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A new state Office of the Energy Transformation will help lead the clean energy transition, the Healey administration announced Friday.

Once launched, it will pick up where the state left off last year, turning words into action. In December, state officials laid out a new regulatory strategy to move utilities away from natural gas as part of the effort to effectively eliminate climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The new office will be tasked with ensuring that there’s sufficient electrical infrastructure, that the transition from gas to electric is well coordinated, and that the transition is done equitably for impacted workers in the gas industry. A former National Grid executive, Melissa Lavinson, will assume the role as the organization’s first executive director, starting in May.

“Melissa Lavinson joins our team with close working relationships with the utilities and unions and will be able to build quick consensus as we make the transition away from fossil fuels,” said Governor Maura Healey. “She’ll be able to translate our policy goals into real-world actions.”

Lavinson has been tasked with putting together a task force with representatives from a broad swath, including utilities, business, labor, and municipalities. The idea is to learn how these groups and the state can best work together and where progress can be made quickly.

“We have to make this transition,” Lavinson said. “We have to figure out how we’re going to do it, and we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to do it at pace.”

The new office builds on an order by the Department of Public Utilities late last year that laid the broad strokes of a future that is minimally dependent on gas pipelines, with buildings powered by the sun and the wind, and warmed by heat pumps.

Lavinson’s job will be to make that vision a reality, while also taking care of utility workers whose jobs may disappear or fundamentally change.

“It is a big job,” said Bradley Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation. “They’ve chosen a very capable person to do it. Now they need to give her the tools she needs to get the job done.”

That was a point echoed by other advocates as well, who cheered the governor’s announcement, but worried that the size of the job Lavinson is taking on is massive, and the new department needs to be given adequate resources to succeed.

“If the office’s mandate is well scoped and Lavinson’s team is adequately staffed and resourced, they could significantly accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to a clean grid,” said Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

But the state’s commitment needs to match its aspiration, she said.

To start, it will be Lavinson plus one staff member, said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper. “And then we’ll see,” she said.

The point of the job and the office isn’t to go it alone, Tepper said. “She’s going to be supported by all of the agencies with the people who are also doing this work,” she said. “We have thousands of people working on decarbonization right now, so it’s not like she’s alone on this little island by herself.”

Mindy Lubber, CEO and president of Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization based in Boston, said she’s hopeful that Lavinson will be able to help speed up the work being done. “The work of transitioning our energy future and transforming our systems — I mean, it’s huge. And it’s immediate. And I think they need somebody who knows how to move systems, and move people and be sensitive and look at all sides of the issue, but still get to ‘yes,’” she said.

Lavinson was most recently the head of corporate affairs at National Grid, and has worked for other utilities including Exelon and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Campbell, of the Conservation Law Foundation, said that even though his organization was sometimes at odds with the direction of National Grid, Lavinson “always had an open door and valued the input of the climate advocacy community.”

“There’s always a risk that that [utility sector] background limits your perspective, but in my interactions with Melissa [Lavinson] I think she’s pretty clear-eyed both about the urgency of the energy transition and the need for fundamental change in the utility model in order to achieve that transition,” he said.

Nicole Obi, president and CEO of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, praised Lavinson for her work with historically overlooked communities. Obi said Lavinson oversaw a program that gave $1,000 grants to businesses — including 250 that were part of Obi’s organization — to lessen the burden when electricity bills soared last winter.

Since then, Obi said she’s run into Lavinson just about everywhere, including the Northeast Clean Energy Council and other climate and equity-related events, and said she’s glad Lavinson will be overseeing an office tasked with making sure the energy transition leaves no one behind.

After so many economic expansions in Massachusetts, from the dot-com boom to the life sciences boom that largely left out diverse communities, “It’s critically important that we don’t miss this opportunity to be inclusive, both environmentally and economically,” Obi said.