Press Release: City of Boston Partners with Innovative Team of Architects to Advance Work on the Carbon Free Boston Initiative

BOSTON - May 21, 2025 – The City of Boston awards a first ever consulting partnership to a team of architecture firms to develop an action plan for decarbonizing buildings throughout the city. The Decarbonization Stakeholder Engagement Consultant team will work closely with the city’s Carbon Neutrality team and key stakeholder groups across the city to develop a strategy to decarbonize buildings, or significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. 

This new partnership grew out of the city’s Climate Action Plan that aims to make Boston carbon neutral by 2050. Buildings and transportation make up nearly 99 percent of Boston’s carbon emissions. At its current rate of service, Mass Save would need nearly 100 years to reach all low-to-moderate income homes in Boston. This announcement shows the city’s commitment to take action to cut emissions from the building sector. In addition to transitioning to zero-net carbon new construction, the city has set carbon targets to improve existing buildings over time.

Team lead, Miriam Gee, is Co-Founder of CoEverything, and has worked for years with fellow consultants, Sara Kudra of Architecture Towards Neutral and Jacob Deva Racusin of New Frameworks. They will focus on smaller buildings not required to comply with the City’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO).

Deeply committed to justice-oriented engagement, the team will ensure that communities most affected by climate policies are at the center of decision-making. Action items include conducting a landscape and barrier analysis, leading facilitation of engagement activities including focus groups and stakeholder interviews, providing data analysis, and drafting a strategy report for programs and policies to advance Boston’s efforts to decarbonize smaller buildings.

“We do not need another study – our work seeks to deliver a plan of action, one rooted in reality, inclusion, and implementation to create the energy equity we desire to see by the year 2050,” said Sara Kudra, Founder and Principal of Architecture Towards Neutral and Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) expert. “Navigating this type of challenging work for my own home has been eye-opening and I plan to bring that learning combined with community focused realism to an actionable strategy to get us all to net zero by 2050.”