Earth Day Charles River Cleanup

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


Join the EPMA's on April 30th, 2016 for our Annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup! Over 3,000 volunteers around the Boston Area come together to pick up litter, remove invasive species and assist with park maintenance along the Charles River. This cleanup builds on a national effort as part of American Rivers' National River Cleanup, which to date has removed over 10.7 million pounds of trash from America's waterways! 


We will meet from 9:00AM-12:00PM at the Esplanade in Boston. A volunteer picnic will be held after our cleanup at 12:30 to celebrate our success! Suggested attire includes closed toe shoes or boots, flexible work clothes and weather appropriate layers. Please RSVP in advance with your preferred T-shirt size for a free Charles River Cleanup Tee!”

Read about how last year's service project went here, and register here!
 

Grey loves cleaning up his trash!


Tonight: Don't Miss our Policy Podium: Panel Discussion on Energy with Legislators and Industry Pros!

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


Are you interested in the future of renewable energy and green buildings in Massachusetts?  How about meeting one of the core legislators focusing on the sustainable future of the state? Then don't miss this event tonight! We will be hosting an evening with Senator Benjamin Downing, the Senate chair of the committee overseeing clean energy and green building policy.   He will be discussing his role and impact on the legislation, and bringing  green jobs to the Commonwealth. 

We are also joined by Betsy Glynn from the Center for Sustainable Energy, Steve Cowel from E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs), and Peter Shattuck from Acadia Center.

Topics of discussion will include:

  • Strategies to transform residential or commercial (or both) building stock.
  • How to bring jobs to Massachusetts through a “green transformation.”
  • Legislation that preserves Massachusetts's #1 national rank in energy efficiency.
  • Balancing public utilities, legislators and the public as we move forward with energy policy.

Q&A session will follow. 

See more about the event & register here!

Build on Your Green building Knowledge with GRESB (Tomorrow!)

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


Join us for a presentation on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) Survey; learn what it is, how it works and where it’s going.  This session will be presented by Laura Barnatt, of TA Realty, and our Existing Buildings Committee.  


The Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) was created in 2009 by a team of economists and statisticians from the Netherlands. Co-founded by Nils Kok at the University of Maastricht, GRESB was developed as a way for portfolio managers to more complexly assess real estate assets to uncover greater value for owners.

GRESB is a process of assessment which enables the multi-faceted aspects of property to be tracked over time in greater detail than has ever been done before. Through the GRESB process, an asset is rated in a new way, and the management entity is evaluated in a new way, which creates useful data about the underlying asset. With this data, and with the identification of component processes, asset managers can see into real estate and how non-financial aspects affect their financial performance.

The 2015 survey data highlights global trends and attempts to explain their impact on investors, GRESB survey participants, and the green building market. The 707 Participants–whose institutional capital represents $2.3 trillion of property value–have made many great strides in sustainability since 2014. The in-depth survey focuses on 7 thematic targets. This survey impressively revealed an average improvement from GRESB participants in each category:

Management: 96% have a specific person with responsibility for implementing sustainability objectives
Disclosure & Assurance: 92% report having specific sustainability objectives
Tenant & Community Engagement: 60% now have best-practice lease clauses 
Health and Well-Being: 84% increase in new construction measures to support health and well-being
Climate Risk & Resilience: -3.04% reduction in GHG emissions
Water & Waste: -1.65% decrease in water use
Energy: -2.87% reduction in energy consumption

Register for the event here!

The 2015 annual GRESB Survey includes seven aspects of sustainability spanning management policies to stakeholder engagement:


New Leadership for our Board of Directors

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

The USGBC MA has a great group of dedicated volunteers in new leadership positions. Congratulations to these worthy servants of our mission, we are looking forward to a great year with this group's guidance.

Earlier this month, the Board of Directors of the USGBC MA Chapter elected, through the consensus-based process of Dynamic Governance, this new slate of officers for the Executive Committee:

 

Chair


Shawn Hesse |
 emersion Design, Architect

Hailing from the great city of Cincinnati, Shawn has been an active volunteer with the Chapter for the past three years. He is an active member of the Outreach Committee and has served the USGBC (nationally) on many boards and working groups including the Social Equity Pilot Credits. He is a co-chair of the Living Building Challenge Boston Collaborative and an Living Building Ambassador.

