Roger Mitchell, dean of the Maine Energy Marketers Association’s Technical Education Center, talks about heat pump training at the Brunswick facility on Thursday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Maine’s ambitious efforts to expand heat pump use to reduce carbon emissions from buildings are outpacing the supply of technicians needed to install and fix the equipment.

Gretchen Larman, of Yarmouth, said she waited about six weeks this summer for a fix to her electric heat pump that leaked coolant. She had to do without air conditioning during the occasional heat waves.

“It’s a very long July to be without anything,” she said.

As she searched for a repair service, she was told she’d have to wait weeks, often getting a similar message: “We are so backed up. This is the best we can do.”

Employers and schools say they can’t train enough heat pump technicians.

While about 2,510 people worked in heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) – including heat pump technicians – in Maine in 2020, that number is projected to drop to 2,350 by 2030, according to a database sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Last year, Maine had already dipped below that estimate, with nearly 2,100 people working in those jobs, according to the state Department of Labor.

Yet the number of heat pumps installed in Maine has more than doubled, from fewer than 50,000 a few years ago to 100,000 in July 2023, two years ahead of scheduled targets set by Gov. Janet Mills. She set a target of installing another 175,000 heat pumps in Maine by 2027, bringing the total number to 320,000 if the target is reached.

Scott Libby, owner of Royal River Heat Pumps in Freeport, questions that goal. “There’s a limit on our capacity,” he said.

AN AGING WORKFORCE 

Libby says part of the blame for the shortage of HVAC workers is Maine’s aging workforce, which affects most industries. As many as 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day in the United States, with the youngest in that generation reaching 60 this year, emptying workplaces with retirements.

Adults who are 65 and older make up 9.4% of Maine’s workforce, compared to 6.6% nationally.

Brandon Stinchfield, lead technician for Horizon Homes, installs heat pumps at Homestead Village in Westbrook on Thursday. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

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The pandemic, too, made things worse as stalled manufacturing damaged supply chains.

“The beginning of COVID, that just magnified it,” Libby said. “It’s been aging out for years.”

The average age of HVAC professionals is about 54, according to the Northeast Technical Institute (NTI), which said a “significant number of HVAC technicians are expected to retire within the next decade.” The institute trains workers for HVAC, health care and other industries in Maine. 

The demand for workers will only increase. Mills announced in July that Maine will receive between $45 million and $72 million from Washington to install more electric heat pumps. Efficiency Maine, the quasi-state agency that administers energy efficiency programs, estimates that with a budget of $42 million, it could convert about 7,750 homes from fossil fuels to being entirely heated and cooled with heat pumps.

A typical home will be outfitted with one to four heat pumps depending on its size, condition and layout, Efficiency Maine said.

WHERE IS TRAINING AVAILABLE?

HVAC training takes different forms, with longer courses of instruction and briefer classes that lead to certification.

Chris Sorois listens as Roger Mitchell teaches a course at Maine Energy Marketers Association Technical Education Center in Brunswick on Monday. The center is offering a 40-hour Heat Pump Training course later this month and again in October. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Welcome Richardson, an HVAC instructor at NTI, said students with training in heat pumps, gas and oil heating, and air conditioning – a seven-month program – often land a job the day they graduate.

“Everybody is looking for employees,” he said. “People who have training to do heat pumps, gas, oil, air conditioning, it’s hard to find people with that capability.”

“People who do go into the trades, especially HVAC, it’s got great pay. Maybe a lot of people don’t know that,” Richardson said.

At its Technical Education Center in Brunswick, the Maine Energy Marketers Association trains HVAC workers in the classroom and in a lab where equipment is broken and fixed. The center has offered six or seven classes a year for five years, drawing about 20 students in each class, Dean Roger Mitchell said.

It’s driven by demand that he said is “pretty steady.”

A 40-hour, one-week session leads to certification and being a registered vendor with Efficiency Maine. The classes cover sales, installation, repair and other skills. Students are referred by their employers, word of mouth, or the result of an online search and military veterans, Mitchell said.

WANTED: WORKERS WITH A MECHANICAL APTITUDE

Libby, of Royal River Heat Pumps, employs about 30 installers, including seven licensed electricians. “I could hire 10 if I have the right 10,” he said.

