City Council - Environmental Justice, Resiliency, & Parks Committee Hearing on Docket #1850

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you for joining. Good morning, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Congressman. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning. Thank you.

Thanks for watching!

Are you ready to go over there on your behalf?

and I'm the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Environmental Justice, Resiliency and Parks. Today is November 14th and it is exactly 10.03 a.m. In accordance with Chapter 2 of the Laws of 2025, modifying certain requirements of Open Meeting Law and relieving public bodies of certain requirements, including the requirement that public bodies conduct its meeting in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public, the City Council will be conducting this hearing virtually via Zoom. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov forward slash shitty dash council dash tv and broadcasted on Xfinity channel 8, RCN channel 82, and Fios channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.ej.boston.gov and will be made a part of the record and available to all counselors. I think that email is incorrect, so we'll circle back on that.

I have the Committee for City Services and Innovation Technology in front of me, that email, so I'll circle back and get the right one. And all our comments will be made a part of the record and available to all Councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so, please email our central staff liaison Ron Cobb at roncobb at boston.gov for the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. and written comments may be sent to ccc.ep at boston.gov, which is the correct email. Today's hearing is on docket 1850 in order for a hearing to discuss the City of Boston's 2030 Climate Action Plan. This matter was sponsored by myself and was referred to the committee on October 22, 2025. Today, I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival.

We have City Councillor Ed Flynn on the line with us and just double checking there's no one else. Okay. And we'll go into opening remarks. Councillor Flynn, you have the floor and then I'll go into my opening remarks.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the administration team that is here. Chris Osgood, Brian Sweat, and others as well had an opportunity to work with Chris for many years and looking forward to that working relationship and partnership on these critical issues. I'm here to learn. from the administration and from my City Council colleagues as well. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Flynn, for being with us. And just quickly, as a lead sponsor of this docket, I'm just grateful to my colleagues who are here to expand upon and elaborate and educate us about their work within the administration. as well as our environmental and community partners and residents of Boston who continue to push our city towards a more just, resilient, and sustainable future. Boston has long been recognized as a national leader in climate action Both for the breadth of our policies and for our insistence that climate justice has to be at the center of everything that we do. And over the last two decades, there's been a strong foundation developing landmark policies like Birdo, Climate Ready Boston, Boston Green New Deal. There's a lot of work being done with the Climate Resilience Office and yet we know that the pace and scale of the climate crisis demands more of all of us. And so this past summer, the Wood administration drafted

A 2030 Climate Action Plan, which is a roadmap that lays out the city's priorities for the next five years and sets measurable indicators aligned with Boston's Green New Deal and our commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050. I've reviewed the plan. I do have a couple of questions. I look forward to the discussion here but perhaps more importantly how this plan embeds climate justice throughout. So how can we ensure that neighborhoods like East Boston, South Boston, Dorchester and others, communities that have long faced disproportionate environmental burdens are centered as beneficiaries of climate investments? And so today's hearing is an opportunity to examine this plan in detail, understand its implementation strategies and ensure that our efforts are coordinated, Measurable, Transparent, and Equitable. So today we'll hear from the Mayor's Office of Environment, Energy, and Open Space, environmental advocates,

experts community members their expertise will help define how we strengthen and accelerate this work together so thank you so much just double checking there's no other city councillors that have come oh we have city council president Ruzzi Louisian President, if you have opening remarks please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to everyone for being here this morning. I just want to thank you for your leadership in this space. You've been dogged on making sure that the city is thinking and that we are executing on a coastal resilience plan. And so I'm looking forward to the conversation and hearing from the administration, where things stand. This is actually a question that comes up quite a bit in community. I'm an Atlar City Councilor and so people are always asking about this. So I'm really glad that we're having this conversation and I'm looking forward to following along. Thank you.

Thank you, Council President. We've also been joined by Councillor John Fitzgerald. Councillor Fitzgerald, you have the floor for any opening remarks.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I apologize I'm off camera. I'm in transit at the moment. But obviously the numbers 2030 have a lot of meaning to me, having been involved in Imagine Boston 2030 several years ago. Under the prior administration and all the offshoots of plans that have come off of that. Climate Resiliency, Go Boston 2030, things like that. So happy to see how far along it's come. And also, obviously, my questions will probably be more focused on the Dorchester coastline, seven plus miles, as well as Trees in the neighborhood. Those are my two sort of climate issues, but I know there's a lot more other work to do on, but I appreciate all of your work and thank you so much for the time, guys.

Thank you, Councillor. So I'll now introduce today's panelists. From the administration, we have Brian Sweat, who's the Chief Climate Officer. We also have Christopher Osgood, Director of the Office of Climate Resilience, and Oliver Sellers-Garcia, who is Boston's Green New Deal Director. You all have the floor. Please feel free to take it away. And just for my colleagues, we did receive a slide deck that they'll be going through that's within the folder, within the email that was sent out this morning by Ron. So feel free to take it away, Chief. Thank you.

Great, thank you so much Madam Chair for convening this and for presenting us with an opportunity to have a conversation on the city's 2030 Climate Action Plan. in the midst of its development and we'll talk a bit about where it's going where we're in the process but to engage with you and your colleagues to make sure we're getting your feedback and support and answering your questions because You guys are obviously both critical inputs into this plan and critical conduits to the constituents in Boston about making sure everybody understands it and is engaging with it. Oliver, who's pulling up the deck? I'll begin with a little bit of table setting. Can you hear me here?

Yes, we can hear you. And we have the . Great. There you go.

So if we want to jump to the next slide, We'll lay out the agenda and overview. I'm going to do a little bit of table setting on the Climate Action Plan and then turn it over to Oliver Sellers-Garcia to walk through the details and the structure of the plan, some of our engagement to date. and then Chris and Oliver and I will tag team on the topics that it covers in the content or the timeline and next steps in terms of engagement. So four very brief items I want to cover just to sort of table set here. First, as I believe all of you know, this is actually our fifth climate action plan. So this is really building on a robust set of planning. And Boston was at the forefront of cities around the country and around the world to define climate action as a challenge, define climate change as an existential challenge to our city and begin planning for it and begin embedding it in everything that we're doing. The most recent formal climate action plan for the city was the 2019 update.

And so this is really building off of that. And I want to highlight a couple of focus areas for this. First and foremost, this is focused on 2030 and we're calling it a 2030 Climate Action Plan because we are reinforcing but not changing The long term goals of the city to be net carbon neutral by mid-century and resilient to our expected future climate. This plan is really focused on what does success look like in 2030 on our climate action programs. and for us that means both our progress on mitigation so on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we'll talk about where those are largely from for Boston and how we're addressing that and on climate resilience. And as Madam Chair, you know, and have been a critical supporter of in the last few years, we've created an Office of Climate Resilience really dedicated to and to institutionalize the government structures around delivering a climate resilience Boston going forward.

So those are the two real focus areas of this plan with foundationally climate justice being our North Star in everything we do. It is not a separate pillar. It is foundational and there will be KPIs, key performance indicators around environmental justice throughout this plan because we know as an administration it's not only morally the right thing to do, But it is also where you see the highest return on investment in terms of health indicators, in terms of economic indicators, in terms of opportunities is addressing climate action in our climate justice and environmental justice communities first and foremost. And so it just makes sense from every way we look at it and this is prioritizing those investments. I will highlight that this is a climate plan. This is not a sustainability plan. So there are lots of things that the city does under the general rubric of sustainability that may get referenced in this plan, but are not explicitly called out and don't have deep dives.

So as many on this call know, we have an open space and recreation plan that the Parks Department, which sits in my cabinet, leads every several years. This will not repeat that. There are plenty of things in the open space plan about parks and open space and recreation You'll see elements in here on trees and shade about climate resilience, but this is not a repeat of the parks plan. This is not comprehensive around food. We have a broad food policy in the City of Boston. There are elements in here on food justice and resilience, but this is not sort of a repeat of that plan. Waste Removal is another one where we have a comprehensive recycling program that is not about climate, that's about sustainability given where our waste goes. So I just want people to not Be concerned if they don't see some specific sustainability-related programs with deep dives in this plan. That is by intent. We wanted to narrowly focus this particular plan on what does success look like on greenhouse gas mitigation, on climate resilience, and on climate justice in 2030.

And then lastly, I just want to mention this is not a city hall plan. This is a citywide plan. And one of the emphases you'll see throughout this is we're going to need partners in the community to deliver this so not only will we be defined in which City Hall is the lead on each of these strategies. We will also be defining key citywide partners, nonprofits, institutions, corporates, who will help co-own delivery of these programs and these goals as we move forward. I may have jumped already to the next slide in my head all over, so let's see. So, yeah, so building on the 2019 plan, collaboration across the institutions in the city, we really do want to partner and I'm excited to see Councilor Coletta, the outside panel, many of those folks have engaged with us throughout and be critical partners. and that is a pivot. In the past, I think these plans have been perceived as city hall plans and we get great engagements on defining the plan.

We want to keep that engagement going when this plan is formally released in April to actually co-deliver on the ambition here. around climate. So with that said, I will turn it over to Oliver to dig deeper into the details. Great.

Thank you, Brian. I'm Oliver Sellers-Garcia, the Commissioner of the Environment Department and the Green New Deal Director. If you could move to the next slide, please. So I just want to preface the slides that I'm going to go through by just Thanking the chair and everyone on the committee for having this meeting. This is really an opportunity to hear from you, the city council, of course from the panel as well but I want you to put this in the context of before I go into the details of We have a lot of public engagement that we have been doing and we're going to share a lot of details about that so that you know how the Boston community has been participating. that this is also, you know, again, you'll hear me talk about a few of the different Thank you.

Thank you. where there's a lot of discussion at the beginning and then a lot of work in between and then a presentation at the end. We're really at a midway point right here, which is different. And so you'll see that by design there's things that haven't been completed. There's information that we're still collecting. There's input such as what you'll give us today that will make it into the final plan. And that is a new way of doing it that is more transparent and also recognizes that We can learn by putting things forward, going back, and coming back again. So you'll hear me say that a few more times with more detail.

So what I'm going to talk about also is a bit of a high level because it's really hard to get into all the details of the plan. So we'll try to go through this quickly to give as much opportunity to have a back and forth about the specific Subject Matter. So, again, just the frame of this plan really is and how it is, you know, how you can conceive of it as being different from past climate plans is a much Closer Endpoint Time Frame to 2030. Of course, we're setting ourselves up to reach our 2050 targets. But where past plans have kind of kicked the can down the road, we're focusing on the things that must be done in the next five years because we're all going to be here to do them together. The other thing is that we are working on developing metrics that are actually going to track our progress

at that scale of annual or even more frequent progress in things that people can understand and see. And the other is, as Brian mentioned, Climate Justice is at the center of what we are doing and this plan is the springboard to create more climate justice tools that will be used in the implementation of the plan. So if you move to the next slide. This is another way of thinking about what is the scope of this plan. For the first time, Boston is doing a climate action plan. that combines greenhouse gas reductions with climate resilience. We all live in the world and understand that these things come together. When you are retrofitting a triple decker, you're not just going to put in solar panels and make it efficient, you're also going to think about The Leaky Basement and How to Keep It Hot and Cold in Temperature Extremes.

Of course, there are strategies that are much more oriented toward one and the other, but this is a recognition that we are going to be implementing climate solutions together. and with a focus on climate justice that does have some sort of explicit components in the plan that are called out, for example, as climate justice metrics that you'll see in the next draft. But fundamentally, it's the underlying basis for a lot of the work that we're doing. making sure that the costs and benefits of climate action are shared in a way that recognizes where there has been more burden and where there is more opportunity across the city. and that is fundamental in the shape of a lot of the strategies that are in this plan. So I will move to the next slide here, which is very busy.

I understand this is more of a takeaway slide for you to look at later and refer to when folks in our community ask you about the climate plan. But this is a little bit more detail about what I was sharing about how we're doing things differently this time and having a couple of drafts before we finalize it that go out there into the public. And so what I'll highlight is the gray boxes in the middle Those are sort of like the big deliverables, the products of the plan. What is in red is the technical input from city staff and some consultants who have been helping out. The green is the community and stakeholder input that feeds into the deliverable once it's sort of in order for it to be completed. and in blue we have a big analytical process with a little bit more detail to show you what that is. So what I want to highlight here is that

The draft that you have seen that came out in August is draft number one. That resulted from a lot of input from community partners and individuals. I'll tell you more about that in a moment primarily around prioritization and a lot of input from our subject matter experts inside of the city. What we're working on now, that's where the star is, is the development of a second draft. And that is going to have a lot of additional things in it. I'll tell you about that more in detail. But what I want to point out in the sequence is that a second round of engagement happened. It's now complete. The results of that is what we are working with for this draft too. And then we'll put out a final draft where there will be public comment. So moving on to the next slide.

So what I want to give you a little bit more detail than we normally do about what the engagement process is, because I know that's so important for representatives of everyone here in the city. So we tried to recognize that community engagement has to work at the different levels and scales at which folks want to engage, provide feedback, and also take ownership for delivery of the plan. And so we have an internal structure, whether that includes our climate council, which is made up of chiefs, 13 chiefs and directors around the city, and we also have a lot of subject matter and delivery teams across the city. I think I'll point your attention more to the external part of it

on the right, which is that we created different kinds of activities and ways to provide feedback and give us ideas for different types of folks in the city. So for the general public, sort of a totally wide open way of individuals providing feedback, coming to meetings We also have created a specialized program for community-based organizations who represent either specific geographies or issue areas and work with them to both receive feedback but also have them be our partners out in the community getting the word out about the plan and sort of being a representative for the constituents they represent. and then finally we have been working with a separate group although there is of course some overlap on key delivery partners these are more

organizations that have identified from the very beginning that they have a responsibility in implementing some of these solutions. So think anchor institutions in healthcare or organizations that do a lot of formal advocacy on issues. That is a distinction there. So if we move on to the next slide. I'm just going to tell you a little bit more about the different drafts so that you understand where we are in the process and the engagement that led up to it. So, as I mentioned, the draft that is up on our website that was released in August, had a lot of engagement that was focused around neighborhoods for public meetings and a survey that was open to everyone to get a sense of what priority areas are. We also had a big roundtable with those CBO partners that I mentioned.

And so what came out of that feedback that you see represented already in the draft that was released in August is that there is a lot of interest in a climate plan that shows things that can be implemented in a realistic timeframe. And the focus areas that we heard a lot about, of course, there's many, but heat resilience, building decarbonization, especially with a focus on renters and small buildings. and also we heard a lot about equitable transportation access. Think of this in the context of conversations that were about how does climate touch your life and what matters to you? So moving on to the next slide, This is the step that we're at right now. We've completed the engagement that is on the left part of your screen here.

and what that consisted of was a series of workshops that were actually, although we have one neighborhood, I'm sorry, a couple of neighborhoods, they were more about different groups of constituents such as young folks, older folks, businesses, and also a survey that was much more you may have seen embedded into the draft to get specific feedback on some of the content in there about the strategies. and also continuing the work with our community partners and delivery partners. So what came out of that engagement that we're working into our draft right now is really a focus on continuing some of the particular areas that I mentioned, but also a bit more refinement on some additional areas to focus on, particularly tree canopy,

Building retrofits, again, we're hearing a lot about cooling and sort of a meta component about education and engagement. and a real desire to have engagement continue beyond the completion of the plan. So we're getting a strong signal that it's not just producing a plan and then measuring our progress, but also continuing engagement on that. Moving on to the next slide. So this is now in the future. This will be the draft that we put out in February for public comment. There will be an opportunity to provide more formal written comments and the climate plan will have all the components in it, such as the metrics and many of our partners who will be co-owning the delivery of some of our strategies.

