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How The City Of Oslo Manages Carbon Like It Manages Money

By Morten Nordskag, Special Advisor for International Climate Cooperation for the City of Oslo

Too often, climate pledges are made with a target date set far into the future, requiring someone else to be responsible for the meeting of that target. With our climate budget for the City of Oslo, Norway’s capital, we do the opposite. Just like a financial budget has a ceiling on how much money the city can spend, our climate budget sets a ceiling on the volume of carbon dioxide that can be emitted in the city in the same year. It’s not a separate document that collects dust on office shelves, but fully integrated into the most important document of any city, or nation for that matter: the fiscal budget.

Here’s How We Did It – and What Happened as a Result

We first introduced it in 2016, the world’s first at the time. Since then, the climate budget has energised climate action throughout our entire municipality. Yes, climate change was already high on Oslo’s political agenda, but this new governance instrument transported the issue from the periphery of environmental departments to the centre of attention, and mainstreamed it into daily operations and decision making.

Key Ingredients That Made This Possible

First, we made it completely in accordance with the most aggressive temperature targets in the Paris agreement, which limits warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. To do this, you need to know your baseline (from what year you’re measuring), and your target (where you’re headed). In Oslo, our ambition is to become a virtually zero-emitting city in just 11 years. Our baseline is 2009, so that means we need to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 95% by 2030. So, that was our starting point.

Second, we mapped out the annual carbon math for each year. We identified what a realistic emission ceiling would look like for the forthcoming budget year and here’s what we came up with. For the year 2019, for example, this ceiling was set at 932,000 CO2-equivalents. In comparison, our 2016 ceiling was 1,085,000 CO2-equivalents. The recent proposal for 2020 is 809,000 CO2-equivalents. This aggressive annual agenda ensures that climate action is not postponed and that action is taken now.

Third, we created a list of emissions-reducing actions that we’ll take each year, the estimated impacts each action is projected to have, how much more will be spent that year on each action, and which government entity is responsible for implementation. This is the critical part. If you do this thoroughly, it’ll stimulate public awareness and discussion and support for climate-action planning, evaluation, and adjustment. In Oslo, we identified more than 40 measures and instruments at different scales: national, regional and local. We expect some to directly reduce emissions, while others are softer instruments, such as communication and engagement.

Fourth, we created a feedback system to monitor and evaluate if our climate budget is working properly. To inform us whether we are on/off track in delivering expected reductions in real-time, we developed “a climate barometer”. Our barometer has 14 indicators that are updated three times a year. It tracks any changes in activity – for example, the number and type of vehicles passing through the toll-ring, delivery of fuel for consumption in the city, bicycle traffic and number of passengers using public transport.

The barometer has proven useful in identifying any need for increased action. It helped us identify a not-insignificant gap in how we measure carbon, for example – a gap that represented 100,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalents. This illustrates just one of the many benefits of our climate budget. When a gap is identified, the system triggers the need to take immediate action.

Fifth, we made sure the climate budget communicates quality-of-life benefits to city residents. Our budget describes how climate actions contribute to making Oslo a better city in which to live. And we make it easy for city residents to follow the progress in decarbonizing the city and to understand what it will take to achieve deep reductions in the long term.

Sixth, and finally, we made sure the climate budget sits in the right city office. By allocating responsibility for the climate budget process to the Vice Mayor of Finance, Oslo managed to create cross-municipal ownership of the climate agenda. Every agency or unit needs to report on progress, as they would need to under a financial budget. The climate budget defines who’s responsible to act and at what cost.

A Flexible and Adaptable Tool

In sum, we can’t think of a better tool for cities to adopt; it’s extremely flexible and adaptable and can accommodate any policy instrument, at any scale. For us, the climate budget is now efficiently managing our mitigation measures, ensuring that they are identified, prioritised, and costed, and that effects are measured and reported. And it’s pushing our city government to show how it will deliver, year-by-year, on our longer-term climate strategy.

No more punting of targets to future leaders, allowing frivolous carbon spending in the short term. The time to start budgeting is now.

This article is available to download as a PDF document and may be used as a resource to help guide your communications, campaigns or community engagement activities. It is based on the social impact research of ideas42.org and connects key psychological principles of applied behavioral science to the climate and sustainability work of CNCA member cities. Download a PDF version here.

 

In order to quickly move cities towards carbon neutrality, one social science game changer that needs to be scaled up is behavior change communications. Few of the more technical game changers – enumerated in CNCA’s Report – will be possible unless public and political will is mustered, mobilized and maintained.

