Boston Prepares for Electric Vehicle Adoption
Rising gasoline prices are painful, but GM, Nissan, Toyota, and other electric vehicle manufacturers must be celebrating the timing. EVs face market penetration challenges however, and consumer skepticism may be the smallest obstacle. States and cities have only recently begun to roll out EV charging infrastructure and electric utilities must ensure that grids are ready to handle the increased loads that EVs will create.
GreenTech has been working with a cross agency team here at City Hall to address these and other EV market adoption challenges. Charging infrastructure – public and private, renewable energy integration, permitting, EV awareness, and smart grid integration are all key issues that are on our radar.
We’ve mapped Toyota Prius owners (by planning district) as a proxy for EV adoption. (The East Boston figure – 171 – is inflated due to EVs at dealerships and Logan Airport. The private ownership number is closer to 130.)
Drop me a line if you plan to purchase an EV.
read moreGalvin Electricity Initiative Sparks Sustainable District Energy Talk in BMIP
District heating. A municipally supported energy aggregation buying group. On-site, business community owned renewable energy production. Smart Grid ready buildings. High performance energy standards and assistance for tenant fit outs. Green leases. A lower carbon, more competitive Boston Marine Industrial Park (BMIP).
These were some of the ideas that a range of 35-40 stakeholders including business leaders, government and quasi-governmental representatives, utilities, energy distributors, cleantech CEOs, policy makers, and energy experts discussed and debated at a sprited workshop today led by John Kelly and the Galvin Electricity Initiative to explore district scale sustainable energy solutions in the BMIP, which anchors Boston’s Innovation District.
Achieving these goals will require innovative finance tools and approaches, greater transparency among stakeholders, and public private partnerships, but BRA Director John Palmieri, who attended the workshop offered his strong support for exploring a range of energy strategies that will help all BMIP tenants reduce their energy costs, move the Park toward a lower carbon energy supply, while growing the cleantech cluster there.
This visioning workshop was just the first step. We look forward to on-going productive engagement with business owners, our utility partners, NSTAR and National Grid, Massport, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Veolia, and others. If we are successful, the sustainable district energy vision in the Park could serve as a prototype which we could eventually scale to the broader Innovation District, joining a handful of sustainable energy district scale efforts under development around the globe.
Beyond tackling energy consumption in existing buildings, experts familiar with the Park speculated that new development could double energy demand in the Park over the next 10 to 20 years. At the same time, rising sea levels and energy costs demand that public and private sector forces join hands to identify innovative solutions to tackle these new energy, climate change, and economic development challenges. The Park’s growing cleantech cluster, anchored by renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, cleantech R&D facilities, and sustainable design firms, can play a powerful role by injecting innovative techologies, new service and business models into the mix, supported by City leaders who are eager to promote cleantech prototyping and beta testing site locations for our cleantech cluster.
Please contact me if you are interested in joining this exciting effort.
read moreCommunity Supported Agriculture (CSA) Grows in the Boston Area
The proliferation of Boston area farmer’s markets has seen extremely positive growth over the last few years. The mass.gov agriculture site offers the complete list of farmer’s markets in the state.
While there has been steady growth of traditional farmer’s markets throughout the growing season, the business model has expanded to include meat and seafood shares. The community supported fishery of Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC) provides sustainably caught, dayboat fish with a direct to customer approach throughout the region to sixteen communities including Cambridge, Marblehead, Ipswich and the Fenway and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods of Boston. Now in its third season the program offers weekly and bi-weekly shares of whole and filetted options for folks. John Crow Farm in Groton, MA offers all natural, grass-fed and pasture raised beef, lamb, pork and poultry at the following locations- Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, Groton and Somerville, MA.
Winter markets have been sprouting up throughout the region and now provide a variety of cold-stored produce, meat, breads and locally produced products like honey and preserved items from November to April.
Boston includes a number of food purveyors that sell locally sourced produce and ingredients. Foodies Urban market, City Feed and Supply, The Harvest Coop, Formaggio’s, Savenor’s Market , and new Southie venture American Provisions stock locally and regionally sourced meats, produce, cheeses, and baked goods for area customers satisfying increased demand.
Boston’s urban agriculture horizon has seen a number of start-ups that are based on a variety of business models-
City Fresh Foods in Dorchester provides food services and locally sourced and healthy foods for area schools, hospitals, child care facilities throughout metro Boston with a mission that is committed to provide healthy and ecologically friendly meals using fresh local ingredients from a community owned operation. City Fresh Foods has been an economic success story as highlighted in the Boston Herald.
Top Sprouts is exploring development of an innovative roof top agriculture business model, that highlights high performance, year round growing techniques and thoughtfully intregrates building science and water management. Top Sprouts CEO Alice Leung participated in a series of BRA sponsored discussions to explore the human health, regulatory, green building, and economic impacts of roof top agriculture in Boston.
Restaurants can get into the game too with help from the (Boston based!) Chef’s Collaborative, an organization that helps restaurant owners link with sustainable, local farms.
Here’s an interesting article measuring the impact of farmers markets on local economies through the Project for Public Places. Strengthening our local food web is crucial to boosting our economy and will help ensure that more Boston residents have access to healthy and locally produced food. Local food guide to metro Boston -Farm Fresh.org
read moreOasys Water Lands in Innovation District
Boston Mayor Tom Menino welcomed Oasys Water to the Innovation District today. Oasys Water has developed breakthrough technology to address the growing water scarcity and energy security needs of the world. Oasys Water’s strength lies at the nexus of water and energy. Water requires tremendous amounts of energy to process and to transport. At the same time, many conventional energy generation processes are water intensive. According to the United States Department of Energy, for every barrel of oil produced, ten barrels of water are required. Oasys developed the Engineered Osmosis™ (EO) platform, a patented process designed to desalinate water at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.
While the spotlight shone brightly on Oasys today, we also took an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the growing cleantech cluster in the Innovation District.Area cleantech CEOs including Next Step Living’s Geoff Chapin, Fast Cap System’s Riccardo Signorelli, and Sat Con’s Steve Rhodes attended the ribbon cutting (pictured at right with Oasys Water CEO Aaron Mandell) and enjoyed some of the purified water generated by Oasys’s proprietary technology. These companies and others in our cleantech cluster are leading the way toward a cleaner economy while creating good green jobs. As the cluster grows, these companies can more easily share ideas and resources, collaborate and network, and identify new business opportunities.
read moreSeeding Urban Ag Businesses
Over the last two years, GreenTech has explored how best to promote urban agriculture businesses within Boston including ground and roof based ventures. Working with the Mayor’s Food Policy Director and BRA zoning experts, the City is taking its first steps toward a demonstration scale project that will help us learn about how to integrate commercial grade growing businesses in underutilized parcels. The project will include community hearings and ultimately, will help inform development of an agricultural zoning provision.
read more“Save the World or Beat China: How to Sell Cleantech Investment to the US?”
That’s the subject of tomorrow night’s CleanTech Kingpin Speaker Series. I’ll be joined by other panelists as we tackle this topic at the NEXUS green building resource center in downtown Boston. US Cleantech economic development has been under scrutiny lately as China and other surging economies have invested heavily in clean energy, and are reaping the benefits in terms of jobs and market share. And in this political environment, some US interests are crying fowl. Still, others argue we simply need to invest more in critical industries and support more government intervention in targeted markets.
I look forward to the discussion.
read more