So with that, I'll move to this next slide here. And I hope that what I just went over gave you a more in-depth sense of what the last 8 months have been like with a lot of back and forth at different levels, some of it virtual, some of it in person. and the sort of wealth of information that we've received. And here is where I completely cannot do justice to all of the rich material in here, but what I'll say is that in between the drafts, What we've done is we've heard some feedback and we figured out what we can consolidate, what might not be as high a priority anymore. and have restructured the plan to fit into these categories. But by and large, the feedback that we've gotten is you're on the right path this is what we want to see in this climate plan so it's really more a question of organization and i want to just give you a

Tiny taste of the categories that this is in, which is very familiar. So we've called out the items that the city will lead on specifically for our operations. And then there's a lot on buildings and transportation. and Energy. So buildings and energy is where a lot of our greenhouse gas emissions come from. And there's a big focus on affordability and how these things can actually be done with not just sticks but also carrots and recognizing the areas that we can work in with most impact now given our context. In transportation, a lot of overlap and highlighting of transportation issues that have Some work going on in the city, but that really have a strong climate nexus. And so I will now turn it to Chris, who's going to give a brief overview of the other sections.

Oliver, thank you so much, and thank you so much to you and to Brian for your leadership on the Climate Action Plan, and really appreciate as well the partnership with Boston City Council and all the partners in the following panel. As Brian said, This is not a city hall plan. This is a citywide plan. It is going to take all of us to be able to really do this work going forward. I'm going to talk very briefly about the second and third columns here. The second column is really focused on those areas where we're most looking to address the climate risks in front of our city. all with a lens towards making sure that Boston remains a great city for all of our residents to call home for generations to come. The three principal climate risks we're focused on are extreme heat, stormwater flooding, and coastal flooding, which you see sort of in the middle of that center column. And then we're also focused on a set of things that really help us do work at an accelerated pace across all of those risks.

So to touch briefly on heat and stormwater and coastal flooding, heat, as many of you know, is the number one weather-related cause of death in our country. And for the City, we are focused a lot on how we support our residents during heat emergencies, those intense Thank you very much. A more comfortable climate for more people. And then a third category of work which is really around making sure that we're tailoring our programs to really support our most vulnerable residents. We've made great progress in the last couple of years on this work including a lot of work by our Parks Department to shift For example, where they are doing their tree planting. So now 40% of our tree planting is happening in the 20% of Boston has lower canopy cover places like South Boston and East Boston.

We've also last year implemented the largest rollout of green roofs on bus shelters anywhere in the nation. In that heat category in this climate action plan is our set of strategies that expand the toolkit of interventions that we can Explore and implement in outdoor spaces, on our streets and our parks, ways in which we can support the transformation of indoor spaces and new policies and programs to support our most vulnerable workers and I want to make sure to give great credit to the Boston City Council for the ordinance that was recently passed very specifically around the protection of of outdoor workers during the course of heat emergencies. The second category here is around stormwater flooding. Obviously, we have all seen the significant impact of severe rain events, and we want to make sure that we're protecting our residents. Their property in our neighborhoods from intense rainstorms.

A lot of this work is about how we both manage these 600 miles of storm drain infrastructure that water and sewer stewards beneath our streets, as well as how we transform Public property, our 800 miles of roadway, our public property in general, above ground. Again, this is a place where already there's been significant progress by both our streets cabinet and our Boston Water and Sewer Commission. implementing a new stormwater program over the last few years and creating a new office of green infrastructure to think about the transformation of our streets going forward. In the Climate Action Plan, our set of strategies that extend this work Refining the stormwater program itself, extending the green infrastructure standards that we have for our streets to more of our city-owned assets across the city, and importantly also updating our stormwater model so that we are

more tailoring our capital plan going forward to lower the flood risk to our residents that may occur during an intense downpour. The third category in the strategies around resilience is focused on coastal flooding. This council has been a phenomenal partner on this work and was mentioned by a number of you in your opening comments. Obviously, we are a city that experiences sunny day flooding in parts of Boston. We are looking at about 40 inches of sea level rise between the start of the century and the 2070s. All of us know and all of us hear from our constituents regularly that taking action on this is of great importance. Again, this is a place with great credit to the collaboration with the Council and our many partners that we've made a lot of progress. around preparedness and around interventions. Through this council, we've been able to allocate the largest amount in the city's history of capital funding towards projects that have a coastal resilience component

We've completed planning across all 47 miles of our coastline and are now focused on the implementation of those projects, projects like Ryan Playground in Charlestown. Through the Climate Action Plan, we are looking at a combination of both Continued focus on some of those long-term projects that help protect Boston and our communities, constituents for the balance of a century, such as our partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as accelerating our near-term work around things like deployable flood barriers and supporting residents with retrofits for their homes. There's a fourth category in that middle column of cross-hazard climate risk because we certainly all recognize that there are things that we can do that really support work in all of those categories in addressing heat, stormwater, and coastal flooding. This includes some work around how we collect data both for a real-time understanding of what's happening in our city

near-term forecasting so it can be repaired for what events may happen over the course of the following week or months as well as long-term modeling to make sure that we are making the right infrastructure investments in the right locations and in the best way possible. There's also a set of strategies in there that are focused on expanding and extending the great work that our Office of Emergency Management is doing around Providing resilience hubs for our residents, something which we look to expand for the next five years. Before I pass it back to Oliver, who will probably talk more about the third category as well that you see on this page, I just want to touch briefly on all the work in that middle category around resilience. Um, These work that we are looking to move from sort of planning and demonstration projects to accelerate implementation. And there's a number of things that this climate action plan puts forward as key strategies that will help us accelerate the pace of implementation. That includes work around

developing tools to finance this work, ways in which we can engage and embrace the incredible community of innovators, entrepreneurs, and researchers in the Boston area to make sure that As we invest, we are investing in the most affordable and effective way possible. And then some really important projects around workforce so that as we are doing this investment, we are creating great pathways into and many more. So I'll pass it back to Oliver. Again, appreciate all the collaboration of the City Council and look forward to your questions and engagement on the Climate Action Plan.

Thank you, Chris. And we only have a couple more slides here. So, yes, as Chris mentioned, for the first time, our climate plan is really also recognizing that, you know, We can advance our climate goals along with workforce goals and the critical importance of the two and also recognizing that we are fortunate enough to really be working on the hardest things that any city can actually work on now it's no longer just the planning but in the implementation we've we've gotten to a point where funding and financing is not something that we can sort of push off to later. It's really figuring that out now. So I only have three more slides, and they're just a little bit more about the nuts and bolts of reading this plan and preparing you for the next drafts that will be coming out.

So we've organized our plan in... You know, of course, the thematic categories, but also recognizing that we need to think of the different work streams in different ways. And so in these three different categories, we have one which is Really taking the things that we've already done, because as Brian mentioned, we're coming off of 20 years of excellent climate planning and lots of implementation already. and things that we're gonna continue, grow and scale. So think for example, Birdo, which is just such a, it's our single biggest tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And this plan lets us figure out You know, for example, how more to help different kinds of buildings that need to reach those Berto targets. Things that we're going to start is another category that are things that they're not coming out of the blue. We've known we've needed to do them.

We have stakeholders who are calling for them and or ready to help us do it, and they will be new, but they are on our radar and shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone in Boston. and then we have things that we know we want to constantly be innovating and are a little bit beyond the point of knowing exactly what we are going to be doing on it in 2026 and so those are in the evaluate and explore category where we're going to be The first step is going to be figure out what the next few steps are. And that is really some of the cutting edge ideas. So moving on to the next slide. You've already probably been able to intuit a lot of this, but this is another takeaway slide to put it all on an actual calendar. We're in the fall of 2025 right now. We've completed the engagement and we're working to release in February a second draft that has a lot more in it. It has the metrics, it has the delivery partners, it has

some measurements of impact on some of the actions that have a very clear quantifiable way to measure. and then that will be out for a public comment period before the plan is completed in the spring and then finally you know you've heard us all talk about oh sorry moving on to the next slide you've heard us all talk about how important metrics are and that is again something you haven't seen yet it's under development and we're really excited to get feedback on it because we've heard from everyone like these are such great ideas I want to know What it looks like to succeed in 2026 and 2027 in these strategies. And we'll be working off of the Green New Deal dashboard that has been so helpful to orient our progress and revamping that to add metrics that are more closely related to the strategies in the plan and that really

Target metrics that are usable and intuitive to folks because maybe we all understand greenhouse gas emissions, but that's not exactly how people think about it. and here are some examples of metrics that we're considering and also there are as Chris and Brian mentioned there will be metrics that more sort of on a meta level look at Climate Justice so for example some sort of health impacts and things like that but also that more specifically for example look at neighborhoods or progress on certain targets that have been set with a climate justice priority, for example, our Boston Energy Saver targets that have a specific focus on some of the equity communities of mass save where Climate Justice is embedded in the strategy. And so the metric is tracking how that is being delivered for those folks. So that is the end of our slides.

And I will just acknowledge that this has been a big presentation. sort of hovering above the specific detail and it almost feels funny that oh no you can leave it on the previous slide these are just some in case we need to refer to them. So we really hope to be able to get into that. I want to thank the members of the panel that is coming up next. Many of them have been involved deeply in the creation of the plan and will be co-implementers and we're just so excited to be really rolling up our sleeves on a plan that I think is really right for this very critical moment where we're facing a lot of crises together and I think recognizing as a city that climate underlies a lot of the things that we want to work on that improve quality of life and our economy and that we really have to keep putting our Boston's leadership role across the country forward to make sure that climate looks like something that is ambitious and achievable.

So with that, we can open it up for questions.

Thank you very much really Chief Oliver and Chris for such a robust and informative presentation. It is high level and of course I find myself wanting in my questions to get Specifically into the details, but for my colleagues and for the panel coming up, I will reserve and I understand that in the next iteration of the draft, we'll get into some of the metrics and accountability measures. So I did have a bunch of questions as it relates to that. Weber. I am going to take one second just to recognize that Councilor Weber has joined us, our Vice Chair, so thank you for joining us, Councilor Weber. I am going to take privilege as Chair and also lead sponsor to ask questions first. I'm going to give myself six minutes and I'm going to time myself and make sure that it is I am more concerned well not more concerned but I guess the to start with my questions they'll be centered more around the internal implementation and the

Internal processes and then the budgeting, which I know could come later on. But thinking about, and there was a talk about there's going to be internal, it was to the left-hand side, internal city structures that are going to be built. Because this emphasizes such an all-of-government approach, can you just walk us through how this coordination will function in practice? I know you have this CAP dashboard that's going to be built on the Green New Deal dashboard, but specifically, What mechanisms are you going to have to ensure that every department, if that's from public works to various offices even within the cabinet to ISD to public health, how are you going to make sure that everyone's aligned? accountable for their role in meeting some of the climate and resilience goals.

Sure, I can take a first swing at that and then Oliver can come in as well. I think, as you know, Councilor, the mayor signed an executive order in September of 2024 to create the Climate Council, which is a group of 13 cabinet chiefs, including some that you'd mentioned, the Chief of Streets, the Chief of Operations, the Chief of Housing, the Chief Financial Officer, and really it's the critical cabinets involved in implementing the Climate Action Plan. and we formed this group at the beginning of this climate action planning process permanently with the idea that this is the internal group that is meeting no less than once a month to go through what are we planning on doing, how is it going, what are the pain points, how do we support each other in implementation, how do we prioritize our budgets, how do we make cohesive asks

So the org structure, you know, we thought about at the beginning of this to say not only how do we develop the right plan, but what is that implementation structure going forward and have already been engaging internally on questions on creating a climate budget. on how do we prioritize and identify the actions that we're taking that we're really embedding climate throughout everybody's decision making to make sure that It's not viewed of simply as other dollars going to climate action, but every budget and operating capital decision we're making is moving us towards a decarbonized, just, resilient, and affordable Boston for everybody. and I think that was a critical element with setting up that org structure to your question to make sure that we have the capacity to deliver and everybody is paddling together in the same direction.

Thank you. And that, I mean, that is my next question, which was how will this inform the city's budgeting process? It's primarily through the Climate Council and both the annual operating and capital budgets are going to be aligned with what is coming out of this council essentially is what you're saying.

Yes and I would say I mean in full candor Some of the strategies have more of a budget priority and impact than others. I think around climate resilience and around some of this infrastructure that has to be purpose-built on our shoreline, those are things that we want to certainly Embed in parks and embed in public access and an open space. But those are new items, right, in our capital plan. And this is not unique to Boston. The state released its mass resilience finance strategy Earlier this week, identifying around $100 billion in investments needed over the next 25 years. On the emissions reduction side, most of this is policy and support mechanisms utilizing MassSAG. Thank you so much for joining us. HVAC replacement, about their next window replacement, about how do they upgrade their buildings over time to be both more affordable and greener.

So varying degrees of sort of budget implementation, but it's this body that will steer us through that to make sure we have a plan that is efficient, effective, and really ties together each year in its delivery. Oliver, do you want to come in and shape any more of that?

Honestly, don't have too much more to add, and I don't want to use up your six minutes.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Speaking of being efficacious, I mean, is there So how you all will ensure that information is being shared across departments and streamlined and consistent. The development of this CAP dashboard, can you just talk through what that would actually look like? Is that just in... Like planning stages right now, how will it build off of the Green New Deal dashboard just so that we can ensure that all everything data and progress updates and implementation milestones are accessible and transparent citywide.

I will cover that one. So I think the Green New Deal dashboard, to be perfectly honest, was Mayor Wu's idea. She was like, I want to show people what it means to measure this in things that in units that people understand. And so that's the core of what we will be doing. But it's going to be more closely tied. To be honest, there will be more metrics on there. because we're doing more things with this plan. And I think the key thing that will be different is that there will be a Several metrics that are added that are really more closely tied to progress on specific strategies. Whereas the Green New Deal dashboard is really more sort of like, you know, imagine taking the temperature to different parts of a cake. This one is going to be like, well, Is the cake ready to eat? We're going to have some of those metrics as well.

And we will be using them much more closely behind the scenes with the Climate Council so that they can align their work in their cabinets toward those goals. And I think the realistic expectation is that they will probably have at a minimum an annual review of what the metrics are and if they are measuring the right things because we will have some that are sort of broad and we want to make sure that they're covering the right indicators. I think in one area like health, for example, is really interesting where we want to know how it's going, but we want to know that it's also something that is under our control that we're measuring usefully the progress of the plan.

Great. Thank you. That's my six minutes. I'll be respectful to my colleagues, but just want to say as an avid baker, I appreciate your temperature reference. I'll pass it to my council colleague, Council Ed Flynn, for any questions. You have six minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I want to say thank you to the administration team that is here for the work you're doing. Chris, maybe I'll ask you this question. One of the issues I've worked on Thank you all for joining us today. Trees in every neighborhood. But we are, as you know, lacking many trees, a low percentage in Chinatown. Is this something that you are still committed to and or do you have a plan of action going forward on how we can support residents in China with more tree canopy?

