Mayor Koch’s administration should be commended for its efforts in welcoming and facilitating new construction in Quincy, which has brought many new residents and a new vibrancy to the City.  Quincy has a choice now, and we, at Quincy Climate Action Network (QCAN), urge the City Council to ensure that newly constructed buildings are built for flexibility and adaptability.

The Specialized Energy Code requires that new buildings are easily converted to use electricity for heating, hot water, cooking, and drying clothes.  A new building that uses heat pumps today, on average, produces 53% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a new building that uses natural gas for heating.  And because Massachusetts law requires that each year, increasing percentages of electricity must be produced by renewable energy, by the year 2050, that same new building built today, if it uses heat pumps, will produce 93% less greenhouse gas emissions than if it has a gas-fired heating system.   

As you can see, decisions made today about how new buildings are constructed have major implications on current and future greenhouse gas emissions, which affects our quality of life.  Emissions affect the frequency and severity of storms and flooding, and heat waves and droughts too.

In the past year, 34 Massachusetts communities have already adopted the Specialized Energy Code, with many more considering this too.  These 34 communities, large and small, wealthy and modest, urban and suburban, want to protect their futures from worsening climate conditions.  These 33 communities want to remain desirable places to live.  They want their new buildings to either use electricity exclusively now, or be easily adaptable to use electricity when appliances are replaced.  If new buildings are not built with the appropriate wiring in place now, rewiring them later to be able to use electric appliances is very costly, messy, and complicated.  QCAN urges the City Council to add Quincy to this growing list of communities, so newly constructed buildings in Quincy don’t become unaffordable and obsolete.

Let’s join Acton, Amherst, Aquinnah, Arlington, Bedford, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, Maynard, Medford, Melrose, Needham, Newton, Northampton, Norwood, Salem, Sherborn, Somerville, Stow, Swampscott, Truro, Wakefield, Watertown, Wellesley, Wellfleet, West Tisbury, Weston, and Worcester, and pass the Specialized Energy Code.

(Map image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license versions 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0.)