Massachusetts has long been an innovative place, Yvonne Hao said as she explained the thinking behind the state's latest initiative on climate change.
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"We've invented so many things," she told Newsweek, rattling off a list of influential firsts that have at least part of their origin in the state where she serves as the secretary of economic development. "The birth control pill, the first mutual fund, the internet, basketball."
With a new billion-dollar economic development program, state officials like Hao hope to steer that inventive spirit toward the climate challenge and meeting the Bay State's aggressive goals on greenhouse gas reduction.
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"The best way to fight climate change and to hit these ambitious targets is through innovation," Hao said.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey's Mass Leads Act would invest $1.3 billion over ten years to build on the state's research strengths, policy leadership and entrepreneurial culture around clean energy. Hao said the goal is to make Massachusetts a hub for climate-related technology in much the same way that earlier state policies helped to attract and grow more than a thousand companies in biotech and life sciences.
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"We can create the tools that help accelerate and help people take more risk and scale things faster," she said. Those tools include access to capital investment, tax incentives and workforce training.
A pair of high-profile conferences this month demonstrated the state's climate focus. A three-day gathering called ClimaTech brought together state officials, corporate leaders and top scientists from MIT and other leading research institutions. Harvard's recently launched Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability hosted a Climate Action Week that featured regional lawmakers such as Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey who have been leaders on climate policy.
"We've set very high goals," Markey said in a Climate Action Week session on June 10. "We are going to be a national leader."
New Energy in New England
Penni McLean-Conner is executive vice president for energy strategy and customer experience at Eversource, the Massachusetts-based electric, water and gas utility serving some 4 million customers in three New England states.
Eversource appears on Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies where it ranks fifth in the energy and utilities sector.
McLean-Conner said the company is looking to emerging climate tech to help it decarbonize as electricity demand grows to power more home appliances, heat more homes and charge electric vehicles.
"This next decade is going to be the most rapid and most dramatic change for every one of our customers," McLean-Conner told Newsweek.
That's something many utilities are grappling with, but there are some challenges unique to New England, she said, where many households rely on fuel oil and propane for home heating. As more of those homeowners shift to electric heat pumps, their power demands will change and the utility will need to change as well.
She said the company is interested in more energy storage technology to be able to better match the renewable power generated by solar and wind to those times of need. New information technology also promises to change the relationship that energy customers have with power companies, McLean-Conner said, a phenomenon she called "animating the grid."
"They can actively engage in managing their energy use," she said, "but also help us optimize the system."
A coming generation of "smart" electric meters offers the company a chance to provide customers better information for energy choices that can both save consumers on their power bills and help make the grid cleaner.
Eversource will be switching to the new smart meters over the next three years, and the company is in talks with a Cambridge-based company called Sense to make the most of the energy use data that will soon be available.
"We're trying to make things better for the consumers while making them better participants in this new, decarbonized energy world," Sense CEO Mike Phillips told Newsweek.
Sense uses machine learning to analyze home energy use. Phillips pulled up a display of the Sense app as it drew on real-time data from his own home. One circle in a "bubble" graph showed the power his rooftop solar panels produced while other circles would swell or shrink to show energy use from appliances.
"You can figure out when the heat pump turns on and the water heater turns on just from the patterns," he said.
Some energy hogs in a home might be coming on at times of peak power use when electricity rates are higher.
"Once the consumer knows about it, they can go make a change and save themselves money," Phillips explained. Those changes can also give a power company like Eversource more flexibility in how it plans to meet power demand, opening more options for the use of cleaner energy.
McLean-Conner said technology like that makes this the most exciting time in her energy career.
"That's what I think about all the time, is how we're going to move our company forward on this clean-energy journey," she said.
Creating a Climate Tech Ecosystem
Sense and its relationships with regional power companies provide a good example of the kind of climate tech ecosystem that has developed in Massachusetts, one that includes higher education, small startups and deep-pocket investors.
Phillips is a former MIT researcher and represents a growing sector of entrepreneurs turning to clean energy.
"People like me that came from the techie world and decided we should really focus on this climate problem," he said.
Some MIT grads launched a climate tech incubator in Cambridge called Greentown Labs in 2011 and it now hosts hundreds of startups. The area's venture capital and finance communities are attuned to the climate sector and are investing in companies tackling some of the biggest climate challenges.
Form Energy is building utility-scale batteries for energy storage; Boston Metal is developing "green steel" techniques, and a company called Sublime has a process for lower-carbon cement, to name just a few.
"We want to use our full state footprint as we think about climate tech and how to keep it here in the state," Economic Development Secretary Hao said.
Massachusetts also has a long track record of some of the strongest climate policies in the country. In 2006, state officials won the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency that established the government's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The state has been a leader on emissions reductions and innovative policies to achieve them, all of which align well with the goal of creating a climate tech hub.
The very term "hub" has particular resonance in Massachusetts. In the 19th century, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote—perhaps tongue in cheek—that Boston's cultural and intellectual assets made it the "hub of the solar system," and the moniker "hub" has stuck.
"Hub of the solar system" might be a bit of hyperbole, but "hub of solar energy systems" seems very much within reach.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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