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Manager Hired To Help Springfield Achieve Climate Goals

Planet Earth

The third largest city in Massachusetts has hired its first sustainability coordinator to help it achieve energy efficiency goals. 

  Gerard Kiernan started work a few weeks ago as the city of Springfield’s Facilities and Sustainability Engineer.

 The former operations manager at the Eastern States Exposition, Kiernan said he is “proud and honored to have the position.”

   The city aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

"I think it is audacious, but we need to be audacious and aware of our climate," Kiernan said in an interview.

Climate activists lobbied city officials for years to create the job of sustainability coordinator.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.