Really appreciate the question and, Councilor, your focus on this issue. I'll gladly start. Ryan, please feel free to obviously add from here. There's three different strategies with great credit to our Parks Department that we're focused on. One is adjusting where we plant our street trees across the city of Boston. So, since the publication of the Urban Forestry Plan a few years ago, the Parks Department has not only increased the number of trees it's planting and increased the maintenance for those street trees it is planting, but to your point has shifted where those trees are being planted so that today more trees are being planted in those parts of our city that have historically had fewer street trees, Chinatown, South Boston, among other locations. So certainly there is there is a focus on street tree planting by our park swerving places that have lower canopy cover. Second, there is a

work that is being led in collaboration with Mass Audubon called the Boston Tree Alliance which is actually focusing on tree planting not on public streets but on private property in those areas as well that historically have lower tree canopy cover. So the Boston Tree Alliance program is sort of a second part of this. Third quick thing, which we're doing very specifically in Chinatown, as you know, is thinking about are there places that we can add trees on the street in sort of large-scale planters that where perhaps some of the subsurface conditions because of the existence of utility lines, et cetera, they make it hard to plant street trees. So we do expect to be doing some pilots around that very specifically in Chinatown on Harrison Ave. coming up again with Great Leadership Fire and Parks Department. But Brian, I don't know if there's other things that you want to cover or correct.

No, I mean, I was just, it was good overview, Chris. I'd say for the last couple of years, we've planted between 1,800 and 2,000 street trees a year. We have about just north of 40,000 street trees in Boston, so we're planting about 5% each year. Some of those are replacements. Obviously, we do lose trees over time to both age and construction projects. But we have made significant progress over the last five years on increasing canopy coverage in the public realm. As Chris mentioned, the private realm is a bit more of a challenge. um and then I would underline the uh so one we are prioritizing environmental justice and low canopy coverage neighborhoods so about 40 percent of those street trees are being planted in the 20 percent of neighborhoods that are defined as climate justice in Boston One of the challenges, Councilor Flynn, in particular, that you're well aware of is in Chinatown, there's a tremendous amount of below-grade infrastructure. So when you're walking along the sidewalk and saying like, why can't there be a street tree here?

Oftentimes the challenge is what's below the sidewalk. As Chris mentioned, we are piloting much larger mobile tree planters because oftentimes that infrastructure also has to be accessible. If you're over a steam pipe, if you're over a gas line, You know, when the utilities want to come there, we don't want to then be sort of ripping up a permanent tree planter. But how do we actually, you know, have trees that, you know, in canopy coverage in Chinatown, given that unique constraints Vis-a-vis other neighborhoods of what's happening below grade so that they have access to nature. And we're thinking broadly about nature. It's not just trees and canopy coverage. We're prioritizing that, but it's other elements of green infrastructure, other shade structures, water features. How do we enhance the parks experience in Chinatown?

Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Chris. Let me ask one more question. Maybe try to get two more questions in. One question. As a result of cuts from the federal government, especially on some infrastructure funding for the Fort Point neighborhood or the Wharf District in the South Boston Waterfront area, Chris, what is the short-term plan and the long-term plan? And I know we are trying to meet up with you Some time hopefully before Thanksgiving, but we can talk more about it later, but just want to see if you have a couple, if you have a brief thought about that.

Absolutely, and really appreciate you raising this. along the Four Point Channel for a number of years with leadership by our planning department. We've been working on a project that would reduce flood risk per section of the Four Point neighborhood. Councilor, as you referenced, recently, $10 million of that The City with its funding, through funding which this Council has affirmed in our capital plan, we are looking at How we can use the money that the city has to be able to protect the Fort Point neighborhood with a sort of city-funded, city-led implementation that could happen on a faster timeline. So happy to dive in more deeply with you on that, about the specifics of it. But it's a way in which we want to make sure that we're protecting a set of residents in a community that obviously has experienced flooding in 2018 and even more recently than that.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. And I met with Tom Reedy, and others last week. And I'm looking forward to working and talking to you soon. My final question, Chris or Brian, and I'll keep this brief. I represent also the south end, the Ruth Barclay BHA development, the old cathedral, public housing, as you know. I want to see how we're able to support those residents with a healthier environment. A better environment for them to live in. But is there any thoughts you might have in terms of how we can support residents living in the Ruth Barkley Development as it relates to providing a healthier overall experience for them, especially on the outside of the buildings.

Is there anything you guys might have any advice on?

Let me give some general, I'll have to get back to you specifically on opportunities there, and then I want to give Oliver a chance to talk about some of our work with BHA, but the Boston Housing Authority has been a phenomenal partner. of ours, and the mayor made a massively and positively ambitious commitment to get our public housing off of fossil fuels by 2030. if at all possible. And part of the reason we're doing that is not only that if we can do it there, we can do it everywhere, but is that those residents benefit significantly from the increases in improved energy efficiency and health. And so one of the programs I'll mention that we're piloting that I'd be interested to see if we can do a next stage of the development you mentioned is replacing gas-fired cooktops with electric induction ranges. and doing that in a way that not only has the benefit of better energy efficiency, but it's the indoor environmental pollution and having open lines of gas in kitchens is definitely associated with asthma.

in particular with those with respiratory challenges. So how do we make that indoor environment cleaner and healthier for folks? So we currently have a pilot installing 100 of these ranges in another development that if successful and then approved of for incentives statewide, we want to bring elsewhere. But Oliver, you want to come in on some of the work with Joel and Kenzie on BHA?

Yeah, I'll just repeat what Brian said that I think the fossil fuel free goal by 2030 that Boston Housing Authority has said is incredibly ambitious, but direction setting and a lot of the work that we do with them. Brian mentioned the gas stove replacement project that we're actually doing in some Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation housing as well as BHA properties at Franklin Field, which is designed specifically to figure out How to work out the nuts and bolts both from a resident standpoint and a property management standpoint to get gas out of housing because it really does make an enormous air quality difference. They are BHA is also you may have seen recently piloting sort of the first in the state use of window Air Source Heat Pump for cooling, which has a dramatic effect both in terms of air quality, energy efficiency, and comfort inside homes.

I know you mentioned, particularly on the outside of buildings, I think BHA has really led the way in terms of being an employer and collaborator with PowerCore to see how sort of the The natural physical environment on properties can be something that residents and community members who are looking to enter a green workforce also do. So all these things come together. But I really think that the indoor experience just in terms of air quality and comfort has an enormous is one of the leading things that our BHA community has to look forward to.

Yeah, I just want to, if you guys haven't been to the Ruth Barclay developments, In my opinion, it is struggling. I need to do everything I possibly can to help them. Maybe Chris, if you guys are able to join me before the end of the year, maybe doing a tour and a meeting there sometime. In December, but it has a lot of challenges that I'd like to see how we can support them. So maybe my office will follow up with you, okay?

Great.

Okay. Madam Chair, thank you for giving me an extra minute or two. I appreciate it.

No problem. Thank you, Councillor Flynn. It seems like Councillor Louijeune had to jump. Next up is Councillor Fitzgerald.

Great, thank you Madam Chair, and thank you all panel for being here today. One of the questions I have, I know a lot of this is about sort of the emissions aspect of things. My question is with the goal of 2030 in the next five years, it seems like a lot of those initiatives for emissions are in A lot of it's for new build, I feel. I know we're retrofitting BHA and other things like that. But there's not a lot being built at the moment, right? So it's one of those philosophical questions that I think maybe you guys can help me answer where we're at with it. Well, we're not building now, so now is the time to do that planning. But are we also telling folks that the goal will be accomplished by 2030? I mean, I feel like 2030 will be like, When we can start implementing, correct? And the next five years are sort of

You know, we'll do what we can, but more when the economy picks back up and more things are built, that's when we'll really do these implementations of the emission reducing decarbonization stuff.

Oh, Brian, why don't you go ahead?

Yeah, I'll frame this a little bit, and you can fill in. So great question, Councilor. A couple of items I'd highlight. One, the mayor passed, coming up on a little less than a year ago, net zero carbon zoning, which means that every new development, every new major development in Boston will be operationally emissions-free from the day they open. So to your point, one of the things we know we can do, because the technology is there and the engineering is there, is build very green buildings right now. And you don't want to miss the opportunity to build the wrong building, right? So you build the right emissions-free, largely electric building from the get-go. That is really important in this journey. But to your point, between 85 and 90% of the buildings that we will have to deal with in 2050 are already with us. Right? And so really the challenging part is how do we make emissions reductions and energy efficiency improvement in our existing building stock, in our existing homes, in our existing commercial buildings. So the program that the mayor announced at her State of the City in the spring and we just launched last month Boston Energy Saver.

is really focused on that, on the non-Burdo buildings. Burdo covers the largest buildings. It's 40% of the city's emissions. They know their trajectories. They're the big owners. They know how to do that. This is the first year of implementation. The smaller buildings are the ones where it's largely a carrot, right? We're putting out saying, when you're changing out your heating system, consider going with electric heat pumps. There are incentives to do that. Now there is a different heat pump rate in the wintertime for the first time ever in Boston. So folks get a lower rate if they're on a heat pump. So how do we encourage folks as they're changing out their systems over time to make the right energy efficient decision. Those are not determined by building permits and sort of the state of the economy. That's usually, you know, my system's old, it needs to be replaced. You know, I don't want to wait for it to break in the middle of the wintertime. I'm going to take some action, right? So we have a number of programs really focused there. In the aggregate, the current programs we had on the books before this Climate Action Plan got us to about a 41% reduction by 2030.

Our goal for 2030 was 50%. So, part of the goal of this overall plan was to find to 1, make sure we're on track to deliver those existing programs between now and 2030 and then find another 9%. right and that's what some of these strategies are about but again we have focused these next five years on the existing building stock because I would agree with you we're not going to have the same number of new builds that we had from like 2015 to 2020 That's not what we anticipate from 2025 to 2020.

Great, thank you. I asked that one first because I'm more focused on the coastal flooding and everything, but I wanted to make sure we touched upon the emissions because it seemed like that was more the heavy In the next five years, but on the coastal resiliency work seven plus miles of coastline that Dorchester has down in South Boston. Where are we in terms of, I mean, I know with Mr. Osgood, we're on the Morrissey Commission, and Brian, you're involved in that as well, and looking at the transformation of Morrissey Boulevard, had to add the berm. I always worry about cost and the reality of these things and how far are we behind? Because I think we're already behind. I don't think anyone is willing to admit that just in terms of... Historically, we should be more ahead of stuff.

But how far are we behind and what do we think in terms of financial stability of getting some of this stuff done by 2030 and or 2050 in the long term stuff?

Really, really appreciate the question and obviously also your collaboration and advocacy on this. I'm happy to give some thoughts, Brian. Please feel free to add. specific to sort of your district, a lot of the areas of the nearest term fund paths are locations where Implementation is going to require collaboration with the state. Tinian Beach, the Ponset, Morrissey, the Harborwalk at Harbor Point. All of which are state assets. We've got a very close working relationship with the state. There is a I think important window which is in front of us, which is that the state's environmental bond bill is going through The legislature right now and I think it's an opportunity for us to think about how do we advocate for funding from that bond bill to help invest in state-owned properties to not only enhance those assets, Parks and Transportation Assets, but also help protect the Dorchester neighborhood. And so happy to sort of follow up on that.

But with great credit to the state, this is the largest environmental bond bill in its history. A lot of it is focused already on resilience. So I think there's an opportunity to be able to accelerate A set of those projects that are top of mind for so many of your constituents.

I'd underline, it's a great question. I think we all share your sense of urgency, right? We're never going to be comfortable, but it's also like, you know, we're not ahead. I would emphasize I'm really proud of where Boston is at in the big picture, short of having been impacted by a major storm. We have been really lucky that we haven't had a major storm that has been significantly detrimental to life and limb. We have done more planning and taking more action I would put forward than any other city in the country that hasn't had a massive cataclysmic storm event, right? Because of that near miss of Sandy really caught our attention and we understand where we need to go. I would underline part of the challenge is that we do everything we can with what we directly control. That is only 16% of Boston's shoreline. 50% is owned by the state and 30% is owned by the private sector.

So part of this challenge is how do we get public-public partnerships and public-private partnerships to move with that sense of urgency to deliver the projects in our plans in enough time, right? And so I think we'll be working with you and working with the city council and state agencies and the private sector owners to really say, The next time we're developing this parcel or we need to proactively come up with a reason why we need to invest in this location to solve these solutions.

Thank you, sir. I asked to because I know along Morrissey I see as sort of the next potential development boom for the city as sort of the selfie Development has sort of creeped up Morrissey and will continue and there's a lot of open space car dealerships etc that you can imagine will be transformed into something else so you think about the economic I just want to also make sure we're you know really long-term thinking like how do we this is a boom for the economy and a boom for the city's Taxbase to protect that as well. So happy to work with you and however I can help on the public public or public private partnerships please Let me know and include me because I'm happy to sell why this area is very important to invest in for the city.

I appreciate all the work you guys do. I think no one is... No one would argue the fact that this is what's important going forward in the city because all the other stuff doesn't matter if the city is not there, right? So appreciate the work you guys do. Chair, thank you so much for the time.

Thank you. Next up we have Councilor Weber.

Thank you. If you can hear me. I guess Just reading in the news this week about the projected increase in our global temperatures since the 1800s, I think the UN had a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius, an increase since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. and right now we're like at 1.3 and now they're projecting you know 2.6 degree increase even if we make good on all of our promises to scale back and do these things. And maybe you said this up top. I apologize. I was late. In a 2.6 degree increase in global temperatures, what does that look like in Boston if we do nothing?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think we've been scenario planning for a long time and the standard deviation of those scenarios keeps moving in the wrong direction, right? And so the reality is, you know, if we are above uh two degrees even you start to come up into these reinforcing cycles right where um you know the the temperature change starts to snowball we start moving faster towards Summers that our average temperature is above 90 degrees. It's not an aberration in Boston. It's 90 days above 90 degrees towards the end of the century. We start to talk about sea level rise being at the higher ends of what we're anticipating. So is it four to six feet at the end of the century? And then how do we make sure we're adapting our infrastructure to accommodate? You know, changes over time to further protect Boston. I am still optimistic that hopefully this is the, you know, this is the canary in the mineshaft moment of the

We need to take all available action, which is why we as a city are so set on leading by example to reduce our emissions and show that it is possible while planning for various scenarios on adaptation and resilience. in terms of protecting against the shoreline, extreme precipitation and extreme heat to the extent possible. And you'll hear us talk about being precautionary. So we're putting in place, and Chris is leading the charge on this, the solutions that protect us in the near term that are also adaptable to a changing environment later in the century in a cost-effective and reasonable way to continue to protect those who live, work, and play in Boston.

