Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future
HR&A is supporting the Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future to build a proactive, durable funding and financing strategy for climate resilience in Maine. As flooding, sea level rise, and severe storms grow more frequent and costly, this initiative furthers Maine’s leadership in climate resilience and develops an opportunity for strategic, long-term investment to protect its communities, infrastructure, and progress.
Communities across Maine are already contending with the impacts of climate change and its growing costs. Though Maine has taken meaningful action to advance resilience and proactively mitigate these impacts, the state’s climate needs are accelerating faster than available funding, requiring a deliberate strategy to close that gap. The Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future engaged HR&A to develop that strategy, identifying the funding and financing mechanisms Maine needs to invest in climate resilience at scale, using resources under State control.
HR&A is leading a team, including experts on municipal finance, small business lending, and insurance risks, and is currently conducting an extensive review of existing funding sources and building a framework that categorizes resilience needs and existing funding sources across asset types (i.e., State-managed infrastructure, community and municipal infrastructure, private property) to identify the scale of the funding gap and areas of highest need. With the guidance of an Advisory Committee—composed of experts in climate resilience policy, funding and finance, and/or program implementation—HR&A will use this gap analysis to develop and prioritize a menu of tailored funding, financing, insurance, and risk-mitigation strategies, including revolving loan funds, resilience banks, and value-capture tools, to close identified gaps. This work will culminate in a set of implementation-ready recommendations for three to five high-impact strategies with a defined pathway to act.
