Providence has set an ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. That’s why, in 2023, Providence began requiring owners of large buildings – the biggest carbon producers in the city – to track and report their energy usage. After a year of reports from places like schools and the zoo, what do we know?
Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke about the results and the city’s pathway to carbon neutrality with Priscilla de la Cruz, the city’s Director of Sustainability.
Interview highlights
On the biggest energy users: Providence schools
Priscilla De La Cruz: What jumps out at us when looking at our schools is that the majority of them are not efficient, and they account for about over 70% of our energy usage. So for us, when we’re looking at what are the next host of buildings that we’re going to focus on deploying strategies, schools have to be part of that priority. But what it also shows us is that the strengths are that we have already been moving in that direction. Given the standards at which schools are being built, we already have three schools that are all electric.
One of the ones that we’re working on, and where we defaulted to new construction, is looking at Mount Pleasant High School. Like you said, some of our buildings are very old, so the decision has to be made to go new construction or to do a major retrofit. So that’s a challenge. But we also have newer buildings, like our PCTA building next to Central High School – and that’s that Providence technical vocational school – and that’s a challenge looking in there. How can we maximize energy efficiency in that newer-ish building, but also deploy technologies like solar, which also proved to be cost effective as well?
On strategies to achieve energy efficiency
De La Cruz: It’s a dual strategy that we’re looking at. It’s telling us there are some buildings that we are better off doing new construction, and that has been the example for some of our new schools that are now all electric running on clean energy with heat pumps. For others, it’s really showing the opportunities of where we can double down on the energy efficiency and really ensuring that there’s a tight envelope. That way, when we are making upgrades to that building, we are heating that building effectively or cooling it effectively.
On incentivizing energy efficiency for private building owners
De La Cruz: Our role here at the city is not only supporting building owners to comply with reporting their energy usage – and right now we are focused on the largest buildings, 50,000 square feet and above that are due to comply by May of this year – but hand in hand, we’re talking to them about, this is what you can do with that information. The sum of these large institutions are already investing in energy efficiency cost-saving measures, so our role is to make sure they can access more of those resources and go beyond the low hanging fruit.
On how the city plans to be carbon neutral by 2050
De La Cruz: We do have benchmarks along the way to get to carbon neutrality. We know that buildings equate for more than 70% of our carbon emissions, but we also know that there are strategies we can deploy in the interim. We also have to be reducing our emissions, making sure that we’re seeing the environmental and economic benefits of those investments, and that we’re also leading by example – but also doubling down on what we’re doing to prepare for a changing climate, because there is a cost of inaction as well.
