Welcome to the Climate Action Plan (CAP) page! Here you can find regular updates on the CAP process. 

Explore Acton's Climate Action Tracker!  

It has been a year since Acton released its Climate Action Plan! Since the plan's launch in July 2022, lots has happened to meet the outlined goals and work towards net-zero emissions by 2023. The Town has created a Climate Action Tracker to update Acton's community on the progress being made to meet the goals of the Climate Action Plan. Click and scroll through to learn about which actions are coming soon, in progress, or complete!

To access the Climate Action Tracker click here.

The final Climate Action Plan is here!  

Building on the overwhelming support for the Climate Emergency Declaration witnessed at the Special Town Meeting on September 8, 2020, the Town kicked off the CAP process in June 2021. The Climate Action Plan is the product of more than a year of workshops, conversations, and analysis. It includes a list of 22 strategies and over 50 actions to address climate change. The actions listed in this document represent broad input and ideas from Acton's community – captured in surveys, at our workshops, at the CAP Open House, or via your emails and phone calls. This is a living document, that we’ll continue to build on together as we strive to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, as directed by our town’s Climate Emergency Declaration passed at Town Meeting in 2020 

To read the final Climate Action Plan click here. 

To read the Simplified Chinese translation click here.

Electrification Roadmap

The Town of Acton also partnered with the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District to develop an Electrification Roadmap. The Electrification Roadmap outlines the capital, operational, and conversion costs for electrifying the top seven energy-consuming municipal and school buildings, which will help move ABRSD and the Town towards carbon neutrality. These buildings include the Public Safety Facility, Town Hall, Memorial Library, Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, RJ Grey Junior High School, the Administration Building, and the Parker Damon Building. 

To view the final Electrification Roadmap please click here. To view a presentation of the Roadmap click here.

Both the Climate Action Plan and the Electrification Roadmap projects were supported by a generous grant from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program. The Climate Action Plan also received funding from the Community Compact Program and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council Technical Assistance Program.

More on the CAP process

The process was divided into two phases described below.

Phase I: June 2021 - December 2021

The CAP Blueprint strategies were developed with input collected through a survey and across eight virtual public workshops, one in-person open house, two advisory group meetings, a staff meeting with division heads, an Acton-Boxborough High school student-led workshop, a renter-focus group, a comment period, and interviews with over 20 staff members, members of boards and committees, and various organizations across Town.

Phase I of the CAP process is complete and the Blueprint can be found here. This was adopted as a living document at the Select Board meeting on December 20, 2021, that we continued to build on during the Climate Action Plan process.

The Blueprint is available in Simplified Chinese. Please find the translated version here.

Phase II: January 2022 - June 2022 (Completion of the Climate Action Plan!)

Building off of the CAP Blueprint, Phase II took place in the winter and spring of 2022. The Town received funding from the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program to hire experts to conduct technical analysis on the draft strategies to project potential GHG reductions, costs, and benefits of each strategy. Community engagement continued to play a key role during this phase, which led to the final development of the Climate Action Plan.

ActOn Climate Festival

We celebrated the CAP process with community partners at the ActOn Climate Festival, which took place on Saturday, June 11th, at the NARA Park Amphitheater! Thank you for joining us! Please let us know if you would be interested in more events like this in the future by contacting sustainability@actonma.gov/. If you missed the event you can check out the ActonTV recording here.

The CAP process has been developed through a collaborative process between municipal staff and the community with support from our consultant team courtesy of a generous grant from the Community Compact Program, the MAPC Technical Assistance Program (TAP), and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program.