Yeah, and I guess, I mean, I'm sort of I don't have a lot of optimism over the planet's ability to sort of come together and find a way to do this and it seems like the solutions, you know, ranging from Decarbonizing the atmosphere just like produced more more emissions than they than they saw. Like we just were not there. And so in a world where there's a six foot A sea level rise, does that mean we have to build a 12-foot wall? What does that look like if all we can do is... We can do these other measures, but if the rest of the world isn't doing the same, then I think we're still going to face these same issues.

like you know in the worst reasonable worst case high projection impacts like you know what kind of infrastructure will we need here that we don't have

Yeah, I'll tee it up and then Chris, you should come in on this. So I think one of the things that you're touching on, Councilor Weber, which is fundamental, is reducing emissions and getting on a steady state is a collective action problem, but Boston controls its own destiny when it comes to how resilient we are to a changing climate. Right. And I think as you start to talk about sea level rises that are four, five, six feet, you start to talk about district scale solutions. These are not building by building solutions. These are You know, seawalls, these are, you know, dams, these are devices, you know, an outer Boston Harbor solution starts to look more viable as you start talking about that level. I think we start to think bigger in scale, right? Because that's the protection that Boston would need to a bigger scale climate crisis in terms of sea level rise.

Will this plan address those scenarios, I guess, for what would be required? Every time I read a story, it's like, Well, we didn't realize it was going to have this avalanche effect or this glacier we thought would be around for another 10 years. We're shocked. I feel like we can't Thank you for your time.

Happy to add sort of, I think, three quick things that are in the Climate Action Plan that are really focused on this. One of which, which Brian already mentioned, is sort of fundamental to this, which is whether it's for heat or for stormwater or for coastal, the infrastructure that we are looking to build We are looking to build so that it is adaptable. We are not thinking that Timelines like 2050 or 2070 are the finish lines. They are sort of milestones. We want to make sure that the infrastructure we're putting in place can meet future risk reducing needs to start. Second, as part of that A lot of what's in the Climate Action Plan, importantly, is not about sort of just the capital projects we need to deliver, but the actual, a bit to Councilor Coletta Zapata's question again, like what are the structures that we need to have? What are the policies we need to have in place? What are the tools we need to have to be able to to build or build more quickly or to be able to, as Councilor, as you've led, put in programs in place that are really geared towards the public health outcomes or reducing the public health impacts for residents.

There's a lot of things over the next five years, a bit to Councilor Fitzgerald's question as well, that are not necessarily about building something new, but giving us the capacity to be as a community able to address the risks as they may change in front of us. The third quick thing I would just mention is that and also to your point is that there's a lot of There's a lot of opportunity as we do more of this work to think about how we generate the next set of solutions, how we actually think about ways we can deliver Things that help us retrofit buildings or transform our coastline or change our streets at a price point that is lower in a design that is more efficacious that is In the means that is more long lasting. And I think there's a lot of work which is called for in the Climate Action Plan about how we engage with our research community and our innovation community so that we are

creating solutions that impact Boston in our region and also that sort of allow us to continue to be a global leader in this work going forward. And I think that helps us be more nimble as, to your point, projections may change over time. But all right.

I know we're out of time, but I just can't help myself. To the extent that you can be all on the City Council spokespeople for what this plan is, I want you to hear something from us, which is that this plan is very much oriented toward some of the big quality of life, affordability and safety issues that We are now actually in a position to be able to implement because prior plans have been about sort of those big picture things that we didn't even know how we'd get there. So whether it is Closer work with the Public Health Commission or with the Office of Emergency Management or with the Mayor's Office of Housing. Yes, it's not necessarily building the giant coastal barrier, but the risks that you're talking about actually have much more immediate

Manifestations in housing instability or being able to pay your utility bill and that is actually a whole new portfolio of work that we're putting forward in this plan that might seem disconnected from these giant scenarios but our work demonstrates that that is actually how many people feel at first. And that is a big way to address the concerns that you're talking about that is in our current time horizon and within the scope of our resources.

Okay, thanks a lot. And just a comment, Chair. In terms of what we thought we were going to be able to do that we now can't because of Lawson, federal funding and cancellation of different grants. I mean, to the extent you You might want to have notes like, well, we had planned on doing X, Y, and Z, and then these were all stripped by the Trump administration. I think you could just highlight areas. We would already be protecting if the funding had come through as we expected because We believe that climate change is real and not a hoax and all that stuff. So anyway, just a note for me. Thanks, Chair. I appreciate the extra time.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Just making sure we have everybody here. I only have two last questions then I want to transition to our next panel because they've been so patient but just really grateful for my colleagues questions about what tools the administration is considering to ensure The funding of long-term large-scale resilience projects across all 47 miles of our coastline and I just have to give real kudos and ups to Those that are in front of you today really and truly have moved so quickly and with urgency that this city deserves. So I just want to thank You Chief, thank you Chris and thank you Oliver for your work on that and your partnership too. It's been really an honor and privilege to work with you on that. My last question is around

just how the council will be kept informed I guess in addition to this public facing dashboard that we will have the responsibility of checking ourselves and all of that but especially about the financial implications as we look down towards you know Potential difficult times. So how are we ensuring that these climate considerations are meaningfully integrated into our budget decisions and how will that ebb and flow with some of the financial landscape that we'll be seeing in the next year or two years. and how will the council be able to help inform those budget decisions in addition to the Climate Council?

Yeah, that's a great question. I certainly invite Chris and Oliver to weigh in as well. I think a couple of initial thoughts. Always appreciate the opportunity, Madam Chair, to come and speak to your committee or any other committee. So don't hesitate if you want an update on anything. We are available on demand. I would say you will start to see, as we talk about developing a climate budget for the City of Boston, much more communication around this as part of our budgeting process. there's a different way of slicing the same decisions we're making and that's not to say we're reorganizing like department budgeting but pulling together that story to say which of these are investments that are also investments in emissions reduction which of these are investments in Climate Resilience, so that there is more transparency and an opportunity to have a dialogue with the City Council and the public about is this the right scale of investment? What are the benefits we're getting from it? So, I think you'll see more of that in the budget process in addition to on demand meetings.

and then I'd add that there will be, to tie it to your previous question, there'll be some really big decisions in the next couple of years to identify how do we come together at our level of government and then with the state and the federal government and the private sector to develop and implement the right revenue streams that recognize the value that's at risk and protects it. And we know we have hundreds of billions of dollars in economic value that's at risk in the do nothing scenario. that we need to find ways of new revenue streams to tie into protecting that critical infrastructure, short of the moral reasons that we want to be protecting those same neighborhoods. I think that we are ready to make those economic arguments and to develop the creative approaches for some of those things that, as Oliver was mentioning, are categorized in the Start and Explore and Evaluate.

Those are decisions we'll be making with the City Council over the next five years about how we set ourselves up for some of these mid to long-term investments where we're going to have to have really creative public-private partnerships to get where we all know we need to go.

Great, thank you so much. And I want to thank you all again for your time and your for your work on this draft plan. I know that this is The timeline is going out until next year and I do appreciate the partnership and collaboration and just everything that you do. So just gratitude all around to everybody. Thank you so much. I'm going to ask that central staff now elevate our community panelists. We have Lindsey Butler, who is the executive director of the Green Ribbon Commission. Also Rebecca Hurst, who is the associate director of Resilience for the Greed and Ribbon Commission, We have Tatiana Magalt, I apologize if I said your last name wrong, the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, who's here to talk about green and blue workforce development. We have former City Councilor and friend Matt O'Malley, who is the Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Vice President of Vicinity Energy.

Hassan Faruqi, who's the Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network, and with him is Emmanuel de Barros, Director of Development and Community Engagement for ACE, or Alternatives for Community and Environment. as well as Jason Rundle, who's the senior manager for Harborwalk Access and Resilience at Boston Harbor now. So I appreciate everybody's Time and thank you so much for being here to provide your expertise and your testimony. I'm going to go through formalities first, seeing that he's a former city councilor. I'm going to go to Matt O'Malley. First for opening remarks, and then I'll go to Lindsay, Rebecca, Tatiana, and then Hassan, Emmanuel, and Jason. Thank you so much, and thank you all so much for being here. Councilor, you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is so great to be back. Great to see so many dear colleagues and friends and allow me a point of personal privilege just to congratulate you on Some wonderful personal and professional news this week that we were so fortunate to read. Good morning. My name is Matt O'Malley. I'm the Chief Sustainability Officer at Vicinity Energy. I am the Chair of the Environmental League Massachusetts Action Fund, and I also serve as a board member of the BPDA. It is an absolute privilege to be back with you today. My work with this council spanned more than 15 years and in that time I've had the honor of partnering with three different mayors, Mayor Menino, Mayor Walsh, and now Mayor Wu, each of whom advanced Boston's climate leadership in meaningful and lasting ways.

I don't think it's a stretch to say Mayor Wu has really, through her vision and practice, established herself as the leading sustainability voice among mayors across every city in America and beyond. I'm grateful to have played a small role in helping to shape those efforts from the earliest climate actions plans to today's bold decarbonization commitments. I also wanted to just briefly note how wonderful it was to hear Chiefs Osgood and Sweat, as well as Oliver Salas-Garcia, whom I didn't work with, worked with Chris and Brian going back to my first days on the council when they were part of the Menino administration. They helped lay the groundwork for the progress that we are continuing to build on. Now, I am extraordinarily lucky to have gone from writing policy as a city councilor to now implementing those various solutions on the ground during my role at Vicinity Energy, which is a proud delivery partner of the Climate Action Plan. Vicinity is the nation's largest owner and operator of district energy systems.

We run 19 systems across 12 US cities serving more than 260 million square feet. Our mission is straightforward. Decarbonize, scale renewable energy thermal technologies, and deliver carbon-free e-steam. In Boston and Cambridge, we have 29 miles of underground pipe that deliver dependable thermal energy to 260 buildings in over 70 million square feet. Our customers are hospitals, research labs, universities, businesses, cultural institutions, and Boston City Hall. Our steam and hot water keep buildings heated and cool, sterile and humidified, and our reliability is essential as we push toward a clean energy future. Achieving Net Zero by 2050 across our entire company isn't just a pledge for us, it's the work we're doing right now. In Cambridge, we operate the largest electric boiler in the country, 42 megawatts. and we have broken ground on an industrial scale heat pump that will turn the Charles River into a renewable energy source. Truly, this is what brought me to the company.

I had a lunch with our former CEO, Bill DeCrosse, who talked about the leveraging energy from the Charles River as they do in countless cities all over Europe to help run their district energy system. And we all know the iconic Boston anthem, Dirty Water by the Standells. That will soon be delivering clean, renewable energy to millions of square feet of office and businesses and hospitals and health centers throughout Greater Boston. And we're actively exploring the next step. which would be a seawater heat pump in Boston Harbor leveraging the city's natural assets to deliver affordable and carbon-free heat at scale. With continued partnership from the City, these projects can move from vision to reality. Together, we can expand access to sustainable thermal energy and drive real, measurable progress toward a carbon-free Boston. We appreciate the City's recognition of District Energy's critical role in the 2030 Action Plan draft, and I thank you, Chair Coletta Zapata, for an opportunity to join with you today.

I think it is so crucial that cities continue to lead in this space as we've seen an absolute rollback at the federal level of these important hard-fought achievements that we've made. What keeps me hopeful about the absolute existential threat of climate change is that cities and states can truly lead and none have led with as much passion and vigor and measurable success as our city of Boston. Great to be with you all. Thank you for taking me out of track.

Thank you for your work and dating all the way back. I'm not going to put a year on it, but thank you so much for all of your work from all the years. and what you're doing now with Vicinity. I'll go to Lindsay Butler, Executive Director from the Green Women Commission and then Rebecca Hurst. If your testimonies are different, you're coming from the same Organizations, I apologize that I don't have this information ahead of time, but I'll go to Lindsay first and then Rebecca.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you for having us and thank you for the time of the counselors and the administration today. I'm Dr. Lindsey Butler, the Executive Director of the Green Ribbon Commission, and I'm joined by Rebecca Hurst, our Associate Director for Climate Resilience. For anyone unfamiliar with the commission, we were formed about 15 years ago. in partnership with the late great Mayor Thomas Menino and philanthropist Amos Hostetter to bring together the public and private sector in support of the city's climate action work and the GRC has been proud to contribute to that robust climate action planning that the team laid out earlier on the call. Currently, the GRC is about 41 official members and additional 60 institutions that engage with the GRC through our six working groups. Those working groups are four sort of identity-based working groups and two problem-focused working groups.

They are healthcare, higher education, cultural institutions, Commercial Real Estate, Coastal Resilience, and Grid Modernization. And so when you look at those four sort of identity groups They make up a huge amount of our city's square footage, our most vulnerable institutions, our most critical services, and so we are so happy to be able to bring Thank you for joining us today. and each of the working groups contributed their own feedback and we compiled all of that feedback to the city earlier this fall and we continue to sort of iterate on what portions of the GRC What portions of the cap, excuse me, the GRC, I can really lead on. As was mentioned by the administration, the City of Boston drafts our cap.

in collaboration with stakeholders, but it's really on all of us to make sure we get this stuff implemented. We're very excited at the GRC to be working on key projects. like examining the feasibility of a thermal energy network, excellent technology that previous counselor Matt O'Malley brought up, proud to partner with Vicinity, a GRC member, and we're very proud to be examining some of the key elements of funding and financing our coastal resilience work that was brought up previously on this call as well. With that, I will I turn it over to my associate director, Rebecca Hurst, who will talk a little bit more about the work we're doing on coastal resilience. But first, I just want to very quickly again thank the administration and everyone It's been very unique to have so much community engagement so early in the process of drafting this Climate Action Plan and so I want to acknowledge

Thank you so much, everyone.

As we said, my name is Rebecca Hurst and I'm Associate Director for Resilience at the Boston Green Ribbon Commission. Thank you so much for the invitation to join you today and for your leadership on these important issues, Madam Chair. So as Lindsey shared, we partner closely with the city on advancing Boston's Climate Action Plan. And there are a number of ways that this looks with regards to the resilience work. One key factor is that we convene a coastal resilience working group that brings together members of the public, private, and nonprofit sector to share best practices, provide feedback and advance resilience and we partner with Boston Harbor now and Jason who's on the call with that as well. So the city of Boston has been a national leader on coastal resilience work as we just heard and we're proud of the role we've played in helping to support that work. After Superstorm Sandy, the Green Ribbon Commission's Coastal Resilience Working Group helped initiate, fundraise, and partner on the first Climate Ready Boston plan.

And building on that work, I wanted to share a little bit about what we are up to now. So we, in the coming weeks, the Green Ribbon Commission is going to release an RFP to develop a funding and financing blueprint that will help us accelerate the movement from planning to action and get more shovels into the ground to protect our city from sea level rise and coastal flooding. We estimate that it will cost between $4 and $10 billion to protect the city over the next few decades from coastal flooding, but Climate Ready Boston in 2026 found that these investments will prevent an estimated of $1.4 billion in losses from property damage and business interruption per year by the 2070s. So this is really an investment worth making. Thanks to the great leadership of our colleagues in the Environment Department and the Planning Department, we know that we have the plans, we know what we need to do, but particularly in light of federal rollback and Just it's a big challenge.

We don't have a strategy to pay for these projects. There's lots of great work that has been happening. The mayor has invested. and many more. So our goals for this project, and I'm happy to have further conversations with anybody about this work as well, please reach out, but we want to compile and aggregate the costs and benefits updated and so on. So really understanding the value that this will provide and We want to develop a broad consensus among leaders in the business and civic communities on the need for prioritizing resilience investments and then develop this blueprint that will have recommendations for how we pay for different projects in two phases. One that is more near term and then longer term.