He said starting pay is $30 an hour, rising to $40 an hour over time. He pays 100% of medical and dental insurance and offers a 401(k) retirement plan and flexible work scheduling.

“I really don’t know how to make it more appealing,” he said.

Students listen as Roger Mitchell teaches a course about refrigeration systems at the Maine Energy Marketers Association Technical Education Center in Brunswick on Monday. The center recommends students take this course before enrolling in the 40-hour heat pump training. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

His workforce includes former carpenters and car mechanics who have a mechanical aptitude. “It’s really a nice job. It’s relatively clean. You’re not going home all covered with grease and soot.”

Libby said he typically finds workers from his employees, who tell friends and former co-workers.

“One employee is responsible for three others,” he said. “They built jeeps and four-wheelers together, driving them through the woods and breaking them and fixing them. Word of mouth is the best thing.”

Heat pumps extract heat from outside air and run it through a compressor that makes it hotter before pumping it indoors. In the summer, it can operate in reverse, pulling heat from inside a building and pumping it outside, cooling the indoor spaces. As state and federal officials set increasingly strict greenhouse gas emissions targets, buildings – and their use of natural gas or oil for heating and cooling – are being redesigned or retrofitted to improve energy efficiency and accommodate electric heat pumps.

Policymakers and environmentalists are targeting building emissions because of the scale: Residential and commercial buildings last year consumed about 28% of all U.S. end-use energy, or energy directly used by homes, buildings, vehicles and industrial applications, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

RAPID EMPLOYMENT GROWTH PREDICTED

Nationally, employment of heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers is projected to grow 6% from 2022 to 2032, faster than the average for all occupations, according to the  U.S. Department of Labor.

Roger Mitchell, dean of the Maine Energy Marketers Association’s Technical Education Center, talks about heat pump training at the Brunswick facility on Thursday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

About 37,700 openings for heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers are projected each year, on average, over the decade, according to the federal government.

Many of the openings, with a median pay last year of $57,300, are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire, the Labor Department said.

In Maine, HVAC jobs pay an average of $59,000 annually.

The pressure is on to hire heat pump technicians. The U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 25 governors, announced in September 2023 that members agreed to reach 20 million heat pump installations by 2030.

Government subsidies help drive demand. Federal and state incentives of up to $10,600 for heat pump installation, with Efficiency Maine providing rebates of up to $8,000 that subsidizes between 40% and 80% of a project’s cost depending on income.

Federal tax credits of up to $2,600 also are available.

And money from Washington is used for job training in the green energy business. Portland Adult Education, for example, received $416,179 for its renewable energy pre-apprenticeship and other programs by adding heat-pump and thermal-focused training. The school plans to use the funds to prepare up to 150 people for jobs in the clean energy industry.

In total, six programs will share $2 million: Maine Math and Science Alliance in Augusta, Biddeford School Department and Biddeford Adult Education, Oxford Hills and Nezinscot Adult Education, PassivhausMaine in Freeport, Portland Adult Education and the University of Maine in Orono.

Larman said difficulties getting repair service are perplexing.

“We’re making such a huge thing to put these in, but we don’t have the people available to service these units,” she said.

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Athletes aged 45 and older compete in the Maine Senior Games cycling event in Brunswick on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024. Cooper Sullivan photo

BRUNSWICK — Winning the Maine Senior Games’ cycling race may not compare to the prestige of a Tour de France victory, but that hardly mattered for the athletes who competed Sunday.

This was the fourth straight year the 20-kilometer race was held at Brunswick Landing. It was also one of the largest fields, with 45 cyclists from across Maine and New Hampshire competing.

The 10k time trials and 20k road race attracted cyclists aged 45 and older. Maine and New Hampshire collaborate on the Senior Games cycling race and host one event. The 2023 event featured a field in the low 30s, organizers said.

Gary Prince of Stratham, N.H., said Sunday he was trying to earn a trip to the 2025 national Senior Games, held next July and August in Des Moines, Iowa. The top-three finishers in each age division qualify for the national competition.

Prince, 82, has been cycling for over 30 years and won competitions up and down the East Coast. He and his wife Lorraine center their vacations around where the next road race is. Once Gary signs up, they pack their car with a makeshift mechanic station in the trunk and make a trip of it.

“His legs are aching, and I ask him ‘Why keep doing it?’ Lorraine said about her husband in between Sunday’s races. “He wants to do it. He never gives up.”

