Around 3pm in the afternoon on a Monday, not long after school was dismissed, about forty kids were running around the playground and under the large solar panel awning over the parking lot next to Hosmer Elementary School in Watertown. There were electric vehicle chargers spaced out in the parking lot and a box sat in the back of the school containing battery storage. Out of the windows in one of the science classrooms, parts of the roof are visible and solar arrays line every free square foot.
Inside the school, there is a constant hum of fresh air circulating, and the walls of the hallways are decorated with brightly colored infographics that lay out facts about the school’s green features. One reads: “1920 photovoltaic solar panels are located on the school property, which generate close to 800 kWh of energy.”
One can imagine students who are just beginning to learn to read picking up the definitions of “fossil fuel,” “solar power,” and “renewable energy” as they walk through the walls.
Hosmer is one of two net-zero energy elementary schools in Watertown. The school, which has been open for about three years, consumes no more energy than it produces from the solar arrays on its roofs and over its parking lots.
Jess Donato, a third-grade teacher whose children attend Hosmer, said that the building makes the students more conscious of the climate and the environment. Her oldest son, who is now in middle school, still talks about how the school helped him learn to think about the environment and green solutions. He started thinking about “how much energy is being used, and different ideas like solar panels over parking lots. [He asked] why every school isn’t doing this? To him it seems so obvious,” Donato said.
The city is in the process of building yet another net-zero school — this time a high school that is going to incorporate geothermal energy along with solar panels. The high school is set to be built to LEED Platinum 4.0 standards — one of the highest certifications a building can receive for energy efficiency and sustainability. According to Watertown officials, it will be the first high school building in the country to both be net zero and LEED Platinum certified.
Watertown isn’t the only municipality in Massachusetts taking steps — and allocating scarce budget resources — to combat climate change. Cities and towns across state are funding programs to decarbonize their buildings, their municipal fleets, their schools, and contribute to the state’s climate goals. As the average global temperature rises, storms intensify, and droughts disrupt food production — and the federal government rolls back decades of climate policy — there is an added spotlight on these efforts as a way for decarbonization to continue in the state.
“We can keep moving forward at the municipal level,” said Amy Boyd, the vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “Municipal leaders can be responsive to their community’s concerns and desires to face the climate crisis head on and be ready and do what we can to protect our communities from the worst of it even if at the federal level, they’re rolling back such protections.”
But most towns and cities — especially in the absence of a federal partner — remain reliant on the state to make major changes, and the state tends to move at a slow pace.
Massachusetts is a leader in climate policies, but environmentalists say that the state can do more to support municipalities in their efforts to decarbonize. The scale of the funding that the state can provide is much lower than what the federal government can. But as the Trump administration freezes funding for climate initiatives, lays off workers at the Environmental Protection Agency, and stymies offshore wind, the state will have to step in to decide what programs it can fund and what projects must be put on the chopping block.
Watertown, which was one of the first communities in New England to pass an ordinance requiring solar panels on most new buildings larger than 10,000 square feet or containing 10 or more residential units, has been committed to mirroring the state goal of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050. The city has a committee dedicated to environment and energy efficiency that works on pushing for green policies.
“Any city has to decide where they want to put [their] money,” said Jocelyn Tager, a resident of Watertown who has led the push for the city to invest in solar energy. “Some other school could spend $6 million on some fancy gym. And we spent it on solar arrays.”
In 2017, the city had three elementary schools that needed to be replaced or renovated. Hosmer and Cuniff elementary schools were rebuilt as net-zero buildings. The third — Lowell School — was upgraded to be more energy efficient. These three projects cost about $170 million and were entirely funded through the city’s budget.
The new high school will cost about $220 million, most of which will be funded by the city, though the Massachusetts School Building Authority will kick in $50 million. The school, set to open in 2026, will serve just under 800 students.
“We have found … that it is a lot easier to convince a small group of local people that this is good thing to do — that our environment is important to us — than it is to convince the state to do something,” said Pat Rathbone, a member of Watertown’s environmental and energy committee. “Massachusetts has very good climate goals, and Massachusetts will do its best to meet them. But this is the kind of thing that you could do in a state … less progressive than Massachusetts. Every single town is able to take a step like this, and our town is enormously proud of these schools.”
