Cressica Brazier Helps Maine Communities Chart Their Own Path to Resilience
Cressica Brazier rode out the COVID-19 pandemic on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine working remotely on her doctoral dissertation in urban and regional planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
She logged long hours at the computer, fine-tuning her app designed to help people track their carbon footprints, while gazing at the Atlantic from the house her mom inherited from a great-aunt. After decades of city living, she was glad to be back. She had spent childhood vacations and summers on the island, but this time there wasn’t much room for anything but the dissertation.
鈥淭he moment I turned in my dissertation, I got on my bike, rode around the island, and talked to as many people as possible. I wanted to figure out how I could start applying all of the energy planning research that I鈥檇 been doing into community-focused projects,鈥 Brazier said.
One of the people she stopped to chat with recruited her to join the Islesboro Energy Committee. 鈥淚t kind of snowballed from there,鈥 she said.
Eventually it led her to her current role as the associate director for the support and research team. MAINECAN is an inclusive network that brings together groups like the Islesboro Energy Committee and other people and organizations working on climate resilience and sustainable energy initiatives across the state.聽MAINECAN is generously supported by and .
Brazier鈥檚 interest in community-engaged research began as a master鈥檚 student in architecture at Columbia University, where she worked as a geographic information system (GIS) analyst with the Spatial Information Design Lab on the New Orleans Justice Reinvestment Initiative. This was an effort to reduce the number of people in Louisiana’s prisons and jails and to reinvest the savings into community-based services.
In addition to developing the carbon footprint app for her dissertation, she also developed models to show how neighborhood block design in densely populated Chinese cities is related to energy consumption and carbon emissions.
These experiences gave Brazier a taste for community-engaged research, but the community work was tangential to her primary research. She said, 鈥淚 wanted to participate in community engagement during my doctoral program at MIT, but I could not find a way to incorporate work with communities into my research at the time.鈥
With the and MAINECAN, she鈥檚 finally been able to put those skills to work full-time for Maine communities 鈥 something she has longed to do.
It鈥檚 a three-mile ferry ride from Lincolnville Beach to Islesboro. A single underwater cable from the mainland brings electricity to the island, and the community 鈥 600 full-time residents which triples in the summer 鈥 regularly experiences outages plus high energy prices. The committee鈥檚 projects are designed to reduce the cost of energy, improve energy efficiency, and increase the resilience of Islesboro鈥檚 energy systems to the impacts of extreme weather.
Brazier describes the Islesboro Energy Committee as a 鈥渄o鈥 committee rather than an advice committee, actively executing projects rather than just providing recommendations.
Some projects engage homeowners. For example, the committee hosted a event which brought together community members to build window inserts designed to improve household energy efficiency.
Other projects focus on the energy efficiency of the municipality itself like the municipal building, street lights, and the library which consume a significant amount of electricity. The committee has spearheaded upgrades including heat pumps and LED lighting for municipal buildings as well as weatherization. A major grant to upgrade the island鈥檚 healthcare center that Brazier collaborated on helped install solar panels. Brazier also assisted the library in becoming a member of the .
Other projects look at the island’s energy infrastructure more broadly with the ultimate goal of achieving 100% fossil fuel independence. This vision will be mapped out in two strategic energy planning reports, the product of technical assistance grants from the Department of Energy鈥檚 Energy Technology Innovation Partnership Project (ETIPP). Brazier was instrumental in writing the proposal for the second of the ETIPP programs.
It was through her work with the energy committee that Brazier found her way to Sharon Klein, a University of Maine economics professor and Mitchell Center faculty fellow, who was simultaneously building the MAINECAN network. The Mitchell Center has supported MAINECAN in many ways, including administration, funding, and advising, and the center continues to serve as the hub for MAINECAN鈥檚 support and research team.
The MAINECAN research team studies how rural communities prioritize and implement community-energy projects. Brazier drew on this research when she was working with the Islesboro Energy Committee.
鈥淜lein鈥檚 research helped me understand and share key insights about supporting communities, especially communities in Maine like my own, in the ways they want to take on these climate projects,鈥 Brazier said.
When Brazier saw the job posting with MAINECAN, it was almost too good to be true. Klein and the hiring committee felt the same. Klein said the selection committee was impressed with Brazier鈥檚 combination of technical expertise like modeling and quantitative analysis along with her on-the-ground experience with community-energy projects.
As the associate director of the MAINECAN support and research team, Brazier seeks to identify and overcome the barriers that are hindering community efforts related to resilience planning. To that end, she helped manage a statewide survey to analyze Mainers attitudes towards public EV chargers, alternative energy sources, home insulation, electrification with heat pumps, and approaches to addressing challenges in transportation and renewable energy affordability.
According to Brazier, surveys become useful when they produce results in a format that communities can actually act on, and she is adept at producing customized survey results for partner organizations. One town wanted presentation-style slides so that they could incorporate the survey results into their public outreach. Other groups are looking for easy-to-read quantitative analyses to include in grant applications or to inform their communities about potential energy and climate-related vulnerabilities.
One group Brazier works with is the Wabanaki Sustainable Energy Team (WSET) where representatives from five Tribal governments collaborate on sustainable energy projects. Kelsey Flores, the inter-tribal coordinator housed at Penobscot Nation and co-facilitator of WSET (along with Klein and Jasmine Lamb) is using the research team鈥檚 survey analysis to help ensure that the resilience efforts she is supporting align with the needs of the five Tribal communities.
Flores said, 鈥淚t is crucial that the input from Wabanaki Citizens be taken into account when planning and implementing sustainably related initiatives. The challenges and priorities identified in this analysis reflect the experiences within the Tribal Nations we serve and give us the confidence that we’re investing in projects that address real barriers, strengthen future grant applications, and ultimately lead to solutions that the citizens are more likely to embrace because they helped shape them.鈥
Beyond surveys, Brazier is focused on another emerging tool for community energy engagement: home energy coaching. This connects interested homeowners with knowledgeable volunteers for one-on-one support throughout the process of making their homes more energy efficient. She’s researching how to develop energy coaching programs sensitive to the needs of small communities with limited capacity. 鈥淗ow does an energy coaching program function when a community only has a couple of volunteers, working limited hours each month?鈥 Brazier said.
Brazier singlehandedly developed the user-friendly . It includes geographic mapping of network members, serving as a way for people and groups to find one another. She is also assembling a resource database on the website so that people can quickly find information that鈥檚 already available to assist them with their projects.
Brazier is also a skilled mentor, assisting the next generation of community-energy researchers and practitioners. In 2025, she received the Mitchell Center award for Outstanding Mentorship of Students in Sustainability Research. As one of her award nominators commented, 鈥淲hen she came on to the MAINECAN team it was clear immediately how valuable she would be. She is the smartest person I have ever met, but beyond that she wants to share her knowledge with all of us.鈥
Brazier’s activities in the Mitchell Center were recently recognized through her selection into the inaugural cohort of the Bridge-Builders Fellowship. This fellowship is provided through the , a group formed to strengthen the connections between energy system researchers and the network of university energy research centers. Brazier will be looking to bring the insights from the fellowship back to Maine communities and MAINECAN.
鈥淐ressica鈥檚 lived experience and her skilled approach to social and technical issues really enrich MAINECAN. Her work is crucial to MAINECAN operations, community peer-learning, and the support MAINECAN provides to Wabanaki Tribes and Maine communities,鈥 said Klein.