BERDO

BERDO Victory Celebration!

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In a ceremony held Tuesday, October 5, at City Hall, Mayor Kim Janey signed what appears to be the most sweeping climate action ordinance in the nation. Boston’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) mandates owners of large building to reduce climate-warming emissions 100% by 2050. To celebrate, we invite you to join us on Thursday, Nov. 4, from 5:30 – 7pm, across the street from City Hall at the outdoor, rooftop beer garden “Sam Adams Tap Room,” 60 State St, Boston, MA 02109. (Note that this is not the Sam Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain.) RSVP for the party here.

The updated city ordinance sets carbon emissions limits for buildings 20,000 square feet or greater, a key strategy in Boston’s plan for a carbon-neutral city by 2050. The event was attended by the press and by members of community groups who had advocated for the amendments, BCAN included.

BCAN played a key role in ensuring passage of BERDO 2.0, building a coalition that included allies from the Green Justice Coalition and Boston Clean Energy Coalition, and turning out volunteers time and again throughout the almost two-year process. Since the May 2019 campaign launch, BCAN volunteers have created digital and print educational materials, giving dozens of presentations throughout the city, gathered petition signatures, and delivered substantive policy suggestions to City staffers working to craft the policy. In the final days before the City Council voted on the measure, we delivered over 2000 petition signatures, with more from our coalition partners, and generated 210 letters from constituents to the district and at-large City Councilors.

Boston is the first U.S. city to codify in law a decreasing set of emissions targets to achieve 100% decarbonization. Three other U.S. cities have adopted building performance standards that are less comprehensive. As pointed out by Synapse, the City’s technical consultant on the process of developing that set of targets, the City’s new policy “incorporates innovative and flexible strategies to help building owners drive down emissions, create benefits for occupants, and ensure smart oversight.” BERDO 2.0 establishes a review board staffed by community-nominated experts to enforce limits on climate-warming emissions from Boston’s biggest buildings, the source of the vast majority of emissions coming from Boston. Winning this policy change is a huge victory! 

For more coverage of the BERDO victory, click here and here.

Mayor Kim Janey signs BERDO! (photo courtesy of City of Boston)

City Council Hosts BERDO Working, Discussion Sessions

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The Government Operations Committee of the Boston City Council held two meetings in August to refine proposed amendments to the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO). In a working session on Monday, August 23, councilors conferred with Mariama White-Hammond, Boston’s Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space (EEOS), and Alison Brizius, Commissioner of the Environment Department. Councilors Matt O’Malley, Lydia Edwards, and Julia Mejia participated throughout the livestreamed session. (Initial trouble with the livestream link, plus a format which showed only the active speaker, made it unclear whether or not other councilors were observing.)

Councilors and EEOS staff were in agreement about requiring Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to be Class I and disallowing offsets for non-electricity-related emissions. Most also agreed that Review Board members must have relevant technical expertise, as well as being nominated by community groups in two-thirds of cases.

The Review Board’s set of responsibilities was also raised at a virtual discussion session on Thursday, August 26, where the public was invited to offer opinions and concerns. Whereas the proposal gives the board the authority to enforce penalties for non-compliant owners, groups representing the real estate industry argued that this function should rest with the Environment Department. BCAN disagrees. The proposal gives building owners time to prepare for retrofits, ways to apply for exceptions in special circumstances, and alternative compliance payments to cover over-limit emissions that remain despite honest efforts. Owners who take the standards seriously should not fear accountability to a knowledgeable community board.   

The next step in the BERDO process will be a second working session on Monday, September 13, at 10:30 AM. 

Boston Must Lead By Example — 2019 Climate Action Plan Update

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The City of Boston recently published its Climate Action Plan (CAP) 2019 Update, which lays out a five-year decarbonization roadmap aligned with the ultimate goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.  BCAN volunteers have taken a close look at the part of the CAP that relates to reducing carbon emissions from existing buildings, since this sector accounts for more than half of Boston’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the key ideas outlined in the CAP is that of carbon emissions performance standards,  mandatory carbon emissions targets by building type that decrease over time. The emissions standards would be established by amending the City’s Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), which currently applies to buildings of 35,000 or more square feet. The process of developing these standards will begin in 2020, and the City expects to propose an amendment to BERDO in 2021. 

