Briefing: How Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission Provides Leadership for the City’s Climate-Change Strategy

April 9, 2018 | Climate Adaptation, Climate Innovation Laboratory Cities, Urban Climate Innovation
by John Cleveland

John Cleveland is Executive Director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission. This briefing document prepared with Amy Longsworth, GRC Director, in late 2017.

Re: The Boston Green Ribbon Commission

Mission: The Boston Green Ribbon Commission (GRC) convenes leaders from Boston’s key sectors to support the outcomes of the City’s Climate Action Plan.

The Commission plays three important roles in advancing the regional vision for climate action:

• Advise the City on the implementation of its Climate Action Plan.
• Engage sector leadership in aligning their assets and initiatives to support the plan outcomes.
• Highlight and promote best practice examples within and across sectors that advance the Climate Action Plan goals.

Membership: GRC Members represent the spectrum of Boston’s major economic sectors and industries, including commercial real estate, education, health care, utilities, renewable energy, finance, consulting, and not-for-profit. (See Members attachment.)

Challenge: The GRC is a commitment on the part of the City of Boston and its private sector leaders to work together to meet the City’s major climate adaptation and mitigation challenges.

• Mitigation. The City’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) calls for a reduction in carbon emissions of 25% by 2020 and 100% by 2050 (over 2005 levels). These targets are within the context of similar goals set by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and codified in the state Global Warming Solutions Act.
• Adaptation. Boston is one of the most physically and economically vulnerable cities in the United States to the impact of rising seas and other effects of climate change. Boston’s Climate Action Plan also focuses on preparing for the impacts of climate change across the City, including a focus on both the built environment and also awareness and preparedness on the part of citizens. In addition to sea level rise, the City anticipates with confidence an increase in very high temperature days, more frequent flooding, and heavier precipitation between now and 2050.

Actions and Accomplishments

Climate Mitigation

The Green Ribbon Commission has worked with the City on strategic aspects of emissions reductions, including:

• Promoting building efficiency through conferences, publications, and supporting programs including the Challenge for Sustainability and the Mayor’s Carbon Cup;
• Championing renewable energy through education, publications, and the 2015 Renewable Energy Leadership Prize;
• Incubating a transportation visioning process (Go Boston 2030);
• Supporting a new building energy reporting ordinance (BERDO);
• Convening stakeholders to envision the electric utility of the low-carbon future; and
• Beginning to develop a major project to define the pathway to deep decarbonization.

In 2016, the City and GRC launched the Carbon Free Boston initiative. The project will support Boston’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 by developing detailed strategies to guide Boston’s transition to a renewable energy future. Carbon Free Boston signals the need to transition from old, dirty carbon-based fuels to 100% clean and renewable energy sources in every sector of the economy by 2050. It will require us to change how we create and distribute electricity, heat our homes and offices, transport people and goods, and handle waste. Carbon Free Boston will quantify the most effective combination of technologies and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the electric power, buildings, transportation, and waste sectors.

Although 2050 is several decades away, it is important to start this work now, because we will be making choices in the next 10-15 years that will affect our ability to achieve our 2050 targets. We need to have clarity about the “end state” that we are trying to achieve, so that we can make mid-term choices that are aligned with that end state.

Climate Adaptation

In 2013, at the request of then Mayor Menino, the Commission formed the Climate Preparedness Working Group to make recommendations on the nature of the public/private partnership necessary to prepare property owners for resilience in the face of climate impacts. The Working Group recommendations on climate preparedness were incorporated into the 2015 Climate Action Plan update.

In 2015, the Commission partnered with the City to launch Climate Ready Boston to advance the understanding of climate threats specific to Boston, identify key areas and assets that are most vulnerable, and develop a set of high-level strategic solutions or actions to address the challenges. The findings of the study were released in December of 2016. In 2017, the Commission will be undertaking multiple efforts to discuss the implications with key groups, including owners of commercial and residential real estate, businesses, neighborhood groups, and planners.

Related to both focus areas described above, the GRC conducts meetings and conferences, publishes reports, hosts international delegations seeking to understand Boston’s sustainability and climate work, and similar activities. In recent years, the GRC:

• Published four reports on renewable energy and electricity markets in New England;
• Held a meeting of the Clean Energy Purchasing Network;
• Offered the Renewable Energy Leadership Prize, a $100,000 challenge to institutions in the Boston area to develop new sources of clean energy;
• Held two Climate Finance conferences: one on financing for energy efficiency and one on the role of the insurance industry in promoting efficiency and resilience investments in commercial real estate;
• Hosted an international delegation of sustainability leaders from 20 global cities, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
• Sponsored a European Climate Innovation Tour which took 25 Massachusetts leaders from state government, city government, higher education, the private sector and philanthropy to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden, to learn about leading edge climate adaptation and mitigation work in Europe.