There’s plenty of research in the social science field on how fatigue makes for bad decision-making. Considering this when we reach out to the community to build public and political will, are we cognizant of when and where they might be fatigued (and thus less equipped to support our climate initiatives)? And when we’re hosting events, are we bringing food so that we’re enabling the community of decision-makers to be well-equipped to get on board a sustainability decision?

Mindful, also, of how our communities are often underserved in their ability to receive and maintain proper nutrition, how are we managing this food insecurity and working with other city departments to help ensure that the community has what they need? This is a great example of how social and environmental sustainability are interconnected and how we must work together to ensure the community has the resources they need to make the healthiest decisions they can.

Example: Partnering with restaurants, bars and beverage companies can help with cognitive depletion and decision fatigue as Yokohama did here in their partnership with Starbucks for the “Nothing is Charming” campaign. The campaign was held inside Starbucks coffee houses to raise awareness about the benefits of using less electricity.

#3 Hassle Factors

How do we make green choices easy for our community? If we want them to ride the bus more, bike more, eat more plant-based foods, waste less, weatherize more, and buy heat pumps and solar power, how do we make it hassle-free or close to hassle-free?

Can we make it more enjoyable, more affordable, or more accessible? People might be more willing to undertake the effort and expense needed if they’re doing it in friendly company, with free food, while having a fun time. If we can’t reduce the hassle any further (and let’s do everything we can to make it hassle-free), let’s at least make it fun, family-friendly, with free food.

Exercise: Let’s vet our sustainability initiatives to see how hassle-free it is for a representative resident of the community. Are there ways that we can make any of these processes slightly less cumbersome? Recognizing that some of these green initiatives are heavy lifts, are there ways in which we can offset some of the hassle with positive reinforcement?

Example: Helsinki is making it easy for residents to discard waste with these convenient vacuum-sucking disposal systems. Not only does it make waste disposal near hassle-free for the resident, it’s also fun to do and avoids hassle-heavy trash bins that often fill up quickly and spill over.

#4 Identity

Since not everyone considers themselves an environmentalist, how do we tap into and resonate with other identities that might be attracted to our climate policies? When we think of the myriad ways in which our communities self-identify, what are the principles that matter to them? Parents, for example, would have, as part of their identity as guardians, a desire to keep their children safe from harm and to provide for their household. In that one sentence, we’ve covered health, security and economics. Are we mindful of this when messaging and mobilizing our climate initiatives? And in the words of ideas42, how do we “prime positive identities to encourage socially beneficial actions”?

Exercise: If you were to do a scan or audit of your climate communication vehicles (printed materials, speeches, websites, social media, etc.), how are you being mindful of your community’s many identities and how are you tailoring your message to be respectful of and resonate with these worldviews? Ultimately, we want everyone to see our work and connect with it. That means we’ll want any and all of our behavior change-related communications to be sensitive to and respectful of the identities that are coming to our events, our websites and our action requests. Let’s make sure they see themselves in our work.

Example: Vancouver taps into city/resident identity and city/resident pride with their “greenest city” framing here. This identity framing appeals to people’s – and the city’s – competitive spirit and desire to be first.

#5 Limited Attention

When our communities don’t immediately respond to our climate requests it’s not because they’re not interested. Perhaps they only heard it once from us, perhaps they never heard it at all, or perhaps other priorities took their attention at the time. Mindful of our own limited attention spans, and being cognizant of all that’s taking priority in residents’ lives, how do we make it easy for them to hear from us by repeating and reiterating our work through every possible channel that might reach them? Are we simultaneously using radio, television, billboards, community newspapers and newsletters, local associations and advocacy organizations, religious halls, phone and email, text and other ways to communicate with the public?

While this may sound time-intensive (and it is), it’ll be necessary if we want to truly engage the community and transform the policy. Surrogates and liaisons can be helpful here, as we don’t have all the inroads and we don’t always have the credibility as communicators that more local leaders might, so employ others if/when possible. But we have to reach our audience often.

Exercise: Take an audit of the frequency of your city’s communications. How and when are you repeating and reiterating and is it resonating? And if not, let’s pre-test and focus-group these messages to ensure that it’s the right wording and the right messenger for the right identities.

Example: San Francisco’s recycling page understands the limited attention span of internet users by directing the eyes to the desired action. They use white space (or negative space) to turn the user’s attention to the desired actions.

