Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is pushing an initiative that would require new city-owned buildings to be zero net carbon. That means those buildings won't use fossil fuels, or if they do, they will have to balance that out with efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The Walsh administration also plans on taking steps to address emissions in private buildings, which is starting to get some pushback from the real estate community. Reporter Craig LeMoult discussed the situation with WGBH News' Arun Rath. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Arun Rath: Why are emissions from buildings such a big focus for the city?
Craig LeMoult: Well, they do plan on reducing emissions from vehicles as well. But Boston's buildings are the single greatest source of emissions, accounting for 70 percent of citywide emissions. Those, of course, come from fossil fuels for heating and electricity and things like that. The real issue is with the biggest buildings in the city. Apparently, 2,200 of Boston's largest buildings represent about half of the city's overall emissions from buildings.
Rath: Wow. And I have to imagine those buildings, especially the big ones — it probably costs a lot to make it net-zero.
LeMoult: Yeah, and that's a real concern for some in the city's real estate industry. I talked with a guy named Gregory Vasil. He's the CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, and he said this is especially concerning for those big residential buildings.
Clip of interview with Gregory Vasil: "We know we have a housing crisis. We know that construction costs are astronomical, and that's one of the reasons why we can't build for the middle class. It's been very difficult, unless you have some kind of government subsidy. So, you know, as you require more and more on the energy efficiency end, you can drive your costs up even higher. So that's going to be the real challenge here, is to figure out how to manage costs."
And I heard one estimate that for multi-family housing, it can add up to an additional $25,000 per unit to build a so-called "passive house building," which is a similar standard.
Rath: And it's not just new construction the city plans to require to have to meet this standard, right?
LeMoult: Right. So Boston's goal is to get to net-zero by 2050. And the city estimates that in that year, about 80 percent of all the buildings that will exist in that year already exist now. So that means about 86,000 buildings will have to be retrofitted by that 2050 goal. The city says if they were to do that, it could cut emissions by nearly 40 percent from the usual projections. But, of course, it's a very expensive prospect, as you mentioned. And Greg Vasil of the city's real estate board, points out that unlike new construction, the financing for existing buildings is already fixed and it makes a major overhaul really difficult.
Rath: Yeah, I mean, 2050 is closer than I think we realize. How is the city going to make this happen?
LeMoult: There's going to be a system that will include some carrots. You know, they want finance models to help pay for retrofits. But they're also talking about sticks. City officials, when we spoke to them, were not big on using the word "fines," but they did say that they may have to charge what they're calling "assessments" for buildings that don't make steps to become carbon neutral. And they said they hope that building owners would just rather pay for retrofits than paying some of these so-called "assessments."
Rath: You cover climate change issues broadly. Is Boston an outlier here? Are there other cities that are there doing this kind of thing?
LeMoult: There is a similar proposal in New York to do this kind of thing. And I talked with Tamara Small about this. She's the CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, which is the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. She said New York City's plan is an example of what Boston should not do.
Clip of interview with Tamara Small: "There are some significant fines associated with that, to the point where you have buildings that, by 2030, would be facing fines of $8 million per year. And the way the New York City program is constructed, those fines are not then used towards climate resiliency measures. It goes into the general fund. So we would advise the city not to do what the city of New York did and to learn from their mistakes."
It's important to point out that Boston's plan is by no means a done deal. City officials made a real point this week of saying this is just the beginning of a process to develop these new net-zero building standards — a process they said would be done collaboratively with all the stakeholders, including the real estate and the development industry. Both Gregory Vasil of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board and Tamara Small of NAIOP Massachusetts told me they were very happy to see this is going to be an open process. They said their industries really also want to see a reduction in carbon emissions, and they said they plan on being very involved in the process to make sure that it turns into something that's both feasible and that works for everybody.
