Sustainability options for NYC communities

Based on a presentation at "Climate Crisis and Community: Mobilizing for a Safe Future," a 350 NYC teach-in, September, 2015.  

Moving NYC toward renewable power will require massive tangible changes that present organizing opportunities, and will help build the climate movement locally.  Even though both activists and some within government and policy circles understand the need for urgent climate action, most are at best distantly aware of the issue.  Some will buy into 350.org's ‘turn off fossil fuel, turn on renewable power’ message fully.  Some will at least be willing to take practical actions and get involved with existing programs that move NYC toward resilience and renewables gradually. Green programs can be promoted in terms with broader public appeal: quality of life or financial benefit. So use different messages for different audiences.  

NYC government climate response is evolving.  Starting with 30% carbon reduction goals by 2030, set out in early PlaNYC reports, and adding a resilience focus after Hurricane Sandy, the de Blasio Administration’s One NYC plan adds the goals of addressing equity to the new carbon emissions goal of 80% reductions cuts by 2050.  They will be figuring out the details of how to do this for some time, and have probably not thought out how neighborhood organizing and climate advocates can help them achieve difficult but essential City goals.

Leveraging local connections

Neighborhood groups can be valuable partners to resilience / sustainability programs that offer tangible quality of life or financial benefits by referring their local contacts.  When Con Edison representatives contacted Long Island City businesses about free energy surveys and discounted energy upgrades directly, 27% of those who got the free survey wound up purchasing recommended upgrades.  When LIC Partnership, a local business group, referred its contacts to Con Ed, the percentage that bought the recommended upgrades went up to 45%.  Many groups can do this, but few have the motivation to push for green programs.  Some energy conservation and renewable power contractors offer referral fees to community groups, based on a percentage of new project income resulting from clients referred by the community group. For marketing materials and sample referral contracts, see www.beyondoilnyc.org.

Lessons from the Transition movement and WEACT

The Transition movement is a community level response to climate change, resource depletion and economic instability that encourages grassroots driven community planning to increase local resilience and start local projects.  Its success in the UK is likely due to cultural characteristics.  Folks in big US cities don't have the same habits of group participation, and are too busy for long open-ended planning discussions.  Despite extensive outreach, a Transition-inspired resilience festival in the Rockaways didn't catch on. See http://www.transitionus.org/ and http://www.transitionnyc.org/

However, if a major community group puts all its weight behind a climate response project, and pours in massive resources, the results can be very different. WEACT, a community environmental group active in Harlem and surrounding neighborhoods for three decades, created a climate action plan for northern Manhattan based on four principles: energy democracy, emergency preparedness, social hubs and participatory governance.  Check it out here.

Where to start in your neighborhood? Perhaps by finding some neighbors and local advocates to focus on one or more targeted interventions, from which other relationships and collaborations may arise. Here are a few.

Cut energy use

NY State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has an overwhelmingly large number of programs. Narrow it down to their Home Energy Efficiency Programs.  Options will vary for each project, but you don’t have to sort it out.  Contact your NYSERDA representative, who will determine exactly what programs and incentives can apply.

NYSERDA contractors will perform free home energy assessments, and provide reports of recommended improvements, such as added insulation and energy efficient lighting to high-efficiency heating systems and Energy Star certified appliances.  The report will include upgrade costs, energy savings, incentives, and time until the energy savings will pay for its cost of installation. Click here to start the process.

Manhattan: Samuel Man, 212-505-6050, samuel@solar1.org
Brooklyn / Queens: Simon Mugo, 718-637-8652, smugo@prattcenter.net

Con Edison also offers energy saving programs for residents, small business, multi-family and commercial buildings. Small businesses can qualify for up to 70% off the cost of recommended lighting upgrades.   Ask your NYSERDA rep whether the Con Ed or NYSERDA programs are a better value for your situation. Of course you can contact both.

Contact your building management agent or coop board members.  Ask them what if any energy upgrades have already been done, and encourage them to contact your NYSERDA rep to discuss the costs and savings of other measures.   

Big buildings with high energy use may benefit from combined heat and power systems, in which both electricity and steam heat are generated on site from a natural gas fired generator.   CHP offers big increases in energy efficiency, and can maintain some power if the grid goes down.