#6 Loss Aversion

People have an intrinsic disdain for loss. We get attached. And we hold onto that attachment – be it emotional, relational, physical or spiritual. So, how do we communicate our climate work in such a way that it’s mindful of the public’s proclivity for avoiding loss? When we think about what people care about – quality of life, standard of living, ego, money, health, and physical security – are we articulating our work in such a way that is mindful of what they don’t want to lose?

Habitat or species loss quickly translates here, as does the quality of life lost, the money lost, the health lost and the security lost from fossil fuels, global heating, and extreme weather. But can we also build new attachment to the kind of world we’re trying to build? For example, after a city turns a few previously road-trafficked blocks into a pedestrian-only zone, full of beautiful park amenities, and encourages active public engagement in that new space, it’s much more likely that the public will become attached to this new reality and want to replicate the experience elsewhere.

How do we show that life is better in this new greener world? There’s a lot of natural, intrinsic fear in letting go of the known fossil-fueled experience. One way to offset this fear is to provide experiences for people to build new attachment to the new reality that we’re trying to create. Most people who have a personal experience and bond with something that’s impacted by global heating – a polar bear, a vulnerable community, a seaside view – are more likely to do everything they can to protect it. In our messaging and mobilizing, let’s give them something specific to protect.

Example: Oslo’s climate website talks first about hidden swimming gems as a way of discussing the importance of protecting water quality. The webpage doubles down on the emotional attachment so that the user will then want to avoid the loss (of these swimming gems) that could result from poor water quality.

#7 Primacy Bias

There is a bias towards information that’s presented first, versus information that’s less visible. How does that bias impact how we message climate, then? Is it presented in a highly visible way on our websites and do we have social media channels specifically devoted to our climate and sustainability work (to send a message to the public that this is a priority)? Are our mayors and city staff leading with the climate message or are they placing it last on a list?

Exercise: Mindful of primacy bias, it’s worth scanning city communication vehicles to see if climate is presented prominently and if not, is that negotiable at all within the city? How can we inch up the city’s climate offerings so that, from a behavior change communications perspective, we’re on the top, not the bottom, of any city list?

Example: See how Stockholm presents itself to the world in this picture. On the landing page, it prioritizes its green leadership as one of its key selling points, alongside “most connected” and “fastest growing”. This sends the message to the world that being a “green capital” is an enduring priority and selling point for Stockholm.

#8 Procrastination

Everyone procrastinates on something at some point in their day/week/month, which is why any far off “2050” framing for our climate initiatives is potentially problematic. Even 2040 or 2030 seems far off. People will wait until the last minute to do whatever it is we’re asking them to do. It’s why it’s problematic for us to talk about future impacts; it merely reinforces the proclivity to procrastinate. We need to talk about impacts that are happening here and now. We need to offer easy, bite-sized steps that anyone can take now. And we need public-friendly short-term climate goals and deadlines to balance our plethora of long-term climate goals.

People are more likely to take action now if it’s easy now, they can see the difference now, and the goals are relevant now. We need to refocus our communications and public engagement on the 2020 and 2025 realities so that people’s penchant for procrastination is countered by near-term realities and possibilities.

Example: Boulder’s “Four Actions with Impact” aims to get people moving now with simple actions they can take now. The videos show normal residents taking simple actions in four areas. This helps the user feel like it can be done, that it’s pragmatic and possible, and helps prevent the procrastination that often comes with climate action due to feelings of overwhelm or inefficacy.

#9 Social Norms

We all know the power of social norming. Approval matters. We all know the study that shows that if your neighbor has solar panels, you’re more likely to get solar panels. And if your neighbor is saving money on their utility bill, due to some energy efficiency measures, you’re more likely to pursue the same or better savings by taking similar action. Given this, how can we use our city communication vehicles to show that a movement is happening in our cities and that our public and private sectors are changing the game? How are we reflecting back community actions so that residents and building owners see their peers taking action across the city and are motivated to do what others are doing?

We recognize that it’ll take time to present a picture of what the new (green) social norm is within the community. Reflecting back the green actions happening within the community not only works from a social norming perspective, but in the field of climate action, where people can feel like their individual action won’t make a big difference, this reflecting back can also lift people up emotionally, provide inspiration and hope, and counteract defeatism.

Example: Sydney, in its partnership with the Better Buildings Cup, is working to create social norms for greener living and greener buildings. By creating competitions that track waste and energy management and then mirror back the results and the winners on their media channels, this effort is conveying to the public that many people are doing this and, thus, so should you. Their sites show lots of activity in this space, show people having fun, and show plenty of diversity (in action taken and persons taking action) so that the user feels represented in this space.

