Energy & Environment

Since 2006, A Better City prioritized engaging member companies and institutions to address the worsening impacts of climate change, launching the Challenge for Sustainability program in 2009. Early support was provided by The Boston Foundation, the Barr Foundation, Eversource, National Grid, and Vicinity, with later support including the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, the Devonshire Foundation, the John Merck Fund, and Bloomberg. The Challenge for Sustainability empowered participating members to commit to long-term and annual climate targets, supported by technical support, convenings, and events. In 2016, while continuing to focus on strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, A Better City expanded the program’s scope to include climate adaptation and changed the name to the Sustainable Buildings Initiative. Although no longer active, various decarbonization and adaptation tools are still available on the website: an emissions reduction toolkit; a climate resilience toolkit; and climate resilience guidelines. In the late 2010s, in response to members’ feedback, A Better City established the Building Policy Coalition to support smart and workable building decarbonization strategies. In 2021, A Better City committed to advancing an Equity in the Built Environment Action Plan, which has supported the development of equitable workforce development and extreme heat resilience work. Current support is generously provided by the Barr Foundation, the Linde Family Foundation, the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, The Boston Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Paul and Edith Babson Foundation. A Better City’s current climate goals include:

• Large building decarbonization
  
  • Equitable workforce development
• Climate Resilience
  
  • Extreme heat resilience
• Energy Transformation
• Climate Financing

A Better City has been focused on large building decarbonization since 2006. From providing one-on-one support to member companies and institutions to informing city and state policies, A Better City is committed to advancing smart strategies to meet climate and economic development goals alike.

Why it’s important: The Carbon Free Boston report in 2019 identified 86,000 buildings in Boston were responsible for 70% of Boston’s GHG emissions, with just 6,000 non-residential buildings being responsible for 40% of these emissions. The report also identified that 85% of buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist today. The outsized impact of large existing buildings on Boston’s emissions was the impetus behind many Boston and Commonwealth policies including the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance or BERDO (existing buildings) and Zero Net Carbon Zoning (new construction) in Boston, and Large Building Energy Reporting or LBER (existing buildings) and the updated Stretch and Specialized Stretch Codes in the Commonwealth. Cambridge is also in the process of updating its Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance or BEUDO, and other municipalities are also developing their own building policies.

 A Better City’s role: A Better City led the Challenge for Sustainability that became the Sustainable Buildings Initiative to support member’s climate goals. Although the program is no longer active, there are many useful tools and guidelines available for large building owners through an emissions reduction toolkit. A Better City has engaged members over the last 4-5 years through a Buildings Policy Coalition to inform various building policies at the city and state level. A Better City staff also continue to showcase members’ climate leadership through events that highlight best practices, new technologies, and opportunities for large buildings.  

In addition, A Better City staff lead the BERDO Commercial Real Estate Working Group, support the Boston Green Ribbon Commission Commercial Real Estate Working Group, and participate in the Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee Buildings Working Group and the Alliance for Clean Energy Solutions (ACES) Coalition.

Equitable Workforce Development

A Better City is working to create the green jobs of tomorrow, today. Since 2022, A Better City has partnered with the City of Boston’s PowerCorps Boston (PowerCorpsBOS) program to develop and implement a building operations training program for Boston’s unemployed and underemployed youth. A Better City members and partners have volunteered as building partners, offering in-service learning to employment opportunities within the large buildings they own or operate.

Why it’s important: In the mid-2010s, A Better City members began to express concern about the aging workforce currently operating the increasingly high performance and technical buildings of today and tomorrow. Over 40% of employees in this field are 50 years or older. As large buildings need to meet increasingly stringent greenhouse gas emissions goals through building performance standards like the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) in Boston, or the Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO) in Cambridge, developing this pipeline is crucial in keeping buildings operating at peak efficiency and meeting compliance requirements.

In 2021, A Better City launched an Equity in the Building Environment Action Plan that included a commitment to equitable workforce development. Recruitment is focused on environmental justice neighborhoods with most members coming from Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and the South End. Over the course of the program, most members (95%+) have identified as Black or Latinx. After 10 months of soft skills training, technical training, and in-service learning, trainees graduate and many are offered entry level positions in the buildings in which they have interned.

