LITCHFIELD – Beth Nagusky of Litchfield has joined GrowSmart Maine of Yarmouth as the organization’s energy and climate director, and will help the organization implement key elements of the GrowSmart-Brookings study, “Charting Maine’s Future – An Action Plan for Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places.”

She will focus on climate and energy issues that effect sustainable prosperity and protecting Maine’s quality places.

Before joining GrowSmart Maine in 2007, Nagusky served as Gov. John Baldacci’s director of energy independence and security. She helped establish Maine Home Performance with Energy Star, Operation Keep ME Warm, a solar rebate bill, natural gas conservation programs, and a comprehensive energy bill. She worked to reduce state government energy usage and helped make Maine the first state to purchase 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources and track its greenhouse gas emissions. From 1997 to 2003, Nagusky was director of the Independent Energy Producers of Maine, an association of Maine’s renewable power providers. Prior to that, she was an attorney with the Natural Resources Council, where she worked on energy, land use and wetlands issues. She drafted and helped to pass the Sensible Transportation Policy Act.

In April of last year, Nagusky was trained by former Vice President Al Gore and The Climate Project to present the “An Inconvenient Truth” slide show to groups throughout the state. Since joining GrowSmart, she has been focusing on land use, transportation and climate issues. She has helped formulate GrowSmart’s testimony in the Plum Creek project, which would minimize the plan’s carbon footprint and its other environmental impacts.

Nagusky will be speaking at the University of Maine, Farmington, on Jan. 31 at the “Focus the Nation” event.

Nagusky attended the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, and Case Western Reserve University Law School.