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Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The state’s climate chief, Melissa Hoffer, published a wide-ranging report today with 39 recommendations to implement the Healey-Driscoll administration’s whole-of-government approach to addressing the climate crisis.
The 86-page report presents recommendations and strategies to:
• Finance investments necessary to meet emissions reductions mandates and resilience goals
• Ensure spending is consistent with the statutorily mandated Clean Energy and Climate Plan
• Accelerate electrification of the power, building and transportation sectors while prioritizing energy justice
• Amplify the state’s global leadership in clean energy and climate tech
• Grow the workforce necessary to build a clean energy future
• Protect natural and working lands that are vital to achieving “net zero” by 2050
Gov. Maura Healey created the Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience on her first day in office and later appointed Hoffer as the nation’s first cabinet-level climate chief.
“We know that addressing the climate crisis requires a comprehensive, coordinated approach across all of state government,” Healey said. “Chief Hoffer’s recommendations will help us build on [our] progress to advance the ambitious climate and clean energy policies that we need to protect our future and power our economy.”
Hoffer said her office’s work is “intentionally disruptive,” adding that “siloed approaches will only result in missed opportunities.”
“We are focused on driving collaboration, spurring different ways of defining problems and opportunities, lifting up innovative and successful models, interrogating conventional wisdom and always ensuring that policy choices are informed by the best available climate science,” Hoffer said. “These recommendations will set Massachusetts up as an example to other states on how to be a catalyst for climate innovation.”
The following are among Hoffer’s recommendations:
Funding
• All state agencies must think creatively about ways to leverage innovative clean energy, decarbonization and resilience funding tools to support policy goals.
• Massachusetts should prepare economic analyses of the total investment needed to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions within the Clean Energy and Climate Plan, including the 2050 Net Zero mandate, and the statewide hazard mitigation and climate adaptation plan, ResilientMass. These analyses should be paired with specific funding and financing strategies.
• Agencies should analyze feasible policies that both reduce emissions and generate additional revenue streams to invest in further decarbonization.
Capital investment, asset management, grants, procurement, environmental justice
• Discretionary state spending should align with emissions reduction mandates in the Clean Energy and Climate Plan. The climate and environmental justice considerations prioritized in the capital and operating budget development process should be formalized into a protocol for evaluating proposed capital projects to align with the CECP.
• Recommendations include continuing to center environmental justice in climate policy and program implementation, implementing a statewide plan for electrifying the state-owned vehicle and equipment fleet, ensuring grant-making and other incentives are used as a tool to drive and amplify decarbonization and resilience efforts, and updating procurement practices to require disclosure of emissions and climate risk.
Emissions mitigation
Recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions include reviewing the best use of ratepayer funds currently allocated to Mass Save in light of existing building decarbonization needs and accelerating work to establish a decarbonization clearinghouse, issuing an annual climate report card on the state’s progress to meet CECP emissions reduction mandates, taking action to reduce aviation emissions, and ensuring new housing production and preservation and construction of new schools is consistent with building sector electrification and decarbonization mandates.
Public health and resilience
Public health and resilience recommendations include efforts to establish consistent guidance, standards and use of statewide climate science and data; developing and implementing a Comprehensive Coastal Resilience Plan; prioritizing investment to develop more energy-resilient infrastructure, such as microgrids, that can maintain power to critical infrastructure during extreme weather events; and readying Massachusetts for the increasingly disruptive and dangerous impacts of climate change, such as inland flooding, heat, migration, crop loss, and droughts, and adverse health effects, including increased disease transmission and mental health issues.
Workforce
Recommendations for building the workforce needed to power the clean energy transition include developing a comprehensive, cross-agency plan that includes measurable targets and goals to build a clean energy, climate, and resilience workforce.
The report also calls for the establishment of a Climate Service Corps to drive awareness, engage residents and institutions, and develop career paths integral to climate-critical solutions. The Climate Corps would provide volunteer opportunities and have programs focused on youth, preparing them for good-paying jobs in clean energy and climate resilience.
Economic Development
Recommendations include developing and implementing a comprehensive clean energy and climate economic development plan that results in the creation of good-paying jobs and long-term economic growth. An investment strategy must ensure that climate technology companies have access to the capital required to innovate and scale in Massachusetts.
Education
The report urges Massachusetts to enhance its efforts to educate communities, including students, about the climate crisis, promoting a basic understanding of climate science and fostering the capacity of communities to deploy climate solutions. The administration will work to support the broad-based adoption by public school districts of a K-12 curriculum addressing climate change.