Clean air is essential for healthy, happy lives. Clean, renewable energy helps ensure clean air. NRCM works for policies and initiatives that will improve Maine's air quality and reduce global warming pollution throughout the state and region.
NRCM’s climate and clean energy work is focused on where we can have the greatest impact: cleaner cars and trucks, clean and renewable energy production, and greater energy efficiency.
Our work in these key areas is critical to reducing health and environmental problems already plaguing our state. These include high asthma rates, more “bad air days,” rising sea levels due to climate change that threaten coastal communities, and threats to our fall foliage, skiing, and our vital tourism-based industry.
NRCM makes certain that Maine's elected officials and decision-makers are kept up to date about information related to climate change pollution, clean energy technologies, and steps Maine can take to ensure clean air.

As Trains Start to Carry Crude Oil Across Maine, Environmentalists Start to Worry
by Kevin Miller, staff writer Bangor Daily News news story The modern-day oil boom in the western U.S. and Canada is fueling interest in shipping crude oil by rail across Maine to a refinery in the Maritimes. But the prospect of long trains of oil-filled tanker cars rumbling through Maine also has state environmental officials Read More

NRCM Testifies Before EPA about Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants
So far more than 1.7 million people, including more than 9,000 people from Maine, have written to support the first-ever national safeguards essential to protect Americans from climate-changing carbon pollution from new power plants! That makes two historic firsts, because this is the also largest number of public comments ever received by the EPA. Power plants Read More

Support of Proposed Carbon Rules at EPA Hearing on Carbon Emission Standards for New Power Plants
Hello, my name is Dylan Voorhees and I am the Clean Energy Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM.) NRCM is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1959 and dedicated to protecting, restoring, and conserving Maine’s environment, now and for future generations. We have over 12,000 members and activists. Improving air quality, promoting Read More

Pipeline Company Enbridge Announces Massive Pipeline Expansion
Reveals True Intentions to Bring Tar Sands Oil Toward Maine NRCM press release Last night Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge announced plans for a massive increase in pipeline capacity to bring dirty tar sands oil from Canada to global markets via the United States. One of the biggest components of the plan is to reverse the Read More

New England EPA Administrator Hears Maine Perspectives on Climate Change, Pollution, and Energy
In Light of First Ever National Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants NRCM press release Portland, ME – The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) New England office, Curt Spalding, joined a Portland roundtable today focused on proposed national standards, which, for the first time would limit climate-changing pollution from new power Read More

Canada-Portland Tar Sands Pipeline Hits Strong Opposition
41,000 Comments Submitted from U.S. and Canadian Citizens Against Threat of Piecemeal Proposal Portland, Maine—The Canadian National Energy Board today closed public input on the proposed Line 9 Reversal Phase I tar sands pipeline project after receiving more than 41,000 citizen comments in opposition. A coalition of 11 groups, including Environment Maine, Natural Resources Council Read More

Natural Resources Council of Maine Goes Solar
Nonprofit now powered with solar energy, expects to save $32,000 over life of project NRCM and ReVision Energy AUGUSTA, ME – The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), the state’s leading environmental advocacy organization, has begun powering its Augusta headquarters with solar energy. NRCM partnered with ReVision Energy, a leader in solar design, installation, and Read More

New Report Sheds Light on Disappointing Winter
Last winter, I wrote a blog post, Joys of a Maine winter, sharing my love for winter fishing in Maine. But this winter has been disappointing. With the warm December and January, and early spring (summer, really) temperatures, the ice fishing season was much abbreviated. I got out on the ice maybe only five times this Read More

Warming Winters Threaten Maine’s Outdoor Traditions
“On Thin Ice” Report Details Impacts on Maine’s Outdoor Heritage Natural Resources Council of Maine and National Wildlife Federation Augusta, Maine—Near-record warmth in the winter of 2011-2012 left wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts and the businesses in winter-based sectors scrambling to adapt—and it’s just a preview of what’s to come in a warming world, according to Read More