Shawn leads the Cambridge office of emersionDESIGN and focuses on integrating sustainability into all of his design, planning, and policy work for clients. He has proudly designed and consulted Net Zero energy projects and LEED Platinum Certified buildings. Furthermore, Shawn has educated and trained hundreds in LEED with support from USGBC as a LEED Faculty member. He also serves on the national board of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. 


Vice Chair


John Dalzell | 
Boston Redevelopment Authority, Senior Architect

John has a unique perspective as an architect working in a major planning agency, engaging stakeholders and managing outreach programs. He has been heavily involved in the City of Boston's E+ program for energy positive pilot projects and with the district energy program looking at how component buildings of neighborhoods can coordinate energy resource management.

John has been deeply involved with USGBC and LEED for many years now, as illustrated by his awarded position as LEED Fellow, Accredited Professional in BD+C and Neighborhood Development, and as a founding member of the USGBC Massachusetts chapter. John is also a senior architect for sustainable development at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and a champion for Green Building and Community Programs.
 

 


Secretary


Carrie Havey | The Green Engineer, Project Manager

Carrie has served the Chapter in many capacities including Chair of the Communications Committee and the Green Building Awards Committee, and more recently as Treasurer of the Chapter.

Carrie joined the USGBC MA within her first few months in Boston and has brought sustainability into all aspects of her work. She currently works as a Project Manager at The Green Engineer. Carrie has over twelve years of experience in planning and landscape architecture from Concord Square Planning & Development, Stantec, Tompkins County Planning Department, and others.

 

 


Treasurer


Steven Burke
 | Sustainability Manager, SMMA

Participating in Chapter life as an Emerging Professional, Steven has delivered countless hours of peer education and supported our fundraising efforts. 

Steven is a Sustainability Manager at SMMA, an integrated, multi-disciplinary design, engineering, and commissioning firm. Steven has guided green building certifications on projects of many different types and sizes, including but not limited to: k-12 schools, higher education facilities, mid-rise and high-rise residential, commercial interiors, retail interiors, and commercial office buildings.

Steven has a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and his professional and educational backgrounds blend business development and management, building analysis, weatherization, energy auditing, solar installation, and sustainable design and construction.


Immediate Past Chair


Jim Newman | Linnean Solutions, Founder

Jim is just stepping away from the Board Chair position (which he has held for the past two years) and taking on a more subdued senior leadership position. He has been engaged in Chapter activities since its inception and has provided incredible support through education, fundraising and strategy over the years.

Jim transforms complex environmental performance information into valuable tools for decision-makers. His experience includes over two decades in strategic planning and operational efficiency management with educational institutions and real estate firms.

As Director of Strategy and Business Development at BuildingGreen, LLC – the ‘go-to’ green building resource for North America – Jim was a driver of green design into the standard practices of design and construction firms. He led the development of the BuildingGreen Suite, through funding from NYSERDA, and a research and writing project to create Green Guideline Specifications, funded by EPA. Jim also led the development of the recently launched LEEDuser information resource.

Jim serves on the Board of the Green Resources Institute. He is a regular speaker at numerous conferences and seminars around the US, including SXSW Eco. Jim was educated at Lehigh University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

How Baseball Stadiums are Built Green– by Our Founder

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow

The following is an excerpt from Greenthink: How Profit can Save the Planet, by USGBC's co-founder and current CEO, Rick Fedrizzi. 

How about something literally out of left field? 


Baseball has long been America's pastime. Ever since 1846, when the Knickerbockers played the very first game, the sport has grown to capture fans all around the world. And yet it feels as though the only time we talk about “green” in the context of baseball is in reference to the Green Monster at Fenway Park. The only mentions of “performance enhancement” have to do with the latest violation of Major League Baseball's doping policy.

But when the Miami Marlins and the people of Miami invested in a new ballpark, they were interested in a very different kind of performance enhancement and a few different shades of green. In fact, one of the first things the county, the city, and the ownership agreed on was that the new ballpark had to be LEED Silver. But thanks to their early and focused commitment to sustainability– from the Marlins organization to the architect to the construction company– Marlins Park became the first LEED Gold-certified professional sports facility with a retractable roof. 

Sustainability is a team sport, and the Marlins had an all-star roster. But to fully understand the scale of their achievement, let's take a step back and consider the environmental impact of a ballpark

In a 162-game season, you've got 81 home games. That's 81 home games where tens of thousands of people get in their cars and drive to the ballpark. Factor in that many of these games are at night, which means you've got to turn on the big lights (in addition to all the regular lights and the screens large and small). On top of that, remember that in places like Miami, where during the height of the season temperatures can regularly reach into the nineties, air-condition becomes necessary. If you think it's expensive to keep your house cool, imagine trying to cool the house that Ruth built– or in this case, the 928,000 square feet of Marlins Park.