And we're setting this up with the hope and assumption that we will be able to partner with the federal government long term with the US Army Corps of Engineers. But if that does not come to fruition, we want to have a strategy regardless. So we're going to build on the past work that has happened to date, engage stakeholders both along the coast and beyond, clarify and measure benefits like avoided property loss, business continuity, enhanced market value, tax-based preservation, public access, avoided cost of emergency response, avoided wear and tear on infrastructure, Access to insurance and more affordable insurance. There are many different things that protecting our city, many different values that protecting our city results in. And then we'll develop this financial blueprint looking at city, state, federal and private revenue sources and develop governance recommendations to determine how we can actually move forward on making this happen.

So really looking forward to partnering with all of you as we continue to have this conversation about how we come together to protect our city from the potential flooding and sea level rise that we're facing. Thank you.

Thank you, Rebecca, and Dr. Lindsey Butler. I appreciate your work on this. We're so excited about the resilience financing work that you're doing. So thank you for being here. Is Tatiana from MASHCOSH? On by chance, I don't think I see her. Okay. We'll go to Hassan and then Emmanuel and then Jason. So Hassan, you have the floor and welcome.

Great. Thank you so much, Madam Chair and Mr. Vice Chair and members of the committee. My name is Hasan Faruqi. I'm the Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network, or BCAN, We're a community-based organization. And over the past year or so, we've engaged over 1,000 residents in this plan and the initiatives within it. Through meetings, workshops, a walking tour through Dorchester, as well as through a few different surveys. And through that, we've heard loudly and clearly that residents are excited about climate action and particularly climate action that people can afford. and people really love programs like Boston Community Choice Electricity, programs like our fare free bus pilots. One survey we did in partnership with Tufts, for example, found that of almost 900 folks who we surveyed, 73% were more likely to take buses more often when fares are free and so that's exactly what we want from a climate standpoint and so we're excited to continue those measures as this plan identifies.

We're also excited to partner with the city already on Boston Energy Saver program, which we're a delivery partner for, because this is really where the pedal hits the metal. We can't get our buildings decarbonized. First of all we have no hope of addressing climate change but second of all we also aren't able to address the very pressing challenges that residents face every day. Energy bills that are high, homes that don't stay warm in the winter, homes that don't stay cool in the summer. And programs like Mass Save can do a lot to fix that. And it's important that all of our residents actually get access to those programs and get support with the many challenges they face Thompson, and using them. And part and parcel with all of this, of course, is making sure that we continue the momentum financially to ensure that these initiatives get completed when the federal government is not addressing that. And so I'm very excited about what the Green Ribbon Commission is doing with their study. that dovetails well with the Global Center for Climate Justice-led study with the Boston Green Deal Coalition.

And these are exactly the kinds of things we should be exploring as these initiatives get underway. and finally I think on the topic of resilience we've heard loud and clear from our members that it's important we do things like expand green space to protect against extreme heat as well as to protect against flooding and that means yes macro level infrastructure the kinds of which the administration testified to but also the very important building level infrastructure to prevent are residents who live in basement apartment units from having their apartments flooded. This is a pressing challenge and it only will become more so the case doesn't just lead to financial devastation for families who see their savings wiped away as their basement apartments flood but also can literally put our residents lives at risk as we've seen in New York City in the past several weeks and and years where residents have lost their lives in basement units when those units were flooded.

And this demands our urgent attention in retrofitting these buildings just as we're retrofitting to expand insulation and heat pumps. And finally, I'll Iterate my support for the many recommendations of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition, which I have the privilege of serving as co-coordinator of and I know some of my colleagues will testify to that as well. We'll submit all of these in writing and I think Most importantly overall, we see a really important opportunity to use all of the many boards, commissions, and advisory councils to continue furthering the work of this plan and Bill deeply. These should be oriented by what our residents' priorities are. The Berto Review Board is a fantastic example of this, and I have the privilege of serving on this board alongside you, Madam Chair, and this is exactly what we need to continue doing

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll go back.

Thank you again, Hasan, for being here and for your leadership. It's a pleasure working with you as well. Emmanuel, I know that we had just recently found out that you could be here and so grateful that you can. Would you also like to provide opening remarks?

Yes.

Awesome. Thank you so much for the floor.

Thank you. Thank you for making me speak today. My name is Emil DeBarros with ACE, Alternative for Community Environment. I am the Director of Development and Community Engagement. And really, ACE has been Been in Roxbury for the past 30 years and mostly we advocate for environmental justice, mostly on transit oriented development work. and mostly we reside in on Nubian Spring and Raspberry for on the past 30 years but for a long time we've been partners and advocates on ticket on the Royal City Ordinance of Berto and Duro which really tackling I'm building in diesel emissions in the city. But here I'm testifying with ACE, but also I'm part of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition as one of the co-chairs of the Trans Am Mobility Justice Working Group. But also, as Hasan mentioned, the coalition also will be submitting drafts. Thank you.

Thank you. Moss Prairie Environmental Empowerment Project, which is a youth group that tackle many of their youth-led campaigns. We also have Key Bias Union, which tackles transit justice in the state of Boston and other statewide coalition spaces that we are part of. but we also have EGEN which is our environmental justice assistance network but that's mostly a statewide system that we have in place to help pro bono environmental justice concerns if it's a household or a group of persons that they have with their group. But I'm here mostly to talk about mostly partnerships and metrics that we can also look at. It's always mentioned how Boston has the worst congestion. and the city and compared to other cities and other towns all over.

But to address this emissions, we can look at more relationship closely with MassDOT and MTA. But the missing gap will be mostly connecting with partners and coalition groups that are working on transportation justice, not just in Boston, but statewide, so we can close the gap of that policy and also funding that we're all looking at. We can look at examples such as the bus redesign and also our city street planning coordination. Also, with policy, there's a lot of saying that Massachusetts is dead rank last when it comes to bill passing. But I like to admire some of the councilors and state and city staff that come to support some of these bills. and most of these partnerships are really valuable when it comes to transportation, healthcare, energy, affordable housing, and healthy housing, but also many EJA policy that relates to all of us.

that can also look into the green spaces in our workforce. But along with these partnerships, we're just looking at mostly our local educational institutions and healthcare partners. and this is all talking from experience of myself and A's with the community partnership that we have locally and statewide and I think this will mostly put progress into the cap and with one of the metrics we looked at for the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Table, which is the EJ Coalition Group. I work on a lot of EJ policy. Well, this year the House was able to actually pass, not pass, but actually reported out our Outdoor Bail Favor, this by the 10th, like really, the 10th really. So by this four-year campaign, this is... Really, as much progress we got really with this bill.

And really, that shows mostly from many of our groups been looking at air quality. We also did our partner with Olin College, Air Partners, and we installed some sensors in Roxbury. Really from this report, we did an indoor and outdoor report study and this really helped with our indoor and outdoor bills for the state. And this is how we was able to get both of those bills a little further than before. And with those results, we were seeing how the World Health Organization guidelines were looking at oxygen oxide instead of other things. And that's true in the city. Many of our transportation hubs are very due to the PM levels, but also nitrogen oxide levels.

So I think we can look at levels of that around the city, but also invest in projects that are looking into that. With the ACE mission vision and also we know that the city can also pursue this, it's also looking into the energy infrastructure Thank you. Thank you. but mostly the energy and finance merge when we look at homeowner costs and trying to transfer off many of the things that contribute to the cost when it's kind of Fossil Fuels, but also looking at many things that are trickling on the source of air, which is our siting and permitting, data sourcing, also other facilities, if this is a substation, and Trach on Transportation as that we refer to our waste to.

But mostly, well, sustainable, resilient investments to our infrastructure, energy, development and transportation system. With the tech and funding, as I mentioned, there's new tech when it comes to air quality monitoring, heat island study effects. but also how we look at our street designs as I see the city also always exploring new ways that we look at buffers and greenery in the city but also new flooding preventments and ways we can look at that. But also when it comes to the workforce, there's funding and investment in mostly programs. I'm looking into our group in the city who have quarries, but our youth and young adults One example I'd like to see the city recommend or have, and I really recommend many folks with that to explore and invest in more would be the PowerCore program.

Many of this guidance that can come from what I mentioned can come from many of the state Offices, which is the EEA, so the Mass Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, but also the Energy Facilities Simon Board. as they are looking at many of their current things when it comes to siting and communicative impact. And that's mostly, yeah, what I was wanting to mention about where we can look at metrics and partnerships. But mostly, I would just like to say thank you for this opportunity to make me talk. And I really love the podcast we got so far. and really, I think one step forward that came from the city recently is the Boston Energy Saving Program.

The investment of having programs like that, I believe, just keep on doing the work like that, but also giving a hand to homeowners and people of the city to take a hand to take that change. And yeah, thank you and I urge everyone to keep up the great work and thank you so much for making me talk.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Emmanuel. It's always incredible to hear about the work that's happening at ACE. I have such deep respect and admiration for the work that you do as it relates to environmental and climate justice and integrating all perspectives. So I appreciate you for being here. Next we have Jason, who is also a late addition to the panel. Jason, I don't know if you have opening remarks or if you would like for us to just go into questioning and go from there. It's up to you.

I'll go really quick. Thank you, Councilor Coletta Zapata, for your leadership here, bringing us together. It's so necessary, and it's great to hear from the city team. and the other counselors. My name is Jason Rundle. I'm representing Boston Harbor now in the Stone Living Lab and I'm also a member of the Nature-Based Solutions Working Group for the Boston Green New Deal Coalition. Boston Harbor Now is a regional organization focused on coastal resilience as well as equitable access to our Harbor, Harbor Islands, and the Harbor Walk. I have the privilege of overseeing the Boston Harbor Walk, which makes up 43 out of the 47 miles of our coastline. and we're really focused on streamlining the permitting process for nature-based solutions. The Stone Living Lab

is an innovative partnership between the city, state, UMass Boston, and Boston Harbor Now in order to scale up and research nature-based solutions in our harbor and on our coastline. and we're also looking forward to working with the folks here to understand the funding mechanisms needed for these near-term flood pathways to protect our city and particularly our environmental justice communities. And so I'm excited to hear the conversation and I'll stop there even though I'm sure I could go on.

Well, thank you so much for being here, and we appreciate it. And always, again, just appreciate the work of Boston Harbor Now and Stone Living Lab, too. So I do have some questions as it relates to nature-based solutions. So stay with us if you can. I will pass it to my colleagues because they have stayed on, and I want to be sure to center their questions first, and then I'll go into mine because I have a bunch. and we'll do that in order of arrival, starting with Councillor John Fitzgerald.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, each of you in all of your respective fields, thank you for the work that you're doing to help sort of coagulate the greater good of trying to keep this city on the forefront of our environment, keeping it clean. I guess that, you know, With the short amount of time, I'll ask a higher level question. But in the priority, because you all have sort of your certain sectors, you're all working towards the good, But do we agree across all of you if we were to rank sort of all of the different issues, whether it's emissions, resiliency, gas stove, all the way down to all the little environmental projects and programs that we have. Do we agree there's a top three? Because from a government standpoint, the reason I ask this is typically it's like, well, we only have so much to go around. We can only support so much. What are the things that we should support? But some of them are obviously huge ticket items like infrastructure and things like that.

So it's like... Do we take the big gamble with that one? Should we focus on multiple smaller ones? You just want to do this thing right because we don't want to spread anyone too thin, right? And then all of a sudden, well, John, we weren't able to really advance anything. Any of our initiatives to the point we wanted to and therefore see nothing happen. So I don't want to have to go through all six of you and thank you all for being here. Do we think, I'll start with Councilor Matt O'Malley just because I know I'll give him the respect of being a former elected official and understanding my job. Where do we rank these do you think? And I'd love to hear from all of you as well.

Yeah, it's a great question, Councillor. I will answer it and I'll keep it brief so others can chime in. But before I did, I neglected to also acknowledge Ron Cobb, who, when I was lucky enough to chair this committee, was my right hand. So thank you, Ron. Great to see you virtually for your just extraordinary work. I mean, it's a great question. If I had to rank them, I'm going to rank them three ways. First, emissions. Emissions account for 70% or buildings account for 70% of all emissions in the city of Boston. Now nationwide, the number is 32%, but when you get to cities, it's a lot denser and therefore it's a lot higher. Buildings, you know, if we want to get serious about emission reduction, it has to be buildings. That's why we did Berto 1, which was benchmarking under Mayor Menino, and then Berto 2. which as we know is the building standards that has been successful and I might note other cities are emulating that. I get to travel a lot in my job and it's been very gratifying to see. The building sector is part of what I do at Vicinity.

That's number one. Number two, for the city of Boston, it has to be about resiliency. We are a coastal city. Your district, we all know Morrissey Boulevard after a major rainstorm and what that can do. Chief Sweat talked about this when he was discussing Superstorm Sandy. That was when I was on the council. Had it occurred four hours earlier or later, it would have coincided with high tide. You would have seen South Boston, East Boston, parts of Dorchester underwater. It would have been as bad as it was in the Jersey Shore. The third thing, I'm going to come a little differently. and as an environmentalist I think we've seen we've just seen a sea change in sort of how these issues resonate with people a lot of extreme weather events I think have have done have helped it focus people on the urgency of action that's needed but we can't give that up and I would say at virtually every hearing that I would

You know, hold when I was a member and this committee is that every fiscal conservative has to be an environmentalist because almost always the sustainable solution is going to save you money. My wife and I went to heat pump. We no longer pay gas. I got my Eversource bill yesterday and it was the first heat pump rate. I'm saving money there. Low-flow toilets are going to save water. Energy-efficient light bulbs. The small case, as they add up, and we did Birdo 1.0, which was a very controversial bill. It only passed by a vote of, I think, 9 to 4, which, as we know, You know, many votes on the council are unanimous. This one wasn't. Just benchmarking showed how we made the economic case. So I think as environmentalists, we need to do that so we can continue momentum and actually get measurable action.

I would agree. Oh, Councillor Fitzgerald, you're on mute.

No, sorry, I thought I clicked off. I was just going to say, I saw you sat in the talk, so please, yeah. And anyone else, if you think that, if the order is different, but so far it seems to be emissions, resiliency, and then the third from Councilor Malley. So, if anyone else.

Yeah, I think Councillor O'Malley said it perfectly. I think within buildings specifically, you know, 40 to 50% of our emissions within of the whole city come from large buildings specifically. And so Berto really is so critical. And thanks to Councilor O'Malley's leadership, we have this tool that gets all of our buildings on the roadmap. I think from a you know there are still many big challenges that these buildings face even though they're subject to the law and funding and financing continues to be the biggest one that I hear from building owners when they come to perform the board. When, you know, some of the things can be covered through MassSave and some of these other additional incentives, but I truly feel we cannot do enough to support all of our building owners, but especially those who are in a difficult financial position as it is, affordable housing. you know developers for example in doing those kinds of retrofits of existing buildings and then I would say secondary to that would be the small residential buildings where Boston Energy Saver is really you know filling that kind of a gap

And again, you know, it's a starting point, but there's a Boston Foundation report that shows there's still about a $5 to $7 billion gap in funding to decarbonize all the small buildings in Boston. I think that's another thing. And then this is after government utility incentives, right? So MassSave is included in that. We have a lot of work to do I think on that regard.

