Julia and Graham chart various innovative ways to use OZs that are already being pursued:

“The OZone program is a good fit for clean energy and sustainable development. First, the tax benefits — capital gain tax deferral, partial forgiveness of tax on capital gains and forgiveness of additional gains on investments in OZones — make it easier to include sustainability features because the projects can deliver higher returns and be structured with simpler capital stacks. The higher return on Opportunity Fund investments, for example, could allow sponsors of clean energy projects to add features to projects or partner with energy customers that are considered more risky, as proposed by Jon Bonanno, CXO of New Energy Nexus. New Energy Nexus provides assistance to global energy entrepreneurs.”

“Second, the program allows for more comprehensive and holistic projects. In fact, the lack of restrictions on investments in the Opportunity Zone program creates an opportunity for integrated, interdisciplinary development plans. With the clarifications in the federal rules for OZones making it clear that clean economy projects are eligible, every project can be a clean energy and a clean jobs-producing project.

“Third, the program allows for a deeper commitment to neighborhood success than many past economic development incentives. That’s why Bo Menkiti of the Menkiti Group has teamed up with Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to pursue OZone funding for its Neighborhood Investment Model, which includes LEED buildings. Because OZone investors must keep their capital invested for a full decade to realize the maximum tax benefits, they have a stake in a neighborhood’s long-term success. In this way, the OZone program creates space to combine clean energy projects with initiatives to train local workers and nurture new local clean economy businesses.”

Full Parzen/Graham report

The post Putting Real Urban Opportunity–Carbon-Free and Equitable–into Opportunity Zones appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

As mounting destruction by rising seas, hurricanes, and wildfires drives the dangers of climate change deeper into public awareness, more and more US cities are trying to figure out how to strengthen their resilience against climate shocks and stresses. They are using two approaches to protect public infrastructure and private property from climate risks: Armoring—building physical barriers to flooding, for instance—reduces the exposure of physical assets and people to climate hazards. Accommodating—raising roads and building sites, for example—alters physical assets to reduce their vulnerability to climate hazards.

But few cities are using, or even considering, a third approach known as “managed retreat.” This approach uses public policies, including regulations, investments, and incentives to remove existing development—buildings, infrastructure, entire neighborhoods—over time and prevent future development in parts of the city that cannot, should not, or will not be armored or accommodated for potentially devastating climate hazards. (See Appendix for an inventory of tools cities use for managed retreat.)

It’s not hard to understand why managed retreat is overlooked: it is an irrational decision under the current rules of the urban-development game. Cities are their development: housing for residents; stores, offices, factories, and warehouses for businesses; transportation, water, energy, and waste infrastructure for everyone. Existing development provides enormous financial value for owners and businesses and a large portion of a city government’s revenue. New development generates profits for developers, investors, and lenders and boosts the local economy. It signals that the city is attracting people and investment, indicators of urban health.

City leaders can foresee that considering retreat would produce substantial political, financial, and emotional pain locally—an array of immediate and intimidating difficulties with little gain in the short run. Property owners and real estate developers will worry that retreat will reduce the value of their assets; some will accuse the city of trampling on their private property rights, People will refuse to abandon their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods, citing a deep attachment to place and neighbors. Civic leaders will be concerned that retreat will shake public confidence in the city’s future. Renters will fear they will be displaced and left with no affordable housing options. City officials will be uneasy about losing future property tax revenue when private development is eliminated and future development is prohibited. And so on.

The inclination to avoid retreat is strong even in cities that have undergone a destructive climate disaster; the civic reflex of city leaders is almost always to rebuild everything as it was. After Hurricane Sandy pounded New York City in 2012, for instance, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg declared that “we cannot and will not abandon our waterfront. It’s one of our greatest assets. We must protect it, not retreat from it.”[i]

But these calculations are changing.

This report examines the role that managed retreat will increasingly play as more and more cities wrestle with how to deal with the growing risks of destructive climate changes. It is organized around three insights:

1. Many cities will not be able to avoid retreat, but they can choose what kind of retreat to have. Whether or not to retreat is a false choice for cities facing certain climate risks such as rising seas. Politicians don’t want to make decisions about who gets protected from climate risks and who doesn’t, notes David Titley, head of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at the University of Pennsylvania. “We saw this in New York with Mayor Bloomberg. ‘We don’t retreat.’ Well, guess what. The ocean gets a vote.”[ii]The question is which of three kinds of retreat will occur in the city: traumatic post-disaster retreat; chaotic, market-driven retreat; or forward-looking planned retreat. In this light, the alternatives to managed retreat may be “greater evils” that cities will want to avoid.
2. There is an emerging roadmap for generating community acceptance of managed retreat as part of building a city’s climate resilience. The limited experience of cities that have taken on managed retreat suggests that an effective process depends on critical actions that move the community from denial and anger to acceptance. It’s especially important to reframe retreat as not simply a loss of what was, but as part of a larger and inspiring vision for what can be, for the city’s future. Five lessons learned are:

