Heritage Now! Implementing Heritage Informed Decarbonization Policies (Forum Webinar)

Okay, we're we're just about a minute after uh let's get started. So, hello everyone. Welcome uh to the National Trust Preservation Leadership Forum webinar series. Uh we do have a great US and international audience signed up for this one. So, um first of all, a special welcome to those participating from other time zones around the globe. Uh and do tell us where you're from. Uh use the chat to tell us where you're joining us from. I'm Jim Lindberg. I'm senior policy director at the National Trust. Preservation Leadership Forum, uh, if you don't know, is the professional membership program of the trust. Uh, our webinars are supported by members of Preservation Leadership Forum. So, we really thank those members who are with us today. Uh, today we have the final installment of our summer series uh, in partnership with the Heritage Now campaign. Uh you'll hear more about Heritage Now if you haven't joined us for previous webinars. Uh the National Trust is is pleased to be a partner in this campaign. It seeks to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment specifically through heritage strategies reuse retrofit and using traditional lowcarbon building practices. Let's jump to the next slide. So our topic today for our third webinar uh in the series is implementing heritageinformed decarbonization policies. Uh this will actually be a 90minute session. So if you've joined us before you know they've been packed with great information. 60 minutes is tight. So today we have a little bit more time. Uh and first we're going to hear about some successful efforts to integrate heritagebased decarbonization strategies into uh climate policy. uh and we'll have a little a little time afterwards as well to for questions from these three presenters uh for these three presenters. These are going to be great um sessions uh uh presentations and then we'll have a a chance to discuss uh strategies and tools for communicating the benefits and how to implement uh preserv uh heritage policies focusing on climate uh and the reuse of ret and retrofitting of older buildings. uh to wrap up. Uh first of all, a few logistics. Uh we'll take questions from the audience during the webinar. You can use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen to ask questions directly. Uh and you're welcome to submit those at any point during the webinar, but we'll be waiting until the Q&A section um uh to have conversations with our presenters. Uh and then of course you're encouraged to communicate with all of the participants using the chat. Uh the closed captioning is enabled for this webinar. You can uh enable it or disable it uh with controls at the bottom of your Zoom screen or through your audio settings. And then everyone asked, but yes, we will be recording and sharing uh the recording of today's webinar using the email you use to register. And then all of our forum webinars, including this one, are available on our National Trust YouTube channel. And then finally, uh, as a reminder, everyone is asked to be respectful in the chat and follow our code of contact, uh, conduct. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth Row with the Build Buildings Lab, who's going to provide an overview and, uh, get us started. Elizabeth. >> Thank you, Jim. Um, as Jim said, my name is Elizabeth Row, and I work as the policy lead at Built Buildings Lab. Um, I'm going to start the webinar off today with just a little introduction uh to the decarbonizing the built environment through heritage or DBTH project and the supporting heritage now campaign uh before we move into our case presentations and panel discussion. We can go to the next slide. So, as Jim said, this is our third and final webinar in this series with the National Trust. Um and today our focus is on implementing heritage informed decarboni decarbonization policies focusing on practical strategies for policy implementation and advocacy. We can go to the next slide. So the decarbonizing the built environment through heritage project is really grounded in um the central idea of heritage informed decarbonization which we have defined as the application of wisdom practices and places of the past to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment in the present and in the future. And what heritage informed decarbonization enables broadly is both the minimiz the minimizing greenhouse gas emissions while also um safeguarding and generating cultural value. The shared practices and ideas that connect people to each other and to our sense of place. And so with that, DBTH seeks to integrate transformative cultural heritage-based solutions into climate policy at all scales of governance through preparing cultural advocates, elevating heritage-based knowledge into climate policy and empowering communities to lead this advocacy within their own cultural context. We can go to the next slide. So as part of this project we wanted to understand um what heritage informed decarbonization looked like um at all scales of governance and all across the world. And in order to do that, we evaluated 100 plus policies, over 150 examples, and connected with over 50 stakeholders already working in this cross- sectoral space between culture, her cultural heritage, climate, and the built environment. And from that work, we kind of organized our findings around five principles of heritage informed decarbonization. And these principles kind of serve as the organizational structure um for this project and its supporting toolkit. We can go to the next slide. So a key component of DBTH is to devel was to develop um a toolkit that supports policy makers, practitioners, advocates, community leaders um in advancing heritage informed decarbonization in their work and in their communities and to ensure that they feel supported working at the intersection of climate, heritage, and the built environment by providing global examples. Um relevant that are relevant with it at the community level. So, this toolkit is now available for download. Um, if you haven't had a chance to look at it already, um, we can go to the next slide. It's organized into three parts. Um the first is introducing this concept of heritageinformed decarbonization and establishing a common set of language policy approaches policy participants and the co- benefits that these programs initiatives and policies enable. again to en ensure that users of the toolkit um can kind of come to a shared understanding of what is unlocked through this unique perspective to climate policy. The second section dives into these five principles that I shared. Um providing you know the cultural context and definition of each principle as well as the applicable policy mechanisms and strategic policy levers to advance this work as well as many case studies into uh successful policies by principle. And the final section is our 14 cases of heritage informed decarbonization. Um, and if you had joined us for the previous webinar, we looked at examples uh from around the world from these case studies which demonstrate how um these five principles interact with each other. they don't operate in isolation and also really dive into the co- benefits associated with these programs, cultural practices, initiatives and policies. Uh and next we'll be hearing from three of our case study partners focused specifically on policy. Can go to the next slide. So um as part of this work, we wanted to advance heritage informed decarbonization into climate policy, right? As a a means of integrating the needs of people and communities um into the solutions that minimize greenhouse gas emissions. And to do that, we kind of identified what were the policies across the climate, built environment and heritage sectors that were most aligned to enable this work. And so we've organized them in kind of five categories. So the first are regulatory tools or regulations. These are uh policies that set legally binding standards to drive innovation and accelerate a clean energy transition. economic tools which provide incentives for the private sector to align with these public goals. Government and public investment tools which um are financial investments into government's own operations and other pilot and research projects. Information tools which disseminate information to promote certain technologies or behaviors. And finally, property rights tools which protect environmental and cultural resources for an intended purpose over an intended period of time. And so together we feel that these kind of five categories of policies are the most aligned to enable heritage informed decarbonization at local, national, and international levels of governance. Right? So taking all of these kind of there's this broad range of um policies that um lend itself to heritage informed decarbonization. And so what we want to do now is kind of identify what are the key policy levers across these five principles. And throughout the toolkit, we've identified which of these policy tools are best situated um to advance each of these principles, but then thinking about what are the kind of immediate steps that can be taken to ensure um alignment across the principles. And so the goal here is to demonstrate the breadth of opportunities that exist to bring heritage and climate policy into alignment. again to ensure that we're not just meeting the needs of climate and environmental targets but also for the people who live in these places. So I'm going to run through these um pretty quickly but the first principle is to learn from the past learning from the greatest living laboratory for clim climate adaptation the existing built environment. This includes policy levers such as establishing heritage structures as living labs, investing in res research and development funding into these structures, developing guidelines for design for the design, occupation and maintenance of these um existing structures to ensure that we're funding the necessary technical assistant pro assistance programs in creating opportunities to test and integrate in technological innovation. into the buildings of the past. Can go to the next slide. So second is to pri prioritize the continued uh reuse and care of buildings such as through implementing reuse for zoning and planning regulating whole life carbon offering flexible pathways for energy and emissions compliance for these existing inherited structures. ensuring that there's alignment between our decarbonization and heritage financial incentives and penalizing prolonged vacancy