Work is underway on a new solar array at Mattapan’s Boston Nature Center (BNC). The environmental organization Mass Audubon earlier this month broke ground on the array, which, once operational, will produce all the energy required annually by the George Robert White Conservation Center and neighboring preschool buildings.

The array represents a major step forward for the organization’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2022. The groundbreaking took place on Nov. 5 at the Center, a sanctuary on the grounds of the former Boston State Hospital.

Installed by ReVision Energy, the array will include the rooftop panels on the Conservation Center, Boston’s first “green” municipal building, and ground-mounted solar panels nearby. In all, Mass Audubon estimates that the solar panels will produce enough electricity to eliminate the equivalent of carbon dioxide emission from 102,678 pounds of coal burned annually.

In addition to the solar array, the BNC plans to convert the three brick cottages that house its preschool and educational programs from natural gas to electrical heating systems.  

The impetus for the solar array came at “a pivotal time,” according to Julie Brandlen, Mass Audubon director for the Boston region. “If we got that close [to carbon neutrality with the George Robert White building], we wanted to make sure we were redoing all of the buildings,” she said. “We were making sure that we had enough solar capacity, combined with the photovoltaics we already had on the campus, to produce all the energy that we consume in a year.”

Much of the funding for the $600,000 project came from the city’s George Robert White Fund and the Tern Foundation’s TernSOLAR challenge grant program, with private donors supplying the rest. 

“We feel like the city, the state, and Mass Audubon are well-aligned in this, and we’re ready to help in any way that we can,” Brandlen said.

The Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, the city’s energy and environment chief, attended the groundbreaking ceremony to promote Boston’s energy regulations for new buildings. Bethany Card, the state’s undersecretary of environmental affairs, also attended to talk about the state’s goals of slashing carbon emissions by half by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Having both the city and the state perspective at the groundbreaking was important to us, and we look forward to working on both the city and the state level to advance this as much as we can,” Brandlen said.

Mass Audubon’s agenda includes fostering climate resiliency, increasing access to nature in under-resourced communities, and mobilizing to address climate change.

In addition to its camp programs and “Pathways to Nature” preschool, the Nature Center offers community-scale events such as “Rockin’ with Raptors.” The Center also has longstanding partnerships with several Boston public schools, offering nature-based programming at the Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School in Mattapan among others. Additionally, it opens up the BNC for private weddings, showers, repasts, and retreats. 

For each of these initiatives, cost and access are taken into account, according to Brandlen.

“We see Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center as a community nature center,” Brandlen said. “We love to provide an array of public programs so that folks who want to engage with nature can do so right in Mattapan. Part of our intentionality about location is so that neighbors can see that there is nature all around us. We don’t have to go to the Grand Canyon. It’s right here.”