Lincoln Comprehensive Climate Action Plan

Global problems need local solutions... The Town of Lincoln is committed to addressing climate change and creating a sustainable and inclusive community. Lincoln believes that global problems need local solutions. As such, the development of this Lincoln Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (L-CAP) established climate actions, described existing and ongoing climate efforts, and developed implementation strategies to advance the Town’s climate priorities. 

It is intended for the 2023 L-CAP to serve as a living framework to help guide the Town and its community members towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also advancing community resilience in equitable and sustainable ways.  

Over the last nine months, this L-CAP planning process provided many opportunities to connect with stakeholders in the community through online survey participation, “listening tour” conversations, workshops, and focus groups. Feedback gathered from these engagement activities served as guidance for the development of the Plan. 

To center equity in this L-CAP planning process, the following questions were considered, especially when establishing the town’s climate goals and developing priority strategies for implementation: 

• Who has been historically impacted? 
• Who will be most impacted by the type of changes to our climate to be expected? 
• How will the benefits be distributed?

To learn more about our efforts, scroll through this webpage, or use the tabs above to skip to a specific section. 

Communities across the Commonwealth, including Lincoln, are already experiencing changing climate conditions. Average annual temperatures and the number of hot days per year have increased, and more annual precipitation and extreme precipitation events have been observed. These conditions will likely intensify, along with associated impacts, according to future climate projections.

For this planning process, a review of Lincoln’s 2017 Greenhouse Gas Inventory was conducted. Additional key data used for this review included municipal electricity and natural gas consumption data, amongst other sources, that allowed us to see a more comprehensive perspective of Lincoln’s emissions from various sectors in 2017.3 Overall, Lincoln’s total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in 2017 were approximately 56,370 metric tons of CO2e. Municipal operations and facilities in Lincoln accounted for approximately 8% of total emissions in 2017. Residential buildings and passenger vehicles were responsible for approximately 38.5% and 32.8% of emissions respectively, while commercial and institutional buildings and manufacturing industries in addition to commercial vehicles, were responsible for approximately 20.6% of emissions. 

Lincoln will also need to prepare its community members, businesses, and residents, to adapt to the changing climate. Furthermore, when thinking of these climate risks, it’s important to keep in mind those who are and will be impacted first and worst. These communities include those identified as priority populations (from previous climate vulnerability assessment work) and the state-designated Environmental Justice communities. These groups included seniors, youth, renters, residents of multi-family developments and assisted living communities, individuals with disabilities, residents who primarily speak a language other than English (a focus on Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian speakers), people of color, and low-income residents. 

The strategies listed for each planning area represent the top recommended strategies, developed in collaboration with municipal staff and community stakeholders. These strategies provide a mix of necessary actions, such as building capacity for municipal staff, assisting businesses and residents to better understand available resources and technical assistance, and continued advocacy efforts at regional and state levels. “Action types” and “implementation lead” are identified to help organize these strategies.  It should be noted that a periodic review and evaluation of these strategies will be necessary to reflect changing status (e.g., policies, funding availability, etc.), as well as most current needs and priorities in Lincoln. 

These strategies do not pertain to any particular planning area but are still critical to support the implementation of the Lincoln Climate Action plan overall. These supporting strategies represent overarching actions that ensure monitoring and tracking of climate action and implementation progress, setting up operational structures, as well as building capacity and expertise to advance L-CAP goals and strategies overtime. Successful establishment of these supporting strategies will support a smooth transition and a more effective implementation of the rest of the L-CAP strategies. 

Carbon Emissions: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted when fossil fuels are burned in vehicles, buildings, and other industrial processes (such as in factories). 

Carbon Neutral: Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by balancing those emissions so they are equal (or less than) the emissions that get removed through the planet’s natural absorption; in basic terms it means we reduce our emissions through climate action. 

Carbon Sequestration: Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by balancing those emissions so they are equal (or less than) the emissions that get removed through the planet’s natural absorption; in basic terms it means we reduce our emissions through climate action.  

