For even the leading-edge cities, making a commitment is not the same as having a rigorous data-driven strategy for getting there – much less actually implementing the strategy. So what does it take to develop a decarbonization plan that you can have confidence in? How do you know if a plan is real vs. one that is just wishful window dressing?

We have gotten a peak into the nitty gritty of this process from co-author John Cleveland’s work with the Green Ribbon Commission in Boston and the city’s “Carbon Free Boston” initiative. The Commission is a voluntary CEO network that supports implementation of Boston’s Climate Action Plan. In a process that began over three years ago, the Commission agreed to help the city develop a serious strategy for getting to carbon neutrality by 2050.  The end goal would be a report, and an accompanying policy modeling platform that could quantify the most effective combination of technologies and policies to reduce GHG emissions across the energy, buildings, transportation, and waste sectors. Both are now scheduled to be delivered to the city by the end of January 2019. They will be used to inform the update of the city’s Climate Action Plan, which will include detailed five-year implementation roadmaps for priority strategies.

Getting to this end point has proved to be a long, complicated, and expensive process.  The first challenge was simply figuring out what a rigorous emissions reduction plan should look like, and what kind of analysis was needed to support it.  Fortunately, we had some good guidance on the desired content of a report, including the “Framework for Long-Term Deep Carbon Reduction Planning” that our non-profit, the Innovation Network for Communities, developed for the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) several years ago. We also had examples of exemplary plans developed by a number of the CNCA cities to draw upon.

What these materials didn’t tell us anything about was the structure of the underlying analytical tools that were needed to be confident that strategies laid out in the plans would actually produce the intended results. It turned out that cities were taking several different approaches to this, at different levels of complexity. The most basic version was to use simple spreadsheet calculations based on a city’s emissions inventory that estimated the amount of GHG reductions that would be produced by different technology outcomes – such as retrofitting of existing buildings, installation on on-site solar, reduced VMTs, etc. A slightly more sophisticated approach was the use of third party “technology” modeling platforms, such as E3 Pathways software, or the Stockholm Environment Institute’s LEAP (Long-Range Energy Alternatives Planning) software. These softwares are able to show the projected emissions profile of specific technology end-games, but they are not able to assess the ability of any strategies or policies to achieve those end games. The most sophisticated approach involves the development of a policy modeling platform with separate models for the energy supply, transportation, buildings and waste sectors. The only other city in the US that we found had developed such a model was New York City, which had created a policy modeling platform for its 80X50 plan.

We ended up partnering with Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy to design and develop the policy modeling platform and produce the “Carbon Free Boston” report. They convinced us it was worth it to take the more sophisticated approach, because it would add more rigor to our results, and also create an on-going tool that the city could use to assess policy choices in the future. Making this choice significantly increased the cost (the total project budget exceeded $1 million) and the time required to produce the “Carbon Free Boston” report.

The buildings sector model will give you an idea of the sophistication of the resulting tool. The modeling team divided the city’s 630 million square feet of building stock into 15 different building types with four different age classes, based on changes in the building code. This created 60 separate building typologies. Our buildings contractor (Arup) developed a separate energy model for each typology and then calibrated the models to actual energy data shared by our electricity and natural gas utilities. These models were linked to the city’s assessor database so that there was in effect an energy simulation model for every parcel in the city. This overall model now allows us to simulate the emissions impact of implementing a broad range of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and thermal decarbonization strategies over different building types and different time horizons.

Similarly sophisticated models were developed for the energy, transportation, and waste sectors. These now allow us to measure the impact of different city policies and strategies on emissions levels, and track whether they have the intended effect over time. The analysis, of course, is just the start of the process.  What will really matter is the development and execution of implementation strategies.

While a simple stroke of the pen can signal a Mayor’s commitment to an aggressive emissions reduction target, the “devil is in the details” – these commitments don’t mean much if they are not backed up by rigorous analysis and disciplined execution.

And as the IPCC report reminds us, this has to happen not just in a handful of innovator cities, but the entire global economy. Are we up for that challenge?

