Video

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Martin Nakov — https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-nakov-16536621b/

Toky Ranaivo — https://www.linkedin.com/in/toky-ranaivo/

Rawan Ismail

Summary Section

Problem Summary

Boston is on track for more floods, heatwaves, and rising seas while its buildings pump out 70 % of local greenhouse gases. The pain falls first on residents of East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan (mostly renters, low-income families, immigrants, and elders) who already face high energy bills and limited political clout. Unless everyday Bostonians understand the crisis and take part in the fixes, ambitious resilience projects and decarbonization rules risk stalling or repeating past injustices. City agencies, utilities, developers, community advocates, and investors all need a single, trusted rallying point that cuts carbon, tests resilience ideas, and proves they work for the people most at risk. Our proposal fills that gap.

Solution Summary “Net-Zero Boston Day”

Launch an annual “Net-Zero Boston Day” a city-wide 24-hour challenge that shows residents, businesses, and government how a low-carbon, climate-ready Boston can work in real life. For one day the city offers free transit, closes select streets to cars, stages pop-up heat-pump clinics, and runs “power-down” hours backed by real-time energy and emissions data. The event is technically straightforward: it uses existing MBTA infrastructure, utility demand-response programs, and mobile solar-battery rigs already approved for street fairs. Funding blends city climate funds, utility peak-load rebates, corporate ESG sponsorships, and small-donor crowdfunding, keeping net public cost under $1 million. Because participation is voluntary, festive, and tied to bill credits in frontline neighborhoods, social buy-in is high. Each year’s measured energy savings, survey data, and new retrofit sign-ups feed directly into city climate targets, making the event a practical, scalable step toward equitable emissions cuts and heightened climate resilience.

Practical Humility Clause

Our projections for energy savings, transit shifts, and community sign-ups draw on analog events and utility datasets—not Boston-specific pilots—so real-world impact could skew lower if weather, MBTA capacity, or resident interest diverge. Sponsorship and rebate figures assume utilities and major employers keep current ESG budgets; an economic downturn could shrink that pool. Permitting timelines for large-scale street closures and the supply of mobile battery rigs are also unverified. To manage these uncertainties, Phase 1 runs a three-neighborhood micro-pilot six months out, pairs it with rapid stakeholder workshops (city traffic, unions, utilities), and streams live metrics to adjust targets, outreach, and cost models before scaling city-wide.

Further Explanation Section

1 | Why “Net-Zero Boston Day” works

A one-day, city-wide climate “fire-drill” turns abstract targets into lived experience. Cape Town’s “Day Zero” showed that a countdown framed around collective action can shift behaviour at scale; water use fell 50 % in three months.sciencedirect.com Boston can copy that behavioral nudge to carbon: free transit, pop-up retrofit clinics, and a public “power-down” hour all use existing infrastructure, so technical risk is low. Because metrics stream live, the event gives agencies, utilities, and residents the proof-points they need to lock permanent policies (e.g., free-fare days, expedited heat-pump rebates).

2 | SMART goals for the pilot year (neighborhood rollout, June 2026)