Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Monday unveiled a climate action plan for the city to curb planet-warming emissions while also combating heat, flooding, and other harmful effects of climate change.
The plan charts a path for the city to slash emissions in half by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, including by exploring controversial new policies such as congestion pricing for car traffic. The plan maintains the same climate targets set by Wu’s predecessor, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, in 2017, and is more focused on implementing and growing existing initiatives than creating new ones. Many of the new programs cited in the report are presented as avenues to explore, not new policies to implement in the short term.
Wu, who ran as a champion for climate issues, faced criticism early in her tenure for not moving faster on climate policy, and did not release a climate plan until her second term. Wu allies said Monday the new plan delivers the comprehensive agenda they had been waiting for, and lays out a clear path to achieving the city's long-held emissions targets.
"We need to do more than just envision," Wu said at a news conference, standing before a view of the city from the East Boston Waterfront. "We are taking action."
The city plans to achieve these cuts primarily by curtailing emissions from buildings and transportation, which account for almost all the city's greenhouse gas emissions. As the city implements BERDO — an ordinance that requires large buildings to reduce their emissions — officials said they will expand programs supporting building owners as they come into compliance. To reduce emissions from smaller buildings, the city will convene a task force to decarbonize restaurants and consider expanding a program that helps residents switch to electric stoves.
On transportation, the city wants to shift Bostonians away from driving toward walking, biking, and public transportation, while increasing the share of electric cars to about 20 percent of all vehicles. The city will expand electric vehicle charging stations in municipal lots and curbside locations with the goal of ensuring every resident is within a five-minute walk of a station by 2030.
Officials also plan to secure permanent funding for three existing fare-free bus routes and study parking fees, tolls, and congestion charges to dissuade private vehicle trips.
While Wu's plan offers few specifics, she is all but certain to face resistance to any proposal for congestion pricing or increased fees.
"The economy of Boston is struggling," said city Councilor Ed Flynn. "Now is not the time for an expensive expansion of city regulations."
In particular, charging drivers more to use the roads has long been a hard sell in Massachusetts. In 2024, former state transportation secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt caused an uproar when she mentioned the possibility of tolling vehicles at the state's borders. Governor Maura Healey promptly walked back the idea and rebuked the secretary for a "very poor choice of words."
While the plan suggests further study, some said the city should take stronger steps.
Joan Fitzgerald, a Northeastern University public policy and urban affairs professor, noted that Boston has struggled to reduce its transportation emissions. Though she supports congestion pricing, she said the measure would likely face political headwinds and require state approval.
"The city should start enforcing actions that make the things that they have, such as the bus rapid transit, work better," she said.
The plan also includes previously announced initiatives such as studying the feasibility of harnessing thermal energy from the Boston Harbor and the Charles and Mystic rivers. And the city intends to join a FEMA program that officials say will reduce flood insurance premiums.
Officials said Monday they believe this plan will put Boston on track to reach its 2030 target of cutting emissions in half — an encouraging, and perhaps unexpected, finding given the dismantling of federal climate policy under the Trump administration. In 2022, NU researchers, including Fitzgerald, concluded that the end-of-decade emissions goal was out of reach, barring a dramatic pivot from the city and other leaders.
City climate officials on Monday, though, projected a more optimistic tone. Since 2005, Boston has already reduced its emissions by about 20 percent, the report said. Officials said if they successfully implement existing policies and programs, the city will slash emissions by about 48 percent by 2030 without adding new requirements.
Not everyone was convinced that Boston is on track for those targets.
"Very similar to the Commonwealth and the nation, I think that we are going to be challenged to hit our goal," said John Walkey, director of climate justice and waterfront initiatives at GreenRoots, an environmental justice group.
He said the initiatives could face funding challenges, especially if the economy takes a turn for the worse. And, he added, the city's bureaucracy sometimes needs to "get out of its own way."
Brian Swett, Boston's chief climate officer, acknowledged implementing existing initiatives successfully will be "a big lift."
The city has already taken most of the easy steps to decarbonize, Wu said.
"The first steps are the easiest ones, and then every additional percentage towards the end gets harder and harder and harder to do," she said.
The plan also maps out a strategy for Boston to combat the accelerating impacts of climate change on residents, including worsening heat waves, heavy downpours, and coastal flooding. These impacts aren't felt equally across the city, officials noted, disproportionately burdening the most vulnerable communities.
By 2030, the city is targeting a 25 percent reduction in heat-related emergency room visits during heat waves. Wu said she will advocate for the state to set a "maximum indoor temperature" during heat emergencies, including preventing utilities from disconnecting customers during periods of extreme heat. To assess how best to combat flooding of basement units, the city has launched a pilot program in Dorchester.
Wu was elected in 2021 on a promise to deliver Boston a "Green New Deal," a proposal to decarbonize while boosting economic opportunity and combatting inequities. Her campaign plan, from before her first bid for mayor, set far more ambitious targets: zeroing out municipal emissions by 2024 and powering Boston fully on renewables by 2030.
When asked about those earlier ambitious targets, Swett said the city had sought to set goals that are "both ambitious but achievable."
"There are tweaks to goals over time based on things that may be outside of our control," he said.
Nonetheless, some climate activists praised the plan as ambitious and credited the mayor for her leadership. They said Boston needed an actionable plan to meet its goals, not additional future targets.
Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, a climate nonprofit, said Wu's plan creates opportunities for Boston to put "put points on the board," and keeps the door open for more ambitious targets in the future.
"She's not backing away from climate commitments," he said of the mayor.
Lindsey Butler, the executive director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, said at the news conference, "At a time when so many leaders have failed us on climate, we continue to be pushed forward."