After the “Carbon Free Boston” report is completed (watch this site to download a copy in late January), the long-term strategy is for the Institute for Sustainable Energy to develop a slightly more generic version of the policy modeling platform that can be used by other municipalities. The Institute hopes to create a Center for City Climate Modeling that can offer open-source access to the modeling code, and advise cities on how to customize the platform to their unique circumstances.

The post Making City Decarbonization Real: Boston Uses Rigorous Analysis to Measure and Track Impact of Policies and Strategies appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

In most cities, buildings are the main source of Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. In dense cities, the building share of emissions can easily exceed 75%. These emissions typically come from three sources:

• The electricity consumed by buildings for lighting, HVAC, plug loads, etc. The fuel source of the emissions depends on the emissions factors in the regional electrical grid. In New England, this is mostly natural gas. In other regions, there will be more emissions from coal and fuel oil.
• Space and hot water heating. Most of these emissions are typically from natural gas, which is the dominant urban thermal fuel. Fuel oil is a larger factor in residential buildings with older oil furnaces.
• Cogeneration. Many larger buildings and campus-style operations (health care, higher education) use on-site combined heat and power (CHP) systems to provide a combination of cooling, steam heat, and electricity generation. Most of these systems are powered by natural gas.

There are several basic strategies for eliminating building-based carbon emissions.

• Reduce consumption – implement energy efficiency measures to radically reduce the amount of energy used.
• Clean the grid – take carbon out of the generation sources for the regional electricity grid by substituting renewable energy for coal, oil and natural gas. (Unless a city has its own utility, this process will take place through state-level policy and market changes.)
• Make or buy your own clean energy – generate renewable energy on-site or purchase it through Power Purchase Agreements.
• Renewable thermal – convert from fossil fuel heating sources to non-carbon sources of heating, such as heat pumps powered by renewables, or sustainable biogases.

When taken to their logical conclusion at scale in a “2 degree world,” these strategies sum to an elimination (or at least a radical downsizing) of the natural gas industry over the next three decades. (Yes – 2050 is not that far away!)

So far, though, there is no clear roadmap for this transition in the US, and it presents a set of “wicked” challenges.

• Limited city control. Most cities have little or no control over natural gas supply systems. Decisions about building new pipelines are mostly made at the federal level through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The only thing cities control is the demand side. They can reduce/eliminate demand for natural gas, but they cannot affect its availability as a fuel source. How do cities support a natural gas transition strategy when they have so little influence on supply? In addition, cities have little control over the cleaning of the grid. But a building electrification strategy only makes sense if the buildings are using clean electricity. How do cities synchronize these two strategies to make sure that you get the desired GHG reductions?
• No clear incumbent business model. In most of the other sectors involved in deep decarbonization, there is some kind of successor business model that allows incumbents to adapt to the market and re-purpose their old assets in a new way. Distribution utilities can still make money by moving electrons, even if those electrons now come from renewable sources. Generators can plan a transition of their generation assets from fossil sources to renewables over successive asset replacement cycles, and still stay in the generation business. Automotive manufacturers can replace internal combustion engine powertrains with hybrid and battery powertrains. But natural gas is different. There is no obvious way to reuse natural gas production and distribution assets. Some very small portion of distribution pipelines might be re-purposed to move “green steam” or “green gas” but that will be a miniscule fraction of the existing market. What happens to these “stranded assets”? How do cities enforce their retirement and who pays for it?
• Long asset lifecycles. Natural gas distribution assets have very long useful lives – often in the 30-50 year time scales. So a pipeline that is built today will still be alive and well in 2050. How do we create short-term continuity of supply without locking ourselves into long-term carbon assets? And again, who pays for any stranded assets in the future? A similar dilemma exists for individual buildings – what is the asset replacement cycle of heating systems and how do you set up the economics so that it makes sense to replace a fossil-fuel based system with a renewable fuel-based system?
• Improve or transition? Some natural gas powered energy systems represent large improvements over legacy systems. Natural gas residential furnaces are far less polluting than oil furnaces. And CHP systems powered by natural gas can in the short term bring large efficiency improvements. But at some point in the asset replacement cycle, you are locking yourself into a carbon source that will be functioning well beyond your target date for carbon neutrality. When do you stop improving the old system and transition to new technologies?