 Structure

 The GRC operates with a staff of two senior professionals who propose strategy, develop projects, support the Members, operate against plan, and manage a set of sector-based and strategy-based Working Groups.

The full Commission membership meets twice a year. Meetings focus on decision making related to implementation of the Climate Action Plan, as well as reports on the activities of Commission Working Groups. Activity between the meetings is carried out by the Working Groups, led by GRC members.

The Commission has three sector-based Working Groups (Higher Education, Health Care, and Commercial Real Estate) to provide leadership that helps align sector practices with the City’s Climate Action Plan goals. The commercial and industrial (C/I) sector, including institutions such as health care, higher education and government, represents 50%+ of total greenhouse gas emissions for the City of Boston. Fifty large C/I property owners account for 60% of the C/I GHG emissions, and therefore for more than 30% of the total City GHG emissions. Making progress in the performance of these large C/I accounts is key to meeting the City’s climate targets. One of the long-term goals of the Green Ribbon Commission is to assure that each of these 50 enterprises has in place an internal strategy that puts them on a path to meet or exceed the city greenhouse gas reduction targets. The sector working groups play a leadership role in this strategy.

The Commission also sponsors several strategy-based Working Groups, including Climate Preparedness, Carbon Free Boston, and Transportation, focus on the design, funding, incubation, launch, and advising on key projects and priorities that enable the City to pursue its goals. For example, the Climate Preparedness Working Group helped develop the Climate Ready Boston project, in partnership with the City, and provided critical funding, guidance, and outreach to important stakeholders.

 Financial Support

 The following foundations and businesses have provided operating funds and project support for the Boston Green Ribbon Commission:

• Arbella Insurance Group
• Avalon Bay Communities, Inc.
• Bank of America Foundation
• Barr Foundation
• The Boston Foundation
• Boston Properties
• City of Boston
• Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Equity Residential
• Eversource
• The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
• Henry P. Kendall Foundation
• National Grid
• Sherry and Alan Leventhal Family Foundation

Additional information on the Green Ribbon Commission can be downloaded from the website at www.greenribboncommission.org.

Boston Green Ribbon Commission Members

1. Kathy Abbott, President & CEO, Boston Harbor Now
2. Matthew Beaton, Secretary, MA Exec. Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs
3. Austin Blackmon, Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Space, City of Boston
4. Alec Brackenridge, Executive Vice President Investments, Equity Residential
5. Thomas Brostrom, General Manager North America Wind Power, DONG Energy
6. Robert Brown, President, Boston University
7. David Colella, Vice President & Managing Director, The Colonnade Hotel
8. Bill DiCroce, CEO, Veolia North America
9. John Donohue, CEO, Arbella Mutual Insurance Company
10. John Fish, Chairman & CEO, Suffolk Construction Company
11. Jeremy Grantham, Founder, GMO, LLC
12. Joe Grimaldi, Chairman Emeritus, Mullen Advertising
13. Pete Hamill, Vice President & General Manager, Turner Construction Company
14. Ray Hammond, Pastor, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
15. Tim Healy, CEO and Co-Founder, EnerNOC
16. Amos Hostetter, Trustee, Barr Foundation (Co-Chair)
17. Michael Keating, Partner, Foley Hoag; Chair, The Boston Foundation
18. Andrew Kendall, Executive Director, Henry P. Kendall Foundation
19. Scott Kinter, Senior Vice President, Avalon Bay Communities, Inc.
20. Ann Klee, Global Operations, VP, Environment, Health & Safety, GE
21. Bryan Koop, Sr. Vice President, Boston Properties
22. Katherine Lapp, Executive Vice President, Harvard University
23. Alan Leventhal, Chairman & CEO, Beacon Capital Partners
24. Alexandra Liftman, Global Environmental Executive, Bank of America
25. Mindy Lubber, President & CEO, Ceres
26. Penni McLean-Conner, Senior Vice President, Customer Group, Eversource
27. Michael Mooney, Chairman, Nutter McClennen & Fish
28. Tom Nedell, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Northeastern University
29. Cordi O’Hara, Massachusetts President, National Grid
30. Bud Ris, Senior Climate Advisor, The Barr Foundation
31. Israel Ruiz, Executive Vice President and Treasurer, MIT
32. David Torchiana, President and CEO, Partners HealthCare
33. Kate Walsh, President and CEO, Boston Medical Center
34. Marty Walsh, Mayor, City of Boston (Co-Chair)
35. Carole Wedge, President, Shepley Bulfinch
36. Gwill York, Co-founder & Managing Director, Lighthouse Capital Partners