From the report introduction:

“The report’s analysis makes clear the great magnitude of the change needed to achieve carbon neutrality. It requires an electricity grid that is powered by renewable sources of energy and a large-scale reduction in the use of oil and natural gas for transportation, space heating, and hot water. It requires immediate and dramatic efforts to make buildings more energy efficient. It entails replacing travel in personal vehicles with greater use of public transportation, cycling and walking, while eliminating the use of internal combustion engines for remaining vehicles. And it necessitates sending zero-waste to landfills and incinerators. These necessary achievements will require innovation and transformation in our city’s core systems. And we will need to make these changes in a way that is cost effective, that equitably distributes benefits and burdens, and that does not unduly disrupt ongoing operations.”

— Amos B. Hostetter, Jr., Co-Chair, Boston Green Ribbon Commission Vice Chair, Boston Green Ribbon Commission and Trustee, Barr Foundation

— Mindy Lubber, Vice Chair, Boston Green Ribbon Commission, CEO & President, Ceres

The post “Carbon Free Boston” — How One US City Can Reduce GHG Emissions and Improve Quality of Life appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

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.

As climate innovations proliferate in cities, it has become common to hear urban innovators talk about the “transformation” of urban systems, neighborhoods, the economy, and the entire city. but what exactly about the city is being transformed, and how does transformation happen? the answers lie in our understanding of both cities and innovations.

Cities arrange their built and natural space in ways that establish the fundamental elements of urban life–the underlying economic activities, life-maintaining metabolism, use of natural systems, and inhabitants’ capacity to shape a shared future…

We explain that urban climate innovations change the design and use of urban space in ways that don’t just decarbonize the city; they change the fundamental elements of cities.

The cities are still cities, of course…. But as their underlying elements change, the cities will not be the same as they were before. They are being transformed. 

When a dozen or so cities began in the early 1990s, with an early version ICLEI, to develop strategies for reducing GHG emissions within their borders, decarbonization, not transformation was on their minds. The urban decarbonization effort gained has gained traction worldwide thanks to entities like C40 Cities, which periodically reports on the thousands of actions its city members are taking to reduce GHG emissions.

Gradually, cities realized that many of the decarbonization actions they were taking produced other, highly desirable benefits. C40 Cities identified these as increased healthiness, economic efficiency, innovation, productivity, growth in the technology sector, and quality of life. “A well-designed city can reduce congestion, improve air quality, reduce noise pollution, and decrease energy use,” state the China Development Bank guidelines. “It can create enjoyable spaces for everyone, from children to the elderly, and increases options for daily life. It makes neighborhoods more attractive and livable, and creates cities with more vitality and economic prosperity.”

With decarbonization underway and co-benefits being promoted, our book argues, the focus can also turn more to intentional transformation–replacing the ideas upon which the modern city was built in the 19th and 20th centuries, but which cannot solve cities’ 21st century problems. Fortunately, we show, a new set of transformational ideas are embedded in the many climate innovations of cities.

The post The 30-Year Evolution of Urban Climate Innovation: From Decarbonizing to Co-benefits to Transformation appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Before climate change arrived in the headlines in the late 1980s, the groundwork for climate leadership had been laid. The creators of urban climate innovation labs span three overlapping generations, each of which experienced its own jolt of awakening and urgent call to action. 

Those who are in their sixties, seventies, or eighties were present when the environmental movement came to life, assembling for the first Earth Day in 1970, spurred by biologist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which warned of the dire impact of pesticides, and by the mounting, visible crises caused by hazardous and toxic industrial processes.

City innovators in their forties and fifties, many of whom are entering positions of substantial authority in government, business, and the civil sector, were coming of age when a 1987 United Nations report, “Our Common Future”—known as the Brundtland Report after its chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s first female prime minister—put a new idea onto society’s radar screen. It offered “sustainable development” as an overarching concept in which the use of physical ecosystems and renewable resources would occur “within the limits of regeneration and naturalgrowth.” Brundtland called for action by all nations but also signaled the importance of cities: “The most immediate environmental concerns of most people will be urban ones.”

