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For years, a team of experts has traveled from tiny town to tiny town in New Hampshire, helping the communities plan and execute clean energy strategies. Now the idea has secured federal funding to expand nationwide — a notable win as the Trump administration claws back billions of dollars for decarbonization policy.
The $3 million in funding was included in the fiscal 2026 agriculture spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law last month as part of the bill that reopened the government after the shutdown this fall. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from the Granite State, led the push for the pilots, which could help municipalities not only cut greenhouse gas emissions but save money as energy costs rise nationwide.
“It’s very exciting to us that Sen. Shaheen saw what we were doing and saw the potential,” said Sarah Brock, director of the New Hampshire program, dubbed Energy Circuit Rider. “It would be amazing to have versions of this program scattered across the country to help communities understand and find solutions to whatever their energy challenges are.”
Shaheen’s office hopes to get the program — which will be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service — up and running within the next year. Because it is a pilot, it does not have to go through the same extensive regulatory processes as other programs, which should allow a relatively timely implementation, a Senate aide said.
Shaheen originally proposed a national version of the program with an annual budget of $25 million in standalone legislation in 2023, and again in June 2025, before pushing to include the smaller pilot in November’s spending bill.
“The commonsense energy circuit riders pilot is an important and effective way for communities to get the tools they need to take on clean energy and energy efficiency projects that lower costs,” Shaheen said in a statement to Canary Media.
The seeds of New Hampshire’s program were planted roughly a decade ago, as towns and cities across the state formed energy committees tasked with lowering power bills and emissions, Brock said. Clean energy advocates began talking about how to support these groups, which were made up of volunteers with widely varying levels of expertise, and which often served small towns without the resources to hire staff focused on energy issues.
The conversation turned to the idea of hiring a “circuit rider,” a position modeled on the traveling preachers, judges, and doctors of centuries past, who provided their services to communities along their route. In 2018, the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund, a foundation that supports causes in New Hampshire’s rural north, funded a position for a full-time clean energy expert who would provide knowledge and support to any town in the region at no cost. Nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire agreed to host the new hire.
The first energy circuit rider, Melissa Elander, had a mission statement but no real guidance on how to do her new job. She spent her first year introducing herself to towns throughout the region, offering her services as a researcher, consultant, and grant writer, and she slowly began to rack up some wins, Brock said. The first initiative she supported was an energy-efficient lighting project for the town of Whitefield, population 2,500.
“As word of those successes spread, more and more communities were interested,” Brock said. “It was clear to us there was something here.”
Today, the program has six energy circuit riders on staff, including Elander. It has expanded to cover all of the state’s 234 municipalities — 138 of which the program has provided support for — as well as small businesses. The team has helped towns navigate a wide range of projects, including weatherization of public buildings, solar installations, and planning for fleet electrification. Clean Energy New Hampshire does not have complete data, but estimates that just 41% of completed projects have yielded $4.26 million in total savings for municipalities.
The program was vital to the successful completion of an all-electric, solar-powered library in the community of Barrington, said Cynthia Hoisington, chair of the town’s energy committee. The municipality worked with an energy circuit rider to manage the process of accepting bids and choosing a vendor for the solar installation.
“You need a trusted expert in these special-knowledge situations when you want to make sure you’re doing what’s right for your town,” Hoisington said. “The bottom line is a lot of this never would’ve gotten done without their help.”
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