#10 Status Quo Bias

Default settings are powerful. We like routine. If a status quo has been established, we’re less likely, in general, to deviate from that. So, how does this principle impact our city-based, climate-focused behavior change communications?

Let’s reach people within their routine, versus asking them to find us, which is often outside of their routine. Let’s meet them with our messages and messengers and go to where their routines take them. Let’s set up default settings that are more sustainable, with opt-out versus opt-in options (since the former produces significantly higher participation rates than the latter). And let’s take this further so that the new status quo is increasingly sustainable.

Example: This Portland partnership presents “ideas for making simple changes in everyday choices”. No big leaps here. It’s about living more and saving more. This is something people can stomach and it understands people’s proclivity for keeping the status quo. It gets a foot in the behavioral door with small bite-sized steps.

#11 The Availability Heuristic

Our publics may think they’ve never experienced a climate impact before, or if they have there’s only been a few events, not many. This is due, in part, to the fact that the press and often policymakers aren’t contextualizing extreme weather events within a global warming reality. The availability of our climate memory, and how easily things come to mind where the climate dots are connected, is limited. This is a problem because, as ideas42 put it, “we judge probabilities based on how easily examples come to mind.”

How are we chronicling for our communities, then, the repeated climate impacts so that the public is able to calculate more realistic probabilities because examples are more readily available to them? Can we use our media channels to document the climate impacts so that people have a more realistic assessment of probability? Similarly, how are we repeatedly showcasing solutions so that people have constant and common examples of the kind of behavior we’re encouraging? So that when they think of “going green”, there are plenty of highly public examples that come to mind.

The more we individually and organizationally message this – so that the public is seeing the city mayor and staff going green, too, in what they eat, drive, fly, wear and power – the more the public has available examples for mental and memory recall.

Example: Copenhagen’s partnership with “State of Green” to showcase the green initiatives happening across the city helps the user feel that there’s a lot happening. This site is presenting back to the community all of the activity in the climate space so that there’s ample available evidence and data for resident learning and discovering.

 

#12 The Planning Fallacy

Humans rarely account for and allocate sufficient time for a given task. We’re overly optimistic about how much time it will take to accomplish a specific task. This has huge implications for any of our sustainability targets and timelines for 2030, 2040 and 2050. And why it’s essential to be very clear about how much time these tasks will take. Reorient the deadlines so that it’s an easier estimable planning period for the public (since we aren’t often planning other tasks in 20 or 30 year timeframes). Admittedly, since city-scaled game-changing will take time, we want to be both clear about the necessary planning and positive about our ability to accomplish the task so that the public isn’t overwhelmed by the amount of time needed.

Give examples of similar time requirements (associated with other behaviors in their lives) so that any green initiative we’re requesting has a salient comparison. By helping our communities know how much planning is required to make the necessary shifts, we help set expectations. And doing it in shorter increments (versus 2050 timeframes) may be helpful in making sure those expectations are realistic, the short-term planning is reported and made public, and everyone is witnessing what’s involved.

Example: London provides ample options, which appeals to citizens of all sorts. It gives multiple time-sensitive and time-specific actions so that people can participate based on the time they have available to them. And we know that once we get them involved in one thing they’re more likely to take action in other areas.

Next Steps

We encourage you to check out ideas42’s full explanation of these 12 principles (they’ve got all of the study/research links for further sourcing). We’ve hyperlinked each page here for quick retrieval of each section.

Choice Overload
Cognitive Depletion & Decision Fatigue
Hassle Factors
Identity
Limited Attention
Loss Aversion
Primacy Bias
Procrastination
Social Norms
Status Quo Bias
The Availability Heuristic
The Planning Fallacy

Some, or all of it, will likely be very familiar to you and, hopefully, a helpful reminder as we work to improve our behavior change communications. If you want support in brainstorming how any of these 12 principles are relevant to your city, please reach out to me. I’m happy to help here. Thanks!

Continue reading “12 Principles for Climate-Centric Behavior Change Communications”

By Alisa Kane, Climate Action Manager, City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

Portland, Oregon, a city of nearly 650,000 people in the Northwest corner of the United States, has been working to address climate-related issues for over 25 years. As the first U.S. city to adopt a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 1993, Portland’s legacy of climate-friendly policies and programs targeting transportation, energy, land use, natural resources and solid waste have contributed to Portland’s steady decrease in carbon emissions. As of 2017, Portland’s per-capita emissions were 38% below 1990 levels.

