The Little City That Could
For Chelsea, Massachusetts, a new microgrid means energy resilience.
On a recent morning, researcher Dominick Dusseau offers a glimpse into the future of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a small, industrial city just across the Mystic River from Boston. On digital maps he displays over Zoom, great blue splashes cover large swaths of the city—areas where, by his calculations, climate-driven flooding is likely to occur. The maps depict a world where the locals who can least afford it will get hit the hardest.
Dusseau’s analysis is a collaboration between the city and his employer, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a nonprofit founded by a prominent ecologist who sounded early alarms about the hazards of DDT and climate change. Its mission is to put actionable data into the hands of decision makers, which is why it doesn’t charge for the climate risk assessments it conducts for cities like Chelsea, whose working-class population of about 39,000 is predominantly Latino.