of buildings. Can go to the next slide. The third is to think about and engage with place implementing placebased solutions to build maintain and live sustainably. This could include um including local and traditional building materials such as earth, timber, and straw into building codes. Ensuring building standards reflect occupant comfort as opposed to p prescribed metrics. funding education for building officials to be able to kind of use and maximize the maximize these spaces and support workforce um development in traditional trades and crafts. Can go to the next slide. The fourth principle is around building waste and to reframe building waste as a resource and an asset through the promotion of deconstruction over demolition. Allowing salvaged and reused materials to count towards low embodied carbon standards, enabling the use of salvaged material in codes and standards and leveraging private and public partnerships to promote this circular approach to waist streams. And lastly, to ensure that policy is inclusive and by including heritage and indigenous voices in climate policym and ensuring that their voices are represented at the beginning of climate policy and are heard throughout the process. This also in could include requiring climate plans to assess the impact to cultural heritage and traditions to tie funding to the inclusion of indigenous and heritage knowledge holders to ensure that they are supported through the process to leverage those property rights tools such as easements and land trusts as mechanisms for developing cl for delivering climate outcomes. And finally, updating climate plans to recognize climate heritage as a climate strategy. To recognize heritage as a climate strategy and not a constraint. So also in the toolkit, we have this lovely matrix again to kind of show the breadth and depth of what heritage informed decarbonization looks like in application, right? demonstrating how each of these five categories of policies can be leveraged across these five principles as well as identifying some kind of case study and real world application of these policies in practice by principle. So to kind of wrap us up here, there is no single entry point into heritage informed decarbonization policy. There's no single pathway to advance this pol these policies forward, but instead there are opportunities for climate policy makers and other policy makers to engage in this work no matter where they are in the pol policym process and to it within their own kind of cultural context. So, as a climate advocate myself, coming from a climate background, we're often really good at demonstrating what the problem of climate changes, the scale and breadth, but we and often shift to thinking about what are the new technologies and transformations needed for a clean energy transformation to transform our transportation systems and our infrastructure. But in these broad focuses on new innovations and technologies, we also hear communities feel left out of these policies or don't see themselves situated in the policy solutions that we're proposing. Right? We often will say the things that an individual could do are related to changing a light bulb or changing the temperature on your thermostat. And these can feel out of alignment with the scope and breadth of the climate crisis. And so what heritage informed decarbonization does is it provides a pathway to integrate the rapid decarbonization that's needed to stabilize global temperatures while empowering and recognizing the needs and opportunities of individual people, their communities um and the networks that those communities support. All right. So um we are going to transition. We're first going to go through three case study presentations that are featured in the toolkit. Um, we're going to hear from Hana Morell at Historic England, Gen Ken Bernstein with the city of Los Angeles and in California, and Stephanie Phillips um with the city of San Antonio in Texas. We'll pause then after their three presentations for any Q&A uh from the audience and then we'll have a panel discussion. I think we can transition to the next slide um to really think about um strategies for advocacy and implementation again hearing from Andrew Pototts, Jim Lindberg and Salem Casper. So, I'm now gonna transition um to Hannah Morel for her case presentation. >> Thanks so much, Elizabeth. All right, so uh good morning, afternoon, everyone, and thanks for having me. Um I'm Hannah Morel, head of climate change at Historic England, which is the uh UK government's statutory adviser for the historic environment. I'm going to use the 10 uh next 10 minutes to talk about um the historic um England case uh that features in the heritage now toolkit but particularly about the how behind it. So in other words, how do we actually get heritage into u climate policy in our experience um this happened through sustained interventions beyond making the case that uh we think heritage is important. So for us it required a combination uh of those interventions, evidence, practical guidance, real world examples and uh sustained engagement across government through a systems thinking approach uh hooking on to government priorities and ambitions. And that combination is really what I want to unpack today. Next slide please. Uh just uh very briefly on who we are. Historic England is government statutory adviser for the historic environment in England. We're an armslength body. So we sit apart from central uh government day-to-day activities, but we're funded by it and accountable to it. And that means that we're not um a lobby group and we're not a consultancy. We hold um legal uh advisory mandate and provide the evidence base needed for uh government um departments across their various remitts. So they come to us, we go to them and um although our core remmit is heritage, we work across a much uh wider range of government agendas. So whether that's um housing, planning, energy, climate adaptation and so on. And that position is um important in this case because this isn't about a kind of nichifying heritage as something different that sits outside of government priorities, but it's rather like quite the opposite. Um our role is to help make sure that the the climate transition works for uh the buildings that we actually have and that um policy is informed uh by understand by an understanding of how traditionally constructed buildings behave and that distinction between advocating against change and helping government deliver appropriate change is fundamental to our approach. Uh next slide please. uh and the scale of that challenge is obviously quite significant. So the UK has um a statutory target of net zero by 2050 and buildings are a major part of that emissions picture and as the toolkit notes buildings accounted um for around 18% of uh UK emissions in 2024. Uh but the really important point for us is that in England just over um a fifth of domestic buildings and around a third of non-domemestic buildings were constructed before 1919. So that older stock is a bigger share of of England than uh people often assume. Next slide please. And um and then of course these buildings are sometimes described as uh hard to treat, but that language can lead us down um a wrong path because uh it can make the historic building stock sounds like an obstacle to climate action. So we're trying to turn that around. And if we're, you know, serious about decarbonization, these buildings have to be part of uh the solution. um but but also that this is also about uh adaptation and resilience on top of mitigation. So we're focusing on how buildings uh can be fit for today um and for the function of of the place in which they reside as well as for the future. And we know that traditional buildings behave differently from much modern uh construction. And that means, you know, poorly designed interventions can sometimes create unintended consequences while well-designed interventions can do things like reduce energy use, improve comfort, and uh protect uh the building um to ensure that they are fit for purpose. So, our job is to move the conversation beyond that binary choice between heritage or climate action. We really need both and and need to send that message across. And next slide please. Um and of course we know that retrofit is only part of this. Um the other lever uh alongside retrofit is adaptive reuse. Bringing vacant um historic buildings back to use rather than demolishing or building new. Um, Historic England research suggests that somewhere between uh 560 to 670,000 additional homes could potentially be created in England through the repair and reuse of vacant uh pre-1919 buildings. So adaptive reuse starts um connecting climate policy to other government priorities, housing, supply, regeneration, local economic activity and uh and circular economy and circularity principles. So we're framing our work as you know cost benefit uh co- benefits and resilience and and hooking on to other key systems across the country. Um because if we're if we're only talking about heritage significance, uh we may only be talking to ourselves. Uh next slide, please. Um so first, um it's it's about building an evidence base and turning it into usable guidance. A good example is Historic England's advice, uh note 18 on adopting uh historic buildings for energy and carbon efficiency. It covers um the different retrofit interventions, what to think about uh specifically for pre919 buildings and how to navigate planning and listed building consent in England. And uh more recently, we've developed detailed resources for organizations producing decarbonization plans for historic buildings. Um and we work with Arts Council England on that. And this is deliberately practical and aimed at people doing the work whether it's architects, plannings, building owners. Um so it's not just policy makers. Um the point is to publish technical research. Uh but also to translate evidence into something that can be used by a wide range of stakeholders that uh might not have that kind of technical bandwidth and and help take them through the process. So evidence becomes guidance and guidance becomes a practical uh route to delivery. Next slide please. The the second part is showing rather than simply telling. So we invest in um in developing case studies because policy makers and practitioners un understandably want to know you know does this actually work? What does good look like? And uh the example here is Kilman's Hospital in Newcastle. um an 18th century alms house that um has uh been prepared and reused to provide