Boston Mayor Wu Stops Pursuit of Ban on Fossil Fuels in New Construction
Despite the setback, Wu will continue her anti-fossil fuel agenda.
Earlier this year, my colleague Mike LaChance reported that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was advancing a plan to reduce the use of fossil fuels in new buildings in the city.
In the summer, that plan came to fruition for new municipal buildings.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Monday signed an executive order banning the use of fossil fuels in new construction and major renovations of city buildings.
“This is a major undertaking,” Wu said during a ceremony at City Hall. “It’s many, many school buildings, and public housing units, and boilers, and appliances, and that is part of why it’s taken us until this point in our administration to be sure that we could deliver.”
The executive order eliminates the use of common energy sources such as natural gas and heating oil in new municipal buildings. It also bars their use in renovations that affect 75% or more of a building’s square footage.
Wu was also looking to be included in a pilot program that banned fossil fuel use from any new construction. That plan has gone up in smoke.
The city of Boston will no longer be pursuing inclusion in a program that would allow it to ban fossil fuels from new construction.
The program was open to 10 Massachusetts municipalities, and nine of those spots have already been taken. Mayor Michelle Wu told The Boston Globe last week that she had received “clear indications that Boston would not be chosen for the one available spot,” and that it “breaks [her] heart.”
Boston was unlikely to be accepted because it is “electrically similar” to a few other communities that have already been selected, such as Cambridge, Brookline, and Arlington, a spokesperson for the state Department of Energy Resources told the Globe. This means that their infrastructures are of a similar age and face similar demands. The pilot program was designed to collect data from a diverse group of municipalities.
It will be interesting to see how many communities still embrace these plans between the upcoming frosty El Niño winter and escalating energy prices.
Despite the setback, Wu will persist in her anti-fossil-fuel agenda.
Wu reiterated that she still very much intends to transition the city away from fossil fuels.
“Truly, the decision was not about whether we want to move forward and be a fossil fuel-free city or not,” she said. “We are doing it, one way or the other.”
Wu’s current term will end in 2026. We will see how much Bostonians appreciate light, warmth, and reliable energy at a reasonable price.
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Comments
Biden green new deal is trillion dollar fraud.
Won’t lower temps by 1 degree.
And Chairman Wu is a Communist.
The left says as long as you preach the doctrine you can fail miserably upward.
Maybe she should try Wu-sta Mass.
Now that is funny!
They will not stop until we are all living in
15-minute citiesconcentration camps, freezing in tepees, and eating bugs.Has anyone looked in Wu’s background and questioned why she continues to promote a Green Agenda that seems to benefit the CCP?
I guess she’s opposed to plastics, computers and medications. Idiot.
Without fossil fuels, the Big Dig would be a dirtbike park.
She went to Harvard, so you must understand that she’s way smarter than all of us. Just ask her!
Aside from the fact that this is completely batsh*t insane, I don’t see how a friggin mayor could possibly have the power to do anything like this.
The problem is that the people who do insane stuff like this using (and abusing) governmental powers are never held to account. Not even one little tiny bit. What they are doing is a crime of the worst sort and they get away with it. All they ever have to fear is that some court will slap their orders down. But they deserve to be removed from society and punished for how they tried to pervert society and ruin people’s lives, along with intentionally wasting billions and billions and billions of dollars (trillions, for those in the larger states and at the federal level).
Why wouldn’t a mayor have the power to give crazy orders about how city buildings are to be constructed or renovated?
The people there voted for it, why should I care if they freeze to death?
Just so we are all clear, Florida is going crazy for alternative fuels. All I see are ads for FPL (Florida Power & Light) about how proud they are to be eliminating fossil (the ads say “foreign” like we don’t have freaking oil here) for whatever. Not happy. But so far, my lights are on, and I can’t complain. Bring me one rolling blackout or brownout, and I am done.
Seriously, I am fine with cleaner energy or whatever, but it has to work, it has to be cheap, and it has to be reliable. If it misses on any one, it’s trash. There is no “two out of three ain’t bad.” When I flip a switch, I want light at a price I can afford. I don’t get that, and I am done with the green crap for all time. If my power goes out on some kind of third world rolling blackout schedule, we have a serious problem.
This is what Team Biden and Team Green New Deal don’t get. I don’t care what makes my lights come on, I really don’t. I don’t care if it’s from fossil fuels, nukes, wind, whatever. What matters to me is that I flip a switch, and I get light . . . at an affordable price. I am not willing to suffer for the planet, period. Make it work, or shut the crap down.
Bill Gates finally got it. Why can’t Team Biden?
The mayor’s staff seem to all have face coverings. Are they Hamas?
I don’t disagree, unfortunately I think the best way to teach the left about how terrible green power actually is from a reliability standpoint is to let them suffer the consequences for it. For some people pain is a lesson, for dumbasses like Democrats it’s a lifetime.
I noticed that, but then noticed it was a campaign photo, so: old.
How much cost to yank out all the fuel oil heating systems? Don’t forget to add the environmental cleanup cost from prior spills way back when. How much additional electric generation capacity to replace all the systems with electric heating systems? How much for additional transmission lines? Don’t forget use of eminent domain to build out; hint those lines won’t be running through the neighborhoods of the wealthy and politically connected. What exactly is gonna be used to generate the additional electricity if not fossil fuels? Solar? In a Boston winter?
Don’t forget that we actually just had two massive offshore windmill projects basically get abandoned off the Eastern seaboard. Somewhere in the Massachusetts area if I remember correctly.
Start with her government car and remove the AC from it. Take out the AC and heating units in the mayor’s office building. Then give her a bicycle to ride to events. I wonder if she realizes that a lot of her clothing and shoes have petroleum in them. In a sane world, people with this kind of mental issue would not be elected to anything and would be institutionalized.
Better yet as an object lesson let the project be done without fossil fuels. All the production, manufacturing transport, installation and maintenance must be done without fossil fuels. See how far that gets.
On the other hand what really does need to happen is a real world demonstration project for this lunacy. Let some community of 50K ish choose to host the net zero /green project for a three year run. However, no cheating and no backsliding. If their power goes out in January then they gotta suck it up until their wind turbines unfreeze or the sun shines enough to produce electricity to run the heat.
She’s already ripping up Boston streets to install curbed bike lanes, don’t give her any more ideas! Can’t wait for the snowplows to destroy them this winter.
If you’re anti-fossil fuel, you’re pro-poverty and pro-starvation, and you will help lower the cost of fuel (by a reduction in demand) for countries like China and India, who will gladly burn the fossil fuels you don’t consume. How does this advance the fight against “climate change”?