On a gray morning in Dorchester, contractors climb ladders and haul new solar panels onto the roof of a triple-decker built a century ago. Soon, the building will be warmer, more efficient, and consume less energy. Multiply that scene across hundreds of homes and job sites, and you get a glimpse of a city quietly reinventing itself.

Across housing, workforce development, and grassroots advocacy, Boston is weaving climate action into its economic and social fabric. Green banks are financing affordable housing retrofits, unions are training a climate-ready workforce, and community groups are holding policymakers accountable. Together, they’re turning some of the city’s biggest challenges into opportunities for lasting change.

In the homes

In a city where many homes were built more than a century ago, the struggle to keep energy costs manageable has become part of the housing crisis itself.

In June 2023, Gov. Maura Healey launched the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank (MCCB), the nation’s first green bank focused on affordable housing. Since then, the bank has financed deep energy retrofits across the Commonwealth, helping residents lower costs and make homes more efficient.

Retrofitting doesn’t just reduce bills. It also improves housing affordability, particularly for low- and moderate-income owners and renters.

“We’re really trying to bridge the worlds of housing, climate, and environment in a way that can accelerate progress toward all of our goals,” says Maggie Super Church, the director of policies and programs at MCCB. “The hands-on home assistance and mapping out a plan for how people can reduce their energy use can make the home more comfortable and durable, and ultimately contribute to keeping the home affordable in the long term.”

“We’re really trying to bridge the worlds of housing, climate, and environment in a way that can accelerate progress toward all of our goals.”

— Maggie Super Church, the director of policies and programs at the Green Bank.

The MCCB provides a variety of loans for qualified homeowners, working with them to help yield their best possible gains in energy savings. Whether it’s switching out fossil fuel-based heating systems to efficient electric heat pumps, or installing solar panels, there’s a variety of ways they’re working to build cleaner communities around the state.

In the workforce

The city’s push to make homes more efficient is fueling another kind of growth: a workforce ready to build Boston’s clean energy future.

Massachusetts has one of the slowest employment growth rates in the country. While Healey has directed funding to revive the job market, Boston’s city government is also finding ways to make employment both robust and sustainable.

That’s where the Worker Empowerment Cabinet comes in. An arm of the city dedicated to advancing the well-being of Boston’s public and private sector workers, their analysis of the upcoming Boston Climate Action Plan, due to release in December, bodes well for their goals. The first draft of the plan, a wide-ranging effort to invest in climate change by reducing carbon pollution and strengthening resilience, is publicly available.

“We can say that 67,000 jobs per year will be supported by our climate action plan strategies,” says Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, the program director for alternative energy at the Worker Empowerment Cabinet. “Those jobs will be directly related to building, designing, and implementing the Climate Action Plan.”

More than half of those jobs are in the trades, and will include roles such as carpenters, plumbers, HVAC and roof technicians, wind welders, and more. Boston’s unions are currently working to prepare people for those roles with apprenticeship programs in partnership with the Boston Water & Sewer Commission, PowerCorps Boston, and others. 

“The city’s ensuring that we make this transition to a clean energy economy, that the jobs its policies are creating are good quality, family-sustaining jobs,” Sugarman-Brozan says. 

The link between housing retrofits and green jobs illustrates how Boston is designing an economy where climate action and workforce development reinforce one another.

In the environment

Grassroots organizations are amplifying these efforts. Boston Climate Action Network (BCAN) has dedicated two-and-a-half decades to organizing city residents and collaborating with city and social justice allies for climate justice advocacy.

“We’ve worked with groups focused on transportation, health, food access, and a whole host of other things,” says Hessann Farooqi, the executive director of BCAN. “I’ve been really impressed how so many of these organizations have deepened their analysis of climate by working with us, and are really great advocates on their own right now.”

One of BCAN’s biggest wins was the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), which requires large buildings to gradually cut greenhouse gas emissions and aims for net-zero by 2050. The ordinance stabilizes costs for building owners, protects tenants, and creates opportunities for job growth and small business development.

“That’s already happened,” Farooqi says, “this law passed in 2021, so we’re already seeing businesses phase up their operations.” Another more recent success was Boston Community Choice Electricity (BCCE), a municipal aggregation program where the city purchases energy for residents and sells it back at a lower rate. Both BERDO and BCCE have resulted in meaningful partnerships with the mayor’s office and labor unions.

“It’s been a much easier process in passing new policies, mostly on the building side,” Farooqi says. “[Mayor Wu] has been great at creating and extending the fare-free bus pilot program, which has reduced the number of car trips people are taking. Those things matter, not just for climate but for people’s wallets.”

By linking housing, workforce development, and climate policy, Boston is showing how cities can tackle today’s challenges while building a more sustainable and equitable future for all residents.

“I was not always thinking about the city as an important actor in the climate action process,” says Farooqi. “Today, I’m so inspired that we have so many people from a wide variety of majors and disciplines that want to engage in this kind of work.”

“I’m so inspired that we have so many people from a wide variety of majors and disciplines that want to engage in this kind of work.”

– Hessann Farooqi, the executive director of BCAN