CO2e: Carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, indicates the number of metric tons of CO2 emissions with the same global warming potential as one metric ton of another greenhouse gas. Source: U.S. EPA 

Clean Energy: Sources of electricity or heating/cooling derived from non-fossil fuel-based technologies including solar photovoltaics, solar hot water, wind, geothermal, air source heat pumps, as well as other emerging technologies such as waste energy recovery from sewers, data centers and the like. These sources are known as clean energy or renewable energy, because they are not from limited resources like coal, gas, and oil. 

Climate Change: Describes the long-term changes in average weather patterns, temperatures, and precipitation across the world due to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere.  Scientific consensus shows that current climate change is caused by human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causing global temperatures to increase. While global average temperatures are rising, the local impact to weather may include both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as changes in precipitation (rain and snow), increased risk of severe weather events, sea level rise, and other changes to weather systems. In addition to extreme weather impacts, climate change affects the world around us including shifts in agricultural and growing seasons, pollen and air quality changes, tourism, insect borne diseases, pests, and other impacts to the environment. 

Decarbonization: Reducing the use of carbon-emitting energy sources, usually in the energy, buildings, and transportation sectors. 

Electric Vehicle: A vehicle that is powered fully or mostly by electricity. 

Electrification: Converting a machine or system to the use of electrical power. 

 Energy Burden: Energy burden is defined as the percentage of a household’s income spent on home energy bills. In Massachusetts, the average energy burden is about 3%. However, the average energy burden for low-income populations is about 10%, and, in certain neighborhoods, energy burden is as high as 31%. This means that some low-income families are spending close to a third of their income on energy bills alone, sometimes forcing them to choose between paying their utility bills and spending money on essentials like food, rent, or medicine.  

 Energy Efficiency: The use of less energy to perform the same task or produce the same result. Energy-efficient homes and buildings use less energy to heat, cool, and run appliances and electronics, and energy-efficient manufacturing facilities use less energy to produce goods.  

Energy Insecurity: People who are unable to pay for basic energy needs such as heating, cooling, and lighting in their homes live in a state of energy insecurity. This is often the case when a household has a very high energy burden and may be at risk of having utilities shut off due to non-payment. 

Environmental Justice: The principle that all people have a right to be protected from environmental hazards and to live in and enjoy a clean and healthful environment regardless of race, color, national origin, income, or English language proficiency.  

 Equity: Equity is the principle of fairness in burden sharing. With respect to climate change, it is how the impacts and responses to the issue, including costs and benefits, are distributed in and by society in more or less equitable ways. One example of including equity in climate work is being aware of who participates in the conversations and controls the processes of decision-making related to the topic.  

Fossil Fuels: Carbon based fuels that are mined or drilled from the earth such as coal, oil, natural gas/methane gas, gasoline. When processed and burned, fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants.   

 Green Infrastructure: Using nature -based solutions to help protect against flooding, extreme heat, and improve air and water quality. Some green infrastructure methods are the use of rain gardens, green roofs, and trees. 

 Greenhouse Gases: Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.  

Greenhouse Gas Inventory: A greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory accounts for the emissions resulting from a geographic boundary in a given year. GHG emissions can be accounted for through different methods, the most common of which is to look at emissions that result from activities occurring within the city or town boundary. GHG emissions are expressed in Metric Tons Equivalent of Carbon, even though there are many types of GHGs.

Nature Based Solutions: Describes projects that use ecosystems to provide services and benefits through the preservation, conservation, restoration, or creation of natural systems such as wetlands. These projects may provide additional co-benefits such as outdoor space and recreation, wildlife habitat, carbon reduction or sequestration. 

Net Zero: Net zero is when the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by the removal of the same amount of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (such as through carbon sequestration).  

Renewable Energy: Energy produced from sources like the sun and wind that are naturally replenished and do not run out. Renewable energy can be used for electricity generation, space and water heating and cooling, and transportation.  

Resilience: The ability to withstand, recover, and bounce back from climate change impacts such as flooding, extreme heat, or extreme storms. This includes the ability of a community to address the needs of its built, social, and natural environment in order to anticipate, be prepared for, and recover stronger from events related to climate change. 

Sustainability: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment and what Earth can provide us with. To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in harmony to support present and future generations.