Mission

The challenge: We face a climate emergency that requires action at all scales and levels of society to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create adaptive solutions that will improve resilience and regenerate our environment, economies, and culture.

MassEnergize works with community organizers and local leaders to scale household and community-level climate actions. Our work is based on two powerful insights.

First, we believe that household-level climate action, propelled at scale, is critical for reaching our climate goals. While a growing percentage of Americans believe that climate change is real and man-made, and demand a response, they have been made to feel that the actions they have the most control over, their household actions, don’t make a difference. But it is household members who ultimately need to accept, implement, pay for and live with the new technologies and behavior changes required for climate resilience. All the more reason to empower them so they will adopt and indeed support climate action, making them allies who in turn drive change in industry, the market, and policy.

Second, we know that activating community networks is a powerful tool to drive change. Research has shown that a combination of (1) leveraging trusted local leaders to promote actions, (2) offering clear steps, (3) giving reliable feedback on the impact of those actions, and (4) providing recommendations from neighbors about service providers or products results in a more-than-threefold increase in uptake of climate action by households when compared to government- or utility-funded efforts. Local leaders are therefore in a unique position to deeply change and empower their communities.

MassEnergize provides local leaders with (1) tools that greatly amplify their influence, (2) well-designed, customizable templates to hit the ground running, and (3) a support group of regional peers. Our software tracks each community’s impact in terms of households engaged, actions taken and avoided carbon emissions. This feedback can improve campaigns, drive policy decisions and build a growing sense of empowerment.

MassEnergize is committed to serving all communities. To drive the change that is needed, it is essential that all communities engage in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pursue environmental justice goals. We offer tools that can support activities in all communities. To support one of our core services, an interactive customizable web platform to promote and track local climate actions, we charge communities a modest fee. For communities with more than 25% of their population living in an environmental justice census block grant, we substantially discount these fees.