On January 9, 2024, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu delivered her second State of the City speech at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. At the GRC, we were pleased to see the Mayor touch on several key climate change related initiatives. A few of the highlights include the following:
- Net Zero Carbon Zoning – In her remarks, the Mayor noted that “this year, we will introduce zero net carbon zoning to make Boston the greenest city in the country.” She also mentioned that “Last year, [she] promised to ban fossil fuels in new City buildings, and we did: Already, two new community centers and two libraries in progress will be fossil fuel free.”
- Networked Geothermal – She also announced that “with National Grid, we will launch Boston’s first-ever networked geothermal system—delivering clean energy for heating and cooling to hundreds of families in the Franklin Field community.”
- Electric School Buses – She thanked the EPA for a grant that has allowed us to “be adding 50 electric school buses to more than double our fleet.”
- Affordable Housing – We also applaud the Mayor’s commitment to affordable housing to ensure that Boston is “planning for a more affordable, equitable, and resilient future” by permitting “the highest ratio of affordable housing in over a decade with the approval of nearly 7,400 housing units for future development.” In addition to increasing the City’s inventory of affordable housing, the GRC sees this as an opportunity to build climate-friendly housing that will house future generations of Bostonians, without increasing the inventory of operating carbon emissions.
State of the City Speech:
Read Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s State of the City speech – The Boston Globe
State of the City Recording: