Clean Energy Cambridge

Powering the Future: How Cambridge and its Partners are Bringing Carbon-Free Energy to Life

This past summer, Meghan Shaw flew from Boston to Indianapolis, rented a car, and drove two hours through the flat farmlands of central Indiana. In the corn and soy fields outside Urbana, Illinois, she took a left turn onto a dirt road. Suddenly, she was surrounded by rows of solar panels, cranes, and construction vehicles. After years of work as Cambridge’s Climate Strategy and Implementation Manager, she had finally arrived at Praire Solar, a project made possible by support from the City.

“It’s incredible to see something so vast – and to know it’s directly tied to our community’s work back home in Cambridge,” she said, while touring the site in a hard hat and steel-toed boots. Crews at Prairie Solar will soon complete installation of more than 315,000 solar panels at the 800-acre farm, and it will start generating new, clean energy.

More than 1,000 miles away in North Dakota, a sprawling, 74-turbine wind farm called Bowman Wind has recently come online, generating enough energy to power 90,000 homes. The Bowman Wind project came to life thanks to the Consortium for Climate Solutions, a unique renewable energy collaboration formed by Harvard, Mass General Brigham, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in collaboration with the City of Cambridge and others. The development of the project was only made possible because of climate commitments by this group of buyers.

“It’s deeply satisfying,” said Steven Lanou, Senior Sustainability Project Manager at MIT’s Office of Sustainability, who visited Bowman Wind recently for an opening celebration. He, with colleagues from Harvard and Mass General Brigham, ceremonially signed one of the long, tapered turbine blades before it was mounted. “These projects are tangible examples of how collaboration can accelerate real, measurable climate progress.”

The Prairie Solar and Bowman Wind locations were strategically chosen to maximize the health and environmental impacts of the projects. Both regions – Illinois and North Dakota – have tremendous natural resources for solar and wind energy, making them ideal places for large-scale renewable development. And, because climate change is a global challenge, prioritizing renewable energy in more carbon-intensive grids has the highest impact and benefits all.

In return for making these new sources of renewable energy possible, the City and its partners will receive Renewable Energy Certificates, or RECs. These certificates allow them to count this new clean electricity toward reducing their local greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are created by burning fossil fuels for energy, and they cause climate change. With Bowman Wind online, the City of Cambridge’s greenhouse gas emissions from municipal electricity use fall to net zero. That means the impact on the climate from generating all the electricity the City uses will be fully balanced out by new clean energy.

“Schools, libraries, streetlights, municipal buildings — all of it runs on electricity,” said Ellen Katz, Cambridge Public Works director of fiscal affairs and energy resources. “To make all of that carbon-free is a really meaningful accomplishment that we're very proud of.”

Both projects will provide RECs to Cambridge Community Electricity, the City’s group buying program, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity used by residents and businesses. They’ll receive 75% renewable energy — more than ever before. Reaching this point took tenacity, innovation, and groundbreaking collaboration between a broad team of City staff and major institutions and organizations, demonstrating how local leadership can have a national impact.

“Our community has never shied away from ambitious goals,” said Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang. “By working hand in hand with our local partners, we’re proving that meaningful climate action doesn’t just happen in theory — it happens through collaboration, innovation, intentionality, and persistence.”

Finding a path forward

Ten years ago, the Cambridge City Council passed the Net Zero Action Plan, committing the community to eliminating or offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. City staff were tasked with turning that vision into reality. The first big step came in 2017, with the launch of Cambridge Community Electricity, or CCE. The program brings residents and businesses together as one large electricity customer. That collective buying power allows the City to negotiate multi-year contracts that keep rates steady and increase the use of renewable energy. Today, about 80% of Cambridge residents are enrolled.

The next step was to supply CCE with more renewable energy. But space and scale posed challenges: Cambridge had no site large enough to generate the renewable energy needed, and the City alone couldn’t fund a project of that magnitude.

“It was a complicated problem. We knew it would take patience and determination to figure it out,” Katz said.

During months of research, the City team kept returning to the concept of Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (VPPAs) — long-term financial contracts that make it possible to build new large-scale renewable energy projects. In a VPPA, the physical electricity flows into local grids where the projects are built, while the Renewable Energy Certificates are credited to the buyers. It’s like making sure that, when electricity is used in Cambridge, an equal amount of wind or solar power is generated elsewhere.

“We considered every option,” Shaw said. “A VPPA was the only way to get us to the volume of clean, affordable energy we needed with the biggest climate impact possible — and we needed other partners to make it happen.”

Luckily, leaders at Harvard, Mass General Brigham, and MIT had been working on an innovative way to collaborate.

