STOW – The Town of Stow has been certified as a Climate Leader Community for its commitment to adopting green energy and reducing its carbon footprint.
The Town was one of 19 communities honored at a ceremony on Friday, May 2, at the construction site for Watertown’s new net-zero High School.
The Climate Leader Community designation is a sign of the Town’s ongoing commitment to sustainable energy and means the Town is eligible to receive grants from two programs:
- Decarbonization Technical Support Grants, which provide communities up to $150,000 to hire vendors to produce recommendations and engineering design documents for one or more clean energy projects at municipal facilities.
- Decarbonization Accelerator Grants provide up to $1 million for projects that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations. Eligible projects must align with the community’s Climate Leader Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap and prioritize reducing fossil fuel combustion, energy use, and costs. Potential funding areas include renewable energy technologies like solar and heat pumps, energy storage, and other strategies that support decarbonization efforts.
To be recognized by the state Department of Energy Resources as a Climate Leader Community, the Town needed to meet a number of benchmarks, including: Establishing a committee to advise, coordinate, and/or lead clean energy and climate activities; committing to eliminating on-site fossil fuel use by 2050; developing a Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap; implementing a policy to purchase only zero-emission vehicles (if available and practical); and adopting a Specialized Energy Code that emphasizes energy performance, as opposed to prescriptive requirements.
The Town was designated as a Green Community in 2015. Through planning and aggressive pursuit of grant funding, the Town secured state support to retrofit the Town Building, police station, and Highway Department office with new heat pumps.
The Town additionally received a $500,000 Green Communities Building Decarbonization grant in 2024 to support the renovation of Randall Library.
The town completed the Municipal Decarbonization Roadmap in the past year to include Center School and Hale Middle School. Those schools are part of the Nashoba Regional School District in Bolton; the Town of Bolton did not achieve Green Community status until 2017.
“This designation affirms more than 10 years of work by community members and Town staff to help meet our goals of building a sustainable future for Stow,” Select Board Chair JT Toole said. “The state has been an excellent partner by providing the resources we need, and we look forward to creating new initiative to further shift the town away from fossil fuels.”
For more information on Climate Leaders, click here.
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