A Better City’s role: Beginning in 2022, A Better City partnered with the City of Boston to help develop and implement a new PowerCorpsBOS building operations program. A Better City convened member companies and institutions to inform the building operations curriculum. A Better City then recruited many of these companies to provide in-service learning to employment opportunities as part of the program including:

• Beacon Capital Partners
• BioMed Realty (operated by C&W Services)
• Boston Medical Center
• BXP (operated by C&W Services)
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital
• Dana Faber Cancer Institute
• Equity Residential
• JLL
• LC Anderson
• Massachusetts General Hospital
• MIT
• Northeastern University
• Related Beal
• Schneider Electric
• The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
• WS Development (operated by C&W Services)

In 2024, A Better City published a report synthesizing several lessons learned that have been applied to future trainings and may be useful in informing other equitable workforce development programs.   A Better City is also exploring other pathways into large building operations to meet the increasing demand in this sector.

Greater Boston is uniquely vulnerable to the worsening impacts of climate change—from sea level rise to increased precipitation, to extreme temperature. A Better City is committed to partnering with local and state partners and with member companies and institutions to advance policies, projects, and initiatives that increase the resilience of our infrastructure and communities alike.

Why it’s important: In 2016, the City of Boston released the Climate Ready Boston report, identifying the projected climate impacts for Boston. Since that time, Boston has been developing plans for its 47 miles of coastline, and its seven most vulnerable communities across coastal flooding, stormwater flooding, and extreme heat. The Commonwealth released the ResilientMass Plan in 2023, to identify the risks to the Commonwealth and the actions that state agencies and partners will take to reduce those risks. The ResilientCoasts Initiative is in the process of developing a state-wide strategy for the state’s coastal communities and other stakeholders. It is well understood that although the costs of climate adaptation and resilience are large, the benefits are more than ten-fold over a ten-year period.

A Better City’s role: Through the Sustainable Buildings Initiative, A Better City developed a climate resilience toolkit and climate resilience guidelines. A Better City was part of the Advisory Committee for the development of Boston’s Coastal Flood Resilience Guidelines & Zoning Overly District (CFROD). A Better City participates in the state’s ResilientCoasts Task Force, ResilientMass Finance Initiative, the Boston Green Ribbon Commission’s Coastal Resilience Working Group, the Mystic River Watershed Association’s coastal flooding, stormwater flooding, and extreme heat working groups, and the Coalition for a Resilient and Inclusive Waterfront.

Extreme Heat resilience

Since 2021, A Better City has been working on community-based extreme heat resilience in partnership with members, partner organizations, and city and state agency partners. With the 2022 publication of Boston’s Heat Plan and 20-Year Urban Forest Plan, as well as the 2023 ResilientMass Plan, extreme heat continues to gain momentum as a core pillar of climate work in Greater Boston and Massachusetts. Although initially heat work focused on resilience and enhanced adaptive capacity to heat, there are increasing efforts to also integrate heat within existing decarbonization efforts, particularly around decarbonization and retrofits of existing buildings—and many A Better City member companies and institutions are leading the way.

Why it’s important: In 2021, A Better City committed to addressing extreme heat as a threat to our communities and our infrastructure. While often ignored, heat is the number one killer of all climate hazards and weather events, killing more people than tornadoes and hurricanes combined with the impacts of heat like kidney failure, heart attacks, asthma attacks, and other life-threatening medical events triggered by heat stress. In the City of Boston, neighborhoods like Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Mattapan, and Roxbury are often 10-15 degrees warmer than surrounding communities—this is due in part to decades of disinvestment in communities of color, resulting in less access to green space, parks, and other cooling features.

A Better City’s role: In 2022, A Better City formed an Extreme Heat Working Group to develop and assess heat resilience solutions. Through piloting solutions like heat safety communications, temperature monitoring, urban forestry, and other interventions, A Better City’s members and partners are helping to move the needle on heat resilience implementation. The Extreme Heat Working Group also helps to uplift heat work done to date in Boston, alongside examples of heat resilience best practices and community-based heat solutions through an Extreme Heat Primer, Extreme Heat Case Studies, and a report by the Applied Economics Clinic on Tackling Extreme Heat: Recommendations for Strengthening Massachusetts Policy. A Better City also continues to advocate for the inclusion of extreme heat in climate policies in Massachusetts, like the elevation of heat in the 2022 Massachusetts Climate Assessment and 2023 ResilientMass Plan.