The environmental impact of a baseball venue is already enormous– and we haven't even thrown out the first pitch!

Now, think for a moment about what those tens of thousands of people do inside the stadium.  You've got thousands of hot dogs grilling, thousands of beers being poured, and thousands of people buying peanuts and crackerjacks– after which the maintenance staff has to root root root through thousands of pounds of trash.  Then add to the equation all the delivery trucks restocking the concession stands and the garbage trucks hauling away the refuse. By the time you get to the seventh-inning stretch, fans have flushed hundreds of toilets countless times. And that's to say nothing of watering the outfield.

Multiply this by the thirty times, and we've got a major-league problem.


While you may watch baseball in appreciation of all the utility infielders, baseball stadiums are all about utility bills. They're incredibly resource intensive–which means they're also an incredible opportunity to become more efficient. You've heard of Moneyball, now let's talk “Greenball”–the Miami Marlins and their LEED Gold ballpark.

Marlins Park uses 22.4 percent less energy than other buildings its size, which translates to roughly $500,000 a year in savings. On top of that, the ballpark uses half as much water as a similar stadium, with the waterless urinals alone reducing water consumption by six million gallons every year. So while the team had a 208-278 win-loss record from 2012 to 2014- which, honestly, is not great- its environmental record has been a home run. 

On my tour of the ballpark, I was impressed to see all these features put to work in such a beautiful facility. They are a tremendous testament to the Marlins organization's continued commitment to sustainable operations. But there's more. In the 2014 season, the Marlins recycling stats were just incredible: The organization recycled 51 percent of its waste, bringing the Marlins' career totals up to 52 tons of oil and 92 tons of cardboard saved. The Marlins even recycled the sod and garden waste after redoing the field–780 tons, to be precise. In 2014, the team also donated more than 10,000 meals to a local senior center instead of allowing leftover food to go to waste. The floors of the clubhouse are made from recycled Nike shoes. And my favorite fact: it costs only $10 in electricity to open the 8,000 tons of steel that make up the retractable roof. That's less than a beer and a hot dog cost at a ballgame!

That said, the beer is doing its part, too. One of the more amazing things I saw during my tour of the ballpark was the centralized beer distribution system. Instead of running kegs up and down to every concession stand on every level, tubes throughout the building bring beer up into the taps. From an efficiency and safety standpoint, this makes perfect sense. But from a sustainability standpoint, it’s the kind of benefit that’s hard to measure bit easy to see. If you’re moving and cooling fewer kegs, you’re using less energy; if you’re only filling up three large tanks instead of constantly restocking hundreds of kegs, you’re bringing in fewer trucks.

This short anecdote demonstrates the transformative impacts of green building– it can take one of the most unsistainable places possible and make it money-saving, feature-loaded, sustainable, and ultra-efficient! Shown below is an aerial shot of the stadium– don't forget, it costs less than $10 to slide that roof in!

 

Our Very Own COP21 Event

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


This March, in just a few weeks, the USGBC MA chapter will be hosting a special COP21 Paris Climate Talks Unconference to revisit these important international conversations.

This is a unique opportunity to discuss the historic 2015 United Nations Congress of the Parties (COP21), held this past December in Paris, France.  The provisions and commitments reached in the agreement have global implications for sustainability, climate change, and green building, and certainly warrant a closer examination, extensive analysis, and more discussion.

For this reason, we have put together a half-day event featuring a community of experts from a variety of organzations and firms. Panelists who attended the Paris climate talks will be present, with break-out groups led by local issue experts.

SIGN UP NOW

Partnering Organizations: 

  • Sierra Club
  • CABA, Climate Action Business Association
  • Foundation for a Green Future
  • ELM, Envoronmental League of Massachusetts

Our Paris Panelists:

  • Michael Green, Climate Action Business Association
  • Christopher Mackey, Payette
  • Professor John Sterman, MIT System Dynamics Group

Our unConference Discussion Leaders:

  • Josh Craft, Environmental League of Massachusetts
  • Henrietta Davis, former Mayor of the City of Cambridge
  • Elizabeth Saunders, Clean Water Action


More about the Event:

More than 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are buildings-related, and emissions could double
 by 2050 if we carry on business as 
usual. Inaction increases risks and vulnerability of countries, regions and local communities from climate change. Yet:

  • The buildings sector offers one of the most cost-effective and economically beneficial paths for reducing energy demand and associated emissions while at the same time supporting adaptation and resilience to climate change.
  • Many low-energy, renewable and deep- renovation solutions are available. Proven policy, finance and technology actions exist.
  • The economic, health, and social benefits of sustainable buildings are significant. Buildings provide shelter, places to live, work, learn and socialize, directly affecting our daily lives.
  • Buildings are long-term ventures. Today’s new buildings are tomorrow’s existing stock. Failure to act now will lock in growth in GHG emissions for decades.