affordable housing. And what make um makes examples like this uh useful is that they they allow us to examine the actual process. Uh what was retained, what was changed, how energy performance was considered and and how heritage significance and decarbonization were, you know, weighed and balanced. Um and then we feed that learning back into guidance and policy conversations. Um and and it's very much the deliberate loop here. Research informs guidance. Practical projects test that guidance. Case studies capture the learning and then the evidence strengthens our uh policy advice. Um next slide please. uh the the third um element and probably the most relevant to today's discussion is just that direct engagement with government. So we don't have uh one single department we engage with both heritage and climate cuts across departmental responsibilities and so does um our work. Uh so for mitigation and um retrofit we engage uh with the department for energy security and net zero DESNES on the development of retrofit policy providing technical evidence and advice about traditionally constructed buildings. Um and a really tangible um recent example is uh the UK government's um warm homes plan. So we sought to make um make sure that traditional buildings were explicitly recognized rather than being treated as this sort of marginal exception. And the published plan now has a dedicated section on heritage and traditional buildings recognizing uh both the scale of this as part of the building stock and the need to appropriately um uh the need for appropriately adapted retrofit. Um and it might look like a relatively small piece of text in a large government document but it it matters. Um this sort of specialist evidence and sustained departmental engagement uh becoming visible in mainstream um uh government policy and making it much easier to build you know appropriate standards, guidance, funding and delivery around it is is really what we're looking for. Uh next slide. Thank you. Um and and the same model applies to climate adaptation. So uh we're working with department the um UK department for um environment, food and rural affairs, DEFRA, and with the climate change committee to make sure um adaptation policy accounts for heritage too. Um again, the objective is to to kind of push that heritage is inside uh the mainstream climate risk conversation rather than something that's added afterwards. And another recent example is um the work around um our statutory assessment. So the UK's fourth uh climate change risk assessment and the well uh adapted UK report. So independent assessment underpinning the UK statutory climate uh risk reporting. Heritage now sits as one of the 14 key systems in the adaptation framework as proposed by the climate change committee. um spanning, you know, heritage sites, landscapes, buildings, fixed assets, mo movable assets. And so with heritage explicitly considered within um that uh independent assessment of uh climate risk, uh we have the basis for a much more uh joined up adaptation thinking to demonstrate heritage um is part of the country's infrastructure, places uh and communities. Uh next slide, please. Um and the third department that we work closely with is the uh Ministry of Housing, Communities and uh local government, so MHCLG on the performance of uh traditionally constructed homes and their contribution to national housing and retrofit goals. Um here we've been advising on uh the performance of these homes and more importantly how uh national approaches to measuring building performance apply to them. A current example is the energy performance certificate reform. So EPC's uh the technical detail is important but the wider lesson is perhaps um more useful internationally that heritage expertise needs to enter the policym process early enough or upstream enough uh to shape the mechanism rather than arriving at the end to point out where a sort of generic mechanism doesn't work. Um and that requires relationships. So so basically in the past slides it's bas it's just to demonstrate the loop of evidence, guidance, guidance, demonstration and uh policy. Uh next slide please. Um so I'll finish with the three lessons from our experience. So the first is being proactive and pragmatic. um we don't just wait for a department to identify the heritage dimension of um policy and then invite us into the room. Often um they don't know that there is a heritage dimension and we have to identify the relevance ourselves, bring credible evidence and then offer workable uh solutions um make sure that they understand and know who we are and what we can offer. And the second is um to focus also on the opportunity the the co- benefits the benefits of it. And I think like climate action through, you know, existing buildings isn't only about carbon. It can actually support things like whether it's affordable housing, reduce energy bills in improve health and comfort, um strengthen climate resilience, uh support jobs and and skills and reduce demand for new um materials. So that wider framing uh gives us many more points of connection with uh government priorities. And then third uh collaboration is always key. So it's um it's the basic mantra that no organization no heritage agency can deliver built environment decarbonization on its own. And our approach um depends on relationships across energy, housing, planning, environmental policy alongside uh local government, industry, building owners, research communities, and so forth. And so the the transferable lesson really is that heritage expertise needs a root into mainstream climate governance. And that root needs evidence behind it, practical tools to support it and sustained relationships to make it uh influential and make it matter. Uh next slide, please. And so finally, I think these slides would be shared, but um I wanted to leave you with some of the practical resources behind all of um all of this thinking. And uh and then the next slide um has a uh signpost for you properly. Um you know if you take nothing away these two resources um I'd point you to first and it's the historic um England's technical advice web pages as well as the advice note 18 itself. Um yeah and that is all from me and I believe uh Ken Bernstein is next up who will do his introductions. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Uh it's a great honor to be with all of you today, be part of this uh national and global uh conversation. I will be um speaking about our city of Los Angeles uh adaptive reuse ordinance really utilizing urban planning and land use tools, zoning tools to create new incentives for adaptive reuse and thereby facilitating decarbonization. We feel this is a replicable policy that can be taken up by cities nationally and globally uh large and small. So we go to the next slide. The backdrop for all of this, of course, uh I don't need to really tell this audience or or um emphasize this for too long, but of course the growing climate threats that we're facing. And this has come home to Los Angeles in a very deep and meaningful way as a result of uh many recent events including the large uh wildfires that we had in January of 2025, the Palisades fire uh in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, the Eden fire in areas such as Aladena and Pasadena. Um the threats of course of uh extreme heat that we continue to be experiencing um intense uh storms and and rain events uh and we're facing an El Nino winter in Los Angeles as well as sea level rise. These threats are uh uh you know kind of enhancing the imperative to really think about this intersection of heritage and decarbonization. Next slide. This is also situated within some of our city of Los Angeles climate uh policies. Mayor Karen Bass, our current mayor of Los Angeles, has put forward a new climate action plan this year that has uh has kind of sharpened and focused on measurable objectives, trackable targets related to climate. And it includes a new focus on uh both new and existing buildings and embodied carbon with a goal of reducing the average carbon intensity of the materials used in building construction by 40% by the year 2035. And uh the adaptive reuse ordinance I'll be speaking about uh was really seen as contributing toward meeting these overall objectives as part of our climate action plan that builds upon some similar plans by our previous mayor Eric Garcetti. Next slide. So, in speaking about adaptive reuse and framing our adaptive reuse ordinance and kind of taking these policies citywide in Los Angeles, we really framed our public discussion of this around the need to address three intersecting crises. And this goes beyond of course the benefits of adaptive reuse for historic preservation since I'm speaking to a National Trust audience, but uh framing it uh as really being aligned with some of our central policy challenges in Los Angeles, California, and the US. One of those is housing, housing access, affordable housing. The evidence of our housing affordability crisis is all around us. We have the greatest number of unhoused individuals of any city uh in the US. we have the largest disconnect between housing prices and incomes of any city in the US. Um so really the need to increase housing supply and and we hope address housing affordability. Secondly, the post-pandemic commercial uh recovery crisis are, you know, we're working so differently than we did precoid. uh many of us are working um in a hybrid or virtual format uh much of the time and so office demand has really decreased and we're seeing that play out in terms of record high commercial office vacancy rates in Los Angeles when we were pursuing the ordinance it was around 26% some of our submarkets in Los Angeles uh about a third of office space is now currently vacant that's the highest ever recorded and then the third and really the focus of our discussion today of course is the climate crisis, the truism that the greenest building is the one that's already built, uh, and the opportunity to rehabilitate our existing buildings really being a proven way to reduce CO2 emissions and take advantage of the opportunity to bring up our u current and existing uh, building stock to uh, to current energy efficiency standards um, in the process. Next. So, our uh most recent citywide adaptive reuse ordinance that I'll be speaking about builds upon some experience that we've had in Los Angeles over more than a quarter century that began with our 1999 adaptive reuse ordinance that was initially focused on downtown LA. And we had uh a reality in the late 1990s in Los Angeles where we