Acadia Center
Public records show a registered, tax-exempt organization in good standing.
What it says it does
Acadia Center advances bold, effective, and equitable clean energy solutions for a livable climate and a stronger, more equitable economy.
- Income
- $984,837
- Spending
- $2.7 million
- Spent on programs
- 88%
- Reserves
- 18 months of spending
- Largest source of income
- donations and private grants, 84%
- Employees
- 19
- Volunteers
- 13
- Highest pay
- $247,326, president
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Financial health
Good: 70 out of 100. Higher than 35% of charities in its peer group (environment, $250k to $1m).
Reserves
35 of 35Spendable reserves would cover 18.0 months of spending.
Debt
20 of 20It owes 5% of what it owns.
Living within its means
0 of 15Spending exceeded income by 170% of income.
Income trend
0 of 15Income fell 75% on the year before.
Spending floor
15 of 1588% of spending went to programs and raising each dollar of donations cost 18 cents.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Governance
Strong: 100 out of 100. Higher than 93% of charities in its peer group (environment, $250k to $1m).
Independent board
25 of 2511 of 12 voting board members are independent.
Conflict of interest policy
15 of 15Has a written conflict of interest policy.
Whistleblower policy
8 of 8Has a written whistleblower policy.
Record keeping policy
7 of 7Has a written policy on keeping and destroying records.
Board minutes
5 of 5Keeps minutes of board meetings.
Board sees the tax return
10 of 10Gave the board a copy of this return before filing it.
Pay set independently
5 of 5Sets its chief executive's pay through independent review and comparison.
Independent check of accounts
15 of 15Its accounts were audited by an independent accountant.
No reported misuse
10 of 10Reports no diversion of assets, excess benefits or loans to insiders.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Impact evidence
Describes programs. Its tax return describes what it does but we have found no measurable results in it.
Programs described in its return (4)
- $333,814 spent. Energy Efficiency and Building Decarbonization:Acadia Center advocates for policies and programs to upgrade buildings to make them more efficient and healthier. The project advances energy efficiency programs that provide incentives and support to consumers to weatherize and improve the efficiency of their homes and businesses by substituting old energy-hogging equipment for new, more efficient ones. This effort is supported by shifting billions of utility dollars from purchasing expensive power plant contracts into low-cost energy efficiency programs, including through state energy efficiency planning bodies across the region and building energy codes. More efficient housing improves indoor air quality and public health. Using cleaner, efficient systems reduces energy bills. By improving the efficient use of electricity and fossil gas, reductions result in needing costly infrastructure. The project focuses on transitioning buildings to clean, efficient, all-electric heating and cooling systems, and it pursues this work through coalitions, state policies, a building-science approach, and innovative methods that make energy efficiency programs easier for consumers to participate in, specifically in environmental justice, rural and other historically underserved communities. These efforts encompass improving weatherization and addressing pre-weatherization barriers for the region's aging building stock, driving flexible loads and grid-interactive buildings, and synchronizing in-building electrification strategies with broader community- and neighborhood-level solutions like networked geothermal. The project further works to sustain and advance energy efficiency as a resource at a regional level, where it contributes some 12-14% of the region's power needs.
- $1.0 million spent. Clean Energy and Infrastructure:Acadia Center advocates for accelerating the deployment of clean energy on the power grid, from large-scale resources like offshore wind to local, distributed renewables like community and rooftop solar. This work extends to the complex area of reforms to remove barriers to clean power in the regional electricity grid, where our goals include articulating the consumer, health, environmental justice, and climate case against persistent reliance on fossil fuel for electricity in the region. In addition to overarching power grid reform work, the organization is pursuing a suite of grid- and infrastructure-focused projects intended to improve the responsiveness of power grids to consumer, climate, and equity goals detailed below: the Northeast Grid Planning Project (NGPF) is promoting a dialogue among stakeholders and power grid operators in a large area of the northeastern U.S. (New York and New England) with Eastern Canada (Ontario, Quebec and eastern provinces); the Communities and Clean Grid project is a novel effort to plug municipalities into the important work of the regional grid operator and help raise their voices and participation in influencing decisions made in the power grid that advance local and state policy priorities; and developing a set of analyses on the barriers to and solutions for harmonious siting, financing, and community engagement around large-scale grid infrastructure projects.Clean Energy:Shifting electric power generation to zero and low-carbon resources is