ISE Tapped to head Carbon-Free Boston Work

The Green Ribbon Commission and the City of Boston have engaged Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE) to use its technical expertise, project management capacity, and knowledge of climate and energy policy to advise the City on its decarbonization effort, including the technical modeling required to make effective strategic decisions. The Institute is now working directly with the City to advise on an initial climate modeling effort in conjunction with Siemens using the City Performance Tool (CyPT). ISE is helping the City assemble and validate data, interface with Siemens, and prepare for more detailed sectoral modeling in the future. The CyPT modeling runs and associated policy analysis should conclude by June 2016.

ISE’s work with the Green Ribbon Commission and the City of Boston also includes a proposal to create permanent, institutional capacity to model urban and regional climate policy. The proposed Consortium for Urban Climate Policy Modeling (CUCPM) will be a center of excellence within ISE that maintains and updates the data and modeling capabilities necessary for New England states and urban areas to develop policies to mitigate climate change. CUCPM seeks to increase the capacity of municipalities to explore, understand, and implement strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to integrate climate policy with broader sustainability initiatives. The Consortium is designed to include members from academia, government, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. Market research, fundraising, and preparations to implement full-scale climate mitigation modeling are currently underway and will continue throughout 2017.