largely kind of abandoned our historic core of downtown LA. And there had been significant redevelopment and new construction on the other side of downtown that left dozens of buildings vacant above uh groundf flooror retail. And so the adaptive reuse ordinance facilitated conversion of these buildings. It set a cut off date of pre-1974 buildings and allowed conversions to housing to essentially bypass planning and zoning requirements that were largely created, of course, in our zoning code for new construction and more of a suburban uh style uh construction that really was a mismatch uh with the uh rehabilitation retrofit of existing buildings. And so it waved requirements for density, parking, floor area, lot lines, heights, unit size, um, and allowed project applicants to essentially bypass our city planning department and go directly to our building counter in most cases and pull a permit for adaptive reuse. Um, that downtown orance was then expanded to some additional targeted areas of the city largely within a few mile radius of downtown in 2003. Next. So, um the impacts of this initial adaptive reuse ordinance were quite dramatic in Los Angeles. And uh in the first decade or so of that ordinance, there were about 76 uh adaptive reuse conversion projects in downtown alone with more than 12,000 new housing units created as a result of the ordinance uh in downtown. Of course, it had a dramatic historic preservation impact, preserving remarkable historic buildings, designated historic landmarks and uh historic building stock that was really um jeopardized uh for many years and now revitalized as a result of the ordinance. It also created a new retail and entertainment base for downtown that helped spark the construction of a new arena, um, uh, new theaters, new art museum, and much more in downtown LA. And it really also established the market for new housing construction. Downtown LA had really been kind of a 9-to-F5 downtown, a commercial office center, a civic center, but not a major residential center. and it established a market for new construction that sparked several thousand new housing units in the heart of the city. Next. And uh leading into the uh citywide adaptive reuse ordinance, we were able to update our downtown adaptive reuse uh policies as part of a new downtown uh community plan and the creation of a new zoning code in Los Angeles that was in many ways a prelude to some of the policies we've pursued in our citywide adaptive reuse horn. So downtown had a little bit of a different flavor that was adopted in 2023 and established some principles I'll I'll speak more about in a moment with the citywide ordinance. Next slide. So turning then to our citywide adaptive reuse ordinance. And uh uh this has just taken effect. It took a couple of years to wend its way through our uh adoption process, but uh the new citywide ordinance took effect at the beginning of February of this year, and it applies everywhere but downtown for the reasons I just mentioned. Um, and it creates a rolling date uh and kind of eliminates that 1974 uh building date cutoff and allows instead a rolling date, which I'll speak more about in a moment. So, it opens up many more buildings for eligibility. And this citywide policy also was a way of um implementing our citywide housing plan, what's called in California the housing element of the general plan. And uh the housing element in Los Angeles uh we were given a target as part of a regional housing needs uh assessment in that that we have to pursue in California that we have to accommodate about 250,000 new housing units over an 8-year period that our housing element is in effect. And the housing element found that we could accommodate over 43,000 of that 250,000 through a citywide adaptive reuse. So, it's an important part of our overall housing uh housing policy. Next, the citywide adaptive uh reuse ordinance now uh opens up. It really unlocks any building above uh 15 years of age. Uh and since that's a rolling date, that's now 2011. And that date will continue to move forward as time marches on. Um buildings that are between five and 15 years old still will need a a public hearing. The reason for that is that those were approved in the very recent past, there may be conditions of approval or some community assumptions that need revisiting. But any building 15 years old or older, it will be a byite process essentially go directly to the building permit counter. And the previous incentives in our original 1999 adapted reuse ordinance have been maintained, but also significantly expanded to provide more flex flexibility in terms of uh changes within the existing building volume. And we're also uh unlocking the possibility of partial conversions, realizing that there may be some buildings that want to retain uh a partial office use uh some of our very large high-rise buildings, buildings that may have a very large footprint uh that that perhaps a mixeduse solution uh should be considered and the new adaptive reuse ordinance allows for that. Next. So, the new ordinance allows, as I mentioned, for optimization of the building interior, eliminating zoning code minimum unit size requirements. Um, it also allows for full intermediate floors, what we used to call partial mezzanines, uh, that those aren't going to be counted as floor area if they're within the building envelope entirely. and then also allowing for rooftop uh additions of up to one story that wouldn't be counted toward floor area or height limitations um with the understanding these would be used for shared amenities uh for all the residents uh of the housing development. Next, parking is a real key that was true for the 1999 ordinance and is still true with the citywide ordinance. And the original adaptive reuse ordinance essentially deregulated parking. It allowed any building that had parking to just only provide the parking that existed within the building already. Uh many uh projects did choose to provide some additional parking or enter into an agreement with a nearby property owner for some supplemental spaces, but that was completely up to the project applicant or developer. Now, uh parking areas can be reduced even further because we've seen um some new state housing uh laws and other laws that have reduced parking requirements. So, we said you don't even need to maintain the parking you have in the building if you uh now qualify for zero parking because the building is near transit or reduced uh parking requirements. Next, one of the policy choices that we faced was whether to uh consider additional affordable housing mandates because again we have a a dramatic housing crisis, affordable housing crisis in the city. We did an economic study though of our adaptive reuse ordinance and it was found that uh creating additional affordable housing requirements would lead to most projects not being able to pencil out economically except in a very tiny sliver uh of the city in in some a small set of submarkets of Los Angeles. And so we took an incentive-based approach to affordable housing, essentially allowing for additional development in exchange for the provision of additional affordable units. And that could be provided through what we're calling um unified development, which could be either on the same lot or across the street or alley from an an existing adapted reuse building, allowing unlimited density in those situations to enable affordable housing. or to go higher in terms of a rooftop addition allowing up to a two-story rooftop addition if there are affordable housing set aides. We did build in historic preservation review since speaking to a national trust audience again for historic buildings. We're taking a look at that in our office of historic resources next. And then just to conclude, um I do want to emphasize that these zoning code reforms are the necessary prerequisite for adaptive reuse uh as a decarbonization strategy, but they may not be sufficient unto themselves. Very important, but it's important to couple these zoning reforms with some other changes and collaborations and community partnerships. Those include working with our building code and fire life safety departments, our department of building and safety, our fire department on accompanying structural retrofit uh um code reforms and fire life safety considerations that can often be an impediment or challenge for uh some of our retrofits. So those coordinations are really key. And then also looking at financial incentives and other cities have been in fact ahead of LA in providing direct subsidies or other financial incentives specifically for adaptive reuse project projects. So there's a a lively conversation right now in Los Angeles about what those um uh financial incentives might look like to accompany our ordinance. Next. And the last uh slide here uh is really about um tracking decarbonization impacts. And so we will be tracking the impacts of our ordinance with respect to housing creation, commercial space that's being converted, but we realize it's also important to be tracking the decarbonization benefit since we're early in the implementation process. And so I want to credit uh our our conveners here from Bill Buildings Lab. The care tool, the carbon avoided retrofit estimator um is one of the methodologies that uh you know we may pursue and we're looking at uh partnering with others as well who can help us really take advantage of uh this um kind of urban laboratory of of adaptive reuse to make the case for the decarbonization benefits of adaptive reuse policies such as this. And so we welcome your ideas, feedback, and partnerships. And with that, I have just a final slide with my contact information. Again, thank you for including me, and I'm going to turn it over to uh Stephanie in San Antonio. >> Thanks, Ken. Next slide. Hi, everyone. My name is Stephanie Phillips. I'm joining you from San Antonio, Texas. I oversee a program in our city's office of historic preservation called the deconstruction and circular economy program and this particular program is highlighted in the toolkit uh under pillar 4 which is reframing building waste as a resource. So I'm really excited to give a highle overview of how we can connect our heritage work into the growing field of the circular economy. Next slide. So, one of the keystone elements of our program here in San Antonio is a regulatory ordinance. We have um a deconstruction ordinance that was adopted in 2022. San Antonio is the largest city in North America with a deconstruction ordinance. And our policy focuses specifically on older housing stock. So, very