By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Given Somerville’s industrial past, we’re no strangers to cleanup operations. Almost every development in the city involves some type of brownfields recovery and we’ve been steadily reviving the water quality in the Mystic River for decades. I remember in my youth when litter was a lot more prevalent, not just in Somerville but everywhere, and your nose used to fill with soot from the local air pollution. Our city and American society in general has gotten a lot cleaner in my lifetime … except when it comes to greenhouse gases.

Maybe it’s because we can’t see carbon dioxide and methane, and because their impact is global, that we’ve been slow to identify and fix greenhouse gas pollution. Yet make no mistake, greenhouse gasses are every bit as much pollution as pouring filth into our waterways or filling up our air with smog. We need to reduce and ultimately eliminate our local carbon footprint. Somerville has set a Net Zero 2050 goal. That means we will be carbon neutral by mid-century. We can and will do it. We don’t have to wait for federal and state government to take action. This is an area where we can lead the charge at the local level.

I’m proud to say we’ve reached our first major milestone toward our Net Zero 2050 goal with our first municipal Green House Gas (GHG) Inventory. The inventory includes both private and public emissions and we collected the data for calendar year 2014. It’s a critical step because you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand. A GHG baseline gives us a way to target our cleanup efforts and measure our progress. Hopefully this kind of data will be standard for every city and town within the next decade, but Somerville is an early adopter on this and it gives us a head start on doing our part at a local level.

Our GHG emissions for 2014 were 609,565 metric tons. More than two-thirds of it comes from building needs like electricity, heating and cooling. It would take a forest 185 times Somerville’s size to absorb all our carbon emissions for one year. That translates to almost 600 square miles of forest needed to pull in the carbon just from our one small city. That’s almost twice the size of the area inside Greater Boston’s 128 belt. Obviously we don’t have that kind of space, so innovation and conservation will be our keys to success.

We broke the measurement up into community and local government inventories. On the community side, we pumped out 609,565 metric tons of GHG. To avoid those emissions, it would take 139,000 homes converting to solar systems, which is four times the number of homes in the city. Building energy accounted for most of those emissions (64%), with fossil fuels we use for home heating – natural gas and oil – leading the carbon load. Another 34% of our community emissions come from transportation, with 98% of those coming from road vehicles. It is a leading reason why it is critically important to reintroduce rail mass transit through the heart of our densely populated city. People are driving more and pumping more carbon into our atmosphere because they don’t have a more viable public transportation alternative. More GHG-friendly cars will help the issue, yet the Green Line extension will put a huge dent in those emissions.

The local government inventory is much lower at 23,260 tons. Emissions from the City government operations are 4% of our community’s emissions. A whopping 85% of that comes from our municipal buildings, followed by public lighting and on-road vehicles at 6% each. When we look into the municipal building emissions, 65% of those come from our schools, and most of that is from the oil and gas we burn for heat. Part of taking this inventory means tackling our GHG elephants when we identify them. Currently we are looking at major renovations to or a complete rebuild of Somerville High School. One of the driving factors in seeking a modern building, in addition to meeting educational needs, is increasing energy and fuel efficiency of one of the City’s largest buildings. We can—and we must—meet our community responsibility to educate our children and be responsible global citizens at the same time.

We are taking other actions to reduce our carbon load now. All of our street lights will be converted to energy efficient LED bulbs in 2016, reducing our GHG inventory by approximately 600 metric tons, and we will continue to add electric vehicles to our municipal fleet. Each small step we take in the right direction adds up to a larger gain. Residents can get a free home energy assessment through the city – http://www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/residential-programs.html – and we plan to launch a Solarize Somerville initiative in 2016. Using public transportation as much as possible or walking and biking for more of your errands also can play a role in getting us to our Net Zero 2050 goal. It’s especially helpful if you’ve got kids, who can learn you don’t need to drive everywhere to get things done. Those are good habits that can last a lifetime.

The main thing is we now know the size of the GHG problem we need to eliminate by 2050. I’ll be an old man in 34 years and younger generations will be the ones to carry us across that goal line, but we are going to get there. A world full of cities and towns needs to join us. The key is to hack away constantly at our emissions and embrace new technological solutions as they become available. I have no doubt Somerville will lead the way on this issue, showing other communities what data and information mixed with commitment and hard work can achieve.