Tager emphasized that Watertown isn’t a rich community in comparison to its neighbors but that it has still been able to achieve this major step.
Danvers, a town located in Essex County which has its own municipal-owned electric company, has a project underway to build solar arrays on top of an existing landfill. The system is expected to generate around 3,200 megawatt hours of energy per year — enough to power roughly 1,000 homes and reduce carbon emissions by 2.7 million pounds. The solar arrays are set to be installed sometime in the next two years, and the entire project is estimated to cost the town around $3.6 million.
In the northwestern corner of the state, Williamstown — which is home to Williams College — is building its new fire station with the aim of making it a net-zero carbon facility with onsite solar panels. It’s a part of the town’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
In Newton, there are solar arrays operating at 19 city-owned parking lots, building rooftops, and a landfill. The city has a plan to add nine more by the end of 2026. Once the new arrays come online, 40 percent of the total electricity municipal buildings use will come from solar. Most of the planned projects will put solar arrays at public schools around the city on roofs and over parking lots.
Newton has pursued several other initiatives like converting its municipal fleet to electric vehicles as of 2022. As of this year, the city has 68 electric vehicles in its fleet program supporting 21 departments.
“Local government efforts in climate action are extremely important right now,” said Caroline Weiss, the climate action coordinator in Newton. “It’s important to continue to work on climate action in times where that’s not happening everywhere in this country. That really can still make a difference and empower residents.”
Many towns choose to pursue climate initiatives not just because they are good for the environment but because they save money. Watertown owns the solar arrays on the schools, which means that the city has a locked-in cost of electricity and is therefore not subject to fluctuations in natural gas prices.
“Putting solar panels on a parking lot or on the roof [of a] school saves money for the town,” said Boyd. “That’s not an investment that’s being made just out of altruism or, love for the earth. It’s actually a good fiscal decision that saves money on the town’s power bills, which can then be spent on more books, more police officers, or whatever else the town needs to do.”
Towns and cities face tradeoffs when choosing to invest in climate initiatives because they often finance projects through their tax base, leaving less money for other priorities as inflation and the uncertainty around tariffs raise costs. And unlike the federal government, local governments can’t run a deficit to make ends meet.
In Marblehead, a community on the North Shore, community leaders are also trying to decarbonize municipal buildings but face budget constraints.
In the town, residents have been frustrated that the restrooms have been closed down seasonally due to failing heating equipment. The town has chosen a climate-friendly way to solve this problem: install a heat pump system for the restrooms.
The project used money from American Rescue Plan Act funding to put in the heat pump. But other climate projects are difficult for the town to afford. Marblehead has struggled to find the funds for a $13.8 million project to replace the deteriorating seawalls that protect the town from erosion and flooding, both of which are intensifying because of climate change. Town officials were counting on a federal PROTECT grant to fund the project, but that program was canceled. They’re pursuing another federal grant, but there is still uncertainty there on whether the town will get funding.
It’s difficult to do climate initiatives with just town funds, according to Logan Casey, the town’s sustainability coordinator.
“Municipalities [are] cash-strapped, and that is very much the situation in Marblehead,” said Casey. “[For] a lot of other municipalities in Massachusetts there isn’t a lot of free cash just flying around ready to pick up for any capital project that you can imagine.”
Federal and state funds are crucial to helping the town move forward on its climate goals, Casey added.
Massachusetts’ Green Communities Grant program, established through a 2008 law, provides funding to municipalities that want to reduce municipal energy use and costs through clean energy projects. Municipalities must first be designated as a “green community” and pledge to cut municipal energy use by 20 percent over five years, support renewable energy, and promote energy efficiency in municipal buildings and transportation to qualify for the program.
Since 2010, the program has awarded more than $191 million for projects like installing high-efficiency lighting, upgrading energy management systems, and transitioning HVAC systems away from fossil fuels. In March 2025 alone, the state gave more than $7.2 million to cities and towns across Massachusetts to fund clean energy projects.
