Ashfield highlighted as leader at inaugural State House Sustainability Day

BOSTON — Ashfield was highlighted as a leader in municipal sustainability efforts during the inaugural State House Sustainability Day on Tuesday.

The House Committee on Climate Action and Sustainability hosted the event to showcase work being done across the state to curb climate change. The day welcomed nearly 40 businesses, nonprofits and government entities to discuss climate technology, their work and the impacts that can be made at the municipal level.

“We’re here to work to elevate solutions, to connect partners across the commonwealth and ensure that the urgency of the climate crisis is reflected in everything that we do here, not only in the House, but the entire Legislature,” said Rep. Tram Nguyen, D-Andover, who serves as chair of the House Committee on Climate Action and Sustainability. “What you’re doing here today is not only to get together, to collaborate, to share ideas, but to make sure we don’t feel alone in this.”

“We’re here to reaffirm that climate change is real and that we can do something about it, and indeed, that each and every one of us must do everything we can, large and small, to have an impact,” committee Vice Chair Michelle Ciccolo, D-Lexington, added.

Local efforts

In the Great Hall of Flags, businesses and organizations showcased recycling, decarbonization and composting technologies and other climate efforts, while in an upstairs hearing room, representatives from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, HEET (a thermal energy nonprofit), the city of Framingham, and the towns of Lexington, Truro and Ashfield spoke on efforts at the municipal level.

Alex Osterman, chair of the Ashfield Energy Committee, said that despite being a smaller town, Ashfield has been able to take several steps toward a sustainable and carbon-neutral future by leveraging state resources and working with other partners.

In May, Ashfield was named among the state’s first group of Climate Leader Communities, making it the first Franklin County municipality to earn the designation. The Climate Leader designation builds upon the Green Communities program, which encouraged communities to reduce municipal energy usage. To become a Climate Leader, municipalities must make a commitment to transition away from on-site fossil fuel use in municipal buildings and fleets by 2050, enact a zero-emission-vehicle-first policy and adopt the specialized energy code.

“Ashfield is a very small town, practically 1,700 people in western Mass, with an annual budget of about $7.3 million,” Osterman said. “The Green Communities program has supported our efforts to reduce energy and there has been a shift recently to focus on greenhouse gas reductions. … [The Department of Energy Resources] has provided funding, information, technical support and resources, and has been very, very supportive of our work.”

Osterman said with help from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the town was able to conduct a solar study in 2023, looking at locations that could support a municipal solar installation. This has allowed the town to proceed with planning two solar sites, one at the Highway Garage and one at the Wastewater Treatment Plant that could save the town $2 million in energy costs over 25 years.

“At that point, we found out about the Climate Leader Community Program and we decided to go for it. We started to work our way through the requirements to be a Climate Leader Community,” Osterman said. “At the Town Meeting of 2024, we passed the municipal decarbonization commitment, which commits our town to stop fossil fuel use by 2050. We passed the municipal zero-emission-first policy and a special energy code bylaw.”

With its Climate Leader designation in hand, Osterman said the town has applied for a $1 million grant to support the solar installations and is expecting to hear back this winter.

“We’re very excited about that,” Osterman said of the designation. “That allowed us to go for these [Climate Leader grants] for up to $1 million with a 10% town match. That’s huge for a town of our size.”

She added that the town has also worked with Double Edge Theatre to conduct public outreach and look at what climate resiliency looks like in rural communities such as Ashfield. The town has begun a municipal energy aggregation program, which has been proven to save residents money on energy costs and provide cleaner energy options, and is working to promote solar and other sustainable initiatives in town through monthly columns published in The Ashfield News.

Other panelists at the State House on Tuesday discussed municipal geothermal energy initiatives, the value of having town employees who can manage grants and work to move projects along, and the importance of pairing sustainability work with other issues impacting their community.

Chris Palmer, the climate action coordinator for Truro, said the town is always looking for projects where topics and priorities “intersect.” For example, he said, when the town built its solar array, it developed a program where half of the energy produced was given to low-income households in town for free. Palmer added that this made the project one with an impact on the climate crisis, as well as the affordable housing and cost-of-living crisis, impacting the region.

Maggie Peard, the sustainability and resilience officer in Lexington, said that having paid staff can boost the efforts of volunteer groups and bring in more money for projects that have larger impacts.

“In 2024, my position brought in 3.5 times my salary in grants, rebates and direct pay credits,” Peard said.

The bigger picture

Ciccolo, the vice chair of the House Committee on Climate Action and Sustainability, said the efforts being made by these towns should serve as an example for municipalities across the state and beyond.

“Our communities are laboratories of best practices, lighting the way for others to follow, here and abroad,” Ciccolo said. “We know here in Massachusetts we are innovators, constantly developing better technologies and processes to improve upon the old.”

Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer, the keynote speaker, said this work at the local level is particularly important during a time when sustainability is not a federal priority.

“The work is hard. It’s often an uphill battle. You take one step forward and two steps back,” Hoffer said. “This is a really tough time. There’s no way to put lipstick on a pig; it’s a tough time we’re facing.”

She said that events like Sustainability Day, which highlight effective and affordable technologies and initiatives, are essential and should be invested in on a national level if the country is to remain a leader in environmental technology.

“The only question right now is one of American competitiveness. And we’ve just handed over American competitiveness in this space to the Chinese,” Hoffer said. “The most important thing we can do is organize and build the biggest, most powerful movement this country has ever seen. It is a movement for sanity, for science, for economic vitality, for common sense and for justice.”

Hoffer said the towns, businesses and organizations represented at the State House on Tuesday proved that Americans are up to the task of creating technologies that can provide a more sustainable future, and it would take a partnership between these minds, local officials, and legislators at the state and federal levels to make that future a reality.

“It is a time for people who traditionally do not work together to come and work together on the things they can agree on,” Hoffer said. “That’s what we have to do now.”