• A city’s community-engagement process for resilience planning should be designed for the emotional and social aspects of considering managed retreat.
• A city’s assessment of its climate risks and vulnerabilities should expose, not hide, the potential implications for retreat.
• Cities should reframe retreat as not just a loss, but as part of a positive and inspiring vision for the city’s long-term development and success.
• A city can help to normalize retreat by starting with the relocation of essential public infrastructure and revising city rules that steer new development.
• Consideration of retreat should include recognition of its potential impacts on economic and social disparities in the city.

3. Until more cities seriously consider using managed retreat, it is unlikely that crucial support from state and federal governments will occur on other than a sporadic, special-case basis. Retreat can involve implementation challenges that cities cannot resolve by themselves, such as legal, regulatory, financial, and planned resettlement concerns. So far, though, state and federal governments mostly treat retreat as a unique episode, usually only responding after a climate disaster. They have not institutionalized policies and resources that cities can rely on for managed retreat—nor has a critical mass of cities pushed for such policy changes.

Download report

[i]Sarah Crean, “Bloomberg: No Retreat From The Coastline,” Gotham Gazette, June 12, 2013, https://www.adaptny.org/2013/06/12/no-retreat-from-the-coastline/.

[ii]Laura Parker, “Who’s Still Fighting Climate Change? The U.S. Military,” National Geographic, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/pentagon-fights-climate-change-sea-level-rise-defense-department-military/.

The post New INC Report: Can It Happen Here? Improving the Prospect of Managed Retreat by US Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Purpose

This research project’s purpose is to identify ways to accelerate the development and growth of public and private financial resources that US cities can use to implement climate resilience plans and projects. Cities often cite access to capital as a major barrier to the implementation of their climate resilience plans.

 Findings

Climate risks disrupt city financing.Cities use multiple, well-established public and private systems to pay for their public responsibilities, but these systems do not have the ability to meet the challenges of financing the mounting climate resilience needs of cities. Barriers include:

• Insufficient publicrevenue for climate resilience projects.
• New and uncertain financial risks posed by climate changes.
• Inherent imbalances between the burdens and benefits of climate resilience projects.
• Misaligned public policies and markets.
• Resilience projects that fall outside of traditional municipal jurisdictions.

Emerging innovations in climate resilience finance do not sum to a system-building approach.A growing number of developments seek to address barriers and opportunities in climate resilience financing. We identified 30 of these [Table 1], but they are mostly “one-off” innovations and changes made by an individual city or financial institution or insurer for a specific project or financial mechanism. Most of these efforts are largely disconnected from each other. The public and private sector players engaged in climate resilience finance efforts do not have a shared vision, framework, or strategies for developing, as quickly as possible, a comprehensive, large-scale urban climate resilience financial system. The set of innovations does provide a great deal of the research-and-development that could evolve into a more systemic and impactful stage of change.

A system for city climate resilience finance would contain three key elements:*

• City transaction capabilities, including adaptation planning, adaptation investment planning, governance arrangements at metro-region and city district scales; and public revenue sources and funding mechanisms.
• State and federal government policies, including: adaptation planning requirements and support; climate resilience standards; flexible governance structure frameworks; insurance market regulations and public “last resort” insurance policy; and grants and loans for city adaptation projects.
• Financial, insurance, and real estate market capacities, including products and services; risk assessment and disclosure; risk pricing; and lending and investment standards.

Recommendation

Development of an urban climate resilience financial system can be accelerated and expanded through collaborations of cities, state and federal governments, and real estate, insurance, and financial markets, as well as community-based sectors such as health care and utilities, that prioritize, design, and implement system-building solutions.

Given the highly distributed nature of the system that exists and needs to be developed, cities—as the entities directly facing the financing challenge—are the only players with an overriding interest in developing all of the elements of a climate resilience financial system. But they would need support and resources from their partner organizations, other sectors and levels of government, as well as philanthropy, to help lead and sustain such an effort.

A starting point for developing a system-building collaborative approach would be to organize cities to link, learn, and align with each other, and act in concert with relevant private sectors and other levels of government to develop and implement projects that build a climate resilience financial system.