Establishing building performance standards is an important step forward toward carbon neutrality.  Low-carbon buildings save money and bring better health to occupants. Setting standards would give property owners clear mandates to guide their maintenance schedules and would show that the City is taking climate change seriously.

We applaud the City for recognizing that establishing performance standards is a crucial element of what must get done in the next 5 years if we are to meet our 2050 goal. We value the public process that must precede putting more teeth into BERDO, but given that we are in a climate emergency, we are concerned that the City’s timeline for retrofitting existing municipal buildings seems very slow.

According to the CAP, the City intends to reduce annual emissions from municipal buildings by a mere one percent in 2019, plus an unspecified “additional emissions reductions” in 2020 and beyond.  Municipal building upgrades are not dependent upon a public process, and an explicit and ambitious timeline for deep energy retrofits of every City-owned building must be made public in 2020. The goal for carbon neutrality in City-owned buildings should be set much sooner than for private buildings.

We are also concerned that there is no plan to address existing buildings under 35,000 square feet. In the near-term, the threshold for BERDO should be lowered.  Also, two promising ideas that would benefit many residents should be pursued: rental energy efficiency requirements and energy scorecards that must be made public when a property is rented or sold.  Scorecards would empower buyers and renters and create a market-based incentive for owners and landlords to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Both of these ideas should be researched, and if possible established, within this current 5-year plan.

Lastly, we are concerned that the CAP does not address enforcement penalties for non-compliance with BERDO.  At present a number of building owners regulated by BERDO have not even complied with the existing mandate to make public their energy use data. Given Boston’s extreme vulnerability to flooding and heat waves, and the consequences of climate change for those worldwide who have contributed the least to the climate emergency, we must use sticks as well as carrots to push Boston’s building owners to decarbonize as quickly as possible.

Read more about our campaign to strengthen and expand Boston’s Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) at https://bostoncan.org/green-buildings/.

You can find Boston’s website about BERDO at https://www.boston.gov/departments/environment/building-energy-reporting-and-disclosure-ordinance.

You can read more about Boston’s Climate Action Plan at https://www.boston.gov/departments/environment/boston-climate-action#climate-action-plan.

Tough Nut to Crack: Reducing Emissions from Boston’s Existing Buildings

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After a thorough process of research and deliberation, BostonCAN is excited to announce the focus of our next campaign: winning policy change to accelerate the conversion of Boston’s existing 86,000 buildings to clean energy for heat, cooling, lights, and all their energy needs.

Powering our homes and businesses with fossil fuels accounts for about 70% of our collective greenhouse gas emissions. The Carbon Free Boston report calls for “deep energy retrofits” within 30 years of all existing buildings in the city: installing deeper insulation in walls and roofs with heating and cooling supplied by highly efficient electrical heat pumps. As our grid becomes steadily greener, these heat pump systems will be responsible for fewer and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Our top near-term goal is to strengthen the energy efficiency of  Boston’s largest buildings. Less than 3% of Boston’s buildings account for more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. These largest buildings are already regulated by Boston’s Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), which covers all buildings of 35,000 square feet and larger. Adding stronger enforcement mechanisms to BERDO will lead property owners to transition more quickly to cleaner energy. More retrofits will also lead to more jobs for Boston residents, as well as cleaner air, soil and water as we reduce our need to transport and combust fossil fuels.

Retrofitting existing buildings is one of the four top priorities that Boston has chosen for the update of its Climate Action Plan. Carbon Free Boston emphasized the importance of reducing carbon use in existing buildings, especially since “85 percent of projected building square footage in Boston in 2050 exists today.”

The goal is challenging. Many Boston buildings face barriers to even basic levels of insulation, let alone the deep energy retrofits they will need. Judy Kolligian, a BostonCAN member and landlord, has already upgraded heating systems for her own and her tenants’ apartments. “I’ve been improving my building as quickly as I learn how to, but my home has asbestos siding and my tenants’ has asphalt siding. I need the City and Mass Save to figure out more cost-effective ways to insulate buildings like these.”

BsotonCAN invites you to join our “Green Buildings, Not Greenhouse Gases” campaign, working with allies and city leaders to find urgent, equitable, and affordable solutions for retrofitting all buildings, from triple-deckers like Judy’s to the biggest buildings in the city.

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Pictured above is the deep energy retrofit in process in 2012, at Castle Square Apartments in Boston.