Here is how the morning will pan out:

8:30 – 9 Registration and networking
9 – 9:15 Keynote and opening
9:15 – 10:30 Breakout (unconference)
10:30 – 10:40 Break + Networking
10:40 – 12:00 Paris Panel with questions from audience

Both the panel and breakout sessions will focus on the following topics and will provide perspectives from various professional backgrounds:

  • Value Chain Transformation: is the building sector capable of massive deployment of low emitting buildings and deep renovations? How will building sector stakeholders better work together to scale up solutions adapted to local circumstances?
  • Bridging the investment gap: how ready is the finance sector to increase investment in building efficiency?  How will we address the critical need to scale up the public and private financing of EE and sustainable buildings. We will explore how buildings and EE can contribute to realizing MA's carbon goals and how the financial sector can help support that.
  • Public Policies: what is the readiness to implement long term action plans to address the key role of local jurisdictions to organize and facilitate integrated policy packages and collaborative approaches that shift to a low carbon and resilient built environment. 
  • Building rating & reporting systems: how do they support the COP21 momentum?  

Please join us as a community of advocates and practitioners as we explore how to leverage the public awareness and policy momentum generated by COP21 to drive policy gains in Massachusetts.

SIGN UP NOW

Residential Green Building Committee Meeting: 3/14/16

By Celis Brisbin, Programs Manager

 

The Residential Green Building Committee gathered on March 14th 2016 before the “Policy Podium: Panel Discussion on Energy with Legislators and Industry Pros” that followed. We reviewed the goals we set for 2016, such as recruiting more passionate people to Chapter, and established that the personal connection is crucial in doing this.

 

One of the projects we have in the works is an Integrated Energy Efficiency Program. We want to make it easier for developers and contractors to see they have access to energy efficiency incentives available to them, when pulling permits prior to construction. We need to start with one city at a time and make the change to implement these Energy Efficiency programs as mere options, not requirements.

 

Increasing this awareness of programs will benefit both the developers/contractors and homeowners alike. Eventually we want these programs to exist statewide, and be presented in an easily understandable way for those involved at the beginning of the construction process.

 

While this program will drive people to MassSave, it doesn’t stop here. There are a multitude of incentives that exist, and we just need to find the right way to make this information accessible in an easily understandable way. We should especially target Stretch Code communities, as they are most likely going to respond positively since they are already on track to utilize energy efficiency upgrades.

Stay tuned for more updates on our next Committee meeting on April 11th (Sign up HERE), and our next Policy Podium on April 14th (Sign up HERE).

 


 

National Grid: Energizing Nature

By Ritchie Lafaille, Office Fellow

The Natural Grid” program, which sees National Grid using its green spaces for good, has been named a finalist in the BITC Environmental Leadership awards. Environmental Sustainability Manager Ian Glover explains why it’s so important for the business to make a positive contribution.

Some of the UK’s most treasured species, including birds and butterflies, are in significant decline as their habitats shrink and become more fragmented. Through our Natural Grid program, they’re finding new ways to use our land which benefit our neighbors and communities and, in doing so, improve the quality of nature on their properties.

The program was born from their environmental and sustainability strategy, which they rolled out in 2012/13. One of the big themes they looked at was how, as a company with significant amounts of land, they could not only minimize their environmental footprint, but deliver more positive benefits by enhancing the natural world alongside their energy grids.

Along with the clear environmental benefits, it’s important that the program makes sense to National Grid as a business. As a highly-regulated organization, they need to show that everything they do is creating returns and providing value to their customers. To help demonstrate this, they’ve developed valuation tools that actually put a price on these “priceless” assets. They allow National Grid to highlight their value, prove that the programs they put in place are more efficient, help them reduce risk, increase long-term environmental quality and enhance their reputation.