Newton has received a total of $2.2 million in Green Communities grants since 2010 for projects like weatherizing public buildings and installing heat pumps. Weiss said that Green Communities and Mass Save, the state’s energy efficiency program for residential and commercial properties, are some of the biggest drivers of decarbonization in Newton. (Mass Save also offers rebates for converting HVAC systems and appliances to clean energy.)
State programs allow decarbonization to happen on a larger scale than a single community could afford, said Boyd
“Larger towns that are able to have a sustainability professional on staff are going to be able to move farther and faster than towns that that can’t afford to have somebody whose whole job is focused on that,” said Boyd. “But every town [can decarbonize] if we can help them with state policies and provide some of the upfront funding … to get over the initial hump of the upfront cost of investment.”
Michael Barrett, the Senate chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee, emphasized the importance of the state providing financial backing to local projects that provide outreach to residents about utilizing the Mass Save program or state funding to decarbonize at the individual level.
“There are all kinds of local activities for example that involve nonprofit, volunteer coaching in which somebody retired perhaps from a regular day job, but smart about heat pumps or solar panels participate in a community backed effort to offer advice to residents of the community that want to do the same thing,” said Barrett. “The reason that so many of these programs are appealing to state officials like me is that you get a lot of bang for your buck. [It is a] human capital extender — the effort is being expended by local volunteers with the help of a compensated coordinator or two.”
One such program is the PlugIn program, a partnership between Acton, Ashland, Natick, Sudbury, Wayland, Westborough, and Framingham to do outreach to individual households on how to shift away from fossil fuels and transition to electrification. The program focuses on rooftop solar, community solar, and heat pumps. The program is run by the non-profit MassEnergize and has received funding from the Legislature.
Legislators set aside money in the state’s budget for programs like these to help municipalities. However, the environmental community argues that the state can do more to support municipalities in their efforts to decarbonize — especially for environmental justice communities that lack resources — in the absence of federal support.
“Municipalities do not have the tools to raise the kind of revenue that they need to do a transition to a clean energy economy,” said Vickash Mohanka, head of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. “We can see that through energy efficiency and Mass Save program. If towns and small cities had to fund their own version of Mass Save, we wouldn’t have any energy efficiency in the state basically. It would be extremely difficult…So having the state step in is a necessary tool.”
Local governments aren’t just limited by their lack of funds. In some cases, they require approval from the Legislature to take steps to decarbonize.
For example, municipalities cannot adopt an ordinance that requires all new buildings or major renovation projects to be fossil fuel-free unless the Legislature approves it. This is a policy that many towns and cities across Massachusetts have wanted to adopt, but the state does not allow municipalities to regulate or restrict the use of fossil fuels in construction.
In 2022, the Legislature launched a pilot program that allows up to 10 communities to adopt such a policy. The communities are: Arlington, Newton, Acton, Aquinnah, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, and Northampton. The program is supposed to serve as a demonstration program for a fossil-fuel free mandate for new buildings.
The roll out has been slow for the program with communities getting approved nearly two years after the law passed. There are many communities including Salem, Boston, and Somerville that wanted to be a part of the program but couldn’t.
Environmentalists say that the pilot program needs to be expanded.
“The Legislature must act with urgency to facilitate the expansion of this program and allow an equitable adoption of this opt-in program so that more diverse communities are able to achieve cleaner air quality, along with lower construction and operational building costs,” said Lisa Cunningham, a co-founder of advocacy group ZeroCarbonMA.
Municipalities have led the push on adopting strict emissions reduction standards for existing larger buildings through “BERDO,” or the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure initiative. The policy sets declining emissions standards for larger buildings and sets fines for buildings that don’t comply.
Boston, Cambridge, and Newton have all adopted versions of BERDO with their own schedules for compliance. For Boston, the first compliance window began in 2025, and the city has created a fund aimed at supporting projects to reduce building emissions, especially for “communities disproportionately impacted by air pollution.” Watertown is in the process of drafting a BERDO ordinance.