While Portland is often recognized as a leader in the U.S. on climate action, it doesn’t tell the full story. Portland is the whitest major city in the U.S., with white residents making up 77% of the population. However, white Portlanders are generally not the people already experiencing the harmful effects of climate change. Rather, people of color, low-income residents and Native Americans living in Portland are on the frontlines of climate change. These are the same frontline communities that have largely been denied the benefits that have historically flowed from years of investments in climate-friendly programs, policies and infrastructure and are facing disproportionate climate impacts that take a real toll on their families and communities.


Decades of institutional racism and gentrification have pushed Black, Asian and Latino communities from the central city to outer neighborhoods. Punctuated by freeways, a deficit of trees and parks, and inequitable investments in infrastructure, these areas are also farther from job centers leading to longer commute times and distances, and increased transportation costs. As a result, frontline communities disproportionately experience the negative health effects of dangerously poor air quality, urban heat islands and unsafe transportation connections. This is the Portland climate story that has not been told and is why the update to Portland’s Climate Action Plan will center on prioritizing high-impact carbon emission reduction strategies that are focused on improving the health, prosperity and resilience of Portland’s frontline communities.

Asking Different Questions

In the coming months Portland will begin hosting collaborative conversations to draft new actions for an updated climate action plan. Through one-on-one conversations, workshops, forums, events and technology, local government staff will engage climate justice leaders, industry groups, environmental organizations and community-based organizations to develop actions that both reduce carbon emissions and create community benefits for those who have been left behind. The goal of this engagement is to uncover new ways of approaching climate action planning.

Here’s an example of how we’re rethinking climate action planning in Portland: Transportation accounts for 42% of Portland’s carbon emissions. In prior climate action plans, the focus has been on increasing walking, biking and mass transit use. Billions of dollars of investment in transit and transit-oriented-development, and bike and pedestrian infrastructure, helped keep downward pressure on emissions. But in recent years, the trend has reversed and is ticking upwards with year-over-year increases resulting in a 14% increase in transportation emissions from their lowest levels in 2012. Portland’s traditional climate planning approach to this problem would be to set even more aggressive targets for increasing bus ridership to reduce vehicle miles traveled, congestion and air pollution.

But does this approach account for the needs and experiences of frontline communities? Before we make increasing bus ridership a signature goal of our next climate plan, we need to ask more questions. Using John Powell’s Targeted Universalism concept, Portland is seeking to move beyond traditional one-size-fits-all approaches which tend to exacerbate existing inequities. We’re looking to develop climate actions that simultaneously aim for a universal goal (e.g., increasing transit ridership), while also addressing disparities in opportunities among frontline communities. So, instead of asking ourselves questions like “how do we get more people on the bus?” we should instead be asking more probing questions like, “who can’t ride the bus safely, and why?”

We’ve known that people using buses over cars is better for the climate, even more so if those buses are powered by clean-fuels like electricity, and if frequent routes serve the places where people live, work and play. Equally important is that there is a connected network of sidewalks, crosswalks and accessibility features so that people can arrive to the bus stop safely. Like most other CNCA cities, Portland typically designs our climate action plans – and measures our success – around these well-defined physical elements of a world-class transportation system. But that doesn’t tell the full story, and we run the risk of continuing to advance solutions that, in the end, won’t get us to our ultimate carbon goals.

A recent report by Portland’s transportation division, “Walking While Black,” found that Black pedestrians are more likely to be stopped by police while walking, and they experience 32% longer wait times at crosswalks than white pedestrians before drivers yield to them. In addition, almost half of all traffic fatalities in Portland are pedestrians, and unsafe crossings and the lack of sidewalks in many frontline communities put people, especially youth and people with disabilities, at higher risk of injuries or even death by automobiles. Finally, we need to acknowledge that there are real dangers to riding transit. Misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia and other forms of oppression don’t disappear once the door of the bus opens. From verbal harassment to physical attacks, Portland’s transit system is far from safe for everyone.

What Can Local Governments Do?

Without addressing these underlying systematic issues, we’ll never get enough people riding the bus to greatly decrease our carbon emissions. Doing what we’ve always done (e.g., more transit routes, electric buses) but just doing those things harder, faster or with better messaging isn’t going to work. Fortunately, local governments are uniquely positioned to employ new approaches to address the intertwined challenges of both climate change and social injustice. In Portland, the local government significantly influences and/or runs the transit system, manages many transportation infrastructure projects, invests in affordable housing and homelessness services, and oversees the police bureau. This may mean that Portland’s next climate plan will include actions that address racial profiling by police, or penalize car drivers that don’t yield the right-of-way to pedestrians in frontline communities.

