Brian Swett
Chief climate officer, city of Boston
Age: 45
Industry experience: 20 years
In his previous position for consultants Arup, Brian Swett observed that the real estate industry now widely acknowledges that climate change is an immediate threat. Developers no longer question the need to study effects on properties and future values, and Swett describes the 2020s as “the decade of implementation” for new technology and design. After advising private real estate investors on climate-related issues since 2015, Swett returned to Boston City Hall this summer to coordinate what is expected to be a multi-billion-dollar series of municipal projects. Swett oversees the city’s Environment, Energy and Open Space cabinet which includes a new Office of Climate Resilience created by Mayor Michelle Wu this month to accelerate the city’s response to rising sea levels, extreme heat and stormwater flooding. The role also includes oversight of the city’s Environment Department, Parks and Recreation Department, Office of Food Justice, and Office of Historic Preservation. Swett was chief of Boston’s chief of environment, energy and open space from 2012 to 2015 under former mayors Thomas Menino and Marty Walsh.
Q: In your previous position at Arup, what questions are private developers asking about resiliency and other climate issues that affect their investment decisions?
A: My lesson learned in that particular space is we largely have the engineering and technology solutions that we need in front of us. There are a few areas that scale, like steam and massive electric boilers. But by and large, we are not waiting for an engineering solution. We have the technology and engineering. In the resiliency space all across the nation in the last 10 years, a common theme is needing to get a better understanding of what the climate holds for real estate assets. In Boston in particular, there’s been a lot of attention on coastal risk and storm surges. The questions before in Boston were really about what to do at a building site to reduce future risk, and what is the understanding of risk and how that risk gets underwritten. You could model what a 1 percent storm looks like in any given year. The appreciation of the risks underwriting the building is getting much more sophisticated. And if you are building a building, what is your exit timing, what is the mitigation and climate risk and how is that risk being underwritten? You’re underwriting a discount on the sale price. We’re in early stages, but it’s getting much more attention from a risk mitigation standpoint.
Q: How can the city prioritize and sequence coastal resiliency projects, and how does availability of outside funding factor in?
A: The city has completed or is about to complete climate action resiliency planning for all 47 miles of our coast. That means we are ahead of the vast majority of cities across the country identifying the climate risks and appropriate issues for mitigation. That doesn’t mean we are reliant on the private sector for delivery. If a project isn’t moving forward, we’ll develop a plan to mitigate any near-term impacts. It’s going to be billions of dollars, conservatively, to make us climate-resilient over the next several decades. There are a couple of projects including Fort Point Channel where various grants are in process, and there are many steps between winning a competition and the money being obligated.
Q: Is Tishman Speyer’s $6.5 million contribution toward the design and construction of the Fort Point Channel flood berm a precedent-setter for future developer contributions to resiliency projects?
A: I think we’re getting more sophisticated in our approach, the same way we’re getting more sophisticated in open space and community needs. Contributions to neighborhood resiliency should be considered a benefit of a project.
Q: Is there a need for a more regional approach such as creation of an MWRA-type resiliency agency?
A: One of the big [recent] announcements is we’re creating an Office of Climate Resiliency for that hub of leadership to work with state and federal partners. That recognizes that the city of Boston alone controls about 16 percent [of the coastline]. The rest is private, state and federal.
The reality is the city inherently is going to deliver through public-private partnerships. One project is on Bennington Street bordering Revere and Belle Isle by Suffolk Downs. We are working with the state, which owns the Bennington Street section in Revere and the city of Revere for the solution to that [flood] pathway as we speak.
Q: What financial models can be applied for resiliency, such as district-wide financing?
A: When you talk about the scale of the infrastructure investment that we need, and you talk about where the investment is happening, that is certainly part of the conversion. This is a multi-decade approach to protecting everything we’ve been benefiting from with the Boston Harbor clean-up and the phenomenal development. One-sixth of the city of Boston is built on filled tidelines. It’s not just coastal resiliency for the benefit of the properties on the coast. The flood pathway at Long Wharf and Central Wharf comes right up to Faneuil Hall. It benefits a very significant area of land.
Swett’s Five Most Important Sustainability Books
- “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming” edited by Paul Hawken
- “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” by Michael Braungart, William McDonough
- “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan
- “Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions” edited by Bunyan Bryant
- “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond
