Panelists discuss how to aim for a career in sustainability.
Written by Andrew Breiter-Wu
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Last month, EPMA organized their annual panel discussion called Careers in Sustainability: Charging into a Career in Renewables. The event was moderated by Andrew Breiter-Wu, the President and Investment Manager of Breiter Planet Properties, who has a very extensive background and has experience with the renewable energy industry.
The panelists included Alexandra Gadawski from HMFH, Emily Powers
from DOER, and Kshitij Chopra from Breiter Planet Properties.
The discussion interweaved the panelists’ personal and
professional experiences across their careers while eloquently layering future
trends across the renewable energy industry.
The audience was very engaging and we were able to ensure the
content of the panel catered to what everyone wanted. We thank all who attended
and spent the evening speaking with us.
The purpose of the Careers in Sustainability series is to educate
everyone on the different career paths that one can take in the sustainability
industry through the use of different people’s experiences and journeys across
their careers. There is not one “right” path to take, but learning from other
people’s failures and successes is the best way to efficiently chart your path
towards a career in sustainability.
Finally, we thank Boston University for accommodating us for the event and allowing such an important conversation to transpire on their campus.
For follow up questions about the event or about hosting a similar event on your own campus, email Andrew@breiterplanet.com.
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The 2019 EPMA Green Building Bike Tour took off from the
Roxbury Crossing station and covered over 9 miles of the woodsy, bike friendly,
community-garden-covered neighborhood of Jamaica Plain.
Jamaica Plain is often referred to as the greenest neighborhood in Boston. “Green” in this case refers to the large area of parks and vegetation, including many emeralds in Boston’s Emerald Necklace. However, after the Green Building Bike Tour, one could argue that the “green” designation also refers to the high concentration of sustainable infrastructure projects and green buildings nestled throughout.
The bike tour followed the Southwest Corridor Park down Columbus Ave where we met with the Assistant Director of the Reuse Center at Boston Building Resources.
Up next we rode to the Roxbury Community College (RCC) solar
parking lot and geothermal well field where the group got to meet with Kevin
Hepner, VP of Admin and Finance at RCC. Tour attendees learned how the Roxbury
Pudding Stone, the rock formation that lies under a large portion of Jamaica
Plain, is an excellent conductor for geothermal.
Next the tour attendees were delighted when after climbing Fort Ave Hill on their bikes, Evan Smith and Jay from Placetailor Architects had cookies and water waiting for them and educated the group on the details of their Passive House design strategies. Afterwards, Evan (a Fort Hill resident and president of Placetailor Architects) and Jay joined on their bicycles and rode along with the tour while pointing out the many energy positive and Certified Passive House projects in the Fort Hill area.
Afterwards the group continued down the Southwest Corridor
and visited Bikes not Bombs and toured the bike shop and learned about the community
programs offered to promote bicycling as a safe and sustainable mode of
transportation.
Next the group rode over to the Hernandez Elementary School
to learn about the school’s stormwater infiltration system that was designed to
integrate into the landscape and play area as well as spark curiosity and serve
as an educational tool for the students. Frank Stone, a bike tour attendee and
a Hernandez School alum, provided the tour.
Around lunchtime the tour stopped by the City Feed and
Supply on Boylston Street and got to speak with Noah Bondy who manages the
“Mini” Feed.
Next the group took a self-guided tour of the Old Oak Dojo,
New England’s first Living Building Challenge Certified project. Tour attendees
got to sit peacefully in the community space (made entirely of salvaged and
re-purposed materials) as well as ride a rope swing over the Dojo’s abundant permaculture
garden.
The last stop on the tour was the JP Branch of the Boston
Public Library. Utile Architects designed many of the sustainable features of
the new addition. One of the highlights of the addition is the digitally
printed ceramic frit pattern applied to the large front facade, the pattern was
created using an analysis of the sun path across the façade in order to provide
optimal daylight as well as shade. The group happily stumbled upon an ice cream
fundraiser being held in the lower level. Tour attendees were happy to come
away with free ice cream and library books.
The ice cream was a much-needed fuel to energize riders for
the final few stops of the tour as we rode through the vibrant Arnold Arboretum
on our way to Turtle Swamp Brewery where we ended.
Thanks to Blue Bikes for donating the adventure passes and
to all those who contributed to make this year’s bike tour a huge success!
EPMA members enjoy refreshments at SW Corridor Park.
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This past Thursday August 1st 2019, EPMA-ers gathered at the SW Corridor Park for an evening of good food and knowledge. Swapnil, one of our volunteers, did a fantastic job organizing the event complete with sumptuous food from Whole Heart Provisions and lawn games.
The highlight of the evening was getting to know the work done by David Meshoulam and his organization ‘Speak for the Trees’. David has been an educator for the past 15 years and is passionate about having new generations understand the deep links between science, culture, and nature. The main mission of Speak for the Trees is to improve the size and health of the urban tree canopy in the Greater Boston Area. They undertake various efforts for advocacy and outreach, but one of their main initiatives is to map, measure, and account for every street tree in the Boston area with the Tree Urban Teen Corps program (TUTC). For this, they properly train their “volun-trees” (that’s a good one) to identify and measure all attributes of the trees. They use their own software, ‘OpenTreeMap’, where anyone can see the street tree cover in their neighborhood, if it has been mapped. For anyone interested in participating in this and many other activities they do, please see their website https://www.sfttbos.org/. Two of our volunteers got a glimpse of the unique characteristics of the trees around us and how to correctly identify them.
Thank you to David and all the people who made it to the event.
EPMA would like to say thank you to Pare Corporation who generously sponsored this event. Lindsey Machamer was representing Pare Corporation. Pare corporation understands the value of urban open space and trees from the substantial effect they can have on stormwater management. Pare is working with some local sewer authorities to plan green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in available public open space. GSI can help to improve water quality by removing pollutants from stormwater, reducing flows into the combined sewer system, and mitigating flooding impacts.
By Julie Salvatoriello, Emerging Professional MA committee
The EPMA met on the third Monday of September for their monthly committee meeting. With Greenbuild just one more month away and the end of the year approaching fast, agenda items centered around networking opportunities, expo volunteer opportunities and holiday parties (and how the BMC rooftop garden tour at the Boston Medical Center had been sold out for weeks!).
The meet up landed mere days after hurricane Harvey hit the U.S. mainland. John Gravelin, Project Manager at Linnean Solutions, kicked off his presentation on “Resilient Design in Boston: Responding and Adapting to Climate Change” with an image of three new hurricanes. Katia, Irma, and Jose were all pictured together with the remnants of Harvey still visible in the satellite imaging. In his presentation, Gravelin described resilient design as preparing “buildings, cities and communities to respond to and adapt to the hazards of climate change.” The image of almost 4 hurricanes at once emphasized the real importance and necessity of intelligent resilient design.
One of the more poignant points Gravelin makes is how much of current resilient design applications that are found today are more focused on protecting buildings and infrastructure, and not, to his dismay, focused so much on the health and lives of people. Resilient design has a few uphill battles to climb, including the necessity for areas outside of flood zones to still have a resiliency plan as so many flood zones don’t take climate change into account or are based on models that just aren’t accurate enough. Even the focus on flood damage ignores that the type of disruption that causes the most deaths are heatwaves, which affects all infrastructure.
Gravelin emphasized the need for all communities to have resiliency plans and support services, and for those services to including supporting community gathering places and organizations. He emphasized that communities supporting each other have been found to be a perfect place to begin a resiliency strategy. It was a good reminder that, though we were brought to the meet up by green building, it’s people that we design and build for.
Join us next month for our October EPMA meeting on Monday, October 16th at 6pm for updates on our upcoming events, a feature presentation provided by Andrew Breiter-Wu and, of course, snacks!
Our August Emerging Professionals Committee meeting was brimming with activity! We welcomed new members, made progress with event planning for autumn, and enjoyed an enlightening presentation about the City of Boston’s continued efforts to improve building efficiency. We hope to see you soon at the Annual Bike Tour in Allston/Brighton this Saturday, and stay tuned for information about the Boston Medical Center Rooftop Farm Tour in September!
This week we were joined by City of Boston Program Manager Benjamin Silverman, who shared his work on the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance, or BERDO. Enacted in 2013, BERDO requires all buildings of sufficient size to submit a report on their energy usage via their utilities information. Currently covering all residential buildings and non-residential buildings above 35,000+ sq ft, this accounts for 35% of all built space in Boston. Through a combination of education, outreach, and on-site visits, Ben and his team have managed a stunning 87.8% response rate across the city, with the goal of hitting 90% by October 1st. This program is not only helping individual building managers and owners track their energy usage, it’s also providing a previously unheard of amount of raw data to better understand our city’s building energy footprint.
Having been in effect for four years, BERDO moves into its next stage in 2019. After a building has qualified for BERDO for five years, they are required to show either a 15% reduction in total energy usage, or perform an ASHRAE Level 2(or equivalent) energy audit. A defining feature of ASHRAE level 2 energy audit is a cost-benefit analysis addressing specific energy-use reducing behaviors, helping our Boston buildings save cash by going green! This second phase is hopefully going to help the push for the Boston Climate Action Plan’s goal of 25% energy use reduction by 2020.
The next EPMA meeting will be on September 18th at 6:00pm at 50 Milk Street. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to sign up to volunteer at Greenbuild, November 8-10!
