Hub of hope: With inaugural ‘Climate Week,’ Boston bets big on innovation

This week, the city is hosting a party of sorts — its first Climate Week. From May 3-10, Boston will welcome international visitors and host more than 100 events ranging from a two-day conference on climate tech at the Boston Center for the Arts to a climate startup pitch competition in a backyard sauna.

“All the ingredients are here in Massachusetts,” said Paul Scapicchio, executive director for ClimaTech, the two-day conference that kicks off the week. “Venture capital was invented here. We’ve got Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, BC — all the universities.”

So the question is, how do you harness all of that and turn it into something that might just make a dent in the climate crisis?

Over the course of the week, the city and its surrounding communities will host a variety of disparate events. There’s a run club sponsored by the Woodwell Climate Research Center and a climate book club at Somerville’s West Branch Library. Or check out the oyster “shellebration” at Island Creek Raw Bar, the New England Women in Energy and the Environment awards gala, the bio-based materials petting zoo at Boston Building Resources, or the various happy hours on offer.

While the week will be filled with a lot of gimmicks and networking, a serious undercurrent runs through the program. Boston is facing an existential threat from climate change — the rising seas are creeping farther into the Seaport, and extreme heat is endangering residents more frequently.

Experts from the city and state agencies, clean tech companies, think tanks, and the region’s academic powerhouses will be discussing those threats and the solutions being proposed through the region’s thriving climate tech sector.

Growing that sector has been a widely shared goal.

Since taking office, Governor Maura Healey has been promoting the climate tech industry, including signing the 2024 Mass Leads Act, an economic development bill aimed at supercharging the clean tech industry. All told, the state would be investing a billion dollars in the industry over the course of a decade.

In Boston, climate tech isn’t just an opportunity, said the city’s chief climate officer, Brian Swett, it could be a critical part of the solution. Climate Week is a chance to explore the question of “how do we create these nodes of growth that then result in not only wanting to start your company here, but wanting to grow here and help us solve our problems,” he said.

The week kicks off with ClimaTech, now in its third year, and a co-organizer of Climate Week. The two-day conference had more than 1,500 registrations and climbing as of Friday afternoon, compared with a total of 1,200 last year.

Beyond the conference, there will be panel discussions and events that explore solutions including solar geoengineering (dimming the sun to the cool the planet), carbon removal (sucking carbon out of the atmosphere to reverse warming), and networked geothermal (a process of replacing natural gas in neighborhoods with linked underground heat pumps, a solution already being piloted in the state).

Boston Climate Week is organized by ClimateBase, a platform for climate job hunting that also runs a fellowship program and operates the global Climate Week Network.

While Boston is putting on its first Climate Week, it’s not the pioneer. New York has had its Climate Week since 2009, and ClimateBase has organized similar events in cities including Mexico City, Munich, San Francisco, and Toronto, said Jesse Hynes, the company’s chief operating officer and cofounder.

Lindsey Butler, executive director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, said good things happen when people take the time to gather in the same spot, and said she looks forward to the “robust conversations that happen as a result of this convening.”

But she also wondered why it took an outside group — as opposed to one based in Massachusetts — to do this, especially given the years of positioning Boston as the Silicon Valley of green innovation.

“I think future efforts like this, convened and anchored by local climate groups could be super powerful,” Butler said.

Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com.