Simply by asking different questions (e.g., “who can’t ride the bus safely and why?” versus “how do we get more people riding the bus?”), Portland’s new approach to climate action planning is poised to redefine what successful climate action looks like. To fully address the urgency of preparing for and mitigating the disastrous impacts of climate change, Portland will need to strategically focus on actions that significantly reduce carbon emissions, create just and equitable solutions, and offer tangible benefits to the frontline communities most impacted by climate change.

Two Approaches To Buildings Decarbonization

By Klaus Bundgaard, Climate Project Manager, City of Copenhagen,
and Jenna Tatum, Director, Building Electrification Initiative

In the start of the twentieth century, Copenhagen was once heated like most other cities. Individual heating supplied every home, which meant the city was heavily polluted from coal, petroleum and coke burned in stoves locally. In 1925, due to rising electricity demand, more power plants were constructed within the city, which led to an increasing amount of excess generated heat. A smart person proposed the idea of utilizing the heat by pumping it out as steam to the nearest households through a network of pipes, and hereby the first district heating network in Copenhagen was established.  Now, 90 years later, Copenhagen has built one of the world’s most extensive district heating networks, supplying more than 99 percent of the city with sustainable and efficient heating. Between 1925 and now, more than 1,400 kilometers of pipes were installed, providing heat to more than 500,000 Copenhageners. More impressively, the district heating network in the City of Copenhagen is a part of four connected networks covering 17 surrounding municipalities in the Greater Copenhagen Metropolitan, and the assembled network covers a fifth of Denmark’s total heat demand.

Establishing a district heating network makes so much more sense in a dense city, since the density of end-users cuts the price of constructing the transmitting network. Of course, the economic business case has been favorable and helped with the expansion of the district heating network, but another important measure was the mandatory connection to the network introduced up through the 80s and 90s. With this regulation, all property owners in Copenhagen had to be connected to the network within a limited time, otherwise they would have to pay an annual fee.

Our road towards a carbon neutral heating will probably be less bumpy than other cities, since we – together with surrounding municipalities – own the utilities. Due to this ownership model, our vision is also shared by the utilities. Today, 65 percent of the heat supply is carbon neutral, and we expect an increase by next year that will allow us to go above 80 percent, due to the opening of the BIO4 power plant. This is a new biomass-based power plant unit that will replace an old unit running on coal, and hereby also highlight the end of coal-based power plants in Copenhagen. This means that our main inputs for heat production will come from waste and biomass with a sustainable certificate. The remaining 20 percent of carbon dioxide will derive from plastic and other fossil fractions in the waste, and further the need for peak-load capacity.

To overcome this, we plan to add carbon capture technologies to the waste-to-energy plants, removing the carbon dioxide emitted from the remaining plastic and fossil fractions, which is roughly 165,000 tons. We’re collaborating with our waste-to-energy plant, Amager Resource Center, and have recently completed a technological screening of a possible carbon capture facility. It is still undecided whether the carbon dioxide will be stored underground or used for producing new e-fuels. Adding this technology to the list of solutions related to district heating offers a huge potential as a game changer, due to the possibility of producing energy with a ‘negative’ carbon footprint, if it is coupled with biomass. Through the annual CNCA Innovation Fund, we received funding for a project focusing on Carbon Capture Storage and Usage from a city perspective. It is our hope that together with the cities of Amsterdam, Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm, we can join forces and share knowledge while pushing each other closer to implementation.

The district heating network is constantly evolving, and it’s not only the transition to biomass that makes it more sustainable. Currently the remaining steam-based pipes are being replaced with low temperature water-based pipes, which will reduce the heat loss by 140 GWh, equivalent to 6,000 family homes, and further cut costs for operation and maintenance by 90 percent. Also, with the increasing amount of wind turbines introduced into the energy system, there is a need for new solutions to balance the grid. Here, Copenhagen’s district heating network can become an integrated part of the future energy system that will utilize renewable energy. On windy days with lots of excess electricity, large scale heat pumps and electric boilers could raise the temperature of the water in the district heating network and function as a storage capacity. Creating flexibility in the energy system is something that is being tested and demonstrated in the project EnergyLab Nordhavn.