A Better City is also a co-lead partner of B-COOL (“Boston Cools”), a partnership between A Better City, the Boston University School of Public Health, the City of Boston’s Office of Climate Resilience, and The Boston Foundation, to host temperature sensors at community partner sites in hotspot environmental justice neighborhoods to learn more about differences in lived heat experiences. A Better City is grateful to partner with the following B-COOL community partners: Arnold Arboretum (Harvard University), Bay Cove Human Services, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Boston Green Academy, Boston Medical Center, Charles River Community Health, City of Boston’s Urban Forestry Division, Franklin Park Zoo, Greenway Conservancy, Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, Museum of Science, and UMass Boston.

A Better City is also a subcontractor on the CATCH (Community Adaptations to City Heat) project looking across Boston, New Orleans, and Phoenix to understand how different heat interventions impact health outcomes for heat-vulnerable populations.

As we move to rapidly electrify our building and transportation sectors, we must ensure that our electric grid is ready to meet the moment. A Better City is committed to advancing the policies and programs needed to ensure that our grid is reliable, resilient, green, and affordable.

Why it’s important: Our region’s economic competitiveness and growth rely upon access to clean, affordable, and reliable electricity. As we transition to a decarbonized energy supply with increased uptake of renewable energy, it will be important to ensure that the Commonwealth’s energy transformation provides sufficient reliability, particularly for sectors like healthcare, data centers, and labs, which require 24/7, reliable, and backed up energy supplies. MassSave incentives and programs that result from the work of the Energy Efficiency Advisory Council in the development of the three-year energy efficiency plans are important for all ratepayers as they consider energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies. Additionally, advocating for affordable energy supplies in Massachusetts is a core component of our region’s economic competitiveness and livability, and will be critical in retaining the workforce.

A Better City’s role: A Better City was appointed to the Commonwealth’s Energy Transformation Advisory Board to advise and guide the state in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. A Better City also sits on the Commercial and Industrial (C&I) Working Group for the three-year energy efficiency plans to advocate for programs and incentives that can most effectively meet emission reduction targets. For example, in 2024, the C&I Working Group set up an HVAC Taskforce, which A Better City joined, to streamline the MassSave Custom Process that provides funding for complex C&I energy use and emissions reduction projects. The Custom Process was cumbersome, resulting in projects not moving forward, despite these projects having the largest emission reduction potential. As a result of the HVAC Taskforce the Custom Pathway was streamlined, removing barriers that had existed since its inception, paving a way for more HVAC funded projects with significant climate impacts. Additionally, to help address energy burden and affordability, A Better City continues to advocate for energy affordability and equity in policy processes like the Department of Public Utilities’ docket on energy burden.

According to the Massachusetts 2023 Climate Report, even if Massachusetts were able to take advantage of every single federal dollar available for climate and clean energy initiatives, Massachusetts would still face anywhere from a 70-90% funding gap for climate. Across both climate mitigation and climate resilience, significant funding and financing opportunities will be needed to meet the Commonwealth’s statutory climate commitments and protect vulnerable critical communities and critical infrastructure.

Why It’s Important: To decarbonize and fortify the Massachusetts economy, innovative funding and financing strategies are needed to move from planning toward implementation of climate solutions. Importantly, there will be funding needed across both mitigation and adaptation, and funding leveraged will need to promote co-benefits whenever possible to maximize environmental, community, and carbon impacts.

A Better City’s Role: A Better City added expanding the scope and scale of equitable climate funding as a goal during the 2023-2024 legislative session. A Better City sat on the Steering Committee that led to the formation of the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank in 2023 and currently sits on the Sustainable and Equitable Funding Coalition, as well as the State’s ResilientMass Financing Stakeholder Advisory Committee. While A Better City will continue to monitor evolving federal funding dynamics, staff will also continue to push for climate funding and financing opportunities that leverage local, state, and private funding, especially opportunities to uplift equitable funding solutions that benefit Massachusetts’ most vulnerable residents.