The housing stock in Maine is old, though not as old as one might think. Relative to population growth in the Pine Tree State, which gained 1.3% between 2010 and 2022, and a median age of 44 for its nearly 1.4 million residents (both figures above average nationally), the median age of Maine’s homes is in line with that of its population.

These numbers reveal a stark reality: Old homes in a cold climate typically equal poor performance. Couple that with the fact that Maine is an older, sparsely populated, and very rural state with an aging grid, and it becomes clear that scalable home weatherization deployment is not only imperative but also an enormous challenge.

Addressing this head-on is Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), which last year launched its Weatherization Business Lab. The Lab emerged after CEI received a grant from Governor Janet Mills’ Energy Office (GEO) as part of a larger effort to launch the Maine Clean Energy Jobs Network. Its goal, according to those who run the training program, is to onboard aspiring and existing home professionals to better understand the weatherization business as it applies to their respective trades and get them the tools to eventually scale up. “We really want to reach that one- to two-person contractor base,” says Emily Wood, CEI’s director of climate justice and environmental resilience. “There’s also a huge gap in services throughout the state, especially in the northern, western, and even midcoast regions. They have way less access to weatherization services than in southern Maine.”

Helping contractors stay relevant

CEI is a Community Development Financial Institution, or CDFI, the purpose of which is to provide capital support and business advisory services for small businesses throughout the state. (There are about 50 CDFIs operating in Maine.) The Weatherization Business Lab represents a unique and innovative extension of the CDFI lending model, which tends to focus on lower-income communities, climate-adaptive infrastructure projects, and various initiatives that are typically the purview of green banks. Since its inception in 1977, CEI’s advocacy and lending work has focused on four sectors: fisheries and aquaculture, sustainable agriculture, childcare, and climate action.

The Lab itself is a free, seven-week virtual course that covers all things home efficiency, from air-sealing, insulation, and energy audits to earning a BPI certificate. Rollout thus far has been successful but modest. To date, two full courses have been held with cohorts of approximately 10 students each. Raynor Large, CEI’s director of business advising and the Lab’s lead instructor, estimates that each course, composed of one 90-minute session per week, could be capped at 30 participants.

Modest numbers aside, those in charge have been encouraged by the diverse reception of the program thus far, believing it holds promise for future growth. The first cohort, according to Wood, was largely made up of professionals who were either small, established businesses or were “in the early adoption phases” of the home weatherization business. The second, held last fall, included participants with little to no experience running a business.

“A lot of [students] are wearing multiple hats. They already have some commitment to figuring out the weatherization business,” Large says. “And they’re not necessarily looking for more work. Contractors are in high demand in Maine; they have lots of work already. So by the time they’ve signed up for the course, they are interested and mission-aligned and understand the needs of the aged housing market in Maine, of trying to make it more sustainable.”

Business training for weatherization contractors

While climate action and lending are core pieces of CEI’s larger operation (upon completing the course, participants are eligible to receive a grant up to $3,000 to pay for additional training and/or certifications), the organization stands out among fellow CDFIs by making business advising a big part of its portfolio.

The Weatherization Business Lab is, above all, a course designed to get new small businesses up and running in every corner of the state. “It’s even more basic than scaling a business,” Large says. The Lab’s purpose is to address the nuts and bolts of just getting a business off the ground. He lists off questions like “How do they hire their first employee? How do they pay payroll taxes? If they need a loan, how do they prepare themselves to sit before a loan officer and explain what equipment they need, and how they’re going to pay the loan back? Taking out the guesswork of next steps and giving people that foundation is really our goal.”

This advisory model has previously been implemented through CEI’s Child Care Business Lab, a multi-month course for people who want to start their own childcare business but may lack the basic knowledge when it comes to obtaining licenses, insurance, and hiring staff. The Child Care Lab provided the template for its Weatherization Lab cousin, which was then tailored to a very different industry.

Beyond the basics of starting, running, and marketing a small business, Large cites industry-specific concerns that are addressed in the Lab, like creating detailed quotes and invoices, helping customers navigate rebates and tax credits, and understanding how to communicate to those customers the upfront costs and long-term value adds of weatherizing a home. Appropriately, each course begins by introducing the students to Efficiency Maine—the state-approved agency that administers energy-efficiency programs, home energy loans, rebates, and the like—and runs them through the steps of becoming an approved vendor.

“The first cohort we had were mainly people who are active in the industry. And none of them were registered vendors with Efficiency Maine, which is something we try to encourage,” Wood says. The value in being an approved vendor is so their customers can access the kinds of financial incentives that have become ubiquitous in the weatherization and efficiency industry these last few years.

Weatherization, with or without incentives

The Weatherization Business Lab’s third cohort is tentatively scheduled for this year, pending a contract extension with the Governor’s Energy Office. And naturally, citizens and public officials alike are justifiably worried about the state of the economy and the Trump administration’s appetite for keeping certain consumer incentives tied to the Inflation Reduction Act.

In CEI’s view, however, rebates and tax credits are not what has historically driven the home efficiency industry. According to Wood, “If you speak with people who have been in this industry for a very long time, they can recall when there were little to no rebates and incentives, and they’ve still been able to keep their businesses … We’re in a cold climate,” she continues, “so even without the incentives, [the weatherization] industry is very necessary.” Wood’s cautious optimism is admirable, but it might fail to account for the exponential deployment of home electrifications and efficiency upgrades in recent years and why those patterns are tied to more robust incentives. In other words, the IRA’s role cannot be overlooked.

Looking ahead to the third cohort and beyond, Wood says they’re focused on “expanding the avenues of recruitment” and looking at more diverse sectors of the workforce. She cites community colleges, trade schools, and even skilled trades outside the weatherization space but still tied in some ways to the home industry. “We would love to see more businesses in the home performance space that operate in parts of the state that really need these services. We also know that Community Action Partnership (CAP) agencies throughout Maine that service low-income housing are in desperate need of weatherization contractors. That’s also a big part of our goal.”

Large seconds that outlook while again stressing the importance of having modest, attainable goals. “Growing a large company with multiple crews is a great vision, but for a lot of these small contractors it’s really about the next six months or so, and them asking, ‘How do I take a step toward that?’”

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Justin R. Wolf is a Maine-based writer who covers green building trends and energy policy. He is the author of Healing Ground, Living Values: Stanley Center for Peace and Security, published by Ecotone.