generally, if an old house in San Antonio goes through all of the existing permitting procedures to get approval for removal, um it has to be deconstructed by a certified deconstruction contractor instead of demolished. And um we have some build date triggers that determine which uh housing stock this ordinance applies to. Um, but this is the genesis of our program and if you want more technical information on that, definitely visit our website. Next slide. Part of the reason why this is so critical is deconstruction is starting to gain policy traction across not only the United States but the world. Um, there's a growing urgency around the reality that construction demolition waste in most places around the world is around 40% of landfill waste. Um, as we all know, building materials are big, they're clunky, the volume is massive. So, when we're talking about the need to mitigate waste overall in the world, this is a really critical strategy um for intervention and the policy level. Um, but across the country, kind of the motivators for why cities are looking at deconstruction as a policy strategy vary. Of course, some cities are motivated by landfill reduction. maybe their landfills are reaching capacity in the next 10 to 20 years. Um, others are motivated by sustainability, the carbon argument, the air quality argument. Um, others are motivated by a workforce development. Deconstruction is a really great workforce pathway. Um, and others are motivated like here in San Antonio. Um, our policy is the first to my knowledge that is led by a historic preservation office and actually administered by a preservation office. And I'll talk a little bit about what that looks like in practice and why that's beneficial. Um, but just know that San Antonio is amongst a lot of illustrious cities around the country and the world that are really looking at this as a policy strategy. Next slide. And some of you may be wondering, you know, how did this conversation start in San Antonio? Um, where were the political interests uh pulled from? And the images on the screen kind of illustrate why this uh started to take hold. Our city council directed us to explore a potential deconstruction policy way back in 2018. And some of you may reflect back on 2018, at least here in the United States. That was around a time of a considerable development boom. um which for us in San Antonio, we were seeing an increase in demolition permits generally, especially in older legacy neighborhoods that were not protected by uh historic district status. So, um we actually there was a nexus of city council being interested in this, but also a lot of activism from our older legacy um communities that were totally eligible historic districts. their neighborhoods are no less valuable just because they didn't have a historic district designation. Um but the erosion specifically of naturally occurring affordable housing stock was really really a big trigger for the city to start looking at this. Um so all innovative policy I think is born from a very clear frustration both from the city level and the community level. So that is what um caused us to start looking at this next slide. And I'm really taken by the recurring theme from these case studies that I really want to emphasize is the need for our field and our profession to understand broader government priorities and link heritage goals into those priorities or demonstrate how heritage can help advance those priorities in practice and also diversifying how we talk about our work generally. So this slide is actually almost verbatim one of the slides that we showed city council in 2022 when the ordinance was up for adoption. And you can see that we kind of honed in over the several years that we developed this ordinance on why San Antonio needed this ordinance specifically. Um we wanted to understand the implic implications of this in San Antonio proper, not just the broad benefits. Um so you'll see that um we talked a about how um we were landfilling actual money, valuable materials um through the linear economy through demolition that could have been recouped for redistribution in our community. Um we talked a lot about how um I mentioned in the last slide that the most commonly demolished building type in San Antonio at the time was standalone single family housing that was disproportionately providing affordable housing. So, it was really critical for us to link deconstruction policy into the city's prevailing affordable housing strategy uh to move that needle forward. We also talked a lot about the health and safety and public health implications of demolition here in San Antonio. Y'all may know that it is so so so hot here during the summer. Um and when um demolition is occurring in dense legacy residential neighborhoods, even if you're taking all of the, you know, protocols for mitigating demolition dust, it still is a public health hazard that stacks on other health issues like asthma and um you know, being located around pollution corridors, things like that. So it was really important for us as an office to verse ourselves in other um communication strategies, other community and city plans around these kind of things like public health. And then something that I think is still very consistent and relevant today is um access to building materials generally. um back in 2022 when uh this policy was adopted, we were on the tail end of kind of the supply chains issues that COVID started and now we're in another supply chain um issue situation here in the United States. So, when we're talking about sending usable materials to the landfill, I like to reframe that as saying we are removing the city, the community's ability to access those materials and prioritizing landfilling them instead. Um, so it's it was important for us to mitigate that through a policy like this. And another important piece to mention on how this is communicated is yes, we're always talking about buildings and their building materials, but at the core of these four drivers is the impact on people, on the lived human experience, on human health, on human access to materials, housing affordability. These are all directly human scale things that we wanted to center. Next slide. So, just a very quick snapshot on the impact of an ordinance now that we are in our fourth year of this being in um effect. Um we've had more than 180 buildings deconstructed that would have otherwise been demolished through our policy. And something that I think is important to um highlight for this audience is that um in practice our deconstruction ordinance in some ways puts a pause or reflection period on the decision to demolish a building in general. And what I mean by that is um we've had at least four documented buildings that have been removed from the demolition pipeline. It it has um you know gotten all the approvals for removal. it has hit our deconstruction ordinance and um our contractors have gone in and talked with the property owner and actually convinced them to rehab the building instead um instead of demolishing or removing the building. So that has been like an interesting byproduct of this ordinance. And then um of course we've recovered um a majority of uh waste or materials from these projects for both recycling but mostly for reuse. And then there's just a demonstrated power shift from demolition to deconstruction. Before we had this ordinance in place, our deconstruction contractors would tell us that it was very common practice for demolition contractors to call them and say, "Hey, you have 24 hours to salvage what you can from this building before we bring in heavy machinery." And that power shift has completely flipped um 180 where um the deconstruction contractor takes their time to do the work to fulfill the ordinance before any heavy machinery comes in if it's even nec necessary at all. Next slide. Um something that's also important to illustrate is that yes, we have an ordinance. Yes, an ordinance is a great tool to facilitate um material reuse, but it's not the only strategy that cities and governments can employ. Our program is um the deconstruction ordinance, but it also includes things like deconstruction contractor training, a facility where materials can be recovered and reused um which I'll talk about in a moment. And then a really big focus on community partnerships and engagement because we could not do this alone. Um we rely a lot on our community partners and our partners in other city departments to help um facilitate this uh policy and practice. Next slide. So I am such a big proponent of building workforce uh capacity before legislating policy. Um, in effect, you know, the deconstruction workforce benefits are awesome, but that means you have to have the workforce in place locally or regionally regionally to do this work. So, we, as you might remember, adopted this ordinance in 2022, but we started offering deconstruction contractor training back in 2019, so a full 3 years before our ordinance was adopted to build the workforce capacity. And we actually um continue to offer this training indefinitely annually to provide access to workforce development. Um and we have held 13 deconstruction contractor training cohorts since that time. And a really important stat is that we've increased the number of deconstruction contractors in San Antonio by over 500%. Since 2019. So, I know it's a common um issue in local communities to be like, I can't find people to do the work. Whether that's deconstruction, window repair, specialized building repair. And I think that if you work for a local government or a city entity, workforce development is such a highprofile topic right now, and there's still a lot of funding in the United States for workforce development. So, this is a really great thread to pull on if you're um thinking about that. Next slide. So, I just really real quickly want to showcase what this looks like behind the scenes of a deconstruction training. Um, this property is actually um was formerly owned by the National Park Service still probably is. This is an under um uh highlighted tool of what sections 106 benefits in the consulting process. Um, we were actually able to communicate with the National Park Service on these two buildings that they owned that they were going to demolish and say, "Hey, we know that we can't prevent demolition um, as a local government, but would you be interested in partnering on a deconstruction contractor training?" Um, so we converted these two buildings from the demolition pipeline into the deconstruction pipeline. Next slide. And this is