Over the last decade, we’ve seen Boston grow into a world-class city that is regarded as a major center of the innovation economy. With its research hospitals, universities, cultural institutions, and successful business community, Boston is seen as a leader in the ideas and innovations that will fuel the 21st Century.
With the world’s spotlight on Boston, it is more important than ever that the city and its business and institutional community lead on another important front — sustainability. Our future prosperity and quality of life depend to a considerable extent on how Greater Boston responds to the challenges presented by climate change. By adopting sensible changes to reduce its collective carbon footprint, the business, institutional and development communities can contribute to improving the environment while reducing their own costs.
Buildings consume nearly half of the energy generated in the United States, but they also present a number of opportunities to decrease energy consumption. A Better City launched its Challenge for Sustainability program last year to help property owners, managers and office tenants measure and reduce their energy and resource consumption, cut waste, recycle more and save money.
Every organization has different sustainability challenges, but over the past year we’ve identified some common goals to work toward. Here are five ways your facility and tenants can retool towards a more sustainable and affordable business model:
Benchmark your utility data on a monthly basis. You don’t know how much you can save until you know what you’re using. Using a system like Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager provides you with a clear picture of your facility’s energy use and can identify opportunities for improvements and efficiencies.
Set measurable goals. Once you know your baseline, set milestones for decreasing your energy, water and waste consumption. Start small by committing to reduce electricity by 1 percent. Look outside the office — how your employees and tenants get to work is part of your carbon footprint as well. Have a plan for tracking your progress and make it a priority to stick to it.
Engage key stakeholders. The best sustainability plan is one with buy-in from the key stakeholders. Property owners and managers need to engage their tenants, and employers should involve and invest their employees in the plan. Involve your tenants in a goal of achieving an Energy Star building rating. The upper management and the “C-suite” should be involved too; the most successful sustainability efforts start at the top.
Culture, capital, offsets. Go for the low-hanging fruit first by changing office culture and employee behavior. Then, look at capital improvements such as changes to your heating, cooling and lighting that are smarter and more efficient. Ask your utility providers about offsetting your remaining carbon footprint with renewable energy sources. You can then use the EPA greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator to turn your utility data into numbers that are understandable, such as how many acres of forest you spared by reducing your greenhouse gases.
Communicate results clearly. To keep your tenants and employees on board and to promote your good corporate social responsibility, make sure that you communicate to all of the stakeholders the progress that you are making in your sustainability efforts, as well as your organization’s continued commitment to reducing its carbon footprint.
Making Boston a more sustainable city will take all of the stakeholders working together. The city of Boston has launched a major initiative to reduce emissions that challenges all of us to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. It sounds like a tall order, but if each building and company makes an effort and takes advantage of programs created by major utilities, the city, and organizations like A Better City, we can hit that goal and make Boston an international leader in sustainability.
Richard A. Dimino is president and chief executive of A Better City. www.abettercity.org