I'll just very quickly add. So I love the way from the question, Councilor Fitzgerald, around like, what are the three? And I think one of the central challenges of the climate space right now is how we balance mitigation Investment vs. Adaptation Investment. It's a real challenge. Even if we were to lower our emissions to zero tomorrow in a dream scenario, the atmosphere would still be on a trajectory where a city like Boston would still suffer from Challenges around flooding and sea level rise just because of how warm the atmosphere has become. I do want to just lift up what Councilor said about building emissions. So as we know, here in the city of Boston, buildings represent 70% of our emissions, and that's why legislation like Berto is very critical. and there's also cost savings to be found in those emissions reductions which means if we emphasize those

We can actually find savings that we can put towards other elements of our climate work. I'll just lift up one example from one of our GRC members, Beacon Capital, commercial real estate member. They have done a lot of work, installed solar, smart technology in their buildings. that has helped them to reduce their emissions in line with their Berto regulations and they found a three dollar return on their investment for every one dollar invested So that's money that we can then reallocate towards resilience projects, towards things that we know we need to do to optimize our grid, right? So those are the things. And then I also just want to lift up on the grid. We know that in order to meet the electricity needs of our city, both because we're electrifying our buildings and because of more development and population growth, we know that we need to optimize our grid. and we will need substations to do that.

So that's just another thing I want to lift up that I think is really critical is just taking care of that grid and making sure that infrastructure can support our city's energy needs.

Thank you so much. Chair, I don't know if I have time for another question or not. Yep, one more question.

Thank you.

Sure. Thank you. I appreciate it. With regards to that, I'm thinking of being more electric and the talk of there's, I know even in my past jobs, there's been talks of, Microgrids being put and being piloted in the Marine Industrial Park, the Raymond Flynn Industrial Park goes to end. And then the best, these battery systems. Are we... Is this the way to go? Do the positives outweigh the negatives on some of these? And I know they're two very different things, but between microgrids and the best stuff, is that something that we want to prioritize? That could be for anybody, sorry.

Go ahead, Hassan.

No, you can go first. I feel like I touched a nerve. Maybe I don't even know what I just asked right now.

No, no, no, no.

No, it's a great question.

I think it's a great question, Councilor Fitzgerald. What I'll say is that it's going to take a fabric of solutions. Like, especially on the grid, it's going to take a fabric of solutions. Personally, I think microgrids and battery storage are going to be a critical element of that. And hopefully some of the siting and permitting reforms coming down the tracks at the state level will help make those things more possible for us. But yes, I would say both of those things that you mentioned are key parts of sort of the fabric of solution to make sure we have the optimal grid for our residents. That's all.

Yeah, I would agree. I think the microgrids are really important from a resilience standpoint, and they're especially important for high energy users. I think about the Longwood Medical Area, for example. The batteries are a critical piece of that though because we want ideally to have microgrids that are powered by renewable energy and for that to work whether it's Thank you very much. Especially to the extent to where we can do that in existing buildings to have that onsite and to still make sure that we're compliant with fire codes and fire safety standards is going to be really important. There are a small number of standalone battery storage facilities that are being proposed, but largely in a city like Boston, it's going to happen in the building. So we should make that easy and possible, and particularly for our customers who are in the Longwood Medical Area, the big hospitals who have to decarbonize.

Batteries are one of the only ways that they can reduce their reliance on the medical area total energy plant, which is its own kind of district energy system. I think those are exactly the kinds of things we want to be thinking about.

Yeah, I would just add, so the answer is absolutely yes, we should be exploring everything. Microgrids are great, batteries are great. What we're looking at is thermal storage, so it's actually It's not like your lithium ion. This is substrate. This is hot rocks, hot ceramics. And what's exciting about storage is that it really will help create more renewable infrastructure. Let's take offshore wind for example. We are the Saudi Arabia of wind in New England and wind blows the heaviest probably from 10 p.m. to about 2 a.m., which is not a huge amount of grid demand. So what we're doing is we're pacing offshore wind. There's obviously been some delays at the federal level, But it will allow us to procure those electrons, those renewable electrons at a very, very cost competitive price. We're already seeing it with our e-boiler. We have contracts with solar contracts. There are a lot of, they call them surplus solar events. It's extrasolar that's been generated outside of ISO's directive.

That's really inexpensive, you know, class one rec. Green Power. So this is to my earlier point of we need to make the economic case on why sustainability is the right thing to do. And battery storage is an absolutely crucial piece of that.

Thank you, Councilor. Chair, thank you so much for the extra time. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you for those great questions and everybody for their really informative answers. Councilor Weber, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Chair, and I'd like to recognize the, I think if you had to have a prototypical District 6 City Councilor, people would say that's Matt O'Malley, they would draw a picture of Matt O'Malley. and his impact in my district is profound and a lot of that has to do with his advocacy around O'Mahaly, You know, in terms of, you know, what I know we took a tour of the vicinity facility, like, you know, and the, you know, I guess your, is that the e-boiler you were referring to? Yeah. And so now you have that, like what, what,

I don't know like what in terms of data like what that saving in terms of emissions in the area you know obviously Cambridge and and Boston are tightly wound together uh can you just give us a sense of like what that change

Weber, and it's the Mutual Admiration Society. I am so grateful to call you my friend and lucky to call you my counselor. You're doing Thank you for doing an exceptional job and as evidenced by your near record-breaking re-election earlier this month. The larger answer to the question is, and why I love what we've been able to do at Vicinity, is that in many ways it's been shaped by policies at the city and at the state level. and it is crucial for government to work with utilities and also to push them as hard as they can go so by putting in new renewable infrastructure such as our e-boiler which is 40 or 35 megawatts The total emission reduction is considerable. It will obviously ramp up as more and more customers opt for a higher percentage of e-steam. Once the heat pump comes on, I mean, that and the e-boiler alone are going to be close to 50% of our load.

and that's by the end of this decade and then you're going to get you know ratchet up very very quickly as it as we get into 2035. and subsequent heat pumps are installed and used. The other thing is that the COP, which is the coefficient of performance of a heat pump, essentially its efficiency, is north of two. And what that means is for every unit of energy that we use to run it, we're getting two more units of energy of thermal energy out. So it's a smart play. Heat pumps on homes have a higher COP. They're a lot smaller. This is the size of a house. But the point is the impact on emissions reduction is considerable. So we are committed, you know, we'll be net zero far beyond 2050, probably closer to 2045 or 2040 in Boston and Cambridge. and you're going to see the reduction has already gone down X percentage. I don't know the exact number of tons reduced as of 2025,

I can certainly get that to you, and another reason why Birdo is so great, as you can see on our annual report, just how the reduction continues to drop at such a dramatic pace.

Okay, yeah, thanks. I mean, thinking about the future, right? That's what we're all focused on, I think. And You know, reducing our emissions, Berto, you know, what Facinity is doing, what we're trying to do. It seems like there's a dual goal. One is to reduce emissions, but two is to make Are energy sources resilient in the future? Because even if we can't stop, you know, China, Brazil, Florida, from getting off of these other countries, from getting off fossil fuels. We're going to be impacted by it, but we're going to I guess, I don't know, for the rest of you on the panel,

We don't want to give up on this fight, but how do we think about... whether our energy is going to look like in a future where, I mean, we're projecting now way above the goals, right? You know, the whole and many more. I you know what what should we be thinking like you know are you thinking okay like there's going to be this flooding we need to prepare for it or are we still in this zone of like well let's just Maybe we can reach 1.5 or, you know, what's the realistic expectations for the future? And what do we do with that? It's just a small question, piece of cake. I mean, if you don't want to answer, that's totally fine.

I can answer. And also, Will just mentioned that I'm an enthusiastic District 6 resident. So thank you both so much for your service. Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is that Boston is going to look really different in the future. And so with things like this climate action plan and the different strategies that we're pursuing, The goal is that we can create a Boston that addresses some past harms and that invests in a future that really works for all residents. but it's a real challenge and we're gonna, you know, there's real trade-offs, there's real, you know, we need to do,

Many things all at once, but I think really focusing to Councilor Fitzgerald's question on you know lowering emissions as much as possible and then protecting and trying to respond to the impacts and resilience as much as we can is essential and I think that it's really important to remember that like It's not like 1.5, if we were below that, everything was going to be great. And if we're slightly above it, everything is horrible. It's all a gradient. Everything we can do reduces harm and reduces suffering and just to continue to focus on that of like what are the ways that we can continue to make things less bad and also, as we're doing so, make things better? That's really where we need to be focusing. It's a big question, but I saw a graph recently about

You know, yes, we're not where we want to be, but business as usual from before was like way, way higher, you know, and we actually have made a huge amount of progress. And so There's more that we need to do. There's way more that we want to have happen and we're not where we want to be, but we have made a lot of progress and there's more to do.

so I guess in terms of like what we're doing and what we should be thinking about like just specifically we had a geothermal pilot at the JFK Elementary School and you know that it I I Again, it sounds great. We spent so much energy drilling the whole, you know, there was like 32 bores and they still have to, I'm told on other projects, they have to run Dehumidifiers 24 hours a day while they're in some of these larger buildings in other towns. I mean, do you think that is in the end going to reduce emissions? Because obviously we had to make a lot of emissions just to do it. You know, here are the similar things about some electric cars, like we're You know, and if we're powering them with gas plant, like, do we just do everything we can, like we can, or is there some thinking here about...

You know, just, you know, trying to, is there some focus on, is there some things that we're, that we talk about that we, you think aren't the best idea? I just don't know how to, you know, process all this information. So I'm looking to the experts. Watching the JFK pilot over the last couple summers, I was like, wow, we're going to have to use this thing for a long time for it to sort of

Yeah, I think I can take some of that, Councilor Weber, you're asking great questions. And, you know, for all types of energy, we think about this ratio of energy input in to extract the energy and then the energy output we get in exchange. And all of these things that we're talking about on the renewable side, thermal, Offshore Wind, Solar, they have significantly more energy out than energy in compared to traditional fossil fuel extraction. So important to think about the amount of energy that goes into building a thermal network, but then moving forward You are going to have the entire life cycle of that infrastructure to get carbon free energy. So that is really important. And I also want to lift up a little bit about Rebecca said that this is a gradient. It's not. We meet the 1.5 degree marker or we don't and that's it for us.

It's something to be gained from every bit of emissions reduction that we undertake and for Boston in particular, As Rebecca said, we know it's going to look a little bit different, particularly because of some of our coastal issues. But I think just, you know, I'll maybe answer your very high-level big question by looking down more granularly. At our work in the city, I think right now with the federal ecosystem, with international data on climate, it's very difficult for us to look at that big picture and get very discouraged and Thank you for watching! that you can do this work. You can reduce emissions while also enhancing your coastal resilience.

So I think, yes, these big picture things you're thinking about are concerning of course but when we look down we have some of the best climate action planning in the world and we're now starting to look at feasibility and financing mechanisms for shovels in the ground on all this planning that we're doing. So it's helpful for me to stop looking at the big picture that can be very concerning and really just kind of focus on the great work that we're advancing in this city.

Yeah, I mean, I guess part of the way I think about it, I think it was like Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about electric cars and how that, you know, if they're being charged with gas plants, but if everyone had electric cars, that would give us, if we could... Give us the ability to take advantage of it once we boost the renewable resource. Electricity Production to take advantage of that in a way that so like don't necessarily think like what we're saving today My last question, I saw maybe you can answer this. When I was first elected, we were talking about Birdo. Maybe this is for Councilor O'Malley. There was an issue with having monitors in place for the buildings to make sure we were meeting the emissions targets. Have we met that?

Do we have the monitors or am I remembering that incorrectly? Was there an issue about that and what have we done?

Yeah, thank you for the questions, Councilor Weber. Yeah, I do remember that exchange. The biggest way that we were Thank you. Thank you. and many more. that can then be used to calculate the total emissions of that building. And thanks to Berto 2.0 and Councilor O'Malley's leadership, every five years, that's actually required to be verified by a third party. So we have and many more.

Certainly, you know, and I think thanks to ACE's work, there are additional air quality monitors around the city that can help to better test what the actual local air pollution is. Although, of course, that's... You know, determined by a wide variety of different factors in the natural environment. And I did also want to just touch on the other great question that you asked a little bit ago which touches on two big things which are embodied carbon and then the broader electric sector emissions and specific to this plan today the largest buildings are required to submit reports on embodied carbon when they're and many more. Better understanding that in the development process is starting to happen for buildings that are now entering the project pipeline.

And what I'd like to see in the next several years is that we're actually putting in place real you know, standards to help start to reduce emissions from embodied carbon over time. As well as, you know, the last point, Clearly a favorite topic of mine, so we can follow up as well. But I think, you know, most of the energy that we're using in Boston is not generated in the city of Boston. That's not going to change even when we start accelerating the production of renewables from geothermal and other things, solar, etc. So I think Boston Community Choice Electricity ends up being a really important tool for how we can actually invest in renewable energy that's generated in New England, certainly, but not necessarily directly in the city. And this plan identifies a really great way that we can first lift the cap to make sure more buildings can buy into BCCE as well as to pilot other opportunities for larger buildings that are currently excluded from BCC to actually be able to combine their purchasing power and invest in renewable energy

and there's really a missing middle in that market because small businesses and residents are well served by BCCC. Large institutions have a lot of market power. They can negotiate really good rates for themselves and often do onsite renewable generation. Everyone else in the middle is not well served, and I think this plan is starting to get at that, which is really exciting to me.

Okay, thank you very much and thank you everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Weber, for your great questions. Can we just elevate Lindsay again? I think she might have gotten accidentally kicked off. And that's because I, a lot of my questions, my first questions are sent around and I have questions for everybody. So thank you. My questions are starting off as it relates to climate resilience. So I guess while we're elevating Lindsay, I'll ask first Rebecca and then Jason. Just around and you all know that this is a subject that is near and dear to my heart that is very important to my district. I represent The district with the most, if not then the second most, mileage along the coastline and so we are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and Coastal Flooding, and Storm Surge. And this has been my top issue on the council and really grateful for how much we have advanced this work in partnership with the administration and the Office of Climate Resilience. And the next task really comes down to, as Chris

had mentioned. Earlier, the analysis into advanced implementation and then taking a cue from my great colleague from District 3, always trying to operate within the reality of what things cost and how we're going to fund them. and so I'm really grateful for the work of Rebecca and the Green Ribbon Commission and Lindsey and for Rebecca in particular, how can we Understanding that there are various vulnerable areas and each faces its own Accelerated Climate Threat. From your resilience work, what do you believe The city has to prioritize to protect residents in the highest risk areas. And how can we use what you're doing at the Green River Commission from a financing perspective to inform that work?