These two generations were joined by a third generation of innovators that arrived after the dawn of climate-change awareness. The commitment of countless numbers of twenty-and thirty-year-old innovators, many of whom are raising young children, was sparked by Al Gore’s 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, which detailed the advent of global warming, argued that the means were available to reverse the trend if only there was the political will to act, and called on viewers to take personal responsibility for solving the problem.

The post Awakening: Emergence of Climate Leadership from Silent Spring to Inconvenient Truth appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

CNCA members selected the seven Game Changers to share with other cities: next-generation practices that can accelerate and amplify decarbonization in cities.

Cities that are embracing these game changing opportunities are thriving and benefiting economically because they are clean, efficient cities where people want to live. Gregor Robertson, Mayor, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The Game Changers and the CNCA cities used as a main examples are:

• Adopt a Zero-Emissions Standard for New Buildings – Vancouver
• Build a Ubiquitous Electric-Vehicle Charging Infrastructure – Oslo
• Mandate the Recovery of Organic Material – San Francisco
• Electrify Buildings’ Heating and Cooling Systems – Boulder, New York City, Washington DC
• Designate Car-Free and Low-Emissions Vehicle Zones – Stockholm, London, Oslo
• Empower Local Producers and Buyers of Renewable Electricity – Washington DC, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro
• Set a City Climate Budget to Drive Decarbonization – Oslo

The report details the cities’ key implementation steps and lessons learned and challenges that other cities may face in implementing the actions. It was released September 12 at the Global Climate Action Summit.

The post Game Changers: 7 Ways Leading Cities Are Reducing GHG Emissions appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

A city innovation lab isn’t a facility with highly controlled conditions; it’s the entire city–the complex, real urban world with its messy swarms of businesses, governments, and organizations; core urban systems; ideas, interests, and politics; built infrastructure, natural ecosystems, economic sectors; and, of course, all manner of people and groupings. These city labs exist on every populated continent. 

As leaders in the climate struggle convene for the Global Climate Action Summit and Climate Week, the role of cities worldwide as active champions and innovators is becoming more and more prominent. Three decades ago, when the first warnings of global warming were sounded, almost no one looked to cities for a response. As we write in Life After Carbon:

“Cities were widely viewed as environmental villains, not saviors. . . . It was widely assumed that a serious response to climate change was up to national governments cooperating internationally. . . . The who did think about a role for cities weren’t sure how much cities could do or would be willing to do to reduce GHG emissions.”

In 2009. mayors showed up in force in Copenhagen to influence national leaders negotiating at a UN conference to reduce emissions, but they were kept on the sidelines. But six years later, when the UN tried again In Paris, cities were in the spotlight. The UN had announced that as much as 70% of global GHG emissions was produced in cities. Leaders from more than 400 cities assembled to press national leaders and pledge collective support for ambitious climate change efforts. In 2017, when President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, nearly 300 American mayors rose up in defiance.

The mounting urban uproar, full-throated by 2018’s fall events, has helped turn up the heat on national governments to take climate action. More significant, we explain in Life After Carbon, “has been the outpouring of urban climate innovations, which shows national leaders and everyone else that cities are doing a great deal–more than anyone expected–in response to climate change, and they could do even more. . . . A great surge of climate innovations designed, tested, and implemented by cities is sweeping through the world.”

By studying the climate innovations produced in 25 of the world’s most ambitious climate-action cities, we were able to discern a set of underlying radical ideas for urban change that have been triggered by the climate crisis. The first part of Life After Carbon studies these cities and their climate work. We call them “urban climate innovation laboratories”–

“Cities that have come to understand themselves, their place in the world, in a new way and act boldly on their changed awareness. They take to heart the challenge of climate change. They publicly commit to do more about it than many national governments have pledged. They immerse themselves in figuring out what they can do. And they start doing it, despite the many technical, political. economic, and social difficulties involved.

“They are changing just about everything in “the city”–the buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and other physical infrastructure; the supply and use of energy, water, transportation, green spaces, and other land; as well as the consumption of resources and disposal of waste. They are changing economic opportunities and the costs of doing business and living in the city. They are changing the minds and habits of their residents. They are changing the identities of their cities.”

More about climate innovation lab cities–and the list of the 25 cities featured in Life After Carbon–here. Better yet, order the whole book from our publisher.

