About

Mission

The mission of the Green Ribbon Commission is to accelerate the implementation of the City’s Climate Action Plan by convening, organizing, and enabling leaders from Boston’s key sectors.

About Us

Boston has 47 miles of coastline, 85,000 buildings, an aging electrical grid, and a population of 650,000. All of these are threatened by climate change.

The Green Ribbon Commission (GRC) has partnered with the City of Boston for nearly 15 years to accelerate climate resilience, carbon neutrality, and climate justice in our city. Launched at the request of then-mayor Thomas Menino, the GRC operates on the theory that by directly engaging key business and civic leaders in the design and implementation of the City’s climate strategies, we can accelerate change and match the scale of transformation to the scope of the challenge.

Today, the GRC is co-chaired by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Barr Foundation Trustee Amos Hostetter — and our robust and growing network of business and civic leaders is informed, engaged, and connected. We work together to share best practices, advance cohorts of “first movers” on climate actions, and weigh in on important policy directions. In sectors from real estate to health care to higher education, we provide urgent leadership and partnership to help the City achieve its climate goals.

The Opportunity Ahead

In 2025, the City will engage in a major update of its climate action plan, bringing together many strands of related work into an integrated strategy for achieving short-term goals in hitting key milestones in 2030 — and beyond. The challenge is now to implement our bold solutions at scale – financing billions of dollars worth of coastal protection projects; decarbonizing our largest, highest carbon-usage buildings (plus 70,000 smaller ones); incisively beginning the transition off of natural gas; and modernizing our electrical grid to handle a dramatic increase in electricity use.

Through the GRC’s 2025-2030 strategic plan, we are meeting this moment by leading efforts focused on three areas where Boston needs to make bold progress in the next five years and where partnership with the private sector is critical. We will accelerate:

Boston’s Path to Coastal Resilience, tackling our toughest financing and governance challenges;
Grid Modernization and a Just Energy Transition, updating the capacity, resilience, and technology of our electricity grid ; and engaging stakeholders in the shift away from natural gas; and

Large Building Decarbonization, solving for the top source of carbon emissions in the city.

Vision

Boston is a global leader in climate resilience and emissions reductions and helps demonstrate the “art of the possible” in ways that inspire others to aggressive action.

Members

GRC Membership is made up of dozens of the City’s top leaders – from universities, utilities, hospitals, financial institutions, real estate organizations, and nonprofits – who are committed to organization-level climate action to meet the City’s carbon neutral targets and other climate goals. The GRC membership also includes key agency heads from the City of Boston and Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Most Green Ribbon Commission members serve on at least one of six different working groups. Working groups are focused either on solving problems and spurring action in specific sectors or on cross-cutting approaches that address key climate issues across the City and region.