Yeah, it's a great question and a complicated one, obviously. I think that one of the things we're really planning to do with this study is develop So that looking at different neighborhoods and the different projects that are necessary in them, and also thinking about how How are benefits shared? Who gets the value of different investments? And how do we then pay for these The cost of these projects with the value that is generated from the projects in mind and also with equity concerns in mind so if we look at

East Boston, for example, a huge amount of the value, the financial value, as has been calculated, of doing the investments on Border Street. really has to do with the MBTA and the tunnels. and state infrastructure being protected. And so the whole state benefits from that. So how do we think about what the role of the state is in helping to support those investments? What's the role of the city What's the role of different property owners? And then also how do we think about the challenge of, you know, like already budgets are really tight. everywhere, you know, at household level, at small business level, you know, even like the, you know,

Development industry is like ground to a halt right now like everywhere things are tight and so figuring out how to Balance the different needs, make these decisions collectively, because this is really a collective action challenge. and do so in a transparent way and in a way where we're really having a citywide conversation about it and about our values is really important because we you know We have to figure this out together, and there's so many reasons to do so, but it's... you know we don't we don't have like those decisions are beyond the Green River Commission they're beyond BCAN and ACE they're beyond Boston Harbor now like we need to be having A much broader conversation so that we can together figure out how we prioritize and how we pay for what's necessary.

Yeah. And thank you for that. And I think if Lindsay's in a place to answer to him or maybe you, Rebecca, just like the role that regional collaboration can play and bringing in large institutions in the private sector to align their resilience I know that there's great work happening between Boston and Revere through the MVP grant, the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Grant, that is taking shape now. even now with the various bureaucracies there's permitting and zoning issues and we're trying to get different communities on board with different priorities so it's difficult but what role can regional collaboration play particularly those within the Green Ribbon Commission in accelerating our resilience efforts that maybe would go beyond municipal boundaries.

Yeah, I think it's essential. And the Boston Green Urban Commission is very focused on Boston. But many of our members have footprints that Thank you. Thank you. that are situated beyond Boston. And there's One of the things that we've really seen in our conversations with our members is that they all have different timelines that they're thinking about. You know, there's Some institutions like Harvard that are thinking on a 200 year timeline and other developers that might have a seven or 10 year holding

and so part of what is necessary is trying to align different layers of risk tolerance, different layers of you know different time horizons of how people are thinking about the investments that they're making and um and recognizing the value that Boston generates for the whole state and for the whole region and understanding that, you know, For the regional economy to continue to be as vibrant as it is, we need to find ways to invest in shoreline protection. And the benefit that we get is not just for the shoreline property owners. It goes much broader. And so it's that, you know,

Connecting at a regional scale is really a challenge in Massachusetts because of home rule and finding ways to connect across municipalities. The MVP program, as you mentioned, has done a great job of trying to incentivize some of that. I think there's more that can be done. And there's also Because of Home Rule, it's really challenging for different locations to figure out about their own you know revenue generation options. Options are really limited and so we need to be rethinking some of our governance structures to incentivize more regional collaboration beyond municipal boundaries because as we all know Water does not respect municipal boundaries and it flows. And so we need to be, a lot of the structures that we rely on that

Thank you for joining us. Our governance and our decision making to allow for the types of changes that are necessary for our next phases.

Right, right. And thank you again for your work on this and I think just transitioning just given time I'm going to transition to to Jason especially within this plan and understanding that we have to appreciate and implement both nature-based and like hard infrastructure solutions like how can we balance through this plan the necessary coastal protections while trying to build in as many nature-based solutions as we can or strategies and while preserving equitable waterfront access. That was a huge issue that I ran on having grown up in East Boston and looking at the skyline through a mass port gate and not really having access until recent years and even that Access has come with an asterisk where we love the development that's there. It truly is exclusive in its affordability.

So how can we preserve all of this? and how can we balance? I know it's a major question, but how can we try to balance the necessary coastal protections while still integrating nature-based solutions and equitable access?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And it's useful to think about how a lot of the Boston water's edge is really built up right up into the water, right? And so we're not necessarily I'm restoring a marsh or wetland to what it looked like 500 years ago, but how are we building on this hard edge in a way That increases the habitat available there and creates open spaces that people can utilize. In terms of public access, I think when we think about nature based solutions on the built environment, things like the living Seawalls that Stone Living Lab is working on can both enhance and extend the longevity of our hardened infrastructure while also creating

I think something that we need for our water's edge is similar green infrastructure design guidelines that we've seen created for our streets and I think that there's some innovative models of how we combine needed industrial waterfronts with public access. I think it's worth looking at the waterfront edge design guidelines coming out of the waterfront alliance in New York as ways that we can both create resilient shorelines while also maintaining public access. And so happy to follow up offline about more specifics on that. But I think it's a great question and something that I'm glad Chris Osgood brought up the Mass Ready Act as a state-level environmental bond bill that's going to play a big role in

and ensuring that we have the resources to kind of make these district-wide solutions that we're talking about in addition to supporting the variety of different landowners that we have, especially in East Boston, thinking about all the private parcels there. We've heard from landowners there they'd like to do things they just don't know what's going to be most cost effective for them and the regulations are you know preventing them from kind of diving into this and so I think as we Streamline those permitting processes. We'll have the opportunity to really find solutions that have the co-benefits that we want to see.

Thank you. And I really do see this as it's two separate problems. I mean, there's so many as it relates to this, but the funding and financing, it's $4 to $10 billion. That was... I forget exactly which institution, but of how many critical infrastructure areas like airports, hospitals, police, Firehomes, schools, all of that are going to be underwater if we don't act. And the corresponding dollar amount was $4 to $10 billion. I think that was Chris Osgood that had said that at a former hearing. And so now the challenge is trying to find that. And then also the regulatory. Framework and Pathway. Rebecca, I see your hand is up. I am going to go just to Hassan, and I promise I'll have an open dialogue following this, because we do have folks that are still on public testimony too, so I want to respect them.

I'll go to Hassan and just ask how do you feel generally being a part of this process with the 2030 Climate Action Plan, how it aligns with Community expectations around equity, accountability, and the pace of decarbonization. You know, I hear that there's already some frustrations in 2030, maybe actually be 2040 or 2045, but How have you found it within your own network and at least from community concerns where they feel like this climate plan aligns with their expectations?

Yeah, that's a great question and I think there are like 66 pages and there are probably 66 different answers to that question on the specific strategies. I think overall, you know, certainly our members of BCAN are very excited about the plan and they're excited about a lot of what's in the plan, which is what the city is already doing. And that's a good thing. I think that people are very interested to know the timeline and the specific line items associated with some of these priorities that are identified. As well as how that process is going to play out in the years to come. People want to know, you know, have regular reports in some way of the progress. As well as to make sure that as the implementation happens that residents' voices are really centered in the process. I mentioned in my testimony that the boards and commissions provide a really important opportunity to do that. That's an existing tool that already is being used in some cases very successfully to this end. And so I think that's a place for us to focus more

Certainly as organizations and as a coalition. And I think the pace of decarbonization, I mean, I'm not the first person to say this, but certainly the attacks on the offshore wind industry have set us back tremendously, and I hear so much frustration from our residents about how That makes it so much harder for Massachusetts to decarbonize our electric grid and that's why they're very excited about opportunities to build more renewable energy within cities City limits, particularly geothermal, one of the things, probably I would say the number one thing that our residents are excited about in terms of energy sources, ground source, water source, heat pumps. Those are places where we very much think clean energy needs to be built. Of course, where and how it's built matters. But we also have seen, and we're participating in a process right now in Dorchester to this end, that when we can bring in residents' priorities upfront and then work collaboratively with the developer, whether it be the utilities or a private developer,

who address those things go a lot more smoothly and we avoid some of the pitfalls of course that you will remember Madam Chair in the East Boston substation We can make sure that this happens more quickly and without sacrificing the concerns of our residents and of our workers and that's what our members are really excited to do.

Okay, sorry, I couldn't find my mute button for a second there. Thank you so much for that answer. And transitioning to Emmanuelle, Ace, Again, under Duane's leadership and others, just has a really strong track record of community mobilization. And that's always at the center of, you know, what of how I approach policymaking and understanding that their input is invaluable and it is their lived experience that we should try to create policy around. From your expertise in this area, how can the city engage residents more deeply in decarbonization efforts? What sort of tools or communication strategies would you recommend based on your existing work?

Yeah, thank you for that. So mostly we had, I think, by the city having their Berto Summit. That would be a good example of it and the access to the folks in the room. But also when it came to most of the policy, I know that y'all looking for folks to focus on the policy level of stuff. Many of the state is looking into like community impact stuff, siting and permitting. But looking at their guidance for overseeing these decarbonizing plans for stuff is really important. And I would say two spaces that are looking at that would be at the EJ table. which is the statewide coalition, and T for Mass, the transportation for Massachusetts. Thinking about like transportation stuff when it comes to admissions. As we know, looking at facilities and transportation, those are the two emission contributors in the state. And those are the two recommended pollution spaces that are tackling it.

but really the yeah the EEA been really um enforcing how they will look in and guidance the state on this but really just having that Thank you for the donation of having them, yourself and community partners who all work on it for the last few years and all All the time, just in the room in the beginning, just not having the one-to-one conversation before plans are already set up, but making sure the planning process is everyone's in a room in the beginning of the start, really. and that would give everyone to fill up the gaps that our partners and city folks are looking at because if you have more folks working on different aspects of stuff when it comes to energy or workforce, when it comes to healthcare, transportation, youth and workforce. and Housing. They see different things differently.

So just having those different partners who are working just not in local in Boston, they also have different views on the region. of New England and statewide. So I think also continue giving your, like pushing your access to the community folks, but also welcoming your community folks and your partners if it's like educational institutions and more. on businesses into the room together when y'all starting and drafting these things, but also to help make it confirm and implement them into the system.

Thank you so much. Thank you for that answer. And then to close this out, former Councilor Malamaly, you talked about your vicinity's You know, efforts into thermal and all of that. I'm just wondering if there's anything else that you wanted to add about how you all are preparing to transition your system towards low or no carbon energy sources and What sort of support or regulatory clarity would help to speed up that transition?

Great question. And again, great leadership. So thank you, Madam Chair. This has been wonderful. Morning into the afternoon with some really inspirational fellow panelists. So I know I've learned a lot. Yeah, I mean, we are transitioning. We're leading in the United States. The beauty about the district energy business is there's no place on earth where they're a rival district energy system. So Con Ed, which operates the New York Manhattan system has been up to our plan several times. As mentioned, we're in nine U.S. cities. We've had folks from Governor Shapiro's team down in Pennsylvania at Kendall Square because we're doing the same heat pump on the Schuylkill River down in Philadelphia. So it's been exciting to see that. It's important to note, too, we're not patent number one. We are proudly and shamelessly copying what's been done to some great success in leading sustainability cities around the world. Copenhagen.

Malmo, Drammen, Norway, Glasgow, Scotland, Esberg, Denmark, where I got to see that the heat pump, seawater heat pump in action, with a great delegation of some great Boston and state officials last May. So we're copying what is being done. and we're just the first to do it in the US. But it's proud to say, I wish it were in Boston, it's technically in Cambridge because that's where our main plant is, but the largest electric boiler in the country. is right in our neighborhood. The largest heat pump in the country will soon be right in our neighborhood. So that's another proud point of Boston and Cambridge in the region. So the second part in terms of regulatory oversight, it's again pushing us, pushing utilities, also having some flexibility to make sure that there's buy-in. And I think that's crucial.

There are two drivers we have found in our customer base, and it's a very diverse customer base when you incorporate all of the cities that we serve. Some have their own internal ESG goals. We serve a number of colleges, universities, labs that are often owned by European drug companies who have very strict and aggressive ESG goals. And this is one way we can serve. But the other is local ordinances, local laws. Birdo, Buda over in Cambridge, the Stretch Energy Code, of Net Zero Carbon Zoning. Down in Maryland, they've implemented the BEPS, which is the Building Energy Performance Standard. Of course, there's Local Law 97 in New York City. Working with utilities. And I think we did this and continue to do this well. I know Mayor Wu has been very focused on Getting buy-in. It's easy to sort of set aspirational goals, but if you're not working with the folks who are going to try to get there, it makes it difficult. It's about communication and it's about some nimbleness.

The technology is evolving so quickly. We are seeing setbacks. Thank you for joining us. The other thing that has been, you know, helpful is that, you know, we're owned by a company that is committed to doing this. And so it's, you know, From my now utility hat, it's incumbent upon us in the utility business to meet this moment. And it's always easy to say no. It's always easy to push back. But we have no choice. And I think, you know, to be candid, We try to make, and I'll be repetitive, make the economic case that we can serve for two greens. Customers don't mind. Paying a little more for a sustainable product. Not always, and the gulf can't be wide enough, but if it's something that's, you know, there's an opportunity.

If you're, and I say this, you know, in my hat with the BPDA, you know, if the business is going to be, I mean, passive house standards, There are customers and tenants who are going to seek specifically that place, a college or university that has a There are students that will partly base their decision on where to go on that. So it's making the business case from the utility point of view. But the partnership with the city and with the state has been phenomenal. And I know that will continue. And I think I'd said this earlier, and it's worth repeating, Other cities are watching Boston, and that's because of Mayor Wu's leadership, because of your leadership, and just because of the policies we've put in place. So that's been exciting to see.

and just including opportunities to work together and be a little nimble if situations warrant it like what we find ourselves in now without ever giving up that ambitious and aggressive agenda but we want to make sure it's achievable so really solving for all of those.

Excellent. I just want to thank you again for everything that you do and just extend my heartfelt gratitude to everybody here, the Green Ribbon Commission, Boston Harbor NOW, BCAN, Obviously, Decinity Energy and ACE and all the community partners that were part of shaping the first draft. We do have not a long way to go, but there's still time to get involved. not just through any of these partner organizations but for all residents that are listening in or watching after this but just want to thank everybody here for their leadership and The fact that you push the city forward and ensuring that climate action is always rooted in equity and justice and inclusion and producing real outcomes for the people who need it most. Thank you, everybody. I look forward as we go into the implementation. Um, phase of this plan, just the, you know, the continued collaboration, transparency and shared problem solving. So thank you so much, everybody.

I really appreciate it. It's always a busy time. So just appreciate your time and being here. I'm going to transition now to public testimony. We do have a number of folks who have signed up and I'll go through the list in the order in which folks have signed up. wonderfully created by central staff. I'm thinking again to Ron and Ethan and everybody. First up, we have Orion Kriegman, who is the executive director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition, if he's on. Ron, do we see him?

Yes. Okay.

Orion, once you're a panelist, please feel free to unmute yourself and just state your name. Oh, I actually don't see him in the attendees anymore. So I'm going to go to Zach Cutler, who is here. You can elevate Zach. Zach, you have two minutes if you want to just state your name and your affiliation. That would be great. Thank you so much.

Hello, my name is Zachary Cutler. I'm an adaptation anthropologist, and I have a question about mapping. I think in 2020, I did an environmental justice study of the Bunker Hill redevelopment neighborhood. and I'm trying to update it now and do a projection scope of current population and so on with the projections of the buildup. And I'm finding on the state and city data sources that that environmental justice neighborhood is made up of two groups and five parcels. and only one of those parcels has data. And I can't seem to find it on any state or city data source. So I'm wondering where I might be able to find that.

and another mapping related question or comment. In terms of quantifying environmental justice factors, of course, precise numbers and things are are important. And in a lot of the city and state maps, the green layer is used for open space in general. and it really creates an area for projects to fudge the difference between open space, non-permeable and permeable ground. and says hoping that maybe we could create a new key and make a new difference between open space that's non-permeable and actual green space or permeable surfaces. But just two mapping questions and thank you.

