Kristine Babick knows precisely how much work Washington, D.C. has to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s her job to know, as an analyst with D.C.’s soon-to-launch green bank.
“Seventy-five percent of our carbon emissions are from our built environment,” Babick says of D.C. “This is currently close to double what other cities and jurisdictions have as their [built environment’s share of] carbon emissions and sources of greenhouse gas.”
D.C.’s is the latest on a list of green bank initiatives that are working to harness public and private dollars to transform energy and transportation systems. The city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, has pledged to make the U.S. capital carbon neutral by 2050.
“The amount of money that would be required to achieve a lot of those [climate] goals would be beyond the public capacity,” Babick says, explaining why the District decided to launch a green investment bank. “There was a recognition that we needed to catalyze private sector investment in order to achieve a lot of these goals.”
NEXT CITY
BY ZOE SULLIVAN | APRIL 24, 2018