“It’s a good way to meet people and to bike at the same time,” Gary added.

Race results were not available Monday at press time.

For other athletes, like Kathleen Judice of Dayton, the Senior Games are the best opportunity to challenge themselves and compete against a field of one.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Judice, 54, said prior to her first official bike race since the 1990s. “I’m just going to push myself and see what I can do.”

Judice, 54, and her husband Stephen, 53, signed up for the Brunswick 10-kilometer time trial less than 24 hours earlier, after the masters track and field meet they were participating in Augusta that Saturday finished at a reasonable hour.

Athletes aged 45 and older compete in the Maine Senior Games cycling event in Brunswick on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024. Cooper Sullivan photo

Even as a lifelong athlete and current track and field coach, Judice is a Senior Games rookie. She hopes to qualify for 2025 Nationals in one of the triathlon sports. She also wants keep signing up for other events, like buoy toss or cornhole just because they look like fun.

“The community is so friendly, welcoming and helpful,” Judice said. “I didn’t have the right size shotput at a track and field event and someone said ‘Here, just borrow mine.’”

The community aspect is one of the reasons Suzanne LaCroix of Standish stays involved as a Maine Senior Games volunteer. Since starting in 2017, LaCroix tries to help out at as many events as she can.

On Sunday, she and 12-15 other volunteers were tasked with standing along the 2.1-mile-long loop around Southern Maine Community College, the Brunswick Rec Center and the Naval Aviation Museum to direct traffic- both cars and cyclists. Although it wasn’t an official task, LaCroix would cheer on every athlete with the same enthusiasm as the last.

“Everyone that participates encourages each other,” she said. “People are now friends and they have their own support groups.”

LaCroix wasn’t the only cheerleader, as a crowd of about 20 stood by the finish line. Signs saying “Chafe Ur Dreams” and “Use Yer Legs” were waved during each lap.

Volunteers are crucial to the operations of Maine Senior Games. As Karen Reardon, the organization’s lead coordinator, explained to the athletes beforehand, safety concerns have seen the number of cycling races around the country go down.

Reardon did not hear of any course safety issues on Sunday and considered it overall to be a “good day,” a testament to the volunteer team after early morning car trouble and technical issues with the timing system almost put a damper on the event.

“There’s a bigger cycling community that wants to keep everything rolling,” Reardon said. “They love their sport, they have a passion for their sport, so they’re here to try to do their thing. We’re here to try to make that happen.”

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A Homeland Security Investigations agent and a deputy from the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office stand on May 30 inside an illegal marijuana grow site in St. Albans. Somerset County Sheriff’s Office photo

In late December, someone claiming to be a worker at an illegal cannabis grow site in the Kennebec County town of China called the police. The caller claimed to have been brought to the rural house at 1144 Route 3 against his or her will and was being held without food or sleep in order to maintain and harvest the marijuana crop.

“No cellphones. We were abducted from China, passports were confiscated,” a transcript of the call reads. “No escape from the house, only work but no salary. I want to leave here, we tried to escape but failed. We were beaten. Please come and save us.”

Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office deputies who responded to the call found three people and nearly 1,000 mature cannabis plants inside the house. Two men, Changgeng Chen, 36, and Bing Xu, 41, and a woman, Aiqin Chen, 43, were arrested at the scene.

Officers said they found no one in distress at the house, and Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason would later say there was “no indication the tip was authentic.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine says it has found no credible evidence that there is human trafficking involved in any of the illegal grow sites the office has investigated, more than 40 of which have been raided by members of law enforcement.

“Human trafficking is a heinous crime that our office takes seriously. Any evidence of human trafficking will be thoroughly investigated and if discovered, vigorously prosecuted,” Darcie N. McElwee, U.S. attorney for the District of Maine, said in a statement in May.

Local law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking advocates said in interviews that the illegal marijuana growing operations bear the hallmarks of human and labor trafficking. In court records, some workers detained at the grow sites say the same thing, raising the prospect that workers are being brought to the locations in rural Maine under false pretenses and kept here against their will.

Officials say they have identified more than 200 illegal marijuana growing operations in Maine. Federal prosecutors say the illegal marijuana grows may be operated by transnational criminal organizations with links to China, and similar operations can be found in at least 20 states.

