City of Boston: Climate Resilience Startup Pilot

Project Partner: City of Boston Office of Emerging Technology, Summer 2025

Project Summary:  The City of Boston is vulnerable to many hazards of climate change along its coastline and within its urban infrastructure. Innovative technology startups are interested in addressing some of these hazards by piloting new technologies for climate change resilience. These technologies can support city efforts to adapt to hazards of climate change and/or decrease contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Flannery worked with the City of Boston’s Office of Emerging Technology on their development of a Climate Technology Lab. She reviewed and categorized the relevance of prospective startups to urban climate change-related concerns. One key challenge that emerged for Boston was navigating the city’s procurement policies. Flannery conducted a review of procurement structures to outline how changes to Boston’s current policy might better support work with new technologies. For example, a sustainable procurement policy might allow Boston to partner with a startup that produces low-carbon cement in a public building project.

Project Deliverable: Internal report of key findings on prospective startups (research on sustainable procurement, breakdown of startups by climate change resilience category, and insights on needs for specific city offices and departments)

Watch Flannery’s URBAN Internship Lightning Talk here.