The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Devin Osting is a Hope resident and founder of Waypoint Alignment Strategies, a strategic advisory firm focused on energy, infrastructure and public policy.
Maine’s next governor will take office at a moment when several of the state’s biggest challenges are becoming increasingly interconnected.
Maine families are facing rising energy costs. Housing shortages are constraining economic growth. Communities are facing mounting pressure from storm damage and aging infrastructure. And many of the decisions that will shape Maine’s long-term affordability and competitiveness now sit at the intersection of energy, housing, land use, workforce development and local infrastructure planning.
These are not issues that can be addressed through isolated initiatives or siloed policymaking. They require coordination across state government, municipalities, utilities, regulators, and the private sector. Increasingly, the central challenge is whether the state government can build on the progress already made and carry complex, cross-cutting strategies through implementation over time.
That is fundamentally a question of governing capacity, and Maine’s energy system illustrates this particularly clearly.
A recent analysis found that volatility in natural gas prices remains one of the largest drivers of electricity price spikes in Maine, alongside storm recovery costs, aging infrastructure and broader inflationary pressures. As electricity demand grows and the region faces continued pressure on generation and transmission infrastructure, affordability and reliability are becoming inseparable from long-term planning and system modernization.
That reality has important implications for policy. Reducing long-term exposure to volatile regional fuel markets means expanding energy efficiency, modernizing transmission and distribution systems to support cleaner generation, storage and more flexible demand, and reducing the planning and interconnection bottlenecks that delay new projects from coming online. Strengthening resilience and infrastructure planning can also help reduce the growing costs associated with storm recovery and system disruptions.
In other words, many of the investments associated with climate and energy transition are also central to long-term affordability and economic stability if they are implemented effectively.
The next phase of Maine’s energy policy must build on the goals and progress already established, with even greater focus on the practical work of implementation.
In evaluating candidates for governor, this is the standard that matters most to me: Who is best prepared to do this kind of work. I believe Hannah Pingree’s experience is unusually well matched to these demands.
As speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, she built a reputation for bringing together disparate interests to pass complex legislation. More recently, as director of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, she has helped translate long-term priorities into practical action.
That includes helping lead Maine’s climate and resilience work, where success has depended on cooperation across agencies, local governments and the private sector. Programs like the Community Resilience Partnership have connected state resources with local capacity to help communities prepare for increasingly severe weather events.
In Camden and Rockport, for example, the partnership is supporting a regional energy coaching program and public outreach on emergency preparedness — exactly the kind of local, practical work that turns statewide policy into community-level resilience. In Northport, the partnership has supported shoreline stabilization planning at Bayview Park, a concrete example of helping towns prepare vulnerable public infrastructure for worsening storms.
Her campaign’s climate and energy platform reflects an understanding that affordability, resilience and decarbonization are increasingly linked. Rather than treating climate policy as separate from economic concerns, Pingree has emphasized reducing long-term energy costs through expanded efficiency, heat pump deployment, grid modernization and reduced exposure to imported fossil fuels while continuing to strengthen resilience and prepare communities for future disruptions.
Importantly, her approach recognizes that implementation matters as much as ambition. Planning and permitting needed transmission infrastructure, accelerating interconnection timelines and coordinating housing, transportation and energy investments all require sustained engagement across agencies and sectors.
Hannah’s experience in these areas is not theoretical. It reflects years of working within state government — understanding where progress stalls and how to move it forward.
Maine doesn’t lack candidates with thoughtful platforms. What’s harder to find is someone who has already done the unglamorous, coalition-building, agency-coordinating work that turns a platform into results.
Hannah Pingree has. That’s why she has my support in the Democratic primary on June 9.
