Waterville, Maine

John and Christine Callahan spent last winter wearing their coats indoors. They're both on Social Security, managing chronic illnesses, trying to stretch the checks. Their single-wide trailer had electric space heaters scattered around like campfires and the stove turned on for warmth. The pipes froze anyway—from the inside, Christine said. That's how cold it was.

This wasn't the plan. They'd signed up for Efficiency Maine's mobile home program, trading their natural gas furnace for a state-subsidized heat pump that would cut their heating bills and help save the planet. Their next-door neighbor had done it. The rebate looked good. What nobody explained clearly was that the program required removing the old furnace first.

So when the heat pump died that autumn—factory-defect circuit board, same problem the neighbor's unit had—they had nothing. The first contractor they'd hired couldn't fix it. Efficiency Maine eventually sent a second contractor who confirmed the factory defect and installed a replacement. By then it was deep winter. The first contractor sued them for $2,400. The lawsuit got dismissed, but the lesson landed.

Maine loves talking about its heat pump success story. Over 100,000 installed. Goal met two years early. The most oil-dependent state in America finally breaking free from expensive, carbon-heavy heating fuel. Governor Mills set a new target: 175,000 more by 2027.

What the success story doesn't mention: When temperatures hit 1°F, seventy percent of Maine homeowners shut off their heat pumps. Not because the technology can't handle it—today's cold-climate units are rated to minus-22 degrees. Because when you're responsible for keeping your family warm and it's 1 below outside, you don't trust the specifications. You trust what you can feel. At 15°F, half the systems are already off.

This is Efficiency Maine's own 2024 impact evaluation, measuring what actually happens when working people bet their winter comfort on new technology.

The overall performance shortfall runs about 40% below what the program models predicted. So how did the models miss by that much?

The models worked fine. Efficiency Maine ran a whole-home heat pump study with ten carefully selected homes before scaling up. Seven didn't use supplementary heating. Homeowners reported satisfaction. Systems provided 80% of heating load down to minus-5°F. One participant said his heat pumps kept them warm at 21 below. Beautiful results. Exactly what you'd want to see.

The people who volunteer for pilot studies are the people who read the manual. The people who just need heat are the people who picked the first contractor they talked to because they didn't know they needed three quotes.

Efficiency Maine built a program for the first group and rolled it out to the second. The technology works fine in controlled conditions with motivated participants. It works less fine when your installer puts the unit where snowdrifts form, or doesn't charge it properly, or when you're the Callahans and you get a factory defect and you've already removed your furnace because the program required it.

Scott Libby, who owns Royal River Heat Pumps in Freeport, says:

Sure. But humans are the ones living in these houses, making expensive bets with incomplete information, trusting contractors they picked from a state list of 800 vendors that comes with no endorsement. The Callahans picked the first contractor they talked to. They didn't know to ask about factory defects or backup plans or what happens if the circuit board fails in November.

I've spent enough time around working people to know how this goes. You're not stupid. You're just operating with different information than the people designing the programs. You hear "rebate" and "lower bills" and you think about the heating oil costs that ate your budget last winter. You don't think about pilot studies and performance curves and the difference between laboratory conditions and your actual trailer in Waterville. Nobody's explaining that difference. They're just handing you the rebate paperwork and congratulating themselves on another installation toward the goal.

After the Callahan disaster, Efficiency Maine changed the mobile home program rules. Now you can only get rebates if you're replacing propane or kerosene heat. Wood and natural gas don't qualify anymore. The cost savings aren't significant enough, the agency says.

Which makes sense as policy. As lived experience, it means the Callahans were test cases for a program that hadn't figured out its own economics yet. They paid for that education in a winter spent wearing coats indoors.

The new replacement heat pump isn't perfect either. Around New Year's it started shutting off after a few hours. Clogged air filter. Got replaced. They're warmer now than they were, which is something. They're also still living in a trailer in Waterville, still on Social Security, still managing chronic illnesses, still trying to make the checks stretch.

This is what climate adaptation looks like on the ground. Not the success stories in the program literature. Not the carefully selected pilot studies. The Callahans freezing in their trailer because a circuit board had a factory defect and they'd already removed their furnace because the program required it. The 70% of homeowners who shut off their heat pumps when it gets truly cold because whatever the specifications say, they don't trust the technology when it's 1°F outside and they're responsible for keeping their families warm.

Maine wants 175,000 more heat pumps by 2027. Massachusetts wants 500,000 by 2030. The federal money is flowing, the rebates are generous, the contractors are training up.

Somewhere in Augusta or Boston, people are modeling adoption curves and carbon reductions and energy savings. They're probably not modeling what it feels like when your pipes freeze from the inside because you were poor enough to need the rebate and unlucky enough to get the defective unit.

The climate is changing. The technology is improving. The programs are learning from their mistakes. And the people designing the programs will never be cold. The people living in the trailers don't get to see the models. That gap doesn't show up in the performance data, but it's there. It's always there.