Convo: Panama Bartholomy on Building Decarbonization
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Panama Bartholomy, Founder and Executive Director at the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
Panama discusses his youth in Northern California, and from an early age, seeing the importance of the human dimension on forging a healthy and sustainable future. He then describes his academic career which focused on sustainable community development. Panama goes on to share his works for the California Division of the State Architect on a sustainable schools initiative, for the California Conservation Corps, for the California Energy Commission, and as an advisor the Speaker of the California State Assembly.
He then moved to Europe and worked for over three years in the Netherlands for the Investor Confidence Project, an Environmental Defense Fund initiative to standardize certification of energy efficiency retrofits to ease financing and lower interest rates.
He later moved back to the states to found the Building Decarbonization Coalition, now in its fourth year with a prestigious list of sponsors. The Coalition he leads is a force, now marshalled to enact policies and to foster collaboration between manufacturers, designers, and installers. So far, nearly 100 cities have passed ordinances that ban natural gas use in new construction.
He concludes with a discussion of scale, and scaling decarbonization. He talks about “Zonal Decarbonization,” taking neighborhoods and sequentially removing the gas. He sees the 2020s as preparation…. and 2030s as the decade of scale.