Building New Partnerships

Created in 2020, the Consortium for Climate Solutions was a new way for Massachusetts institutions and organizations to work together and combine resources, reducing the barriers for smaller nonprofits to participate in renewable projects. Their shared goals are to expand access to large-scale renewable energy solutions, enable the development of renewable energy projects, create cleaner grids, and help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Consortium’s collaborative model proves that by joining forces, private institutions, cities, and non-profits can share resources and enable the development of renewable energy at a scale that can truly support the clean energy transition,” said Harvard Chief Sustainability Officer Heather Henriksen.

Harvard and MIT were also interested in combining forces with Cambridge to learn whether a new partnership model could work for other U.S. cities. So Cambridge joined the Consortium through its long-time partner PowerOptions — a regional nonprofit with more than 500 members that works with cities and other nonprofits to combine energy buying power.

The Consortium vetted more than 100 potential projects, looking for opportunities that would have the greatest climate impact and also create health and community benefits. They settled on Bowman Wind and another project, Big Elm Solar in Texas. The City signed on to be part of the Bowman Wind project.

PowerOptions brought on a number of additional partners who strengthened the collaboration, including Beth Israel Lahey Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Tufts University, and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. PowerOptions also serves as a buyer on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and GBH, giving them the opportunity to participate with smaller purchases.

It took a year of work and coordination among lawyers, consultants, Consortium members, and City leaders to finalize all the contracts involved. But when that process was over, in November 2024, Bowman Wind’s future was secured, with 208 megawatts of installed capacity. Harvard, Mass General Brigham, and MIT are Bowman Wind’s anchors, procuring the largest volume of energy from the project. Cambridge’s portion provides enough RECs to make all the City's municipal operations carbon neutral and add more renewable energy to Cambridge Community Electricity.

“Every step required our legal and finance teams to solve challenges and come up with new solutions,” Shaw said.

Overall, the Consortium will buy 1.3 million megawatt hours of new solar and wind electricity generation every year, thereby eliminating nearly 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually.

“With large renewable energy projects like Bowman Wind, Harvard has been able to make a significant step forward in its commitment to a clean energy and fossil fuel-free future,” Harvard’s Henriksen said.

“We’re proud to see the results that unite diverse philosophies under a shared goal: a future powered by clean energy. This wind farm integrates with local farming — raising cattle while generating income — proving progress and tradition can coexist,” said Dennis Villanueva, Mass General Brigham’s Director of Utilities, Energy Strategy and Procurement. “Beyond local benefits, reducing carbon emissions in a high-intensity region is profound. For a healthcare organization, this is more than energy — it’s a commitment to cutting emissions, improving community health, and supporting climate stability for generations.”

Growing Momentum

As the contracts for Bowman Wind were being finalized, one of Cambridge’s consultants, Boston-based Sustainability Roundtable Inc., presented the City with another strategic clean energy opportunity: Prairie Solar. Cambridge staff and leaders, now with more experience with VPPAs from the Bowman Wind project, moved quickly, thoroughly reviewing the project with help from consultants.

By December 2023, the City had agreed to sign on to the 113 megawatt Prairie Solar project independently, outside of the Consortium’s work.

“Everything seemed to suddenly coalesce,” Shaw said. “There were a million pieces of paper flying around, a million final ts to cross on the contracts, and then they were all done, and in 2024, construction started.”

The Prairie Solar agreement, announced in December 2024, is the largest-ever VPPA made directly by a U.S. city to reduce its community’s emissions, through Cambridge Community Electricity. Cambridge’s portion will generate enough renewable energy to cover the average annual energy consumption of more than 25,000 Cambridge homes, nearly half the City’s households.

“Cities almost never take on VPPAs of this scale, and what makes this achievement even more unusual is that the clean energy generated will lower our residents’ energy bills along with their carbon footprints,” Cambridge Climate Chief Julie Wormser said. “This is such an exciting breakthrough.” 

A Shared Future

Standing amidst the rows of Prairie Solar’s panels, Shaw said she could feel the impact of years of collaboration taking shape.

“It’s the moment when years of behind-the-scenes work finally connect back to the people we serve,” she said. “This is what cleaner air, more stable energy prices, and a more resilient future for Cambridge families actually looks like.”

The impact of those goals being achieved will be felt in Cambridge and across the country, as Bowman Wind and Prairie Solar give the people of North Dakota and Illinois access to electricity generated without producing air pollution.

“What we’re building isn’t just cleaner electricity — it’s a foundation for the next generation,” Wormser said. “These investments will support residents and businesses for years to come, and they demonstrate that a just, affordable, carbon-free future is within reach.”

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