According to Boyd, communities like Boston adopting BERDO can serve as an example of a success story that other communities and the state can learn from.
But outside of ordinances like BERDO, the energy profile of buildings is still largely regulated through state standards.
“There are other ways besides grants that state aid is hugely helpful to municipalities,” said Ann Berwick, the co-director of climate and sustainability in Newton. “Cities and towns can’t adopt their own building codes. So the state plays an important role in promulgating progressive building codes.”
Another way that towns and cities have sought to green their energy portfolios is by setting up municipal aggregation programs. A municipality can negotiate a competitive rate for electricity pricing on behalf of the residents and businesses within a community and they can set how much of the energy mix is provided by renewable sources. These arrangements have been around in the state since 2000, but more recently, municipalities have begun to choose increasing amounts of renewable energy content.
There are 199 municipal aggregation programs with around 1.27 million customers enrolled in them across the state, as of January 2024. The biggest one is in Boston where residents are automatically enrolled in a program that has 42 percent renewable energy unless they opt out. (Newton, for example, has a much higher base option of 95 percent renewables in which residents are automatically enrolled.) The cost of electricity through the Boston program is currently higher than the rate offered by the local utility company but given the fluctuations in fossil fuel-based energy, there are times when the negotiated price is lower than the rate offered by the utility company.
The Department of Public Utilities is tasked with approving each municipal aggregation program and that has led to years-long delays for municipalities seeking approval. The state has made the approval process easier by creating a template and guidelines for municipalities to follow. That has reduced the delay significantly, according to Larry Chretien, executive director of the nonprofit Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
The country is entering a new era of federal climate policy where funding for decarbonization and mitigation programs is being frozen as the Trump administration rolls back state-level rules and other protections designed to avoid the worst of climate change.
Towns and cities are doing the best they can to decarbonize but they are looking to the state for more funding, more guidance, and more permission to be aggressive in their climate goals.
The state’s climate chief, Melissa Hoffer, emphasized that a partnership between communities and the state will be crucial to meet the current moment.
“It’s not only important to think about individual projects in municipalities, but to think about how [we] can coordinate efforts across districts,” said Hoffer. “Instead of one-off projects and one-off planning, how can we coordinate that to address that risk and better coordinate the capital that is available…We’re in a capital-constrained environment now.”
The question on many environmentalists’ minds is whether the Legislature will meet the moment.
“The [Massachusetts] Legislature definitely is [slow],” said Gandbhir. “I appreciate all the work that they’ve done so far, but there’s definitely a need of a jump start. There’s a lack of transparency with the Legislature and… that can really cause a loss of perspective and a loss of sight over what we really need to accomplish. There’s a lot that needs to be done moving forward, and we do really need to pick up the pace.”
Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who sponsored the funding for the PlugIn program and has pushed for drought management policies and a plastic bag ban, said the Legislature can do more for municipalities.
“The state certainly needs to step up and we need to pass a very robust climate bill, perhaps [with] more state incentives for electric vehicles, battery storage, [and] solar panels,” said Eldridge. “What are we doing to make it easier to put up solar, given the Trump administration’s hostility to offshore wind?”
Eldridge is pushing this session for a bill that would create a climate change superfund that would collect money from companies that are responsible for the more greenhouse gas emissions to fund resilience and adaptation projects in communities that are most impacted by climate change.
“It’s reasonable whether it’s going after multinational corporations or finding some progressive tax to find a dedicated revenue source to do climate projects, whether it’s energy efficiency, solar, geothermal [or to] help communities hire sustainability managers,” Eldridge said.
Barrett, the state senator from Lexington, added a note of hope for local efforts even in the face of federal hostility to climate policies.
“When it comes to climate initiatives, Trump is torching the field,” said Barrett. “He is riding roughshod over the crop and really putting it to ruin, but he’s not really destroying the root system of the climate movement. We’ve got lots of local activists with [some] state and local government help available to preserve the … climate movements — the root system. We can keep things healthy and going even though he’s doing a lot of damage on the surface. … The more localized climate action is, the less likely is it that Trump can reach it and damage it.”