Many of the world’s “climate innovation lab” cities are deep in the details of working out the answers to these dilemmas. But so far, there is no clear “pathway” for managing the natural gas transition that does not result in serious economic and political stress. Figuring this out is one of the big climate mitigation challenges.

The post The “Wicked Problem” of Transitioning Off of Natural Gas appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

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

The post Briefing: How Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission Provides Leadership for the City’s Climate-Change Strategy appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

It is designed by our Meister Consultants Group colleagues to help cities plan for a transition towards 100% renewable electricity supply. Cities and their partners will be able to use “Pathways to 100” to

1. understand their unique energy landscape,
2. identify strategies that are applicable to their utility and state policy context, and
3. organize city staff and external networks to support energy supply transformation.

“Pathways to 100” includes an Appendix that can help cities embed equity in their city energy supply system transformation. This work was made possible through the generous support of the Energy Foundation and The Kresge Foundation.

The post Pathways to 100: Energy Supply Transformation Primer for Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The Zone is composed of two stretches of mostly coastal land in the United States, covering 12 states. Atlantic Climate Zone spans 400 miles, from Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia to New York City and Boston, and contains more than 33.7 million people in its major metropolitan areas. Pacific Climate Zone sweeps across 1,100 miles, from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Portland and Seattle, with about 24 million people in the largest metro regions. These Zone’s combined metropolitan areas alone generate about 23 percent of the entire U.S. economy’s annual output—a combined GDP larger than any nation except China and Japan.

When you use a climate economy lens to look at this population and economic data, adding climate change, physical and economic infrastructure, and political culture, a larger and intriguing picture emerges—a potentially robust response to the Trump Administration’s ferocious opposition to climate-smart policies.

Why add these particular elements? First, they are critical to the prosperity and wellbeing of urban economies in the 21^st century. As has been widely noted, a “climate-smart” economy—clean-energy technologies, green buildings and infrastructure, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, electric vehicles, water-efficient utilities, and more—is growing rapidly and becoming a driver of urban wealth creation and a means to reduce the cost of living for households. At the same time, the risks of severe physical damage and business disruption from climate changes is growing; examples already exist worldwide and climate science tells us that things are only going to get worse. The cities, states, and regions that will be big winners in the emerging economy are those that take climate change seriously, as an opportunity and a threat, by forging the political leadership and consensus needed to invest in innovation and infrastructure. Second, these elements lend themselves to geographic mutuality, the connection and alignment among metropolitan regions and states that makes it possible to generate shared benefits that an individual city or state cannot realize by itself. As strategist Parag Khanna argues in Connectography, the global trends of urban connectivity across national borders, devolution of authority from central capitals to provinces and cities, and competition over global supply chains, energy markets, and flows of finance, technology, knowledge, and talent all lead “smaller political units” like cities and states to fuse together so they have the resources needed to survive.

Applying the climate economy lens reveals that these coastal urban agglomerations—the metro areas and states of the Pacific and Atlantic zones—look pretty similar, and quite different from much of the rest of the nation.

When it comes to climate change, California, Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states and the cities we’ve mentioned are national and international leaders in reducing GHG emissions and building climate resilience and, In many cases, they have achieved strong “vertical” alignment of local and state policies. They are adopting and implementing public policies that require new and existing buildings to meet strict standards for energy consumption; transition as much energy supply as they control with renewable sources; promote a shift from driving to walking, bicycling, and use of public transit; and remove potential sources of GHG emissions from the waste stream. They are using their resources to stimulate the emergence of “green economy” businesses and jobs—especially clean-energy technologies—as a robust and sustainable sector. They are taking steps to assess the risks they face from increasing climate turbulence, to plan actions that will make them “climate proof,” and to develop the community, technical, and financial capacities to implement plans.