These tools tell us that National Grid has up to £500 million of natural capital value there! So it’s vital that they make the right decisions that not only preserve that value, but enhance it.

The Natural Grid is growing and they’re proud to have been named a finalist at the BiTC’s Responsible Business awards. It’s recognition that they’re showing new ways for land and natural assets to be managed that are more efficient, collaborative and drive environmental improvements.

National Grid is also seeing a lot of personal passion on display across their sites. Many of their people are voluntarily looking out of their windows and taking the opportunity to build bird boxes and new habitats for local wildlife. The Natural Grid is a fantastic opportunity to get even more colleagues and construction partners engaged in breathing new life into our precious landscapes. Thank you to Chapter Sponsoring Partner National Grid for building on their commitment to sustainability through this program!

 

Learn more about National Grid on their website and in our blog!

A recap of our Net Zero Building Tour at the Dept. of Fisheries and Wildlife

By Kevin Provencher, PDA Associates, Inc.


On Tuesday February 23rd, the USGBC MA Chapter hosted an in depth discussion and tour of the LEED Platinum, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife Headquarters located in Westboro, Massachusetts, winner of the Chapter's 2015 Innovation in Green Design Award. Designed for net zero energy performance with direction from the Division of Capital Asset Management and completed in early 2015, the facility is on-track to meet and perhaps exceed its performance goal in 2016, according to Conor McGuire, Director of Sustainability at Columbia Construction Company. The project was designed to be the first publicly owned net zero energy building in the Commonwealth. Conor was joined by Dan Arons, Principal Architect for Architerra, Inc. who was responsible for design of the project. They report the facility was 94% efficient in first year of operation. Record breaking snow accumulation and cold temperatures in February of 2015 reduced the energy output of the rooftop photovoltaic array to below expected levels; however the overall annual performance suggests the facility may even be net positive in 2016.  

Located on a beautiful cleared and gently sloping hilltop site overlooking a wildlife management area at the edge of the former Lyman School campus, the two story building responds to the horizon with the long side oriented on the east-west axis for maximum solar exposure. The sloping shed roof is covered by an impressive 300 kW photovoltaic panel array. A deep overhang on the south facing façade provides shading for interior spaces from high angle sun in the summer months, reducing solar heat gain during the cooling season, but allows low angle winter sun to penetrate the interior to offset the heat load during the heating season. North facing clerestory windows allow daylight to penetrate the interior, reducing the energy required for artificial illumination through daylight sensors and controls, which regulate interior lighting levels based on the available daylight.  Vacancy sensors were chosen for daylit spaces to avoid turning lights on unnecessarily. Unlike an occupancy sensor, a vacancy sensor requires the room occupant to turn the lighting on manually when entering the space, then turns the lights off automatically after the occupant leaves. When adequate daylight is available, the occupant is less likely to turn the lights on. 

The exterior walls and roof are constructed of structural insulated panels (SIPs), a layer of foam plastic insulation with oriented strand board bonded to both sides. When compared to framed wall and roof assemblies, SIPs allow for continuous insulation uninterrupted by framing members, maximizing the insulating value in a minimum depth. A continuous air and weather barrier was applied over the SIPs behind open joint rain screen panels. Maintaining the continuity of the air barrier is critically important to the thermal performance of the building envelope. Whole building blower door testing confirmed the building's air barrier performed at an average leakage rate of .062 cfm/ft² at 75 Pa, far exceeding the minimum energy code performance value for building tested assemblies (0.40 cfm/ft²). The open joint rain screen design allows for bulk water to penetrate the cladding and drain down the face of the weather barrier in the air cavity behind. Ventilating the cavity promotes air circulation and drying which increases the overall resilience of the wall assembly.

In addition to passive design measures, the project utilizes highly efficient environmental systems to drive down the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) which is a measure of the energy consumed annually per square foot at the site. The design and engineering team targeted a low EUI (26.3KBtu/ft²/yr) which could be offset by the renewable energy production available from the photovoltaic array, resulting in a balance of energy consumed with energy produced on site. The building's primary systems are all electric, which eliminates on-site combustion of fossil fuels and carbon emissions.