The post Research Report: Toward a Climate Resilience Financial System for US Cities appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The post Art and Water Do Mix appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

More and more studies are emerging that tackle some of these questions, few of them more comprehensive and insightful than “Financing Climate Resilience: Mobilizing Resources and Incentives to Protect Boston from Climate Risks,” just off the presses. The 60-page report by the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s Sustainable Solutions Lab, produced for the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, is one of the few studies that combines a scan of the landscape of adaptation financing with the specific adaptation needs of a city. It’s not an adaptation investment plan; it’s a step toward such a plan. But in taking the step it also provides a knowledge asset to other cities: a framework for understanding what is possible and emerging in adaptation finance and how it fits–and doesn’t fit–with a city’s adaptation needs.

The picture that “Financing Climate Resilience” provides is, let’s say, cautiously optimistic without ignoring the real challenges faced by cities like Boston, which must take on serious adaptation costs due to sea-level rise. An obvious challenge is to muster the political will–of elected officials and stakeholders in the community–for paying the increased costs of adaptation. But just as necessary will be the development of innovations in governance and financing. Without new ways of collaborating at the regional level and at the district/neighborhood scales, and without new ways of assuring private investors and insurers that the risks of climate change will be managed, it will be difficult–perhaps impossible–to assemble the money needed to implement Boston’s adaptation.

Other cities and some states are also following analytic pathways, driven by the need to figure out where their adaptation money will come from. Gradually, as our research is finding, these pathways form a direction: cities, financial and insurance markets, and state and federal governments will have to develop a financing system for urban adaptation, not just a set of solutions for Boston, and a set for Miami, and a set for San Francisco. We’ll be reporting on that research soon.

The post Urban Climate Adaptation’s Money Trap appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

1 SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION – Capacity to assess and understand climate risks and vulnerabilities of city’s built, natural, and economic assets and its populations, and use these analyses for ongoing adaptation planning.

2 COMMUNICATIONS – Capacity to communicate with and educate civic leaders and community members in ways that build and sustain a sense of urgency to adapt for climate changes.

3 EQUITABLE ADAPTATION – Capacity to make social and economic equity a central driver of the city’s adaptation approach.

4 INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT – Capacity to fully engage stakeholders and the public, especially vulnerable and underrepresented populations, in developing, implementing, and monitoring adaptation plans

5 INTERGOVERNMENTAL ALIGNMENT – Capacity to coordinate planning and action across governments at local, regional, state, tribal, and federal levels.

6 TECHNICAL DESIGN – Capacity to design, test, and implement adaptation actions that require engineering, legal, and other highly specialized details, as well as performance metrics for monitoring

7 FINANCIAL RESOURCES – Capacity to repurpose, leverage, and obtain public and private funds to invest in infrastructure development and other adaptation actions.

This work was supported by the Summit Foundation and the willingness of 35 city practitioners, climate-adaptation experts,city-supporting and conservation NGOs, and funders of urban adaptation work to share their knowledge with us. See report

The post Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Now, with a grant from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network and contributions from Baltimore, Flagstaff, Fort Collins, San Jose, Tacoma, and Washington D.C., USDN has released “Marketing for Action: A Guide to Marketing Fundamentals for Urban Sustainability Offices.”

“Marketing for Action” lays out the marketing fundamentals for  creating and shaping strong environmental behavior-change campaigns using best practices in marketing. It offers a practical how-to, with or without big budgets, for cultivating voluntary action by city residents. It provides real-world examples from U.S. cities leading this practice.

Roya, who headed GreeNYC, the marketing arm of PlaNYC, for five years,has started her own business, Vision Flourish, to work with cities and NGOs to develop successful behavior change strategies.

(Access to USDN’s set of innovation projects)

The post City Marketing Campaigns Can Change Behavior. Here’s How. 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.

AEE’s latest report, “Advanced Energy Jobs in California,” provides a good look at both the methodology and its conclusions. Here are some highlights:

• California contains 20% of all advanced energy jobs in the U.S.—more than 500,000 workers in all, triple what California’s most famous sector, Motion Pictures, TV, and Radio, contains. [Note: The state has about 12% of the U.S. population, but is a leader in promoting energy efficiency and has a cap-and-trade market.]
• Advanced energy generated jobs at six times the rate of the overall California economy last year, 18% versus 3%.
• Energy Efficiency accounts for about 60% of advanced energy jobs in California.
• Driven by strong supporting policies and declining prices, employment across Advanced Grid technologies—energy storage, smart grid, and electric vehicle charging stations– more than doubled between 2014 and 2015.

The post California Dreaming appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The document is just 20 pages long and includes 17 indicators of progress with measurable targets for 2025 and current performance data.

“Co-Create” is well worth a look. Notice the cover, too: like so many of the images in the city’s publications, it features a child having fun.

Thanks to Copenhagen’s Mariann Anderson for calling our attention to this report.

The post Co-Create Copenhagen: A Liveable, Responsible City With an Edge appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.