Because they are new immigrants to the United States in search of work, money and housing, workers are often vulnerable to being exploited by the operations, which are seeking cheap, expendable labor they can tightly control.

Human trafficking is defined as “the exploitation of a person through force, fraud or coercion for labor, services or commercial sex,” according to Hailey Virusso, director of the anti-human trafficking division of Preble Street in Portland, which provides services and seeks solutions for those experiencing a variety of issues, including homelessness, a lack of stable and affordable housing, hunger and poverty.

A raid earlier this year revealed what officials say was an illegal cannabis growing operation at a single-family house at 368 West Ridge Road in Cornville, top. The lower photo, taken by the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office, shows the house’s interior.

It is an umbrella term that includes a number of other crimes, including labor exploitation and trafficking, Virusso says. Advocates say all three are likely occurring at Maine’s illegal cannabis grow houses.

Traffickers specifically target Chinese immigrants with promises of good work and steady pay, taking advantage of new immigrants’ trust in the communities they have traveled thousands of miles to join.

Among the grow house workers arrested in Maine, all with Chinese backgrounds, many have given home addresses in Massachusetts, New York, Florida or California, with several coming from the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Officials say some workers are aware they are growing illegal cannabis, while others are misled and brought to the grow sites through more dubious means.

On numerous Chinese-language job boards, dozens of veiled job listings appear for grow houses in Maine. They are presented as openings for “four-season indoor crop planting,” courier drivers, energy company apprentices and other jobs.

Many of the listings describe themselves as plant harvesting or processing facilities, but none discloses what it is growing. Some present themselves as entry-level jobs with warehouses or electric companies that offer free training and room for growth.

Most require basic legal documents, such as a driver’s license and tax filings. Nearly all offer free accommodation and transportation, which experts say are hallmarks of human trafficking operations.

The same contact information appears on nearly a dozen job listings across several Chinese-language job boards, offering roles ranging from “watering and cleaning potted plant debris” to “warehouse workers with legal jobs and basic English reading and writing.”

A reverse search for the Maine telephone number listed on nearly a dozen job listings across several websites does not return results. Many other listings direct applicants to anonymous recruiters on WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform.

Offering free housing and requiring tax documents allows criminal organizations that operate grow houses to scoop up low-income immigrants who largely come legally to the United States from China, according to officials.

Misleading online job listings have rapidly become the primary avenue for human traffickers to recruit workers across all fields. According to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67% of victims of labor trafficking were recruited through what appeared to be a legitimate job offer in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

Human traffickers often take advantage of people’s individual needs and trust in their communities to coerce them into forced labor, according to Rafael Flores Ávalos, director of bilingual communications at the Polaris Project, which operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Ávalos says those with lower incomes and a lack of stable housing are most susceptible to forced labor.

“There’s a big myth that if you’re going to be trafficked, you’re going to get kidnapped in a white van. That is not the case,” he said. “What we hear more of from the hotline is of the recruitment process, of people attracted to these opportunities by someone they trust.”

Aside from their Chinese descent, many of the grow house workers have little else in common. Some are men, some are women. Some are elderly, some are in their early 20s. Some have received education, others have not.

INSIDE THE HOMES

Once workers are brought to Maine, they are put to work planting, watering and harvesting hundreds of cannabis plants each day inside single-family homes that have been gutted and converted into massive marijuana farms growing as many as 2,000 plants at a time, according to several sources in law enforcement.

At the grow houses that have busted in Maine, workers have been kept in squalor and are rarely allowed to leave the sites, according to several law enforcement sources who have been present for the raids. The living space for as many as three or four workers is confined to one room at each house, oftentimes the kitchen, while industrial-scale heating, lighting and ventilation systems are installed at the houses to accommodate the growth of thousands of marijuana plants.

As a result of the high humidity and warm temperatures needed to efficiently grow marijuana, the houses are often filled with black mold. Potent and sometimes carcinogenic chemical fertilizers are used inside the houses.

While laborers were previously living and working for months at a time within each individual cannabis grow house, the operations have adapted since the first police raids in January by further restricting workers’ movement, according to several law enforcement sources.

Police who raided a home in Madison in April say they found evidence of an illegal marijuana growing operation and signs of black mold. Somerset County Sheriff’s Office photo

Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster, whose office has busted more than 20 grow houses, says the number of sites and the amount of people staffing them has shrunk in the months since the first busts earlier this year, partly due to a shift in how the workers are managed.

