They worked, smart phones at their sides, talked with each other incessantly, laughing. I loved it.

There's one more day of summer showing on the calendar as this column is being written, but the signs of autumn are everywhere on the coast of Maine.

When your community's electric rates are among the highest in the nation, it pays to consider ways to cut consumption. Work done on Monhegan Island was both simple and effective, and could reduce the island's collective annual electric bill by $15,000.

Heating efficiency experts will tell you the best bucks you can spend on your home are those that keep the heat you've already paid for inside a little longer.

Solar power is likely to be the most dominant form of renewable energy in the future, and that's because it's so simple. It works everywhere, has very little maintenance and the embedded energy in solar equipment—the energy used to make the components—is much less than other renewables.

We face a watershed moment as important as 1973, even though oil prices are at historic lows. The opportunity this time lies with electricity production.

To call this an industry would be a stretch, but they are certainly a group of businesses with the potential to become an industry. What would the industrial scale look like? Well, there will be choices.

It took a while to accomplish the project. But as of July 31, the Edgecomb Community Solar Farm has been up and running, a model for what appears to be a wave of community farms now in the works. This is the first member-owned solar farm in the state.

Paul Greenberg is the author of American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood and Four Fish: The Future of Our Last Wild Food. A lifelong fisherman, Greenberg has written for The New York Times, National Geographic and GQ, among other publications.