central to Acadia Center's core program work. As building and transportation sectors electrify, securing renewables and clean energy resources on the grid is vital to ensuring adequate renewable supply to keep pace with rising demand, power vehicles and heat pumps with clean electrons, and deliver economic and public health benefits to local communities. Acadia Center is focused on accelerating the deployment of diverse renewable resources that are and will be part of an optimized renewable portfolio for the region, including offshore wind, onshore wind, utility-scale solar, community solar, rooftop solar, clean hydropower, and beyond. The program undertakes policy advocacy and market reforms needed to remove barriers and spur adoption at the local, state, and regional levels from renewable portfolio standards to net energy metering rules, solar incentive programs, and large-scale procurements.Acadia Center has long advocated for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program, which has delivered over $6 billion in funds to invest in clean energy and consumer benefits in 11 participating states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. We lead regional advocacy calls on RGGI, develop recommendations to the states and RGGI, Inc., and prepare analyses and reports on both the program's benefits and ways to improve it.Clean Grid:Acadia Center has long played an important advocacy role before ISO-NE, NEPOOL, and their respective stakeholder committees and bodies, such as the Consumer Liaison Group (CLG). In conjunction with this work, the organization's Communities and Clean Grid project provides energy education resource material about the power grid to municipalities in the region. The objective of this project is to equip and empower local communities to understand better and potentially engage in and influence deliberative ISO New England grid planning and management processes, aiming to 1) place local communities on an equal footing with other stakeholders seeking to influence ISO-NE grid planning and management, and 2) enlist them in the region-wide effort to implement equitable, affordable clean energy solutions. Acadia Center has advocated for the creation of an Independent Transmission Monitor (ITM), to provide necessary review of billions of dollars in transmission upgrade projects that currently receive little or no public oversight yet are funded by ratepayers and is closely monitoring the Asset Condition Review process established at ISO. We are advancing the concept of using modern technology to improve the grid, called Grid Enhancing Technologies or GETs. GETs can increase the capacity of the current grid in low-cost ways that avoid building high priced new transmission lines. GETs cost a fraction of new lines yet are not deployed because there is (1) no mandate and (2) they do not provide the same level of financial return to utilities and transmission owners. We provided comments in processes at ISO-NE on the LTTP process and attend NEPOOL end user meetings to raise points and concerns. Northeast Grid Planning Forum:The Northeast Grid Planning Forum (NGPF) is a deliberative stakeholder dialogue designed to formalize and deepen collaboration across northeast U.S. states and Canadian provinces around interregional energy systems and grid coordination. Acadia Center and Nergica, independent US and Canada-based non-profit corporations serve as co-convenors for this effort. The dialogue will be convened via three distinct roundtable processes: 1) environmental justice and community mobilization, 2) interregional planning, and 3) clean energy procurement and market development. Interregional grid coordination in this context includes a range of planning, investment, market design, community benefits, and operational approaches. Northeast states already share electrical connections with their Canadian neighbors, but a more holistic approach to planning and implementing improvements to the regional energy system will deliver significant value to New England ratepayers.Infrastructure and Community Engagement:Acadia Center is addressing the issue that to meet climate goals successfully, a large increase in renewable generation will require sufficient transmission and other infrastructure to be built. That increase will occur when communities and stakeholders value and support infrastructure development. This will require improvements in permitting processes to be incl
- $367,339 spent. Utility Innovation and Accountability: Acadia Center advances thought-leading reforms in state and regional utility regulation so all parties engaged in the energy system utilities, regulators, and consumers work together to achieve shared goals. The program builds awareness about how outdated financial incentives influence utility decision-making and can misalign with clean energy deployment, climate goals, and ratepayer benefits. The program has significant reforms of public utility commissions and state regulatory oversight so that they consider climate impacts and equity imperatives alongside reliability, affordability, and safety. Program goals seek to catalyze modernization of the grid and the utility system of the future, with a focus on performance-based regulation, utility performance incentive mechanisms, rate-design for electrification and DERS, integrated distribution system planning (gas/electric), non-wires alternatives, and inclusive stakeholder engagement.
