Boston heat recovery project wins award, $150,000 grant

Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH) is one of Boston’s leading grassroots tenant organizations, rooted in a history of preserving affordable housing and community for Boston residents in the face of university and hospital expansions. Its mission is to “develop, preserve, and maintain safe and affordable housing for low and moderate income people of diverse backgrounds in the RTH/Mission Hill neighborhood and to improve the quality of life for its residents.”

The residents of Mission Park include 1,500 low- and moderate-income residents, inclusive of both families and elderly residents, whose average household income is below $25,000 per year.

Because Mission Park is subject to BERDO standards, RTH faces alternative compliance payments in the tens of thousands of dollars by 2030 if they don’t take action to reduce their energy use. GreenerU and its partners’ design for this Boston decarbonization project provides an innovative solution to provide heat more efficiently—with multiple additional benefits.

The problem: ensuring BERDO compliance

As the owner of multiple large properties in Boston, RTH is required to reduce its energy consumption as part of Boston’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO).

RTH’s single largest building is the Levinson Tower, a high rise building that includes 260 residential units as well as a central natural-gas-fired boiler plant located in the basement. This central plant provides heat to all 775 apartments in RTH’s Mission Park neighborhood. 

In 2025, GreenerU and partners Elevate Design and Building Evolution Corporation completed a deep energy retrofit study of Levinson Tower. We found that all 260 apartments in Levinson tower emit their kitchen and bathroom exhaust through the roof of the tower. This results in significant low-grade wasted thermal energy.

Worse, reduced fresh-air ventilation during cold snaps result in poor indoor air quality. And these cold snaps create chilly conditions for tenants because the central natural-gas-fired boiler plant is inadequate.

RTH stakeholders recognized that BERDO compliance could provide an opportunity to address multiple tenant comfort, health, and affordability concerns.

An energy-efficient solution: waste heat recapture

In partnership with Elevated Design, consultant Peter Munkenbeck, Trinity Management, and Building Evolution Corporation, GreenerU has designed an innovative solution: taking advantage of waste heat from bathroom and kitchen exhaust. 

Heat recovery—i.e., exhaust heat that is recaptured as usable energy—is an excellent source of thermal energy that can offset the need to generate heat from scratch. The designed system can thereby take kitchen and bathroom exhaust and reuse it to reduce the heating load for all 775 apartments in the Mission Park neighborhood.

This solution will leverage heat exchange coils and a water-source heat pump loop to recover heat from the bathroom and kitchen exhaust fans, then use that heat to displace natural gas burning in the current heating plant. The system is designed with a future decarbonized air-source or ground-source heat pump in mind, which will reduce energy consumption with the current natural gas heating system and the eventual electrified heating system that will replace it.

Figure 1. — current system at Levinson Tower, where fresh air is heated using natural gas from the boiler

Figure 2. — proposed system at Levinson Tower, where fresh air is heated using waste heat (bathroom and kitchen exhaust) and a water-to-water heat pump

Anticipated results: better air, cozier spaces, lower energy costs

By reducing natural gas combustion in Levinson tower, this project will improve local air quality, reduce the cost of heating for residents, and also help address the long-term impacts of climate change, all while helping RTH stay compliant with BERDO regulations.

Because the work for this project will take place on the roof and in the boiler room, residents of the building will experience no direct adverse impacts from the project’s construction. The project is expected to reduce emissions by 102,000 kgCO2e per year and save 19,320 therms of energy per year, resulting in annual cost savings in excess of $25,000. 

Thanks to the innovative design of this Boston heat recovery project and clear community benefits, this project was awarded both the inaugural Building Decarb Intervention award at the 2025 BE+ Green Building Showcase, as well as a $150,000 grant from the Equitable Emissions Investment Fund by the City of Boston.

Is your Boston building BERDO compliant? There may be multiple benefits to decarbonizing your building beyond avoiding non-compliance payments. Contact GreenerU to learn more.

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