which is then compounded by the increasing cost of living, as well as price volatility with home heating oil (Maine uses more home heating oil than any other state). Additionally, Maine’s small population means that expense capital-intensive grid updates are shared over a small ratebase. Residents want distributed energy and a cleaner system, but high upfront costs present major challenges.
Natural/Built Environment
Maine’s extensive tree coverage is fantastic at absorbing carbon – but presents major grid resilience challenges. Multiple actors remarked on the difficulty of maintaining miles and miles of poles and wires while also actively managing vegetation, as well as the fact that vegetation on private property can often cause outages. A spread out population means electricity infrastructure also needs to spread with it. The distribution system thus spreads for miles and miles, and combined with extensive tree cover, includes many points of potential failure. Coastal flooding is another major challenge. There’s a sense that it’s only a matter of time before more major storms hit and fracture the energy system. Maine also has the oldest housing stock in the nation: old housing means beneficial electrification may require expensive panel updates, and housing is often configured to use either wood or oil as a primary heating source. Summer housing stock also presents efficiency challenges: many coastal/island communities in Maine consist of housing units originally intended for seasonal use, but are now occupied year-round. These houses don’t typically have strong insulation, making heating and cooling relatively inefficient.
Final Thoughts
Although Maine is facing many energy challenges, there are many people working diligently to build a better future. Every person I met with had tangible care for their work and their state. This trip allowed me to forge new relationships with stakeholders across the state, and I’m looking forward to continuing those partnerships when I return home to New England.
Blog content and images provided by Chelsea Moody – thank you!