The key strategy employed by the team for reducing the EUI includes separating the heating and cooling systems from ventilation air through the use of a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) and low temperature hydronic radiant floor and ceiling panels. Compared to air delivery systems, a low temperature differential between heating and cooling modes is possible when radiant energy is utilized to maintain thermal comfort. Further, the pump energy required for hydronic systems is significantly less than the fan power required for air systems to deliver heating and cooling. Hydronic systems become more increasingly more efficient than air systems as the size of the building increases. The low temperature differential is supported by a ground source heat pump system with 20 closed loop wells by transferring the thermal energy of the ground beneath the site, which is at near constant temperature year round, to the building's heating and cooling systems. 'Free cooling' is available during the swing seasons via bypassing the heat pump compression cycle and running the cooling tower.


The energy required to meet the ASHRAE 62.1 ventilation standard required for LEED certification is offset by the dedicated outdoor air system. Latent load, which is the energy required to remove moisture from air without change in temperature, is decoupled from the sensible load, which is the energy required to raise or lower the air temperature, by dehumidifying the ventilation air. The thermal energy of the air returned from the interior spaces is exchanged with the incoming ventilation air by an energy recovery ventilator (ERV). The entire latent load and a portion of the sensible load are taken by the DOAS, while the hydronic radiant system handles the balance of the sensible load. The overall result of running the two systems in parallel is a highly energy efficient solution that provides superior thermal comfort for the occupants.

Thank you to Conor, Dan and the staff at the Division of Fisheries & Wildlife for leading the in-depth discussion and tour of this skillfully designed, engineered and constructed net zero energy facility.

Learn More about COP21 in a Green Building Context!

By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow


This March, in just a few weeks, the USGBC MA chapter will be hosting a special COP21 Paris Climate Talks Unconference to revisit these important international conversations.

This is a unique opportunity to discuss the historic 2015 United Nations Congress of the Parties (COP21), held this past December in Paris, France.  The provisions and commitments reached in the agreement have global implications for sustainability, climate change, and green building, and certainly warrant a closer examination, extensive analysis, and more discussion.

For this reason, we have put together a half-day event featuring a community of experts from a variety of organzations and firms. Panelists who attended the Paris climate talks will be present, with break-out groups led by local issue experts.

SIGN UP NOW

Partnering Organizations: 

  • Sierra Club
  • CABA, Climate Action Business Association
  • Foundation for a Green Future
  • ELM, Envoronmental League of Massachusetts

Our Paris Panelists:

  • Michael Green, Climate Action Business Association
  • Christopher Mackey, Payette
  • Professor John Sterman, MIT System Dynamics Group

Our unConference Discussion Leaders:

  • Josh Craft, Environmental League of Massachusetts
  • Henrietta Davis, former Mayor of the City of Cambridge
  • Elizabeth Saunders, Clean Water Action


More about the Event:

More than 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are buildings-related, and emissions could double
 by 2050 if we carry on business as 
usual. Inaction increases risks and vulnerability of countries, regions and local communities from climate change. Yet:

  • The buildings sector offers one of the most cost-effective and economically beneficial paths for reducing energy demand and associated emissions while at the same time supporting adaptation and resilience to climate change.
  • Many low-energy, renewable and deep- renovation solutions are available. Proven policy, finance and technology actions exist.
  • The economic, health, and social benefits of sustainable buildings are significant. Buildings provide shelter, places to live, work, learn and socialize, directly affecting our daily lives.
  • Buildings are long-term ventures. Today’s new buildings are tomorrow’s existing stock. Failure to act now will lock in growth in GHG emissions for decades.

Here is how the morning will pan out:

8:30 – 9 Registration and networking
9 – 9:15 Keynote and opening
9:15 – 10:30 Breakout (unconference)
10:30 – 10:40 Break + Networking
10:40 – 12:00 Paris Panel with questions from audience

Both the panel and breakout sessions will focus on the following topics and will provide perspectives from various professional backgrounds:

  • Value Chain Transformation: is the building sector capable of massive deployment of low emitting buildings and deep renovations? How will building sector stakeholders better work together to scale up solutions adapted to local circumstances?
  • Bridging the investment gap: how ready is the finance sector to increase investment in building efficiency?  How will we address the critical need to scale up the public and private financing of EE and sustainable buildings. We will explore how buildings and EE can contribute to realizing MA's carbon goals and how the financial sector can help support that.
  • Public Policies: what is the readiness to implement long term action plans to address the key role of local jurisdictions to organize and facilitate integrated policy packages and collaborative approaches that shift to a low carbon and resilient built environment. 
  • Building rating & reporting systems: how do they support the COP21 momentum?  

Please join us as a community of advocates and practitioners as we explore how to leverage the public awareness and policy momentum generated by COP21 to drive policy gains in Massachusetts.

SIGN UP NOW