Boston Council Panel Clears O'Malley for Building Emissions Review Board Seat

BOSTON — June 16, 2023 — Boston's environmental committee advances former councillor Matt O'Malley's appointment to the city's building emissions oversight board. The City Council's Committee on Environmental Justice, Resiliency and Parks, chaired by District 6 Councillor Kendra Lara, cleared Docket 0822 — a Mayor Michelle Wu nomination — to send O'Malley to the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Review Board for a term through April 24, 2026. O'Malley, now chief sustainability officer at Vicinity Energy, which provides heating to roughly 70 million square feet across Boston and Cambridge, pledged to recuse himself from any board decisions touching his employer's clients. Committee members including Council President Edward M. Flynn and Councillor-at-Large Michael Flaherty offered unqualified praise, with Flaherty calling O'Malley "second to none" on decarbonization work. O'Malley, the lead author of BERDO and BERDO 2.0, told the panel that passing the legislation was "the easy part" and that the hard work of implementation now begins.