Local Energy Advocates Piques Local Interest In Large Scale Building Decarbonization

How can we most effectively increase the mix of renewable energy as our energy source until it is 100 percent renewable?
How can we prioritize decarbonizing especially leaky buildings?
How can we succeed in getting our local landlords to partner in the effort to decarbonize our buildings?

These are some of the questions that locals raised during and after the March 15 Local Energy Advocates (LEA) Zoom presentation on Ithaca’s groundbreaking plan to decarbonize 100% of the city’s buildings by 2030.  The LEA  presentation, which can be found here, featured Dr. Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s Director of Sustainability and Ariel Kalishman-Walsh and Clare Doyle Dowd of BlocPower,a Brooklyn based technology company engaged in the greening of America’s cities.  See a more detailed discussion of the Ithaca presentation here.

During and following the presentation, attended by local activists, contractors, elected officials and municipal staff and others, attendees offered additional questions, which LEA hopes to engage the presenters to answer in a follow up session. Considerable interest was expressed by residents of different western MA municipalities about how they might initiate a program in their towns/cities. LEA hopes to hear from Bloc Power about the types of mid to large scale programs they have done or might consider managing including programs to decarbonize:

• all existing municipal buildings, 
• one or more large apartment complexes, 
• entire neighborhoods or voting districts, 
• buildings over 50 years old
• low/moderate priced single family homes
• A Community Choice Aggregation organized program “building/home decarbonization industry” as the aggregation scales up with new members

Interested residents can hear about upcoming meetings and answers to the follow up questions by contacting the Local Energy Advocates at info@localenergyadvocates.org to join their mailing list.