Steve DeZenzo, left, and Travis Roux, workers for Royal River Heat Pumps, set an outdoor unit into position at a home in Cumberland in October. Maine’s effort to promote heat pump installations is continuing despite concerns about federal funding. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

Most of the federal money Maine is counting on to achieve its ambitious climate goals is still flowing, at least for now, despite President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw support for clean energy and conservation projects, according to state climate officials.

“A lot of people think all these grants have been canceled and that is not the case,” said Hannah Pingree, the co-chair of the Maine Climate Council, during a quarterly meeting on Friday. “These programs, from weatherization to heat pump installation, are happening.”

The meeting was the council’s first since last year’s update of Maine Won’t Wait, the state climate action plan. Given the federal government’s changing climate policy, Pingree said the council may eventually have to reconsider some of Maine’s climate change projections, timeline and goals.

But that can’t happen until “after the dust settles,” most likely toward the end of the year, Pingree said.

There were some notable exceptions to Maine’s relatively stable climate funding situation: energy efficiency and electric vehicle charging infrastructure funds, climate and solar grants to Maine farmers, and forestry grants designed to increase carbon storage in the most heavily forested state in the country.

Federal authorities froze a $25 million federal grant to Efficiency Maine’s Green Bank, which issues loans to help homeowners and small businesses pay for energy efficiency projects, after the funding was deposited in Efficiency Maine’s bank account, said executive director Michael Stoddard.

Efficiency Maine is one of several green banks that has gone to court to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from clawing back a total of $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund funds. Earlier this month, a judge ordered Citibank to hold on to the money while the case proceeds.

In a court filing, the EPA claims it is not abandoning the funding program, but instead plans to “re-obligate” the funds with “enhanced controls” to ensure accountability. It argued a new administration is entitled to reappraise the costs and benefits of its programs.

Stoddard remains hopeful that the green banks will prevail in court. Without that money, Maine’s green bank has enough money left to continue issuing loans, mostly to residential homeowners, for another year before it runs out of money, he said. Efficiency Maine’s popular rebate programs remain untouched.

Meanwhile, Maine farmers are still waiting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release about $12 million in contractually obligated conservation grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, despite a judge’s order and USDA’s promise to do so.

Farmers sign contracts agreeing to adopt conservation practices on their farms to improve soil health, create healthy ecosystems and sequester carbon in the soil to help mitigate climate change. Once completed, the USDA reimburses farmers for a share of the cost.

“What we’ve just learned today is that the USDA, even though they have said that IRA funds are unfrozen, and that the contracts are going to move forward, we are finding out they are still holding up those funds,” said Sarah Alexander, director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

Without these funds, most Maine farmers couldn’t afford these conservation programs, said Annie Watson, a first-generation dairy farmer in Whitefield who is the president of the Maine Dairy Industry Association. Just writing a manure management plan can cost up to $10,000, she said.

As much as she wants to protect the environment, Watson admits the federal funding situation makes her hesitant to sign a new USDA conservation contract to build cattle stream crossings on some newly acquired land that would protect the water quality of the Sheepscot River.

“It’s incredibly important that that water is protected,” Watson said. “If we go through all of these processes and at the end of it are not able to recoup any of the cost, it could absolutely tank our business. That’s a hard gamble for folks to make.”

The USDA has also stalled a $32 million effort to restore New England’s forests, with $17 million earmarked for Maine, through climate-smart forestry practices. The program would pay commercial forest owners to store heat-trapping carbon on their land and expand sustainable forest product markets.

The New England Forestry Foundation, a lead partner in one of the climate-smart forestry programs, doesn’t know why the USDA won’t allow it to draw down from the grant, but it has told its Maine partners that it is unable to execute its signed contracts until it knows the funding status.

Trump proposed doing away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in January, and then suggested it shift disaster response and recovery to the states. The Maine Emergency Management Agency has been in limbo, awaiting federal guidance on the fate of its trickle-down funding.

“I’m really happy for all the state agencies that are reporting out that some of the chaos is declining a little bit,” said Anne Fuchs, MEMA’s director of mitigation and recovery. “I can’t say emergency management is in that same boat. … I can’t say money’s flowing right now.”

Fuchs said MEMA is “tiptoeing in the right direction,” but it remains a “wait and see game” for those who suffered through last winter’s back-to-back storms, which caused more than $90 million in damage to public infrastructure. Maine has recorded six weather disasters since December 2022.

Maine Climate Council members are not just worried about funding — they are also worried about environmental regulatory changes and mass federal firings at key environmental, scientific and disaster recovery agencies, too, including FEMA, the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In addition to blocking wind projects on federal lands and in federal waters, the Trump administration is challenging California’s authority to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035, a move that would slow the rollout of the nation’s electric vehicle market.

The U.S. had been on pace to cut greenhouse-gas emissions over the next decade, but the Trump administration’s funding cuts, regulatory rollbacks and plan to fast-track oil and gas projects make it likely that planet-warming pollution will increase.

SUCCESS IN COURT

Despite all this, Pingree said she feels good about Maine’s ability to tap federal grants that have already been awarded and the state’s ability to achieve many of its short-term climate goals, especially given the success states and nonprofits have had at overturning federal funding cuts in court.

For example, Maine’s $69 million climate resilience grant from NOAA — its largest ever climate grant — is unscathed, Pingree said. The grant creates a new state resilience office to help Maine communities adopt nature-based solutions, bolster working waterfronts and prepare for the effects of climate change.

“While there is certainly a lot of challenge at the federal level with climate resilience and emissions reductions, it is not all doom and gloom,” Pingree said. “We want to project that we feel good about where we are right now. But there certainly could be challenges on the horizon.”

Council members are worried about what will happen when existing grants begin to run out in two years.

“A lot of the funds that we’ve been worried about are kind of unsticking,” said Commissioner Amanda Beal of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. “Our bigger concern at this point is what happens in the future with programs that are very important in helping us meet our climate goals.”