Climate Action Plan Committee (CAPC)

About the Climate Action Plan Committee

The Climate Action Plan Committee (CAPC) was established to guide the Town in developing a plan that meets or exceeds the State’s climate mitigation and resilience goals.  The Committee will make recommendations to the Select Board on approval of a Climate Action Plan (CAP), and may be asked to continue to serve as an advisory committee to oversee the implementation of the CAP. 

The Committee is charted with reviewing the Town’s climate-related data, establishing a program to create a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory for the entire Town of Needham, recommending long-term climate action goals that focus on reducing GHG emissions and building resilience within and across the Town’s residential, commercial, and municipal sectors, and recommending programs and policies to implement GHG reduction goals and climate resilience planning.

The Committee will develop a Climate Action Plan for the Select Board’s review and approval that includes: 

1. Definition of the climate action goals for each decade through 2050, with a focus on the next decade;
2. Strategic options and incentives that seek to overcome barriers to implementation of climate action goals; 
3. Recommendations for any structural changes, resource, or staffing recommendations that would assist in implementation; 
4. Actions to protect environmental justice communities from disproportionate effects of climate change; 
5. Recommendations for implementing the plan across all sectors of the Town;  
6.  Measures that assist in tracking and reporting Town’s progress towards fulfilling climate action goals; and

Climate Action Plan Committee Materials

Agendas, Agenda Packets, Minutes

Use our Notify Me feature to receive automatic email announcements related to Climate Action Plan Committee Agendas.

Contact the Committee: climate@needhamma.gov

Members

The Climate Action Plan Committee consists of nine appointed members for 2-year terms.

Community Electricity Aggregation

The Climate Action Plan Committee has identified Community Electricity Aggregation (CEA)  as the single most impactful step that Needham can take in the immediate term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Needham can enter into an aggregation with no cash expenditure by the Town, and residents and businesses may opt out of the aggregation program at any time, without restriction or penalties. The Committee asked Town Meeting at the October 2022 Special Town Meeting to authorize the Select Board to start the process, which will take several months to complete. This ask was approved. Specific details about the structure of the plan will be developed and communicated, and public input will be sought by the Select Board. The Town may also choose not to finalize a contract for a CEA if the bids received from competitive electricity suppliers are unfavorable.  Learn more about CEA in this Frequently Asked Questions document.

Working Groups

The Climate Action Plan Committee (CAPC) held a community wide Kick Off Meeting on October 17, 2022. The presentation from the Kick Off Meeting can be found here. That meeting included the initiation of six working groups who were tasked with evaluating potential items for the Climate Action Plan, compare anticipated impacts on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions to level of effort to implement, and make recommendations to the CAPC. The six working groups and their members are listed below:

*indicates Chair of Working Group