- $629,651 spent. Climate Policy and Solutions:Every program and project at Acadia Center touches on climate policy and solutions. Climate Policy represents a dedicated set of activities specifically focused on addressing opportunities for states and the region to achieve overarching climate targets, which require deep, economy-wide decarbonization and phaseout of the use of fossil fuels. Program area activities include engaging with states on comprehensive climate planning studies, modeling, and energy system strategies. This work advances long-term, "big picture thinking," which is needed to ensure that comprehensive and cohesive strategies for decarbonizing entire economies are considered. Climate Policy includes work in Acadia Center's CLEAN-E Analysis team. It embraces three project areas that are essential to the achievement of near- and long-term climate targets at a state and regional level: 1) CLEAN-E/Analysis; 2) Fossil Fuel Phase-Out, and 3) State and Regional Climate Policies, which includes work on programs that set binding caps on emissions (e.g., RGGI, cap-and-invest). In addition, Acadia Center has released "Rapid Response" materials addressing claims made about the costs of clean energy. We issue topical Explainers and related public information on clean energy policy, events and technologies.Climate, Energy, and Equity Analysis (CLEAN-E):Acadia Center develops analytic materials and independent, thought-leading recommendations across various clean energy and climate issues. Work products created by our Climate, Energy, and Equity Analysis program include 1) comprehensive, proactive reports, 2) analytically focused comments to government agencies and filings with regulatory bodies, and 3) rapid response offense/defense analysis. In recent years, we have produced groundbreaking reports about building electrification, the RGGI program, and issues around claims for clean fuels. Work performed in 2025 includes comprehensive assessments of energy affordability and benefits of energy efficiency and clean energy; ways that solar and clean energy saved billions of dollars during periods of high heat; and detailed information on energy burden.Fossil Fuel Phase-Out:To meet climate goals, the region must almost entirely phase out its use of fossil gas, commonly referred to as natural gas and other fossil fuels. Acadia Center seeks to replace fossil gas with clean energy alternatives in electricity production, building heating, and transportation. This conversion necessarily requires the downsizing and decommissioning fossil fuel infrastructure and supply chain networks, such as gas distribution system transition. This project advances proposals to level the playing field for renewables and efficient electric technologies and shrink the reliance on fossil fuels across the region and all program areas. As the electric sector faces an approaching need to develop and deploy dispatchable, emissions-free resources (DEFR) such as long-duration storage, green hydrogen, and other potential resources, Acadia Center is engaging closely on the question of how to address reliability and resource adequacy role currently served by fossil fuels, including reliance on dual-fuel oil/gas and LNG resources for winter reliability. We provided comments and recommendations related to the Everet LNG terminal and participated in discussed in Massachusetts related to the role of natural gas. Our staff intervened in Future of Gas proceedings in various states.State and Regional Climate Policies:Since its inception, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has been a primary focus of Acadia Center helping to shape the design, implementation, and evolution of this important regional program to address power plant emissions. RGGI is undergoing its third program review, and we continue to lead the charge to improve RGGI and address pollution in communities suffering high asthma rates and a legacy of fossil fuel pollution. Acadia Center advocacy focuses on strengthening the program's emissions cap and adopting new equity protections. Acadia Center is further exploring a regional program to address economy-wide emissions and infrastructure needs.Transportation and Mobility:Acadia Center is working to accelerate the transition to low-carbon transportation. We advance policy approaches that address transportation emissions and invest in equitable access to clean mobility solutions, including solutions that specifically focus on disproportionate impacts and gaps in service in underserved urban and rural communities. The solutions we promote range from electric vehicles and zero-emission buses and trucks to transit, rail, and biking/walking infrastructure, among other measures to reduce emissions and vehicle miles traveled (VMT). We strive to help states evolve the way they and their DOTs plan for and invest in their traditional transportation assets to a model that is compatible with emissions reduction requirements while also ensuring that the region's construction workforces see a vibrant future even as funding is shifted away from, e.g., highway expansion projects. Our vision also includes place-based decarbonization interventions at key hubs within the region's transportation system, including ports, freight terminals, and airports. We initiated research into ways to fund and invest funds to support community transportation needs in an evolving program.Equity and Environmental Justice:Embedded across Acadia Center's work is addressing climate and clean energy policies and solutions designed to improve the lives of all residents and specifically redress the detrimental impacts of a fossil fuel economy on lower-income urban and rural communities. Acadia Center internally applies diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice through staff discussions, materials, approaches, and engagement. Programs seek to connect and build relationships with community-based organizations and diverse stakeholders to improve energy system decisions a
Source: Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Legitimacy checks
Is it registered with the IRS? Passed.
Listed in the IRS master file of tax-exempt organizations as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Has the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status? Passed.
Not on the IRS automatic revocation list.
Source: Automatic revocation of exemption list, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Are donations tax-deductible? Passed.
On the IRS list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.
Source: Publication 78 data: organizations eligible for tax-deductible contributions, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it keeping up with its IRS filings? Passed.
Most recent return on file covers the year ending December 2025.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
How long has it been tax-exempt? Passed.
Recognized by the IRS since August 1998.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it in good standing with state regulators? Passed.
Not on California's list of charities barred from soliciting. Other states are not yet checked.
Source: May Not Operate or Solicit for Charitable Purposes list, California Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, file dated October 21, 2026.
Ratings and checks are our reading of public records, using the published method. They are not a statement about anyone's honesty. If you work for this organization, you can send corrections or results, confirm you want gifts through Veridonate, or ask to be removed from giving.