During the Summer of 2024, Green Building United hosted Yuto Morishita as a Muscoe Martin Green Building Fellow in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. The Fellowship preserves Muscoe Martin’s legacy by providing a student applicant in the Environmental Building Design (MSD-EBD) program the opportunity to pursue research and projects that advance green building and sustainable design.

Yuto is currently a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, studying Environmental Building Design including Building Performance and Life-Cycle Assessment. With experience as an energy modeler, and architectural designer, and a drive to learn more about environmental policy, Yuto spent the summer researching equitable policies driving decarbonization and how these policies could be implemented in Philadelphia.
Prioritizing equitable decarbonization ensures that efforts made to decarbonize – reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a major greenhouse gas causing climate change – are done so in a way that leads to fairness, justice, and positive outcomes for those most marginalized.

In their report, Yuto illuminates the disparities in building energy use across Philadelphia’s diverse communities and examines data on energy consumption, building characteristics, and socioeconomic factors, to identify which neighborhoods and populations are most burdened by inefficient buildings. Additionally, the report reviews decarbonization policies in countries such as France and Scotland and examines the trends of global decarbonization policies and how they can influence local policies here in Philadelphia. The report culminates in a review of suggested activities and policies that Philadelphia could implement to promote an equitable and just transition to a climate-friendly green future.

Associated with the report is a recording of Green Building United’s December Coffee Chat, where Yuto presented his report to interested parties. This recording can be found here.

Equitable Decarbonization - December 2024 Coffee Chat
Equitable Decarbonization - December Coffee Chat Recording
Equitable Decarbonization - Yuto Morishita - 2024 Muscoe Martin Fellowship Report

About Muscoe Martin
Muscoe Martin, AIA, LEED Fellow was a lifelong environmentalist, coming of age in the energy and environmental movements of the 1970s. After completing his BA at Princeton in 1978, he worked at the Habitat Center in Berkeley, before completing his Master of Architecture at Penn in 1985. After graduation, he worked with Adele Naude Santos, JacobsWyper Architecture, Wallace Roberts & Todd, and Susan Maxman Partners, before founding his own firm M2.
Muscoe’s career in sustainable design and architecture began in the 1980s with his work on solar design. He worked tirelessly to champion green design in both practice and education recognizing the critical impacts of construction on resources, water, energy, and land.

Muscoe was a founding board member of Delaware Valley Green Building Council (now known as Green Building United), Chair of the AIA Committee-On-The-Environment (COTE), a member of the USGBC Board and Sustainable Buildings Industry Council, and a long-time LEED faculty member. Muscoe taught at Penn for nearly 20 years where he helped establish the programs in Ecological Architecture and Environmental Building Design.

“A community must be supported from below – by its inhabitants, present and future.” -Muscoe Martin