Planner Passage

Michael Cahill, Climate Resiliency and Sustainability Planner

Welcome to the Winter 2025–2026 edition of The Seasonal, the Town of Plymouth’s periodic newsletter reporting our work on environmental, energy, and climate-related issues. As we look back on some 2025 highlights, we’re also looking forward to many exciting opportunities in the new year. If you have any questions, ideas, or feedback, you can always reach me at mcahill@plymouth-ma.gov. And if you haven't yet subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here. 

Energy Assistance

Plymouth Hires First Full-Time Energy Advisor to Help Residents

Our community was fortunate to receive a grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to hire the Town’s first Energy Advocate (EA). Fhillipe Reis, a longtime Plymouth resident, came aboard last fall to help homes, small businesses, and local nonprofits navigate today’s complex energy landscape. Fhillipe (pronounced “Felipe”) can help with anything from scheduling building energy assessments, to accessing state incentives, to understanding specific charges on energy bills, for starters. He is also trilingual, able to converse with English, Portuguese, and Spanish speakers.

Fhillipe brings extensive energy expertise in a number of areas relevant to homeowners and organizations, including weatherization (making buildings more efficient and resilient), residential and commercial solar (including installation requirements and potential savings calculations), and building electrification (including switching to electric appliances and heating systems and installing electric vehicle chargers). He’s also deeply familiar with all the various incentive programs offered under the state’s Mass Save program.

Fhillipe holds weekly office hours at the Plymouth Public Library (Main Library) on the first and last Wednesday of each month from 2 to 6 p.m. and monthly office hours at the Plymouth Center for Active Living on the third Tuesday of every month from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. You can also connect with Fhillipe by phone at (508) 747-1620, Ext. 10131 and online here.

Since starting his position in September 2025, Fhillipe has conducted two dozen public outreach events and engaged with more than 500 Plymouth residents. His position is supported by a three-year grant of more than $250,000 that runs through March 2028, at which time the Town can apply for an extension. 

The grant was awarded under Mass Save’s Community First Partnership Program, which supports Plymouth and nearly five dozen other communities in the Commonwealth. Hiring Fhillipe directly supports the Town’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, one of whose action items was to create an energy coaching program to benefit residents and local organizations.

Blue Future

Plymouth’s Annual Conference a Resounding Success

To build momentum for new environmentally beneficial technologies and brand Plymouth as a regional epicenter of the “blue economy,” the Town of Plymouth and the Plymouth Foundation partner to host an annual conference. On October 16–27, 2025, they held the fourth annual “Blue Future Conference” at Plymouth’s Hotel 1620 for an audience of over 400 participants.

The Blue Future Conference is not just an event – it’s a launchpad for ideas, innovation, and partnerships that are transforming the region’s marine economy. Day one hosted 200 guests from various fields including academia, government, nonprofit, environmental, marine tech, insurance, finance, health, and aquaculture. Bill Nye, TV’s beloved “Science Guy,” provided the keynote. 

Day two, the student session, hosted more than 200 students, roughly double last year’s figures. About a quarter were young women – an 18-fold increase over just two years ago. Virtually all students found the program educational (98.5%) and inspiring (94%) and would recommend to another student (97%).

Critical Insight

Innovative Partnership Helps Plymouth Adapt to Risk

Plymouth has partnered with InnSure, a Boston-based nonprofit insurance innovation hub, on a pilot project to develop risk simulation software meant to support the Town’s economic development and coastal resilience planning. The pilot focuses on 500 residential and commercial properties from Boundary Lane to the mouth of Eel River, an area chosen for both its density of development and its risks from sea level rise, storm surges, extreme precipitation, and stormwater and riverine flooding.

The risk simulation software will produce a “Total Cost of Risk” metric, which the Town aims to leverage in its planning and decision-making. It also plans to use the data to enable homes and businesses to receive “resilience audits” so they can better understand flood risks and potential solutions for enhancing physical and financial resilience.

Currently, 1,561 buildings in Plymouth, or 9% of the total, are vulnerable to a 100-year flooding event. Moreover, 81% of Plymouth’s municipally owned critical facilities are located within a flood zone, while data indicates a 24% increase in heavy rainfall events and 2.4 inches of sea level rise for Plymouth by 2050. If left unaddressed, these hazards are likely to cause failure of infrastructure, negative impacts to utilities and ratepayers, and substantial disruptions to our critical emergency services and economic activity.

In 2024, the U.S. experienced 27 climate-related disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage and cost $183 billion overall. Since 1980, the U.S. has experienced more than 400 climate-related disasters at a total cost of nearly $3 trillion. Climate change therefore poses one of the greatest economic risks facing the U.S. 

The insurance industry has largely struggled to adapt – and so have consumers. As climate-related risks have increased, insurance premiums have skyrocketed and policies have not been renewed. In 2023, Massachusetts ranked fourth among U.S. states for insurance non-renewals, while Plymouth County ranked 87th among all U.S. counties. A catastrophic storm event could therefore trigger cascading economy-wide financial effects for Plymouth’s local and regional economy.

The Town secured a two-year award of roughly $295,000 from the Coastal Resilience Grant Program of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) to support this project, with the remaining matching funds (10% of project costs) allocated from the Environmental Affairs Revolving Fund at Fall Town Meeting 2025.

Tree Canopy

New Plantings Will Cool, Beautify Town Wharf

This spring, Plymouth’s Department of Energy & Environment (“DEE”) will embark on a program to enhance Town Wharf after securing a grant of over $65,000 from the Cooling Corridors Grant Program of the Massachusetts Division of Conservation Services. “Cooling Corridors” funds communities to conduct tree plantings and related heat mitigation activities and enhance the tree canopy in neighborhoods and public spaces.

DEE will plant shade trees in two public parking lots on Water St. between Town Wharf Way and the roadway entrance to the State Boat Ramp. This area contains nearly three acres of contiguous, paved asphalt surface with little to no shade canopy to mitigate the heat from solar radiation. On especially hot and sunny days, this can produce dangerous “heat island effects.”

DEE staff will work with the Parks & Forestry Division to select a variety of right-sized native species to provide shade canopy from the median islands located throughout the parking lots.