Kelly Rehberg, sustainability program manager at Greater Portland Council of Governments, speaks at a Climate Action Forum on July 18 in North Yarmouth. At left is Anna Paddock, also of GPCOG. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

North Yarmouth is in the process of creating a Climate Action Plan, a document that will guide the town in lowering its emissions and becoming more resilient to climate change.

Those involved in leading the process hope to present a draft of the plan to the town Select Board this fall. To help with the drafting process, the town is actively generating input through a survey that can be accessed at surveymonkey.com/r/NYActions. The survey, which will be open for at least another month, asks residents to prioritize various climate change mitigation strategies and strategies to lower emissions. Survey respondents are asked, for example, how critical they think it is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from municipal vehicles by transitioning to electric vehicles.

The North Yarmouth Climate Action Plan Subcommittee, made up of four residents who also serve on other municipal committees, is leading the climate action planning process. They are receiving technical assistance from the Greater Portland Council of Governments, a regional agency that includes 25 dues-paying municipalities in Cumberland County, including North Yarmouth.

The two groups convened a sparsely attended Climate Action Forum on July 18, the second session to solicit in-person community feedback that will inform the plan.

At the meeting, residents participated in an interactive session that mirrored the survey, where they put stickers next to strategies that they wanted to prioritize. They also had a chance to ask questions of representatives from GPCOG, as well as members of the subcommittee.

Community input around strategies will constitute the real “meat” of the plan, according to GPCOG Director of Sustainability Sara Mills-Knapp.

The first forum held back in February – which drew about 40 people – was focused on gathering initial feedback and what community members’ concerns are when it comes to climate change, said Mills-Knapp. North Yarmouth also issued a survey around the same time.

In addition to the survey that is currently open, there will be other opportunities for the public to weigh in on the process. “There will be at least one other public forum for priority setting before the plan is presented to the Select Board,” Keith Bubblo, a member of the Climate Action Plan Subcommittee, said in an email to the Northern Forecaster.

“We plan to bring the forum documents to some upcoming town events, like the farmers market, so we can get more direct input from residents,” he added.

GPCOG has assisted the process by providing data that will inform North Yarmouth’s plan. The first data input is a greenhouse gas emissions inventory, a breakdown of how much carbon dioxide the town is emitting.

In 2022, the town emitted 25,853 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The inventory found that stationary energy – a category that includes emissions generated by industry, homes and business – was the largest category of emissions for the town, at 56%. The second highest emitting sector was transportation at 39%.

The other data input is a vulnerability assessment – a final report of which is still in the works – looking at “areas of risk there might be in the community related to climate hazards,” according to Mills-Knapp. That could, for example, include looking at infrastructure that could be impacted or particular ecosystems that might be at risk, she said.

In North Yarmouth, 268 buildings are at risk of flooding during a storm event by 2050, and 936 parcels will be at risk of flooding by 2050, according to a poster displayed at the meeting that pulled information from the vulnerability assessment.

Climate action plans have become common throughout the country. As of November 2023, 33 states either had released a climate action plan or were in the process of developing one, according to the policy organization the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Maine unveiled a four-year climate action plan, called “Maine Won’t Wait,” back in December 2020.

A number of towns near North Yarmouth have adopted climate action plans, including Falmouth and Yarmouth. Both municipalities have pledged to reduce total town carbon emissions by over 60% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. The 2050 target is slightly more ambitious than what the state has outlined in its “Maine Won’t Wait” plan, which calls for 80% emissions reductions by 2050.

When asked if North Yarmouth will outline similar targets, Bubblo said that it was too early in the process to say.

“Because North Yarmouth is the smallest and least commercially developed of the other communities working with GPCOG, our goals are going to reflect our specific situation, which is likely to be a lot different than (in) Falmouth or Yarmouth,” he said, but “we’re all trying to follow what the state of Maine has outlined for their climate policy goals for the next few decades.”