The post What is an Urban Climate Innovation Laboratory? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

• “World’s first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden” — “The world’s first electrified road that recharges the batteries of cars and trucks driving on it has been opened in Sweden. About 2km (1.2 miles) of electric rail has been embedded in a public road near Stockholm, but the government’s roads agency has already drafted a national map for future expansion.”
• “Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars” — “The idea is pretty simple. Take nine square blocks of city. (It doesn’t have to be nine, but that’s the ideal.) Rather than all traffic being permitted on all the streets between and among those blocks, cordon off a perimeter and keep through traffic, freight, and city buses on that. In the interior, allow only local vehicles, traveling at very low speeds, under 10 mph. And make all the interior streets one-way loops (see the arrows on the green streets below), so none of them serve through streets.
• “This ‘Singing Road” in the Netherlands Has Been Driving Locals Batty” – “Rumble strips that have been installed on a highway located in the Friesland region, in northwest part of the Netherlands, make the road play the Frisian national anthem when drivers pass over them at 40 mph, the BBC reported. The new addition to the road was meant to promote the city of Leeuwarden, this year’s European Capital of Culture. But instead, it has turned into the residents’ nightmare. According to the BBC, one resident called it ‘psychological torture.'”

But don’t just look to innovations for the future of city streets. San Francisco recently discovered film of the aftermath of its 1906 earthquake. There’s not much more than rubble and survivors to be seen, but when you compare that footage to pre-earthquake footage of the city’s Market Street, you can see the multiple-use of city streets by pedestrians, trolleys, horse-drawn carts, and, yes, some slow-moving cars–in the days before cities let cars take over and shove every other user aside. No traffic lights and no bicycles, but a people- and transit-centered vibrancy that cities lost and are now trying to restore.

The post Road Wars: City Innovations and Back to the Future 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.

As Arup seeks to carve out a new market to serve–arid urban climate adaptation–it has identified dozens of strategies for cities to pursue at the scales of buildings, public spaces, and citywide. Arup’s most important framing message: Arid cities must set aside old ideas about urban design, planning, and development and invent,

“Cities in these regions face complex challenges such as water scarcity, inadequate infrastructure, rapidly growing populations, and impacts on public health from the effects of urban heat islands. Yet most cities in arid environments are still planned and designed based on a global city making paradigm established during the middle parts of the 20th century. This one-size-fits-all approach, characterised by private car ownership and separate land uses connected by highway networks, fails to respond to specific climatic contexts and needs.

“Planners, engineers and decision makers working in arid environments require climate appropriate design solutions to create sustainable and liveable cities. Future responses must be tailored to specific social, economic, environmental and political conditions, combining the best of new technology with locally adapted solutions.”

This is precisely the theme of our forthcoming book, Life After Carbon: cities must–and are–replacing the modern-city paradigm with a new set of ideas accounting for climate change, energy system transformation, urban greening, and other sustainability models–and these ideas are transformational.

The post Hot and Bothered: What’s the Future of Arid Cities? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The first thing to notice in the report is the economic sectors that are growing: green buildings and clean tech. The green building sector has developed deep expertise in building envelope performance, while the city and the province of British Columbia have adopted some of the toughest green building standards in the world. The clean tech sector covers clean-energy production, management and storage; water treatment and management; material efficiency and circular economy; advanced materials development; green agritech; and clean transportation. Province-wide, clean tech companies raised $6 billion in equity investment between 2011 and 2017.

The report notes that “green job growth includes both new and transitional jobs. New jobs come from market expansion and growth, while transitional jobs are existing jobs in traditional sectors that have become green due to changed norms and practices (e.g. construction changes due to greener building codes). On average, 40 percent of growth in green jobs each year may be attributed to new jobs, while 60 percent of growth is due to transitional jobs.”

It also points to some of the fundamentals for urban success in the emerging economy:

• Branding–“Vancouver has a global reputation as a leading clean and green economy”
• Talent — Large numbers of highly educated people who become green-business entrepreneurs and employees and want to live in a sustainable city.

The report has much more information that other cities may find useful for developing strategies and indicators of their standing and progress in the economy that is coming.

The post Going Carbon Free: Vancouver Builds a Green Economy appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.