The Healey-Driscoll administration recently awarded $7.7 million in Green Communities competitive grants to 50 cities and towns across Massachusetts to pay for clean energy and energy efficiency projects.
Of that, Gloucester netted $144,311 to install heat pumps or make improvements to various city buildings.
Gloucester has used this and other grant programs to leverage about $780,190 in funding since the start of 2023, according Gemma Wilkens, the city’s first sustainability coordinator.
The $144,311 Green Communities grant when paired with $116,000 in utility incentives will be used to install heat pumps, pipe insulation and air sealing in various city and school buildings:
Gloucester High School will get new kitchen hood controls, weather stripping and walk-in refrigerator controls.
Bayview Fire Station will get an energy-efficient air source heat pump.
The Visitor Welcoming Center at Stage Fort Park will be equipped with an air source heat pump, weatherization and mechanical insulation.
O’Maley Innovation Middle, Beeman Elementary and Plum Cove Elementary Schools will all get new walk-in refrigeration controls.
Wilkens said the projects are expected to save the city $17,000 in energy costs a year and reduce the city’s greenhouse gas consumption by 1%.
The city was committed to creating the position of sustainability coordinator in the Community Development Department, Mayor Greg Verga said.
“Gemma’s been doing a great job, literally more than covered her salary many times over with these grants,” Verga said.
For the past year, the city has been working on creating a pipeline of energy-efficiency projects, working with the Department of Public Works and facilities staff to identify where the needs are, Wilkens said.
“Because we want to get that savings in terms of the energy efficiency, so, you know, how much are we going to save in the year,” she said, “but we also want to get that savings in terms of avoiding a replacement cost down the line.”
While the Green Communities grant will fund heat pumps at the Bay View Fire Station and the Visitors Welcome Center, the city has also requested federal Housing and Urban Development funding to install heat pumps at the Gloucester Alternative Program at Stage Fort Park. In the past year or so, the city has electrified the West Gloucester and Magnolia fire stations with heat pumps, Wilkens said.
In all, with this latest grant and others, the city will have updated older heating systems in eight of its small buildings. The majority were previously heated with oil or electric resistance heating.
“We are working on electrification starting small,” Wilkens said, “but we are also doing an electrification study at the high school and the middle school to kind of start to understand our larger facilities and what it might look like to electrify those facilities.”
The city is partnering with National Grid on these electrification studies and the city is seeking additional money to do follow-up studies.
Wilkens noted Gloucester will have significantly more municipal buildings that are fully electric.
“And the nice thing about that is that, you know, in Gloucester, we are in a power purchase agreement with the two wind turbines at Blackburn Industrial Park that offsets about 75% of our electricity demand,” she said.
With the grant awards, announced on Jan. 25, the state Department of Energy Resources has awarded more than $177 million to Green Communities like Gloucester in designated grants and competitive grants since 2010.
The year 2010 is also the year Gloucester was recognized as a Designated Green Community — one of the first — by the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The grants provide financial support for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects meant to meet a Green Community’s clean energy goals.
Ethan Forman may be contacted at 978-675-2714, or at eforman@gloucestertimes.com.