“We are executing these search warrants, but there’s no one at the residence, and I think that’s by design,” Lancaster said. “We’re dealing with smart people, and they’re adjusting how they do business.”

Laborers are increasingly being transported by their managers from house to house, diligently watched as they harvest and process each site’s cannabis crop for several hours, before being brought to the next location, according to several law enforcement sources.

Nearly all have their movements restricted to and from the cannabis grow houses by managers overseeing the movement of the fertilizers, electrical equipment and people required to operate the facilities. The organizational structure beyond that remains murky.

Federal and local investigators say they are seeing fewer lower-level workers living within a single grow house, with more laborers being taken from one site to another — trends indicative of labor trafficking.

“They’re being dispatched to work in these places, where they were originally staying in these places, sometimes in vans or cars,” one law enforcement source said on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

Restricting transportation is one of the most restrictive ways control their victims, Virusso said, especially when workers are brought to remote areas where they have not been before.

“If you’re faced with a situation where your employer says, ‘You’re done for the day, but my buddy down the road needs some extra help,’” Virusso said, “you have basically only two options: Go work at the other location, or say no to the person your employment, housing and livelihood is tied up into.”

KEPT IN THE DARK

At one Somerset County marijuana grow site, workers did not know the names of the towns where they were being sent to work and sleep. This was not because they did not know English, but because their bosses never let them see the outside world, according to Lancaster.

“Speaking with them, one of the males didn’t even know what town he was in or what town he was staying in,” Lancaster said. The man only knew “that he got picked up in the morning, taken to a facility to work and taken back.”

In court documents and police affidavits, several people arrested at the cannabis grow houses have described being brought to the sites against their will and having their pay withheld after they arrived.

A worker at a growing operation in Whitefield told police he had “been working for a few years,” but never received a paycheck. When arrested in January, the man, Ding Zhan Liao, said he had less than $500 despite having grown illegal marijuana for years.

Federal investigators say each cannabis grow house is run differently, and some laborers receive payment based on the amount of marijuana they harvest and process.

“Typically, workers on the ground are earning at least several thousand dollars (monthly),” Andrew Lizotte, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the federal investigation into the illegal cannabis grow houses, said. “It’s an agreed-upon labor structure where they are acting in exchange for payment to staff up these illegal operations.”

Still, many of those arrested at the cannabis grow are unaware that what they are doing is illegal, according to several sources, because they are new to the United States, unfamiliar with cannabis laws and sometimes being told lies by their bosses.

Some workers are told by their bosses that what they are doing is legal under Maine’s marijuana laws, according to a law enforcement source who asked not to be named because the source has not been cleared to discuss the investigation publicly.

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in January raided 615 Wiscasset Road in Whitefield, where officials say they found 300 marijuana plants that were part of an illegal grow operation. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

“Some of them don’t know that what they’re doing is illegal because they just have been told (marijuana) is legal in Maine,” the source said. “Some of the houses even have fake (marijuana growing) licenses they can point to and say, ‘See, we’re not breaking the law.’”

The fact that workers are being forcibly kept at and trafficked between marijuana grow houses is indicative of forced criminality, Virusso said, regardless of how much they know about Maine cannabis law.

“Forced criminality is a form of labor trafficking that is oftentimes deeply invisible,” Virusso said. “(It) is when someone’s trafficking experience required or compelled them to engage in illicit or criminalized activity. That could be selling drugs, if somebody’s forcing them to engage in that.”

Federal investigators maintain that their investigations have found no evidence of human or labor trafficking within the cannabis grow houses, though Lizotte noted that nearly identical operations in nearly a dozen other states have employed forms of human trafficking.

“It’s been reported that different states and different regions have disparate dynamics; for example, Oklahoma, the Pacific Northwest, California,” Lizotte said. “But here in Maine, we haven’t seen evidence to suggest that there is human or labor trafficking. The U.S. attorney’s views on that remain unchanged.”

Local law enforcement and anti-trafficking advocates dispute that assertion, noting that the cannabis grows are cloaked in layers of secrecy.

“Illicit marijuana grows are rife with the potential for exploitative conditions because they create layers of invisibility, which creates real fear and justifiable fear,” Virusso said. “Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

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