Community Blog

NESEA is an extraordinary community of practice. We share our lessons learned, our successes, and our questions. We challenge each other to reinvent the status quo and include more perspectives, all in service of our shared vision: a built environment in the Northeast that is climate neutral, adaptive and resilient, energy independent, architecturally inspiring, and supportive of connection and community. We’re so proud of what we accomplished together over the last year!

As we witness the end of our 20 year war in Afghanistan and the barrage of media coverage swirling around this upcoming 20th anniversary of that war’s trigger (9/11), a growing body of evidence is emerging linking these events to issues of energy and climate, of central concern to NESEA members. A recently updated Brown University study has calculated the human toll to be now over 800,000 dead (with millions more wounded) and over $8 trillion in costs to the American taxpayer, factoring in long term veteran care.

As America launches into the final eight weeks of the 2020 campaign, there is an overriding sense of a reckoning in the air, a quickening in our collective unconscious for coming to terms  with past mistakes or misdeeds. One could say, this is what transformation looks like, or the Chinese word for crisis (Weiji), which really means an opportunity for a “changing point”.

BuildingEnergy Boston 2020 Not Taking Place in March

Over the past several weeks, NESEA has been grappling with the decision on how best to move forward with the BuildingEnergy Boston conference given the ever-evolving situation with COVID-19. We have been monitoring the situation closely, have been keeping up-to-date with recommendations provided by the Boston Public Health Commission, and have heard the concerns of members of our community.