A 3-square-mile portion of Pittsburgh avoided 507,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in 2023 — equivalent to what 121,000 cars, or 66,000 homes or one-and-a-half natural gas-fired power plants produce in one year.
For Chris Cieslak, chief operating officer and vice president of programs for the Green Building Alliance, that amount of carbon is more easily understood monetarily: Pittsburgh’s 2030 District saved $75 million in utility costs.
Pittsburgh’s 2030 District is one of two dozen across the country with the shared goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% to 65% by 2030 and having net-zero emissions by 2040. Pittsburgh’s district started Downtown in 2012 before stretching into Oakland, Lawrenceville and the North Side.
Nonprofit environmental advocacy organization the Green Building Alliance manages the project locally.
“People don’t build sustainable buildings for the purpose of building sustainable buildings,” Cieslak says. “They build buildings to serve their mission, and our job is to help figure out what is preventing their building from serving their purpose in the most cost-effective, healthy, energy efficient, resilient way.”
Each year, the 2030 District is compared to a 2003 national baseline set by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. The district reached a 38.3% reduction in 2021 and 44.8% in 2022.
In 2023, it reached 48% — barely shy of the 50% minimum six years ahead of schedule.
Although the total percentages show a net positive, 2023’s improvement was mostly spurred by renewable energy purchases rather than infrastructure improvements. In 2021, energy use by buildings in the district dropped to 20% below the national baseline. It reached 37% in 2022 but remained the same in 2023.
Cieslak expects affordable renewable energy purchases to continue driving up the district’s reduction percentage but worries that long-term efficiency improvements will get left by the wayside.
“That’s definitely a theme of our presentation — that energy efficiency isn’t very difficult,” Cieslak says. “The technologies and solutions to be more energy efficient are well established, they’re low risk. They’re not necessarily the least expensive depending on what you do … but they’re very fundamental, and really, any building operator should be able to undertake an energy efficiency project.”
The financial burden for efficiency projects, such as switching to LED lights with vacancy sensors, sealing air leaks, insulating walls and sealing windows, is lower than in the past because of the Inflation Reduction Act. The 10-year plan ending in 2032 provides tax credits for energy efficiency investments.
“Once you make the investment into something that lowers your carbon emissions, that investment sticks with you for the life of the improvement,” Cieslak says. “If you switch from a natural gas boiler to an air source heat pump that’s electrified, you have now reduced your carbon emissions … for 20 to 30 years. And the reality is, in 20 to 30 years, there will be even better technology.”