A city wide commitment to curb climate change

New York City’s Roadmap To 80×50

New York, NY, USA

Following the Paris Agreement, a number of cities across the globe have made steps to follow the principles it lays out. Climate change is a major risk on an international scale, and the need to reduce global warming is becoming more and more pressing. The 80×50 initiative reflects the need to create a blueprint for reducing emissions caused by energy supply, buildings, transportation and solid waste in cities.

Gaining its name from the drive to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050, Buro Happold worked alongside the Mayor’s Office for Sustainability to draw up steps forward for New York City’s 80×50 plan.

New York was the first major city in the USA to undertake a plan of this scale

Plan will see an 80% reduction in emissions

Initiative looked to reduce emissions across four key focus areas – buildings, energy, transportation and waste

Challenge

Buro Happold was commissioned to lead a multi-disciplinary team to provide an understanding of New York’s current emission sources, drivers and trends. A key challenge for us was to evaluate high-level strategies to achieve an interim target of 40% GHG reduction by 2030 – an initiative known as 40×30 – in advance of the eventual 80×50 goal

Solution

Our team conducted ground-breaking, integrated GHG modeling across four sectors—buildings, energy, transportation, and waste—for a number of future scenarios. This included utilizing both industry-accepted models and developing bespoke ones to test the impact that existing and potential policies and technologies could have on NYC’s built environment. We devised a New York City-specific buildings energy model and a community energy map to identify the most promising solutions and likely impacts on its varied building stock and neighborhoods. We also led a stakeholder engagement process that included over 100 stakeholder groups who provided input throughout the project.

Value

The resulting New York City Roadmap to 80×50 plan articulates a low carbon vision for the City, a set of strategies that frame the City’s approach to reducing GHG emissions, and near-term actions to achieving 40×30. The actions also set the foundation for deeper future emissions reductions by facilitating the adoption of new and emerging technologies and transforming institutions, regulatory frameworks, and markets.