Community: City of Grand Rapids
Population: Over 12,001
The Grand Rapids Policies and Programs for Equitable, Healthy, and Zero Carbon Buildings Initiative (E.H.Zero) is a partnership between the City of Grand Rapids, U.S. Green Building Council West MI, and Urban Core Collective.
Buildings have significant impacts on our climate and our health. Transforming the way buildings and homes are designed, built, and operated is one of the most important ways a city can support affordable housing, ensure clean healthy air in our communities, and increase our resilience to the negative impacts of a changing climate.
E.H.Zero will co-create with community policies and programs to equitably decarbonize Grand Rapids’ residential and commercial buildings and present them to Commission for consideration and hopeful adoption.
This program is a local continuation of the work these partners participated in during the national Zero Cities Project, a three-year grant funded project to develop an equitable policy roadmap toward a zero-net carbon building sector.
Replicability:
The E.H.Zero approach could be replicated in other communities, although outcomes and paths forward would depend on each community's specific findings. Our team consists of three organizations who each bring relevant strengths and networks of stakeholders interested in commercial and residential buildings, equity, and climate change solutions. A baseline building assessment was done to better understand Grand Rapids built environment and which buildings were most energy intensive to prioritize. To better understand equity in our local built environment, a national equity assessment tool was adapted with Grand Rapids data for metrics such as energy burden, quality of housing, wealth gaps, displacement, and urban tree canopy. Building trust and community partnerships have been prioritized in this process. We've begun educating the community on our findings and plan to do a year of community engagement to co-create policies and programs before presenting to City Commission next fall for hopeful adoption then implementation.
Creativity and Originality:
Our program stands out for our collection of local data, our education and engagement campaign, and our equity-focused process. The City of Grand Rapids conducted a baseline building assessment to prioritize which buildings are our community’s largest source of emissions. Based on findings, we will be focusing on commercial buildings over 10,000 sq. ft. and our single-family residential sector. A national equity assessment tool was adapted with Grand Rapids' data to better understand disparities in our built environment. The Urban Core Collective also surveyed 125 residents on their use of local energy efficiency and home repair programs to better understand awareness of and barriers to accessing existing programs. Grand Rapids has been nationally recognized for prioritizing equity in building decarbonization policy planning, taking time to build trust and community partnerships. Moving forward, we plan to provide engagement events in both the commercial and residential sector around building decarbonization to co-create policies with community.
Community Impact:
Since 2020, the E.H.Zero Team has educated about 3,000 people in events and received over 4,000 webinar views on outcomes from the Zero Cities Project and what options there are for building decarbonization. The Grand Rapids Equity Assessment completed during the Zero Cities Project highlighted the grim reality that the lowest income Kent County residents are paying up to one third of their incomes on energy bills. Those making 200% of the federal poverty level pay more than the national average on utilities. Just over half of Grand Rapids' building stock consists of single family residential homes, and over 60% of homes were built before 1960. Just over 1100 commercial buildings over 10,000 sq. ft. contribute 42% of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, although they only make up 1.8% of buildings. Our goal with E.H.Zero is to co-create with community policies and programs that would improve building energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to present them to our City Commission in the fall of 2023. Through this effort, we hope to not only reduce emissions as a mitigation strategy to address climate change but to also reduce the energy burden on low-income residents and improve public health with safe, healthy and climate-resilient buildings.