just a snapshot of some of the amazing scenes that you can see from these trainings. Something that's really important from a heritage perspective is deconstruction is a slower, more intentional, more methodical process than demolition. Um, so it always results on people stopping by the site, asking questions, telling their stories. Um, and I would really really encourage you all to visit the website on the screen that really has a deep dive into um this training because it talks about the oral histories that were we were able to collect. Um, the material finds that we were able to uncover like the um old highway sign that we discovered was um used as roof sheathing during a roof repair um in the ' 50s or 60s. So the amount of stories and information that can be told to us through deconstruction is immeasurable and immense and so exciting from a heritage perspective. Um so definitely take a look on on that. Next slide. And then of course just the materials. These are I refer to these materials as a nonrenewable resource. These are old growth trees locked up inside our buildings. I refer to our cities a lot as urban forests. um these trees have done so much work holding our buildings up for sometimes um centuries at a time and I think it's really really important and responsible for us to prioritize um recovering those materials for reuse and other projects. Um so once again the site um the site the site that's linked um does a deep dive into what we recovered. Next slide. And this is yeah um one thing that's really important for us um was not only just answering the question of who's going to do all the work workforce training but also where is all the material go and I think I already saw a question in the chat about storage. Um so next slide the city of San Antonio itself decided to play a role in material recovery and redistribution. We have a small facility called the material innovation center that we um operate out of land that we lease uh for people to donate materials if they don't want to handle them themselves. It's an optional donation free for them to donate to us. And then we as the city play matchmaker for their next use. Next slide. And the materials go into three categories currently. um affordable housing projects as our priority, but then we also um link them to projects in trades education and broad category called community impact projects. Next slide. And these are just a small snippet of examples of where we've been able to redistribute these materials. Um affordable housing repair projects. We are about to undertake a brand new project that is basically deconstructing and rebuilding an affordable housing project. So we're happy to serve those needs and really demonstrate that when we talk about inkind repair, the most inkind material that you can reuse is recovered material from the same construction era. So that is what we're demonstrating in practice. Um we've also served things like urban farms and gardens, community infrastructure like playscapes and bus stops, trades education. That image on the screen in the bottom left is a wood window restoration trades training program. So those windows that you see them um learning is um on uh windows that have been recovered and then things like community resilience and higher education. Next slide. All right. So I just want to leave you with my forever call to action is that heritage practices are inherently circular. Um, I hope you all see yourselves in this case study because I firmly believe that heritage pro professionals are exceptionally well suited to lead in the deconstruction and circular economy space. Um, so I would definitely encourage you all um to reach out to me if you have more questions on how we were able to achieve this and how we talk about our work. Next slide. Um, and I look forward to connecting with you all. Thank you so much. >> Great. Thank you, Stephanie. Um, so for our time, if you have any questions for our panelists, we ask that you please put those in the Q&A function and they will be um answering those. But now I would like to transition to our panel discussion. So if I could have Andrew, Jim, and SA come on screen. Um, and just to introduce our panelists, I'm joined by Andrew Pototts, the director of policy and partnerships at Preserving Legacies. Jim Lindberg, the senior policy director at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Salem Mona Casper, the executive director of Latinos and Heritage Conservation. Um, so thank you all for joining us. Um, and excited to kind of dive into this conversation. So, if you all could just kind of quickly introduce us to your organization and your engagement with climate action, policy, and heritage. So, we'll start um with Andrew and then turn to Jim. Great. Thank you, Elizabeth. Uh, thank you, Elizabeth. Uh, can can I just start by saying how awesome it is to see over 100 people on this webinar? It it really is a inspiration to me to know how many people out there are working on culture-based climate action and a good reminder that none of us needs to do this work alone. So, it's fantastic. Uh, as Elizabeth said, my name is Andrew Pototts and I am representing preserving legacies and heritage adapts. Preserving Legacies is a program supported funded by the National Geographic Society that supports local communities to do locally climate adaptation work for their heritage places. And we're currently working with about 40 communities around the world on every continent, helping them with basic climate change and climate science literacy, risk assessment, and adaptation, planning, and implementation for their heritage places. A as proud as we are of those communities, we know it's just a drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed. every place really needs to be doing risk assessment and adaptation planning especially as the world seems poised to hit 1.5 degrees of global warming and enter into this dangerous overshoot period. Uh and so a few months ago on June 4th, we came together with 10 other international networks uh ECOM, World Monuments Fund, Heritage Management Organization, others, and we launched heritage adapts, which is a global c campaign to support thousands of heritage sites and cultural practices to implement adaptation action by 2030. Preserving legacies and heritage adapts are really sister projects to build buildings lab and heritage now within the climate heritage network framework. We're the lead on adaptation matters and dbth heritage now are the lead on mitigation matters. Uh and it's really been so valuable to be able to collaborate in this way within this framework. uh by the way enabled in part by some joint funding that we received from the Melon Foundation and and there's a lesson there about the importance of heritage funders historic preservation funders prioritizing the climate change thematic. So thanks to Melon and also to the 1772 Foundation and other funders that are leading the way. But anyway, we're in this common framework and this has allowed us to focus on the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation in the built environment. They're really two sides of one coin. And so this approach I think is essential and and I hope that our collective work across heritage adapts and heritage now signals the the value and the um importance of doing both adaptation and mitigation when you're looking at the built environment. But let me end there and just simply congratulate the built buildings lab and DPDH teams on the toolkit launch. Uh fantastic work. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you, Andrew. I'll turn over to Jim. >> Yeah, great. Uh, thanks, Elizabeth. And certainly echo Andrew's comments about how great it is to see the participation. We've had great participation throughout the series this summer. And, um, I know a lot of folks are also looking at the videos um, as well. Um, so again, I'm Jim Lindberg with the National Trust and I think most of you know we are a private nonprofit uh organization leading the preservation movement to save historic places in the US and we're also engaged internationally. Uh we're a proud member of of into the international national trust organization and as well as a a partner in the heritage now campaign. Um, I think I should start maybe by just acknowledging that right now when it comes to policy, our top priority of our government relations team, our law department, our other departments, and all of our partners around the country is really to address the the new threats to nationally significant historic resources that have emerged here in the last year or so, including the building behind me in my background. That's the National Center for Atmospheric Research designed by MPe built in 1966 in Boulder uh among the threatened uh federal buildings, but also of course the whole fundamental legal framework of protection for our historic resources. So that's top of the list. But of course, we have a a you know a long history of working with our partners to create incentives for um a fundamental climate action strategy, which is to re reuse buildings, extend their lifespan, avoid the carbon emissions that come from replacement and new construction. And and you know, for decades, the federal historic tax credits have been um a top priority. they continue to be. But we've built um as well with the leadership of my colleague Renee Kman and others around the country and a a really impressive network now of state historic tax credits as well. And I think we all many of us know a lot about this and how how impactful they've been. But it's it's I think worth taking a moment and just thinking about the carbon emissions avoided through the literally hundreds of thousands of projects um the the around the country that have benefited from these. And when you can get that federal state combination, it's so impactful the transformation in states like, you know, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, uh, New York, Ohio, and elsewhere. Um, and I I might mention too that we do have two subsidiaries that bring those incentives to the ground through specific projects. our um in uh National Trust Community Investment Corporation, NTCIC, which provides financing for projects of all kinds, all scales, but particularly big projects uh that can have a real climate impact. And then, if you don't know, a new subsidiary called Repurpose Capital, which was created with the explicit goal of uh fostering and supporting deep energy retrofits of historic buildings through adaptive reuse in communities with limited access to capital. Um that