While some parts of EnergyLab Nordhavn relate to more systematic changes, it also tests solutions within the households of our citizens. The previously mentioned peak-load capacity is a challenge since it relies on backup from oil or gas turbines. On a calm and cold day in January, most people wake up and go to the shower while heating up their household, which creates a peak load. But what if the utility centrally could manage their room temperature and could raise the room temperature a couple of degrees before people wake up, and thereby move forward the demand a couple of hours? We call this ‘flexible heating customers’, and they should of course be rewarded for this service.

Lastly, why limit yourself by only installing a network for district heating? In the center of Copenhagen, we’ve now installed a new district cooling network utilizing the sea temperature in the harbor through cooling exchangers. As for now, it is voluntary to connect your property, and it is still only in certain central areas. But in the future, we expect the network to expand as it delivers some clear benefits such as substantial reductions in cost and carbon dioxide and further requires less space and produces less noise.

Why Building Electrification?
In cities across North America, fossil fuels used to provide heating, cooling, and hot water in buildings account for a significant portion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—accounting for between 15% and 40% of emissions in a typical U.S. city. This is particularly true in heating-dominated climates like the Northeast. In New York City, for example, on-site fossil fuel use in buildings accounts for 42% of the city’s GHG emissions, which is the largest single source of citywide emissions.[1]

In the North American market, where individual building owners generally purchase and operate their own heating, cooling, and hot water systems, the most viable option is to convert these systems to cold climate air source heat pumps (ASHPs) and heat pump water heaters (HPWHs). These are highly efficient electric technologies that use a compressor to pull heat from the outdoor air to provide indoor space heat and hot water—essentially an air conditioner that can run in reverse.

Because these technologies are so energy efficient, heat pumps reduce emissions in nearly all parts of North America today, and they have the potential to dramatically reduce emissions even further over the long run by using electricity increasingly powered by clean and renewable sources. During warmer seasons, ASHPs can also provide high efficiency cooling, which is an increasing need across North America as cities experience increased heat and waves due to climate change. Electrifying building systems also has the potential to dramatically reduce indoor and outdoor air pollution and reduce the risk of fire from gas infrastructure—over the past two decades, there have been over 640 gas distribution accidents, resulting in 221 fatalities across the U.S.[2]

In the long term, major utility investments and state regulatory action will be needed to fully transition buildings away from fossil fuels. In the short term though, city action can spark the development of new markets and equitable approaches for transitioning to high efficiency electric building systems. This action will deliver immediate GHG and air pollution reductions, while also providing information on best practices and laying the groundwork for more ambitious efforts that will be needed at all levels of government.

The Building Electrification Initiative
The Building Electrification Initiative (BEI) equips cities with the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to implement strategies to accelerate the transition of building heating and cooling systems away from fossil fuels. BEI currently works with six leading cities: New York City; Washington D.C.; Boulder, CO; Burlington, VT; Berkeley, CA; and Salt Lake City, UT.

BEI emerged from the “Thermal Decarbonization Initiative for Cities,” a project launched in 2016 with startup support from the USDN and CNCA Innovation Funds. Under this Initiative, cities conducted market analysis and developed roadmaps for accelerating building electrification in their communities. They also began forming critical partnerships with states, regional organizations, utilities, manufacturers, and others to co-invest in solutions and coordinate regional action.

Building on these activities, BEI has developed a Theory of Change for how it will scale up these initial efforts and deploy city leadership to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels in buildings.

Theory of Change
When it comes to building electrification, it is important to recognize the scale of the problem. There are over seventy million homes and businesses that burn natural gas, oil, or propane on-site in the U.S. for space heating and hot water production.[3] Electrifying all or most of these buildings would be a massive investment. For example, electrifying all the residential homes in Boulder alone—a city of roughly 100,000 people—would require an estimated investment of at least $1 billion. Moreover, there are tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of gas infrastructure assets across the U.S. that will need to be depreciated or phased out.

In general—but particularly in regions with colder climates—heat pump technologies have not moved beyond the “innovators” or “early adopters” and into the mainstream market. However, because heating systems have 15-20 year replacement cycles, it is critical to begin installing high efficiency electric heat pump systems today in order to minimize the cost of the large-scale transition and reach broad market scale by 2050.

Given the scale, voluntary market development alone will probably not be sufficient to achieve these goals; it will require robust local, state, regional, and federal policy regimes to transition away from fossil fuel-based building systems. Supporting market development activities will also be necessary to improve existing heat pump products, train and qualify contractors who can install them, and ensure there are customers who want heat pumps and understand their value.