When it comes to infrastructure, the economies of the Climate Economy Zone’s two regions, especially their metropolitan areas, are based on a similar model for success: They are deeply embedded in the interconnected global trading economy and have developed, over the decades, world-leading business clusters in technology, finance, education and other sectors. They depend critically on competitive transportation and digital systems, corporate supply chain management, research and development assets, availability of financial capital, and well-educated and entrepreneurial talent. And they face similar challenges due to the national underinvestment in physical and communications infrastructure and the chronic underperformance of public education systems.

When it comes to political culture, the climate-economy regions have developed large constituencies and prominent stakeholder groups, including business leaders, which support aggressive climate action and have been willing to support substantial local changes, including increased public investment. They share a strong affinity for political leadership that fully acknowledges the practical and moral responsibilities of the nation, as well as its cities, to address climate change. One indicator of this is voting in the 2016 presidential election. In 10 of the 12 Zone’s states, Clinton defeated Trump by landslides, 10 to 29 percentage points, won another by 4 points, and narrowly lost one, while the District of Columbia went 92 percent for Clinton. Another indicator is found in survey data from Yale University: people in the Zone’s metropolitan areas and states are more likely than most other Americans to think that global warming is happening, caused mostly by human activities, and already harming people in the U.S., and that carbon emissions from power plants should be strictly limited and utilities should be required to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

This sketch of the Climate Economy Zone suggests a potential for “horizontal” economic, infrastructure, and political collaboration at the regional level, multiple cities and states, which has only been minimally tapped so far. Pacific Zone states, for instance, are slouching toward a regional price on carbon emissions; California has a cap-and-trade market, while Washington and Oregon have explored options. The three states are developing the West Coast Electric Highway, a network of fast-charging stations located every 25 to 50 miles on Interstate 5and other roads. Six states in Atlantic Zone are part of a regional carbon-emissions trading market. Core cities on both coasts work together on aggressive climate actions: eight are members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, six are in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, eight are among the 100 Resilient Cities.

But much more could be explored and perhaps done. We tend to think of public policy making as occurring along the traditional vertical axis of federal-state-local authority, and this obscures the potential of horizontal approaches. We tend to think of cities as locations, and this obscures their growing interest and engagement in international relations. We tend to think of climate change as a problem of reducing GHG emissions through national government regulation of energy markets, but this obscures the crucial role of corporations and cities as end users in the energy supply chain. If we were to think more about Climate Economy regions not as separate states and separate urban regions, but as “countries within the country” that align around a shared framework of public policies to address climate change, business growth, and urban development—what opportunities might be revealed?

The post America’s Climate Economy Zones appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

We’re starting a new project, with support of the Summit Foundation–to look more closely at the challenge of “managed retreat” by cities vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate impacts. Your thoughts and examples welcome.

There is not the slightest doubt that beachfront development will retreat on a massive scale, though widespread recognition of this and serious planning for it are lacking. . . .The sooner we recognize the truth about nature’s intentions at the shoreline, the better. Neither time nor tide is in our favor.

—Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change[1]

 Managed retreat is widely considered to be a “third rail” of local politics—there is great peril in touching it, even in discussing it. There are good reasons for this: The idea of retreat undercuts the conventional urban narrative of development and growth, and the related public revenues and economic activity that are generated, as the path to urban wellbeing. It also raises the specter of government “taking” of private property. Depending on the actions that local government takes, property owners can suffer significant losses of asset value. Intentional retreat involves long-term changes to city land uses and more advance planning. It has significant equity and fairness implications: how do you decide which places are “worth” saving, which are not, and who should bear the costs? Its value is undercut by perverse incentives in government flood insurance programs and private insurance financial risk management. Finally, authority to enact the practices of retreat—policies, regulations, subsidies, etc.—is fragmented among levels of government and is filled with legal uncertainties as well as subject to scientific uncertainty about potential climate impacts. “Retreat is at present mostly a legal theory,” note J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” for an American Bar Association publication. “Few retreat policies have been implemented on the ground.”[2]

Yet, more and more cities are finding themselves responding to real and crippling climate changes or anticipating and planning for these in their future—and having to decide where they will permit what to be built under what conditions. Even not deciding is a type of decision with consequences.

