April 11, 2024 Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy breaks down sustainability in simple, easy to understand terms. "The Five Grand Challenges of Climate Change are 1. How We Plug In, 2. Make Things, 3. Grow Things, 4. Get Around, and 5. Keep Cool and Stay Warm.” Tackling these challenges cannot be done in siloes. In fact, real estate touches all of these categories. "How We Get Around," is the #1 emissions producer in the US (Source: EPA). Couple Transportation with Buildings in the US and developed countries, then you get a whopping 67% of emissions (Source: UN). Transitioning to electric vehicle ..read more

January 25, 2024 With all of the turmoil in the shared micromobility industry since December, the question arises again - should bike and scooter share systems be supported by city, state, and federal subsidies in the same fashion that public transportation is? When I attended the inaugural NABSA conference in 2014 in Pittsburgh, the original goal of this new industry was about finding a healthy and sustainable way to bring the public, private, and non-profit sectors together in order to provide an affordable and reliable transportation service, further encouraging people to use pedal powered ..read more

October 18, 2023 I just arrived in San Francisco for the Micromobility America conference, where I’ll meet entrepreneurs, advocates, and policymakers working on decarbonizing our transportation sector via human and electric powered, small vehicles.  Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) released a new report, saying that “even under the most ambitious emissions-reduction scenarios (with electrifying vehicles), the United States must also reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 20 percent before the end of the decade to stay on course for a 1.5 degree C future.” It goes on to recommend e-bikes as ..read more

September 26, 2023 I just arrived in Washington D.C. on the Acela train from Boston for the US Green Building Council’s Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, representing ActiveScore. I’m excited to have conversations with sustainability professionals that are tackling one of the top 2 largest carbon emitting sectors in the US - real estate - which includes the energy that buildings use, as 30% of all emissions, according to the EPA. The other sector in the top 2 is transportation emissions, on par at 29%.  Breakthrough Energy defines the categories of emissions in an easy to di ..read more

September 12, 2023 Building certifications for the real estate sector are an increasingly important aspect to the creation of better buildings. These certifications evaluate many topics - from the reduction of embodied carbon in a new development, to transitioning to more energy efficient heating and cooling systems. The primary reason that these certifications exist is to directly and indirectly reduce our emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, and enable us all to live healthier, more active lifestyles. Having scoring systems and metrics in place creates healthy competition for the real est ..read more

July 19, 2023 In order to stay competitive, real estate developers, owners, and landlords need to provide an exceptional tenant and user experience, and as active transportation grows in North America, providing an active travel facility is no longer a nice to have - it’s a must have. A best-in-class active travel facility can improve the health and well-being of its occupiers, reduce the building’s indirect, scope 3 emissions, and receive ActiveScore certification, complementing the world’s leading green building certifications. To really lure employers and employees to work from the office ..read more

May 16, 2023 I’m at the @Urban Land Institute (ULI) Spring Meeting with @Laura Walsh to learn from and network with experts in land use transformation, real estate, and sustainable development – while experiencing the innovative and rapidly growing city of Toronto.  We are here leading the North American expansion of @ActiveScore – which assesses, designs, and certifies best-in-class facilities that support and encourage the adoption of active travel. What I appreciate about ULI is that it’s a real estate-focused organization, but it also draws professionals from the fringes of the indust ..read more

I’ve been thinking about what the two biggest news stories in bike and scooter sharing means for the future of the industry and how cities in general should approach introducing new e-mobility pilot programs:  #1 Paris had their citizens decide in a yes/no referendum to overwhelmingly stop shared e-scooters from being a part of the transportation mix anymore. #2 Lyft, the largest owner/operator of bike sharing in the US, has been pulling out of markets and is in some financial trouble.  In the case of Paris, a yes/no vote is a simplification of the issue at hand and is equivalent to ..read more

February 23, 2023 In order to transform our communities to be more walkable, bike friendly places, it's a dual battle of incentivizing more people to ride (more frequently) and making people feel safe while doing so. The former is relatively easy to implement but can only go so far if the latter is not addressed. With the influx of federal funding now available to city planners and engineers, every community in America should be submitting grant applications for funding more bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects, because in reality, the most amount of funding ever is now available, whil ..read more

February 9, 2023 I finished reading a brilliant book recently, titled Upstream, by Dan Heath. Given my work and interest in sustainable mobility, I thought it was worth noting the upstream vs. downstream approaches to e-mobility. In its simplest form, moving upstream to solve challenges is difficult, because it's proactive. So many issues in an organization and in our society are handled downstream, in reaction to a problem. The recent surge of banning e-scooters and e-bikes is a downstream solution; the problem with a downstream solution such as a ban is that it doesn't consider the reason th ..read more