Reaching scale will also require major investments in frontline communities to ensure these communities are not negatively impacted by the transition and that benefits are equitably distributed. Cities have long been on the frontlines of historical societal inequities, and are now facing a growing affordability crisis that threatens to displace many of their existing communities. Climate change will only exacerbate this rising inequality. Moreover, enacting transformative policies will require building new and broad coalitions of support. Communities who are most likely to be impacted will need to help create these policies, and can also become key allies for policy implementation. If implemented well, these policies can also help address cities’ equity and affordability needs by creating better quality and more affordable housing, providing new economic and job opportunities for those who need them, and mitigating against climate, health, and safety risks.

Cities can take the lead on developing strategies that pave the way for an equitable transition. Cities play an outsize role in their regional markets due to their size and population density. They can develop “proof of concept” programs and policies that can pave the way for future state, regional, and federal policy action on building electrification. They can also participate as strong voices within coalitions advocating for the necessary policy changes at other levels of government, and help ensure that these efforts equitably distribute benefits to frontline communities.

By equipping cities with the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to implement these strategies today, BEI aims to achieve a widespread transition away from fossil fuels in buildings by 2050 while delivering major investments that prioritize benefits for frontline communities.

City Highlights: Burlington, VT
Burlington is Vermont’s largest city, with a population of approximately 42,000. In 2014, Burlington became the first city in the country to source 100% of its electricity from renewables, and today is poised to make the transition to net zero energy in the building and transportation sectors.

Achieving Burlington’s goals will be no easy feat, given its cold climate, older housing stock, and the fact that more than 90% of housing units use natural gas for heating, which is relatively low cost compared to electricity. Fortunately, Burlington has a municipal electric utility, the Burlington Electric Department (BED), which is committed to supporting Burlington’s climate goals and has delivered innovative energy efficiency programs for nearly 30 years.

In 2018, BED launched a cold-climate heat pump rebate program that includes a combination of weatherization services and installations of high-efficiency electric heat pumps for customers using oil and propane for heating, which are more expensive than natural gas. In this program, BED prioritized low- and middle-income customers so they can be first to benefit from energy savings and gain access to cooling. To date, BED has provided incentives to over 300 customers to convert to cold climate heat pumps. Additionally, the City has found that cold-climate heat pumps are becoming a popular option for new multifamily buildings, due in part to the cost-savings that come from avoiding the installation of gas infrastructure to the development.

Building on its progress, going forward, Burlington will explore the potential to create new policy options for installing heat pump retrofits in new and existing multifamily buildings. To ensure their focus on equitable building electrification, these efforts will include an emphasis on building new partnerships between the City and representatives of low-income communities and communities of color to ensure these policies are implemented as successfully and equitably as possible.

City Highlights: New York, NY
New York City is the largest city in the U.S., with more than 8.5 million residents and over one million buildings. To achieve New York City’s commitment to 80×50, the City estimates that over half of these buildings must convert to high-efficiency electric heating and more than 90% will need to electrify their domestic hot water.

Through a detailed market segmentation analysis, the city identified over 175,000 small residential buildings that are the best candidates for heating electrification in the near-term based on a combination of technical, market, and socio-demographic characteristics. This includes more than 75,000 buildings located in the borough of Staten Island. Based on the market opportunity, the City is collaborating with its electric and gas utility, Consolidated Edison, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and Mitsubishi Electric, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of heat pumps, to propose a coordinated outreach and assistance program to scale up heat pump installations in Staten Island. To ensure that the program delivers equitable benefits, New York City plans to develop a strong workforce development and job access component to connect un- and under-employed New Yorkers in frontline communities to new HVAC contracting jobs.

New York City is also piloting heat pump installations in larger multi-family and commercial buildings through its NYC Retrofit Accelerator program. As part of this initiative, the City is publishing case studies and technology primers that will help accelerate future action across other real estate owners and developers. The City has also compiled a list of technology needs to improve existing heat pumps for the NYC market and has begun working directly with manufacturers to identify opportunities to develop these new systems. As a result of these efforts, New York City will begin to unlock its huge market and help drive the long-term transformation away fossil fuel use in buildings.

[1] New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, New York City’s Roadmap to 80×50. www.nyc.gov/80×50

[2] Reuters, based on data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

[3] Rocky Mountain Institute, The Economics of Electrifying Buildings, based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. https://rmi.org/insight/the-economics-of-electrifying-buildings/