Now in its fourth year, the Historic New England Summit continues to serve as a forward-looking gathering place for conversations around the intersection of preservation and sustainability. These conversations aren’t just about how to preserve old buildings, they are about educating the public that preservation isn’t just about the past, it’s about a low-carbon and equitable future. By valuing our built environment as a shared resource, we can ensure sustainability is central to every decision. The climate conditions that existed when many of our region’s historic buildings and landscapes were constructed are no longer the same. Climate change is already, and while we can’t return to the climate of the past, we can explore new ways to adapt to these changing circumstances. Some of our past Summit panels offer insights into how.
One method for adapting historic buildings to modern needs is carbon neutrality. At the 2022 Summit, Dr. Luis Aguirre-Torres, former director of sustainability for the City of Ithaca, New York, discussed how Ithaca’s commitment to carbon neutrality led to the creation of a timeline for achieving net-zero emissions. His discussion of how developers must weigh the costs of deconstructing existing buildings versus constructing new ones highlighted opportunities to reuse materials, adapt existing structures, and bring community members together. As he said of a church rehabilitation project, “There were like 150 people carrying pieces of a building, and instead of demolishing the building, we recuperated the windows, stained glass, stairs, and rail guards.”
Achieving net-zero and zero-waste goals requires prioritizing preservation and adaptive reuse over demolition, deconstruction when demolition is necessary, and sustainable new construction. The 2023 Summit explored these ideas further, highlighting a reason for prioritizing preservation: embodied carbon, or the energy already invested in a building Speaker Dan Bersagel’s discussion of embodied carbon really stuck out: “Buildings can be taken care of and maintained to reduce carbon levels they output, the embodied carbon within the materials and actual construction is one big hit,” he said. “The embodied carbon cannot be recuperated unlike operational carbon; the embodied carbon is locked in at the beginning.” Accounting for embodied carbon—and not just operational carbon—in assessing the sustainability of a project creates a paradigm shift in how we evaluate new construction, deconstruction, and adaptive reuse.
Discussions at the 2024 Summit explored the interconnectedness of environmental sustainability, community well-being, and cultural heritage, and emphasized the role of arts and culture in promoting healing and community resilience. A panel on climate migration brought together regional experts in climate planning to discuss the importance of advance planning for new populations and incorporating inclusive housing, infrastructure resilience, and cultural integration to welcome new populations while sustaining community vitality. The panel highlighted how preservation can provide a roadmap for responding to climate migration.
Each year, the Summit highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary approach and collective action, especially in advancing preservation and climate resilience. Preservationists, architects, and policymakers must work together to promote rehabilitation and provide continuing education on the value of preserving embodied carbon. Buildings are not disposable commodities—they serve as cultural artifacts, keystones of community identities, and embodied energy reserves. If we want people to see them as powerful tools in the fight against climate change, we need to change the way we think about preservation—it’s not old-fashioned or stuck in the past; it’s active, essential, and part of our future.
Working together is key to building more resilient, sustainable communities—and the Historic New England Summit continues to be a catalyst for that work. As we look ahead to the next gathering in New Haven, we invite professionals, advocates, and community leaders to join the conversation and help shape the future organization of preservation and climate action. Stay tuned for what’s next—it’s a conversation you won’t want to miss!
Written by Hailey Stebner, Spring 2025 Preservation Services intern. Stebner has a master’s from Boston University’s in Preservation Studies.
This post is part of our Preservation at Work series, where we share stories from the field about current and emerging issues related to historic preservation in New England and beyond.
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