It’s not hard to recognize that as the emerging urban climate adaptation field of practice matures, it will need to develop practical knowledge about why managed retreat makes sense, what managed retreat involves, and how managed retreat can be enacted by cities

The focus of this project is the “what” of managed retreat. We intend to frame the multiple pathways that cities take to deciding what they want to do about using managed retreat as a city strategy for addressing climate change risks. And we will identify the city capacities needed to prepare, make, and implement decisions about which pathway(s) to take.

A preliminary, rudimentary look at the practice of managed retreat suggests three general, prevailing pathways:

• Do Nothing About At-Risk Development. Cities let the insurance, financial, and other markets (or another level of government) address the problems of vulnerability and loss.
• Defend/Armor At-Risk Development. Cities invest in increased climate protections that reduce vulnerability of high-risk areas.
• Starve At-Risk Development. Cities buy and remove existing development and/or eliminate infrastructure support in high-risk areas.

Using this initial framing of pathways, the project will develop a more finely differentiated, nuanced set of pathways that cities are using or could be using. For each pathway the project will identify the city-based capacities needed to make pathway decisions. We will initially frame the capacities along the lines of the 7 capacities identified in INC’s March 2017 “Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation” report:

• Scientific Foundation
• Communications
• Equitable Adaptation
• Inclusive Community Engagement
• Intergovernmental Alignment
• Technical Design
• Financial Resources

Here, too, we expect to produce a more finely grained, nuanced version of capacities for managed retreat. For example, the capacity to manage legal challenges to managed retreat may loom larger than in our more general framing of urban adaptation capacities.

We believe that framing the pathways and capacities in this way will provide two kinds of value. It will help others in the urban climate adaptation field who are developing tools and other knowledge for cities. The project report will also be made available directly to cities, hundreds of which are in various stages of developing and implementing climate adaptation plans.

[1] Orrin H.Pilkey, Kinda Pilkey-Jarvis, and Keith C. Pilkey, Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 164-165.

[2] J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis, “Coastal Retreat Measures,” chapter 9.

The post Pathways for Managed Retreat – A New INC Project appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

“Leadership by U.S. Cities: Innovations in Climate Action” surfaced five insights that are relevant for cities worldwide. “The innovative trends and systems framework highlighted in this report are valuable tools for cities in the U.S. and around the world to adopt in order to address the challenges they face,” Kerry wrote.

A summary of the five insights:

1. Cities are Uncoupling Growth from Carbon. Cities in the U.S. are demonstrating that it is possible to reduce GHG emissions substantially while also growing their economies and populations.
2. Cities are Transforming Core Urban Systems. More and more U.S. cities are serving
   as “innovation laboratories” for climate action — moving beyond pilot projects to develop and increasingly sophisticated framework for transforming core city systems to achieve desired climate outcomes.
3. Cities’ Climate Actions are Delivering Impressive “Co-Benefits.” U.S. cities are finding that climate action leads to “co-benefits” for their residents and businesses, including improved livability, economic opportunity, public health and sustainability.
4. Cities are Engaging Local Stakeholders in Ambitious, Sustained Climate Action. U.S. cities are developing potent climate- action alliances with local business and community leaders and with specific business sectors, such as health care and commercial property, community-based activists, universities and philanthropies.
5. Federal and State Governments are Adopting Policies that Enable Cities’ Climate Actions. Cities cannot do this work alone — many aspects of effective climate action by U.S. cities, especially in transportation and energy-supply systems, depend on enabling policies being implemented by federal and state governments.

For more details and examples, download report here.

The post Five Insights About Climate Action by U.S. Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.