
With Ordinance, Boston Targets Climate Change
For a planet with over 8 billion people, BERDO cannot provide meaningful climate change mitigation by itself, but one has to start somewhere.
For a planet with over 8 billion people, BERDO cannot provide meaningful climate change mitigation by itself, but one has to start somewhere.
Owners of Charlestown’s 20-acre Hood Park are ready to take the next step in its transformation with plans for a 160-room hotel and 90-unit residential building.
The New England Aquarium became the first property in Boston to receive a higher emissions limit in complying with a new building emissions ordinance, after executives described the energy-hungry requirements of its Central Wharf facility and potential decarbonization costs.
Watertown leaders hit pause on new building emissions regulations after objections from the business community and condominium associations about the potential costs and complications.
The costs of meeting the state’s energy policies are showing up as a stealth tax in the form of higher housing ownership costs and higher rents. A lot of that has to do with town and city policy.
Potential new requirements to discourage fossil fuel use at approximately 150 large buildings in Watertown would drive up housing costs and penalize developers of recent lab projects, opponents say.
More than 30,000 properties currently appear on a draft list of “covered buildings” tied to the LBER policy, which was embedded in a 2022 clean energy and offshore wind law.
There is a clear opportunity to embrace sustainability strategies while reconfiguring Boston’s building stock for a more sustainable future.
In a surprise vote Wednesday night, Boston’s Zoning Commission rejected the Wu administration’s attempt to limit carbon emissions in new developments.
As commercial landlords swap out fossil fuel-burning systems for electricity, 24 Crescent St. in Waltham is the first office building to tap into Eversource’s clean energy retrofits program to offset the costs.
With capital hard to come by, even the promise of city fines and higher-paying tenants attracted to green energy upgrades may not be enough to make downtown building owners act.
We are experiencing a sea change in regulations related to sustainability and decarbonization in the built environment. And technical experts like architects need to have central roles in their development.
The engagement of A Better City and our member companies in this process was instrumental in finding a solutions-oriented approach to a critical piece of combating climate change.
The next hurdle for developers that want to build in the city will challenge them to include decarbonized materials and green building designs to reduce their fossil fuel footprints.
Boston’s groundbreaking law cutting large buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions is set to gain a set of teeth, but a leading real estate group says the measure could drive up rents and make the affordability crisis worse.
Boston officials set a schedule for large building owners to begin complying with new regulations designed to halve carbon emissions by 2030.
Developers and landlords face difficult decisions about how to finance work to to control energy costs and comply with decarbonization regulations. Mike Doty and Nuveen Green Capital say they can offer an affordable solution.
Is another sustainability regulation coming down the line for Boston developers? Traditional commercial building materials such as steel and concrete are drawing scrutiny from regulators as a potential contributor to the building sector’s carbon footprint.
Robert Cooper’s Worcester proptech startup Embue says it can predict which of the “hundreds or thousands” of Boston apartments that will have to start paying carbon emissions fees in the next few years.
As new regulations prod the building sector toward decarbonization, they could align landlords’ and tenants’ financial incentives to help reduce commercial real estate’s climate impact.