The Maine Climate Council is moving away from green hydrogen and toward electric vehicles for now.

The Maine Climate Council has concluded that green hydrogen is unlikely to become a commercially viable market by 2030, so installing an additional 15,000 Mainers as electric vehicles by the end of the decade, for a total of 150,000, is the state’s best hope of meeting its goals to reduce emissions. .

The exchange came Thursday as the council was putting the finishing touches on Maine Can’t Wait 2.0, the state’s second climate action plan that will be presented to Gov. Janet Mills on Nov. 21. The plan outlines ways for Maine to reduce emissions and adapt to a changing climate.

State law requires Maine to cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030, or from 31.4 million metric tons to 17.3 million metric tons. As of 2021, latest data available, Maine achieved a 30% reduction..

The council consultant had It was originally projected that Maine could meet its goal by 2030. with 135,000 passenger electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel to meet 1.3% of Maine’s energy needs, along with a proven combination of heat pumps, building insulation and vehicle mileage reduction.

But the consultant had to rebalance that emissions formula after the council last week abandoned the prospect of pinning even 1% of its hope of meeting its 2030 emissions target on the emerging hydrogen energy market, which is unfamiliar to some members.

“Modeling doesn’t have to be ambitious,” said board co-chair Hannah Pingree. “It has to be realistic.”

Green hydrogen is a clean fuel made by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity; when combined with oxygen in a fuel cell, it can produce heat and electricity and only release water vapor. In April, Maine lawmakers approved a 20-megawatt clean hydrogen pilot plant.

On Wednesday, consultant Jeremy Hargreaves of Evolved Energy Research returned with a new formula: 150,000 passenger electric vehicles will be needed on Maine roads by 2030 to make up for the emissions savings lost due to Maine’s end-of-season hydrogen shutdown. energy balance of the decade.

An extra 15,000 electric vehicles may not seem like much, but the council has already had to cut EV targets once. In 2020, Maine’s first climate action plan predicted there would be 219,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Clearly, that’s not happening: Maine currently has only 12,000 passenger electric vehicles.

“When we set our goal for 2020, we saw electric vehicles take off,” Pingree said. “We thought the market would move faster. The pandemic has slowed down this process. The trajectory is not what it needs to be to achieve the goal we set in 2020.”

Council members hope the pace of adoption will accelerate now that Maine is expanding its high-speed charging infrastructure and pandemic-related supply chain disruptions have eased. To encourage EV adoption, the council wants 50% of EV rebates to go to low- and moderate-income Mainers.

“This is still a big period of transition for Maine people,” said Pingree, director of the Governor’s Office of Policy, Innovation and the Future. “The plan envisions many more electric vehicles on the road than now in the next five to six years. I think all the strategies we have included in the plan will help us achieve this goal.”

On Wednesday, some council members expressed concern that the goal of 150,000 light-duty electric vehicles was not ambitious enough. Kate Dempsey, director of The Nature Conservancy in Maine, noted how far the 2030 goal is from the 2020 goal. “This is a place where you can aim a little higher,” Dempsey said.

But Pingree said the revised goal puts Maine ahead of the federal government’s EV rollout schedule.

“It takes 10 to 15 years to renew a light truck fleet,” Pingree said. “I would say that if you look at the 2050 numbers (100% EV adoption) and think about the fleet turnover rate, that would still be a really significant change in our fleet over the next few decades.”

DON’T GIVE UP HYDROGEN

The hydrogen electric vehicle swap doesn’t mean Maine is giving up hydrogen. Commissioner Melanie Loysim of the Maine Department of Environmental Conservation said hydrogen will be an important clean energy option for sectors that are difficult to electrify, such as heavy vehicles, industrial and aviation.

“As technology costs come down and green hydrogen becomes more common, hydrogen is expected to become a smarter alternative for applications that are difficult to electrify,” Loyzim said. “Hydrogen will play an important role in providing clean fuel for these applications.”

Many of the goals included in Maine Can’t Wait 2.0 continue those included in the state’s first plan, which was released in 2020, but others have been reworked to ensure benefits reach all state residents, including :

By 2030, 40,000 heat pumps will be installed in low-income homes
By 2030, 10,000 low-income homes will be weatherized
1,500 green, energy efficient and affordable housing units are created annually.
By 2030, there will be 15,000 registered rooftop or community solar arrays for low- and moderate-income homes.
40% grants for climate resilience in low-income communities.

Scientists who advise drawing advice Maine’s warmer, wetter future: Average temperatures will rise 2-4 degrees by 2050 and up to 10 degrees by 2100, depending on global emissions rates. The amount of rain in general increases, the downpours become more intense, but the drought will also intensify.

Dry periods will become drier and wet periods will become wetter. The 2020 growing season was the driest on record; the summer of 2023 was the wettest. Storms like those that have caused more $90 million in damage to public infrastructure and millions in private property losses This past winter will become more intense.

The level of the Gulf of Maine has risen about 7.5 inches over the past century, with about half of that occurring since the 1990s. The Maine Climate Council projects sea levels will rise another 1.1 to 3.2 feet by 2050 and 3 to 9.3 feet by 2100, depending on how much we limit the global rate of emissions.