(Photo Credit: Rene Schwietzke, Flickr Creative Commons)Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh set the city on a path to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 when he signed the Metro Mayors Climate Mitigation Commitment in 2016. A new report undertaken at Walsh’s request identifies the specific energy-related steps that Boston’s leadership must take to reach that goal.
Carbon Free Boston, an initiative to analyze the city’s options, launched in fall 2017. After data collection and model development that winter, the project moved to policy-driven greenhouse gas emissions modeling last year.
Developed in fall 2018 and published this week, the Carbon Free Boston report comes out of a partnership the city has with the Green Ribbon Commission and Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy. The researchers who wrote the report found that in order to meet the carbon neutrality goal, the city must pursue three mutually reinforcing strategies in key sectors.
The fundamental characteristics of a carbon-neutral city are clear, the report says, and outlines them as the following:
“Buildings in Boston rely heavily on the combustion of oil and natural gas for space heating, cooking, and hot water,” the report notes. “This makes the combination of building energy efficiency and the use of low- to zero-GHG fuels and electricity important changes to make. Accordingly, new buildings can be designed to achieve net-zero/net-positive performance by prioritizing passive building strategies, well-insulated and air tight envelopes, and orientation and massing, while at the same time employing smaller high efficiency heating, cooling, and lighting systems.”
Boston has more than 86,000 buildings, comprising more than 647 million square feet, the report points out. These existing buildings pose a greater challenge than new ones, the researchers say. In order to help test the effects of energy conservation and emissions reduction measures, the research team developed a model that simulates building energy across the city.
Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from buildings detailed in the report include performing deep energy retrofits, electrifying building energy services, and improving energy efficiency through measures like switching to efficient lighting and adding insulation.
“Carrying out some of the actions will take a lot of work,” Katie Pyzyk cautioned on Smart Cities Dive. “For example, building more energy-efficient structures is achievable, but carrying out the suggested whole-building energy retrofits on Boston’s centuries-old historic buildings is no easy task.”
The full report is available for download here.
We are still accepting submissions for the 2019 Energy Manager Awards. Learn more and submit a project or product here.
