Warwick and Shutesbury have been named Climate Leader Communities, opening up a new avenue of financial support for sustainable infrastructure projects geared toward protecting the environment.
The Climate Leader designation, given on March 26, builds on the Green Communities program, which encourages communities to reduce municipal energy usage while helping the state meet its clean energy goals.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity because of the grant funding that it opens up,” said Hayley Bolton, Shutesbury’s town administrator. “It really speaks to our small rural community’s commitment to being a good climate partner.”
To become a Climate Leader Community, towns must meet a series of requirements: be a Green Community in good standing; create a committee to advance clean energy and climate activities; commit to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; craft a Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap with a plan to decarbonize town operations; commit to purchasing zero-emission vehicles when “commercially available and practicable;” and adopt the Specialized Energy Code to ensure new construction is “consistent with 2050 net-zero goals,” according to the state’s website.
Last May, Ashfield was named among the state’s first Climate Leader Communities, making it the first in Franklin County to earn the designation. Now, Warwick and Shutesbury have joined the group of 35 municipalities that share this title.
“It’s been a long road,” said Warwick Building and Energy Committee Chair Janice Kurkoski.
The Building and Energy Committee has led several projects that combine sustainability with cost savings, Kurkoski said.
Before Warwick Community School opened its doors as an independent school in 2023, Kurkoski worked with volunteers and town officials to ensure mini-splits heated the building. Besides the kitchen stove, the building is completely electric. According to the school’s application for the Green Ribbon award presented by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, solar panels in Connecticut power the school. This reduces the school’s electric bill, which accounts for two-thirds of the town’s electric bill.
According to Kurkoski, most of the town-owned buildings in Warwick have been converted to run on clean energy, including the Fire Station, which is now powered by solar panels that were installed in December.
The Climate Leader Community designation unlocks up to $1 million in state funding for projects that shrink a municipality’s greenhouse gas emissions. With Warwick now eligible, the Building and Energy Committee plans to pursue the installation of solar panels on the roofs of the school, Police Station and Highway Garage, as well as a battery energy storage system outside the Highway Garage. Kurkoski hopes the solar panel projects will start before the snow falls next winter.
For the first time, the town has hired a building and energy manager to help secure funding opportunities and turn the Building and Energy Committee’s ideas into tangible projects. The building and energy manager is slated to start at the end of May.
Kurkoski described clean energy projects as “an easy sell” given the cost reductions. When the “moral incentive to do something about climate change” combines with the cost savings, Kurkoski said clean energy projects are often a “no-brainer.”
In Shutesbury, the Energy and Climate Action Committee plans to apply for funding to convert the Shutesbury Elementary School’s standard oil heating system to a geothermal heating and cooling system. Committee Chair Michael DeChiara explained the geothermal system would channel heat from the ground to heat and cool the school.
“It would be a game-changer,” he said.
With an aging heating system at the elementary school, he described the inevitable replacement as a “big expense.” He expects the price tag to exceed or come close to the $1 million ceiling for the state grant.
“If we can do it and get off of fossil fuels at the same time, that would be great,” DeChiara said.
DeChiara said the Climate Leader Community designation opens up financial opportunities that make expensive projects like converting the heating system to geothermal a possibility for small rural towns.
“When it comes to competitive grants at the state, smaller towns are usually disadvantaged because we’re all run by volunteers. … It’s harder to take advantage of grant opportunities, and so something like this is really significant,” DeChiara said. “It opens up the door for money that we could really use to make a difference.”
DeChiara and Bolton stressed that rural towns like Warwick and Shutesbury are leading the charge to become Climate Leader Communities.
“It’s a nice thing to be able to say we were at the cutting edge of this — we don’t get a lot of chances to say that,” Bolton said.
“It makes sense that western Mass. is deeply involved in this, and I’m particularly proud of that,” DeChiara said. “Given where we live, our region, the fact that nature is so present, there’s a commitment and an awareness of climate change and that it matters.”
