2/1 Retrofits: The Intersection of Housing, Climate, Environmental, Racial, and Gender Equity

Maine’s aged building stock creates wide spread health challenges including asthma, exposures to toxins in building materials, stress in physical discomfort and vulnerability in extreme weather and anxiety of about heating and cooling costs. The barriers to retrofitting are multi-fold, the rewards of retrofitting combine the health benefits with carbon and reduction as part of our path to our carbon goals. Equitable approaches to improving the built environment are critical. passivhausMAINE is exploring bundling funding sources for systemic approaches to whole building renovation. We are preparing the case for cross/multi department communication and systems to ease the funding barriers and structure scalable retrofits across the state through pilot projects in Freeport and Lewiston, Maine.