MassIPL is an interfaith network made up of thousands of people from 250 houses of worship across Massachusetts. We bring many traditions and spiritualities together to meet the climate crisis, building a future where people and planet can thrive.
There are more than three thousand houses of worship in Massachusetts, gathering hundreds of thousands of people every week. They are, together, the largest untapped resource for climate action in the Commonwealth. MassIPL exists to help them step into the scared call to protect the Earth.
For more than twenty years, we've been a religious response to the climate crisis: working alongside people of religious conviction and moral conscience to ground climate action in faith and spirituality, lower the emissions of their buildings, and lift their voices for justice in the public square.
Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light is a nonprofit organization representing more than 250 houses of worship across Massachusetts. Our mission is to inspire and support people of faith and conscience to respond to climate change and care for the environment — by helping communities Pray in ways that ground climate action in faith and spiritual values, Act by stewarding their buildings and resources to cut climate pollution and strengthen community life, and Mobilize around climate as a matter of justice and morality.
"It’s in that convergence
of spiritual people becoming active
and active people becoming spiritual
that the hope of humanity now rests."
Learn more about the MassIPL story.
As people of faith, we begin with love. We see the earth not as a mechanism but as a miracle of creation. We see people not as producers and consumers but as unique and precious. We see ecological healing and environmental justice as a sacred responsibility.
What we hold sacred, we will protect.
In the late 1990s, an Episcopal priest in San Francisco named Sally Bingham started asking a stubborn question: if we're called to love our neighbor, how can we keep polluting our neighbor's air? With layperson Steve MacAusland, she organized congregations to buy clean electricity and eventually named the project 'Interfaith Power & Light,' borrowing the language of the utility companies to make a point. This was a power company — just a different kind.
That model worked, and it spread. In 2000, it went national, with California and Massachusetts among the first state affiliates. MassIPL was incorporated on April 26, 2002, founded by MacAusland and Tom Nutt-Powell. From the beginning, we were practical: assessing buildings, improving energy efficiency, and helping congregations reduce carbon emissions.
Through the 2010s, MassIPL grew from a fledgling initiative into an established statewide voice for faith-rooted climate action. As our work inside houses of worship grew steadily, we carried that moral witness to Beacon Hill, and trained faith leaders and community organizers to make sustainability a lasting part of congregational and community life.
Over time, MassIPL broadened its focus. The work that began with our buildings grew into something more holistic: connecting the climate crisis to our deepest values, taking practical action in our communities, and advocating for the policies a crisis this size demands. That threefold work is now the heart of everything we do: Pray, Act, Mobilize.
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Today, MassIPL works alongside more than 250 congregations across the Commonwealth — offering technical advisory on energy and efficiency for houses of worship, advancing environmental justice where the burdens fall heaviest, and organizing a faith-based mobilization team to bring voices of faith into the public square to speak up for the climate.
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Learn more about the staff, Executive Committee, and other leaders at MassIPL.
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