Thank you, Zach. Good to see you. So I don't have, and I want to make sure that I have an accurate answer to those questions, so I'm going to go back and just find the right one for you, and then we'll get back to you. I believe we have your contact information, but thank you for being here. and we'll be sure to get back to you with those answers shortly.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, next up we have Michelle Brooks. Michelle, still on? Great. Michelle's hand is raised. Please elevate her to panelist. Okay, welcome Michelle. If you wouldn't mind just stating your name and your affiliation. You have two minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, my name is Michelle Brooks. I use she, her pronouns. I'm a senior organizer with the Massachusetts Theatre Club and Co-coordinator of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition. Just want to reiterate thanks again to you, Chair, Coletta Zapata, and to all the members of the council who've been here and provided excellent comments about the Climate Action Plan and all of our expert panelists for your great testimony. I just wanted to share some of our comments and recommendations from our Energy Justice Working Group from the Boston Green New Deal Coalition and once again these will be shared In written format, we're going to be submitting them onto the record. Just a moment here, I'm just pulling that up.

So just to give a summary, some of this has already been discussed today, but in our review of the first draft of the plan, Some of the things that we have highlighted related to governance and transparency is wanting to see clarity and Publishment of the City's role and accountability structure for each of the strategies within the Climate Action Plan. Identifying point people or offices that are responsible for customer protections against predatory Thank you for watching! We would also like to see that studies include implementable metrics and I know that we've heard about some of those sample metrics today.

Really appreciated hearing about that in the City Panel testimony from Director Sellers-Garcia. We have some additional recommendations on sample metrics for economics, like household energy cost savings, Job creation, workforce participation, municipal cost savings, and more. Health metrics related to reductions in indoor and outdoor air pollutants, heat exposure reductions, asthma incidence rates, hospital admissions, things of that nature access to green space and noise level reductions different ideas on emissions reduction metrics and process and equity metrics as well related to community Community participation rates across demographics and neighborhoods, translated outreach materials, and public data availability.

as well as co-design with environmental justice organizations and residents. So those are just some of the examples that we've been thinking about. We also would find it really helpful to see assigned estimated budget allocations for the strategies and funding sources where possible. I know that's also been a topic of discussion today that's been incredibly helpful on implementation metrics we really want to see like moving beyond the studies as we've talked about over the last 20 years we have seen a lot of studies and so we're excited to partner with the city Both as the Sierra Club and members of our Green New Deal Coalition on implementation of demonstration projects through this Climate Action Plan. published data on tracking progress so hearing about the new CAP dashboard that's going to be produced similar to the Green New Deal dashboard We're really in support of that.

We'd also like to see criteria published on what kinds of technology selection are being used for the holistic energy plan, which is one of the strategies in the cap. and identification of grid constrained areas that are suitable for distributed energy resources, which we've talked about. Lastly, related to equity and energy justice, our BIPOC leaders in the Green New Deal Coalition had set a goal that we would like to see funding related to climate from the city. with a commitment of at least 60% for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and low and moderate income communities. and we would additionally like to see integration of stakeholder mapping with trusted community partners for these strategies so look forward to supporting on that

Thank you. Thank you. So that's past two minutes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle. It's good to see you. And I always, as always, appreciate your thoughtful comments and suggestions. Next, we have Hayden Seeger. Elevate her to... A panelist, and then after that, Libby McLaughlin from State of the Harbor. Libby is raising her hand. Oh, but first we have Hayden Seeger. Is she elevated?

Hello. It's me.

I apologize, Hayden. Excuse me. Excuse me. Welcome. Thank you for being here. And please state your name and then your affiliation. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm Hayden Seeger. I'm a Boston resident, so just a concerned resident, really. I read this climate action plan. I really encourage everyone to actually read it. It's only like 60 pages. You can read it pretty quickly. As far as the data shows, specifically slide or page 17 of this climate action plan, it looks like If we don't change anything, it's suggesting that we'll have a 23% reduction in emissions from the year 2005.

which if you do like a little bit of quick math that's actually less than one percent a year which is you know of course we're trying to like aim for as much as we can but based on this document it's saying that we're going to go from 23% to 44% if we implement these strategies. So we would have to basically 5x our previous emission standards Over the next four years, which I mean, yes, of course, we're like shooting for this. But in my opinion, and I think also in the data's opinion, it's like we need to do more. And that's really like what I'm trying to. encourage maybe the city council and kind of also the people in the Zoom

Currently, it costs zero dollars to obtain a parking permit, a residential parking permit in the city of Boston. You know, there is not a zero dollar impact on owning a car in the city. You know, I live in Back Bay. I could buy a car tomorrow and I live in like the most walkable neighborhood of all time and There's zero cost to the city is recouping any of that money. So yeah, look at... New York, you look at London or Paris or even like Singapore you know it costs a hundred thousand dollars to get a car in Singapore so really like it shouldn't be zero dollars you know I'm not suggesting we should have a hundred thousand dollars but yeah it should be something like that it really is like a economic and psychological problem you know you want to like disincentivize particular behaviors uh and you do that

Just by charging money for these activities and then using that revenue to fund things that you want people to do. So in this case, read the report, it's saying that The bus routes 23, 28, and 29 are currently free, which is an amazing program and I fully support, but they're going to run out of funding. You know, where does this money come from? I think Oliver in the panel earlier, he said, Funding is not something we can push off until later. That's something we have to figure out right now. So, I mean, you can just do this, but of course it's not popular amongst the constituents, right? No one wants to pay $25 or $50 for something that they already are paying zero dollars for. So I'm not suggesting having $10,000 for a parking space, You know, in Cambridge, it's $30 a year. In Somerville, it's $40 a year. This is money that we're like leaving on the table and people would be, they'd be willing to pay it.

Or you can market it in a way that Would you pay $30 to reduce traffic congestion by 10%? I don't know, I would pay that. You know, it sounds like a good idea. And really, like, you don't need to study these things. There is data out there. I mean, just look at New York's congestion pricing. Look at the London... Low Emissions Zone. I mean, yeah, you can just look this stuff up.

Thank you. Thank you.

if you want to say one last thing and then we'll go to the next person yeah i would just say you know and then use this money to incentivize program like every Senior Citizen over the age of 75, if they give up their car, give them a free e-pass for life. You know, positive things with money that you collect from the kind of like negative externality. So, thank you.

Thank you so much, Hayden. Thank you for being on. Next up, we have Libby and then Sarah.

Hi, everyone. My name is Libby McLaughlin. I'm the environmental policy manager for Save the Harbor, Save the Bay. Great to see a lot of familiar faces today. Save the Harbor is really excited and grateful about the city has and the Boston Climate Ready team has prioritized combating coastal flooding impacts. and has given this its own dedicated section of the CAP and we're particularly in support of strategies C4 which would implement deployable flood strategies including projects focused specifically on neighborhoods and then C5 to protect and expand existing coastal projects by advocating with a shared government approach. We're also a member of the Boston Green Deal Coalition, which a lot of other people on this call are, and I just wanted to boost some of the Merckx from Hassan and Michelle and other coalition members and add to our support of the recommendations from the coalition which will be submitted in writing. I particularly wanted to

Flag recommendation 20 from the coalition's nature-based solutions working group, which is that the next draft should identify at-risk natural resources within the 47 miles of the coastline and evaluate managed retreat and land acquisition strategies as a possible component for addressing coastal risk. And then finally, in regard to the earlier conversation about the need to collaborate with the state on coastal resiliency projects, Save the Harbor definitely recommends you know the consideration of the recently released resilient coasts initiative that was released by CZM on November 6th so last Friday and it actually includes information on the city's most vulnerable Publicly Accessible Beaches, which is identified in Appendix V, so I recommend looking at that. And the Metropolitan Beaches Commission, which is a legislative commission at the State House

is currently working on identifying strategies to protect those specific vulnerable areas, which includes some areas in the city of Boston, and how to sort of allocate funds from the environmental bond bills towards those coastal protections. Save the Harbor would be happy to work with the city in our role as the facilitator of that commission to find ways to collaborate. Yeah, and that's all from me. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Libby. And with apologies to Sarah, I accidentally skipped over an individual who I have deep respect and admiration for and just apologize, Lydia Lowe from the Charlestown Community Land Trust. If we can elevate Lydia and then we'll go to Sarah. Lydia, welcome and thank you so much for being on.

Thank you so much. I'm Lydia. I'm the director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust. And I want to commend the administration for taking a strong, proactive and all government approach to addressing climate action on the local level. And I particularly support the focus on racial, economic, and environmental justice. I'm just gonna focus on a few areas of work that Chinatown Community Land Trust is engaged in. First of all, heat resilience is a core focus for Chinatown. Many of our climate justice projects really relate back to the goal of addressing the heat island effect in Chinatown. I want to emphasize that cooling resources and infrastructure are needed not only during the daytime but also at night as temperatures in Chinatown remain hot well into the night and early morning hours.

and I'm also glad to see in the plan an idea that tenants and workers in Chinatown have said many times who often live and work in really inhumane conditions that State regulations have a minimum temperature, but no maximum temperature. So I'm glad to see that advocacy around that. is part of the Climate Action Plan. In terms of small building decarbonization, our organization is paving the way for this work in Chinatown by implementing a variety of Heat mitigation, decarbonization, and resilience measures on older small multifamily properties, which we have preserved as permanently affordable community controlled housing. We've put in the first cool roof in the city. We're doing building envelope improvements, electric service upgrades, air source heat pump installation for efficient heating and cooling.

induction stove installation, and planning a small solar and battery installation on one of our properties. So we're really glad to see the city's participation in the Mass Save Community First Partnership to expand this work in environmental justice historically underserved communities like Chinatown. We hope that partnership can address some of the complications and delays that we've experienced in our work and working with very difficult to navigate systems with MassSave and the utilities. I think an important issue there is that often we find that projects might fall, there's a lot of silos and projects might fall between silos. Like small mixed-use buildings or three or four rental apartments with a commercial space or buildings that are four units, which somehow fall in this gap between

What's considered home ownership and what's considered multifamily. The other important issue that we know the city is aware of, but I want to highlight is the need to incentivize building owners to make these upgrades, but also to prevent displacement of tenants. On the solar topic, Chinatown is part of Eversource's downtown area network, which has very strict regulations that limit the size of solar installations. and also prevent feeding energy back to the grid. This is a key reason why Chinatown has not benefited from solar technology. So we think the city can play an important advocacy role in calling for updated regulations in the downtown area network. And so we'd urge the city to work with the community on that and also to advance community solar and utilize city-owned property for that purpose.

We think this is an important strategy that we would like to explore. City property like the city tow lot, for example, could be installed with solar canopies, and then those solar credits could be assigned to lower-income residents in nearby Chinatown and the South End. or as part of the pilot negotiations with large institutions, rooftop solar on these institutions could be used to benefit host communities. Finally, on open space, Chinatown is one of the city's worst heat islands with summertime temperatures often as much as 10 degrees hotter than elsewhere. And so that's a core reason. A core reason for that is the lack of permeable surfaces, green space, and tree canopy. We hope that Chinatown will be an important priority for the administration on planting green infrastructure and open space improvement.

Residents have been organizing around open space issues a lot in the last few years. and often the community itself is really leading this work. For instance, our organization is working with the Friends of Reggie Wong Park to transform the neighborhood's only recreational court space into an intergenerational and climate resilient park. We're similarly partnered with the Friends of the Chinatown Library to try and find ways to convert a privately owned surface parking lot into a green space next to what will soon be the new branch library. So we're really glad to see land acquisition called out as a strategy, and we hope that the city can work flexibly and in partnership with community groups like ours, which have taken initiative already and tried to identify resources that can support these projects.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Lydia. I appreciate you and all the work that the Chinatown Community Land Trust does. I think I said Charlestown earlier. I'm always on brand. Appreciate you being here. Next up we have Sarah McCammond. If we can elevate her to being a panelist. Not already. And last but not least, Sarah Friedman. After her. Welcome, Sarah. Just state your name and affiliation. You have two minutes. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Clerk, Coletta Zapata, for the opportunity to speak in the Cabinet of Environment, Energy, and Open Space and our second panel of experts for this morning's hearing. My name is Sarah McCammond, and I am the Executive Director of the Harborfront Neighborhood Alliance. The Alliance brings together neighborhood associations along the harbor to ensure resident voices, growth, development, and resilience of an accessible and equitable Boston waterfront. We are strong advocates of coastal resilience, and specifically flood protection from sea level rise and rainfall inundation at the water's edge to closing flood pathways in the inland neighborhoods and increasing management. We support increased tree canopy, shade structures, and cooling features in our public realm. We encourage green infrastructure and nature-based solutions. that be incorporated in resilient infrastructure. And we'd like to thank the City Council for adopting a resolution urging the City to certify with participation in the National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System.

As we experience the cancellation of FEMA grant programs and uncertain future of federal funding and state funding constraints, budgetary and funding feasibility is critical in prioritizing coastal resilient projects. without pitting neighborhoods against each other and being able to implement district and region-wide protections. We'd like to underline the urgency of this work for 2030 and beyond to 2070, along with accessible evacuation and Retreat. The Alliance looks forward to continuing to work with the Office of Climate Resilience City Council, and partners on the Climate Action Plan, as well as integrating resources and other programs such as strategies from Mass Resilient Coasts. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. Always good to see you. Next up, we have Sarah Freeman. Welcome. Please state your name and affiliation, and you have two minutes.

Hi, everyone. Sarah Freeman, JP resident and member of the Green New Deal Coalition, as many have stated, representing the Arborway Coalition. So, real fast, because I'm the only thing holding you here now, appreciate all that the city is doing. I wanted to comment on a statement that was made at the very beginning about what they're not doing. or what they're not highlighting by cylinderizing the open space and recreation plan. It feels a little secondary, and it's only updated every five, sometimes stretched to six or seven years.

One of the final slides showed the city was leading there by example. Then they listed buildings, transportation, and energy. And they didn't even say, see the open space and recreation plan for the green. I do wholeheartedly support what Lydia Low said at the end about prioritizing Thank you. Thank you. More industrial solutions. They're all important, certainly, but don't forget the green, please. That's all from me. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. And I want to thank everybody for their testimony and staying on until the very end. I want to acknowledge that my colleagues have also stayed on, Councilor Weber, and Council Fitzgerald. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That wraps the public testimony portion of it. If you have any closing statements, Council Weber and Council Fitzgerald,

Yeah, I don't. Just thank you for doing this, and it's nice to see Sarah Friedman here, and I'm glad we could have this conversation, and obviously it's a much longer conversation. We have a lot of good minds in Boston who are trying to tackle this. and help people. Thank you, Chair, for doing this.

Thank you for being here. Councillor Fitzgerald, do you have any closing remarks? Okay, seeing and hearing none, I'll just wrap by saying thank you again to all of our presenters, our partners and advocates who joined us today. It really has been great to listen to your expertise and your lived experience to help shape the next phase of this conversation and what it means to truly meet the needs of our city and build a more greener, sustainable, and resilient City. And so thank you for your time, your testimony, and your ongoing commitment to this work. This hearing on docket, hold on, 1850. is now adjourned.