An article fromDive Brief $23M awarded to Massachusetts colleges, state facilities for clean energy projects

The state grants will cover up to 45% of the cost for large-scale projects, such as implementing energy efficiency measures.

Published July 31, 2026Joe Burns Reporter

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The University of Massachusetts Amherst campus center, hotel and pond. The state university system's flagship campus is receiving $7.4 million in grants to install a 5-megawatt industrial heat pump at its central heating plant. Getty Images

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• Massachusetts is awarding $23 million in clean energy grants at nine public colleges and state facilities, the state announced this month.
• The awards will cover up to 45% of the cost for projects that include connecting geothermal systems and implementing energy efficiency measures at the University of Massachusetts’ Dartmouth, Boston and Amherst campuses; Massachusetts Maritime Academy; Salem State University; and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation and Development Services. 
• When taken together, the projects are expected to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 21,000 metric tons and lower long-term costs for taxpayers, Gov. Maura Healey said in a press release.

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The grants were awarded under the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources’ Leading by Example Decarbonization Implementation Program. The executive order creating the program directs the state to reduce on-site fossil fuel emissions 35% by 2030. 

Key awards include $7.35 million to support the installation of a 5-MW industrial heat pump at the UMass Amherst central heating plant that will use waste heat to produce low-pressure steam. Fewer than two dozen of these systems are installed across the U.S., “putting [the university] at the forefront of a growing field,” the state said.

UMass Boston is receiving $5.3 million to support a campuswide decarbonization plan. As part of that plan, the campus will replace gas boilers at its central power plant with three electric heat shift chillers that use an existing sea water pump to cool and heat the campus. The plan ultimately will reduce the campus’s natural gas consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels by over half, the state said.

UMass Dartmouth was awarded $1.1 million to establish a new connection to a geothermal system being installed at one of its buildings to leverage excess heating and cooling capacity. 

The state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance received $7.5 million to support geothermal projects at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Salem State University, connecting several buildings on each campus to the system. 

The grants to the Department of Conservation and Recreational Services and Development Services, or DCR, support projects at three public recreation sites: almost $1 million for an energy retrofit at the headquarters building for a Boston park, more than $400,000 at one skating rink to replace a natural gas-fueled heating and hot water system with a variable refrigerant flow system and more than $400,000 to a second rink to replace a natural gas hot water system with a heat pump and energy recovery ventilation.

The rinks are the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the DCR rink portfolio, so the retrofits are seen as proving grounds for future decarbonization efforts at other rinks, the release says. 

These are “major steps to … cleaner heating and cooling technologies [with] our colleges and universities … leading the way,” Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said in a statement.

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