was uh very exciting to see that launched. Um and they've got a couple of projects under their belt now. Um policy wise, I'll just mention quickly we are uh we have a forthcoming policy report on how to better align preservation, heritage, and climate policies around shared goals. I think several of the speakers have mentioned the importance of of thinking about how we can go beyond our um you know known circles and really connect more powerfully with other advocates and allies and making the case for um the benefits of the work of preservation when it comes to climate. And this new report has some examples of how we can do that and and thinking about ways that we can better align um both our policies as well as other climate policies to be more impactful around those shared goals. So, I'm happy to talk more about that, but um that's happening. And then on on I I want to mention too just exciting work that's being led by my colleague Sarah Weren um a partnership with uh Travelers Insurance to help make historic places that are threatened by the impacts of climate change more resilient, how they can adapt to that those impacts and do it in a way that is insurable. Um which is, you know, big part of um what we'll be dealing with in future. So, we've got an exciting partnership there. there are some grant grants that are going out to demonstration projects. So, if you haven't taken a look at that, it's all on our website as well. >> Then, thank you, Jim. Um, I'd like to turn over to SA to to introduce yourself and your organization and your engagement again with climate action policy and heritage. >> Thank you, Elizabeth. And thank you to everyone. Greetings. So glad that you're here with us. It's an honor to be in your company today. I am Salem Casper and I'm executive director of Latinos and Heritage Conservation. We are a nonprofit that focuses on national um Latinex representation throughout the United States. We're the only nonprofit that solely focuses on historic preservation of Latinex heritage here in the United States. So really um the work that we're doing is at the intersection of historic preservation um preservation, culture, community building and social justice. Um so a lot of the work that we've been doing around um just more heritage informed decarbonization has been centered around people and that is with the belief that um all of the work that we do is about community or what we call community-led preservation. Um, so a lot of the work that we do around decarbonization is centered on Latinx communities and really thinking through how is it affects people. So we start by asking questions like who lives here? Um who owns this building? Um what cultural practices does this building hold? Um if there's a new investment that's coming in, you know, who will benefit from that investment? Um or who gets displaced? uh more importantly. And so there's a lot of work that we've been doing around that and it really is central to one of our recent um equity studies that we just published last year where we found that still um only about 65% of sites listed in the National Register here in the United States are associated with Latinx heritage. So under 1% the largest cultural community group here in the nation. Um, and what that does is that that um impacts a lot of potential sites because they are not protected throughout the United States. Um, typically here um if you are designated or within a district, there can be some type of review process um that's available or some type forms of protection in certain cities. So if you have a historic bio that is not protected, is not designated, um that's one of the biggest threats that we typically work around. Um so that's one of the calls to action really that we often speak about is that we need to be talking about not only protecting communities, um but protecting people and where they live, which I'll expand on later. Um, but a lot of the work that we've been doing is centered around just being community-based and um, all of our delivery that we put out into the world is for community and you know, community is our number one audience. That's our primary member and that's who we do this work for. So, we just created and launched two years ago the Latinx preservation toolkit and it is a toolkit. It's based with community in mind. Um, I always say I wanted something that my mom would be able to open and see herself in and understand. And we made it very accessible in knowledge. We took out all of the jargon that we've all learned throughout, you know, our training and practice and really made it to where it was centered on elders and families, workers, crafts people, um allowing them to be the experts in their own, you know, preservation world, allowing them to have then the skill set and the um toolkits that's needed to be able to do this work amongst different practitioners like those of us in this room. Um, so through the toolkit, we have a lot of policies and work that we talk about around, you know, what we call decarbonization, but really it's just regular community life within historic Latinx communities. Um, and a lot of the work is centered on just our indigenous practices of knowledge sharing and recognizing that elders have so much to teach. Um, and it's our responsibility and also our honor to learn from them. And so we're able to put these practices into place through the toolkit, through that multigenerational sharing and learning how to take care of different things like our water systems, our land systems, um, and being able to think through, you know, like in Albuquerque, we have a partner who they are on their sixth generation of land ownership and they have a historic waterway and a sequia system, which isn't just a waterway, it's a spiritual and community way of life. um the community is centered around it and they're now on this generation and when we were there visiting with them and supporting them through a workshop that we were doing about learning how to care for land in a sequest we were able to see um the next generation that was coming up and he was a 15-year-old young man already walking the land walking the waters and doing all of the uh daily land expans um daily land um review and uh walkthroughs with his father already um learning, you know, these ways and these knowledge systems to help protect these um spiritual waterways. Um and then the other thing that I will say that um we often begin to think through as we're thinking through this is, you know, the reuse of buildings, the reuse of structures. This is a very common way of, you know, living within historic Latino communities. And we see that in multi-generational homes where grandparents are living alongside of their grandchildren. And so it's not only just a way of life of community life and communing together, but it's also, you know, helping with affordable housing, it's also like anti-demolition. And so we see a lot of those types of practices that just occur naturally um either within residential communities or within um you know mom and pop legacy businesses that are on their third or fourth generation of legacy owners um heritage owners of those buildings and of those businesses. We're just not necessarily within the practitioner side really viewing those as a part of this ecosystem, which they very much are. So, I will stop there and just thank you so much for um listening. >> Awesome. Thank you, SA. I think something really interesting you touched on there was thinking about the language that we use to to describe both our cultural heritage and our community and and the work that you've done to really make that accessible. Um, I wanted to see quickly if Jim if you had anything you wanted to add on that and thinking about the ways that language is used to talk about these policies um both in community and with policy makers. >> Yeah, may maybe thank you. maybe um just diving in specifically to policy discussions and thinking about how we can bring together the worlds of heritage and climate community. Um in the report I mentioned that's coming out where we're looking at a couple of different policies and opportunities for alignment. Couple of themes emerge there. One is just the idea of reuse is one that I think really resonates and it you know and I we've heard that from our great speakers today. The idea that we don't want to waste things. We want to figure out a way to be more creative to extend the life of things that already exist. And that I think that term then leads to policy strategies that can cut across the board that go beyond preservation um and as it's traditionally been perceived and helps us get to I think a a broader menu that goes beyond some of the things we're used to. You know, hearing about deconstruction, hearing about the adaptive re reuse ordinance in LA are great examples of that. that's not necessarily seen as traditional preservation and yet it's all part of that idea of reuse um as a concept and a and a a word to use. And the other one is flexibility um as opposed to exemptions. And again, this is getting into the weeds a little bit on policy, but we've we've in the past, I think, as things like energy codes, now new building performance standards are having more and more of an impact on existing and older buildings, we want to make sure we don't leave older buildings and historic buildings behind by seeking exemptions, but rather to seek flexibility and to look at ways to make sure that our policies are supportive of climate goals through streamlining. So those kinds of words streamlining f flexibility I think can be um useful to bring into specific policy conversations. >> That's fantastic. And I think building on some of that language reframing, I want to pass it to Andrew to think about what evidence is or data do you feel is the most needed to advance um these policies working as you do at the international level, but again also thinking about national and community level policy. >> Yeah, thank thank you for the question. It's it's slightly ironic uh to turn to me to speak to data data. My my American colleagues will know what it means when I tell you that my math SAT score was half my verbal one. But I have learned from a really painful experience over 20ome years of doing policy work the incredible importance of having data to back up what you're asked. And honestly sometimes it often of course what the data says is incredibly important but just having data is important. It's sort of the price of admission to the policy arena. And if you show up with no data, what it says to some people is you're just