PORTLAND, Maine — Many people know our state for its natural beauty and the animals that call it home, but concerns about the future of those homes are growing.
Nick Lund is the advocacy and outreach manager at Maine Audubon.
“The greatest threat to Maine wildlife and Maine wildlife habitat is climate change," Lund said.
Maine Audubon’s mission is to conserve wildlife and their habitat. Lund said both are in danger because of a warming climate.
“For us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we need to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel use," Lund said.
Lund said solar and wind are among the renewable energy choices that will be most effective in Maine.
However, Maine Audubon stresses that environmental impacts of renewable energy development, like all development, must be minimized.
“There are a lot of strategies that we can use, policy strategies, mitigation strategies that can reduce the impact we have, get the best of both worlds," Lund said.
By advancing solar energy in Maine, Lund said everyone wins. That includes getting renewable energy onto the grid. But doing it in a thoughtful way that avoids and lessens impact on habitat. For example, putting solar panels on roofs and giving preferential treatment to solar farm development on contaminated land that’s no longer viable to farmers.
Two Maine senators proposed a bill to help, and it turned out to be a big win for farmers. Gov. Janet Mills recently signed bill 1591 into the law incentivizing renewable energy on land where nothing can grow.
But it’s not just solar farms that Maine Audubon has on the agenda. Offshore wind turbines are another area Lund said we can expand upon.
“We have a real opportunity in the Gulf of Maine with offshore wind," he said.
Advocating to get wind turbines won’t require drilling, minimizing impact to whales. Between solar and wind mitigation projects Maine Audubon believes properly sited solar and wind projects can supply Maine with clean, renewable energy while avoiding the worst impacts to wildlife from climate change.