When I took office, I set a goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps in Maine by 2025 in order to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and to support energy efficiency jobs – the kinds of jobs that attract young families to our state.
Well, earlier this week, I was pleased to announce that we’ve reached our goal -- a full two years ahead of schedule.
Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.
You know, Maine uses more home heating oil per capita than any other state in the nation. Nearly 60 percent of homeowners rely on oil for home heat, and we send over four billion dollars out of state every year to pay for our use of fossil fuels.
Over the last two years especially, Maine people and all kinds of businesses in Maine have been hurt by high and volatile energy costs, a direct consequence of our state being so reliant on global energy markets to heat our homes and power our businesses.
Heat pumps are affordable heating and cooling appliances. They work well in cold climates. They are much more efficient than window air conditioning when used for cooling, and they’re easy to use.
To meet our goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps by 2025, the Efficiency Maine Trust and Maine Housing organizations drew a combination of state and federal funding to offer rebate incentives to Maine people and businesses to purchase heat pumps, and then our Community College System trained hundreds of heat pump installers to serve those new customers statewide.
I got to meet many of those heat pump installers at Kennebec Community College this week. KVCC alone has trained more than 250 people over the last four years to install heat pumps in every corner of our state.
I want to thank every one of those individuals for their hard work – we wouldn’t have achieved our goal without them.
To build on this progress, I announced that we are now setting a new goal of installing another 175,000 heat pumps in Maine in the next few years. That will bring the total number of new heat pumps installed during my Administration to 275,000 statewide.
We will reach this new goal by using more than $70 million in federal funds to offer rebates for consumers to weatherize their homes and to install systems such as heat pumps and other efficiency appliances.
Transitioning to heat pumps is creating good-paying jobs, it’s curbing our carbon emissions, and cutting costs for Maine families, and it’s making people more comfortable in their homes. I am confident that we can reach our new goal, which will make such a significant difference in the lives of Maine people.
I look forward to celebrating the next milestone on the road to our clean energy future here in Maine.
This is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.