Climate Planning for the Private Sector

Small and medium enterprises (SME’s) are the lifeblood of Maine’s economy, making up 99% of businesses in our state. With a large concentration of these businesses in coastal areas, Maine’s economy faces numerous climate-related challenges as sea level rise (and consequent saltwater intrusion), warming ocean water, and increasing storm damage, and other impacts emerge. Recent analysis by the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future indicates that lower-end projections of sea level rise by 2050 (1.6 feet) could cause over $500 million in property damages per year, a loss of $118 million in the states Gross Domestic Product, and a loss of up to 1.6% of Maine’s jobs in coastal and tidally influenced areas. With tailored information and informed planning, though, businesses can ensure they continue to thrive in a changing climate. We support this planning by partnering with businesses to mainstream climate considerations into their decision making and help them implement business-appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Adaptation:

Adaptation is at the heart of being a resilient business and starts with understanding the risks your business faces. Through our Business Climate Action Program, we work with coastal businesses to understand how their supply chains, customer base, and operations are impacted by climate change. We leverage the unique blend of multi-disciplinary expertise at GMRI with an extensive professional network to tailor adaptation plans to the individual business. Through this planning service we can help:

• Understand the vulnerability of your business’s physical assets to climate change and how best to protect them.
• Understand and plan for the risk of operational disruptions and lost or damaged assets.
• Identify emergent business opportunities presented by climate change.
• Seek low-cost funding opportunities to protect your business and/or recover from acute climate-related disruptions.

Mitigation:

To avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need collective action is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This means everyone has a responsibility — and opportunity — to act. To aid coastal businesses in achieving decarbonization, our planning services can help organizations understand their current emissions, plan projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and get connected to the technical and financial resources needed to implement these strategies. We can do this by:

• Performing baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventories.
• Identifying high-impact strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Co-developing a plan to achieve net-zero emissions.
• Identifying low-cost funding opportunities to fund your emissions reduction goals.