not ready to be there. You're not a serious uh contender in the public policy realm. So, it is incredibly important to think about what da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d da you can collect about your work. I did read all of the 14 case studies in the toolkit um almost 100 pages and nothing stood out to me more than the number 115,000 which I saw on page 94. This is the Agnes Scott case study and that's where Agnes Scott tells us that their work uh has avoided emissions equivalent to 115,000 metric tonses of CO2 equivalent. So, uh, that really stood out to me. Uh, and I hope that every case study can provide similar data. Um, now I know it's not always easy. I I was also struck by the building change case study where they talked about the difficulty of computing embodied carbon with products that don't have EPDS uh, especially in the global south and their innovative case study of partnering with Autodesk to try to develop that data. But the lesson I take from that is increasingly there are better and better methodologies for putting numbers behind the work that we're doing. So um you know Jim I I really appreciate your shout out to the historic tax credit. This is a USA based thing. Um I think it's the undersung climate strategy of the whole country. Um I live in New York where we have one. I'd love it if the New York shipo could tell me how many metric tons of carbon has been avoided by the New York state tax credit. And it's not just avoided carbon. how many jobs were created uh uh you know like that. So um I think Lori Ferris and others will talk more about data collection going forward, but I really just want to underscore the importance of being able to collect and present data about the work you're doing relevant to climate action goals. >> Thanks. >> Great. Thank you, Andrew. Um and I just saw it pop in the chat. Andrew is referencing some of the case studies included in the DBT toolkit. Um again, I would direct everyone there. um to see these projects. There were several questions in the Q&A about global south representation and those cases are taken from around the world to kind of showcase the many ways that these policies and programs can be implemented. Um, I hate to cut our conversation short, but I do want to recognize we are coming up to the end of our time together, and I want to give chance to pass it over to my colleague at Built Buildings Lab, our research director, Billy Faircloth, to share a little bit about what's next for the DBTH project. So, thank you everyone. >> Thank you, Elizabeth. What's next for decarbonizing the built environment through heritage? Next, uh, the DBTH project will continue. The UN climate body has recognized DBTH as the, um, plan to accelerate heritage informed decarbonization. And this means that it is now recognized as one of 120 implementation plans. How did this happen? Global stakeholders advancing culture and heritage as climate solutions have been convening at the UN climate change conference first on the edges and then with more direct engagement for several years. Last year COP 30 in BM was a turning point advocates worked with climate high level champions to deliver plans to accelerate solutions. Let's go to the next slide. So, I'm I have a feeling you're curious. What is a plan to accelerate solutions or a pass? Plans to accelerate solutions target a challenge such as the building and construction sectors impacts on emissions, resource exploitation, and waste and propose a practical solution such as the role of build heritage in climate change mitigation. So, plans to accelerate solutions are part of the UN's global climate action agenda. They connect national governments to people outside governments who offer coalition-based road mapaps for which levers will work best to deliver solution and which steps will scale and and drive implementation. The plan to accelerate heritage informed decarbonization is coordinated across a coalition focus focused on implementing and scaling the solutions demonstrated by the speakers that you heard from today as well as the cases that are documented in the DBTH toolkit and online through the DBTH atlas. Next, there's a broader context and to establish the full ambition if you're curious uh you can look at the global climate action agenda and find that there are actually that this total of 120 plans and growing distributed across these five axes. So the plan to accelerate heritage informed decarbonization is one of two plans focused on built heritage. Heritage adapts as Andrew mentioned is the other and one of five plans within key objective 19 which you can see there. Culture, cultural heritage protection and climate action. Those circles that you see on this slide represent where buildings sit within this uh broader series of axes. So you can see that sustainable and resilient construction in buildings and culture, cultural heritage protection, climate action include the built environment. We go to the next slide, we can dive a little bit more into the details of the plan. So the plan to accelerate heritage informed building decarbonization focuses on increasing the capacity of policy makers to integrate heritage solutions into climate mitigation policy. Uh Andrew talked about um needing the data and that's precisely what we're focused on. So if you click it one more time, you'll see yes the steps. So to begin the implementation of this plan, we are going to be convening policy makers to learn where and how existing and heritage buildings are integrated into greenhouse gas reporting structures, which is step one. and will be identifying opportunities and barriers for for reporting the impacts of heritage informed decarbonization measures as we move forward. The plan focuses on developing tracking methods and resources, implementing a training program and growing a network of heritage informed decarbonization policy makers. Next slide. This plan is supported by a broad coalition including the world monuments fund, ecomos, elay, climate heritage network, built buildings lab, architecture 2030, corno and corno Atinson center for sustainability. As I mentioned, our immediate next steps within the next six months include learning how existing buildings in heritage are integrated into climate policy and reporting structures. But we'll also be working to estimate carbon savings per heritage informed decarbonization solutions and to develop a workflow map for integrating heritage informed decarbonization into greenhouse gas tracking and reporting structures. Next slide. Zooming out a bit and looking more broadly at this entire effort, we can see that the first two years of the decarbonizing the built environment through heritage project provided the climate heritage network and its partners with significant global momentum to implement implement this plan by first defining what heritage informed decarbonization is and then demonstrating that it exists by bringing into this conversation a range of on the ground practices and projects globally. globally. We're now turning our attention to giving heritage informed decarboniz decarbonization solutions a seat at the global the greenhouse glass tracking table. So if you are engaged in tracking and reporting emissions associated with any of the strategies that we include in the toolkit, traditional lowcarbon materials, material salvage, reuse and deconstruction, building reuse, adaptive reuse, urban planning practices and cultural practices. please reach out to built buildings lab who is a co-leader of the plan to accelerate solutions. We're also looking ahead to our work for COP 31. Um and we were able to um bring to COP 31 if you go to the next slide two key messages from the decarbonizing the built environment through heritage project. first that built heritage is a measurable and feasible carbon mitigation pathway. And second, capacity building for policy makers is essential to deliver and track heritage-based decarbonization. On the next slide, you'll see the work streams that are underway. Go to the next slide. Yeah, thank you. Um, you'll see the work streams that are underway as we continue to collaborate with other efforts. So we'll also be aligning the heritage informed decarbonization plan with the priority themes of COP 31 which include zero waste in climate resilient cities. We'll be expanding the heritage informed decarbonization coalition across the building and uh culture sectors and we'll continue to align uh in order to integrate fully the relationship between ad adaptation and mitigation. And then finally, I invite you all if you happen to be on the next slide joining uh or or visiting um New York City uh for climate week 2026. If you happen to be there, I invite you all to um uh join us as we as we um pivot towards the plan to accelerate heritage in informed decrimarization for a session at New York Climate Week that focuses specifically on understanding more broadly what this action agenda is, what these plans are, and more specifically the um challenges that policymakers face reporting greenhouse gas emissions associated with heritage informed decarbonization. Thank you. So, I'll turn this back over to you, Elizabeth or no, Jim. Sorry. >> Thank you, uh, Billy. Um, and thanks to all the speakers, uh, today. This has been a fantastic way to conclude the the summer series. Um, I just want to thank Billy, Elizabeth, and Lorie Ferris in particular for their leadership here through the Build Buildings Lab. Um, they've just really done amazing work. the toolkit is such a great resource. So, momentum, let's keep up the momentum. Um, also more coming up on forum. Uh, we've got a a webinar uh next week on section 106. A lot of you probably following that. And then in September, another um update on uh legislation at the national level. Next slide. And then also in September we have the National Preservation Summit and we really encourage everybody who can to join us online for that. Um it should be great chance for you to participate and hear all of the sessions. Signing up is free. Please do so. Next and then in October, so it's a busy fall, we've got our uh preservation law conference that can that's a convenient you can join both in person in DC as well as online. So please sign up for that. And finally, next slide. Um, again, take a look at uh this webinar if you want to review or others. Um, and thanks again for everybody to everybody uh who participated as speakers and contributors and also all of you who stuck with us through um this great uh series of presentations. Thanks so much. Have a great week everybody.