Install solar energy

Rooftop solar technology allows homeowners and multi-family buildings to generate part of their own electric supply.   According to Solar One, the price of solar has decreased over 60% since 2011. Incentives and tax benefits cover up to 75% of system costs

- NY-Sun incentive: $0.70 / watt, so a 4,000 watt (4 kW) PV system would receive a $2,800 rebate.
- NYS Residential Solar Tax Credit: 25% of post-rebate system costs or $5,000, whichever is less
- Federal Residential Solar Investment Tax Credit: 30% of post-rebate system costs
- NYC Solar Property Tax Abatement: 20% of post-rebate system costs

A 4 kW PV system with an installed cost of $24,000, minus the NYSERDA rebate and the Federal, State and City tax incentives, only costs $5,400. Innovative financing options mean that most homeowners can go solar with zero money down and monthly payments that are the same as or cheaper than your current electricity bills.

Here Comes Solar is a program that supports solar advocates within co-ops and condos.  It helps them recruit and organize fellow residents; provides building-specific analysis on costs, benefits and performance; obtain proposals from multiple certified and vetted solar contractors at the same time; help building reps review and compare proposals; and supports building reps for each stage of the installation process.  Contact Angelica Ramdhari at angelica@solar1.org.

Recycling and composting

What other interventions could you explore? Our food and agriculture system uses incredible amounts of energy in transportation and processing.  For the big picture, look at the Foodworks Report.  A report is expected soon from the NY State Food Hubs Task Force on increasing consumption of food grown in the state.  Simple choices include supporting farmers markets.  Lots of groups in NYC promote urban agriculture.  Rooftop gardens are a trendy concept, but right now there are very few of them.  What's an easy place to start? If your neighborhood has lots of backyard space, consider encouraging neighbors to start gardening.

About a third of all waste generated by NYC residents is organic waste including yard waste, food scraps, and compostable paper. Since the City has to pay landfills to accept our waste, and to ship it long distances, composting saves us money.  By storing food waste in special rodent-resistant bins, it can make sidewalk trash less of a food source for rats. The City is picking up organic compostable wastes from houses and small buildings in a growing number of neighborhoods. If you live in a building with over 10 apartments, you can request bins for clothing donations and electronics recycling, and organic waste collection.

Emergency preparedness

NYC Office of Emergency Management offers the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, which raises awareness about emergencies and disasters and provides basic response skills needed for fire safety, light search and rescue, disaster medical operations, and traffic control.  The three hour interactive class meets one night a week for ten consecutive weeks, with discussions, exercises and group building activities  based on the Incident Command System. NYC CERT instructors are active FDNY, NYPD, and NYC Emergency Management personnel.

Organize an event in your neighborhood

How do you find collaborators, and test which projects appeal to your neighbors? Consider organizing a community forum co-sponsored by climate activists, elected officials, City sustainability programs, and civic groups.  A very successful forum like this took place in July 2015 in Park Slope and can be easily replicated, with local variations, in your neighborhood.

For more information, contact Dan Miner at beyondoilnyc@gmail.com, or visit www.beyondoilnyc.org.

Spring - and a look back at projects of 2013-14

It's been a long time since my last entry in this blog - nearly a year - but the return of spring seems a good time to refresh it.  
For many years, I've had parallel lives.  A conventional day job that pays the bills, and a string of volunteer sustainability projects.  The latter is chronicled here.  Here's a look back at my green projects in 2013 and 2014.

In 2013 I wrote a series of blog posts.  They summarized my research into sustainable project areas that I might have been able to transition into from Long Island City Partnership. Not that it worked out that way. 

• People are more likely to sign up for a program after being contacted by a community group they know than by the program’s outreach staff, who they don’t know. We proved this at LICP with our successful promotion of an energy efficiency program to western Queens businesses.  We were motivated because of our environmental agenda.  Many other nonprofits could do the same – but would find money a better motivation.  What sustainability programs could offer enough income to get community groups to promote them?  
  
  Community groups can promote solar for income. Over the last year, Beyond Oil NYC has explored how community groups could earn income from sustainability initiatives. There’s probably no easy money in either compost or urban agriculture. Good news: CBOs can earn money from promoting solar energy systems right now – and start conversations on sustainability and resilience. It's easy and we'll show you how, on request.

• Can NYC community organizations earn income from neighborhood scale food waste collection andcomposting?  Can industrial tricycles make a difference? Could bags of compost with the name of your block association or church ever be used for fundraising - like Girl Scout cookies? 

• In 2013, this blog has explored how community-based nonprofits could earn income from promoting sustainability. In fall 2012 we published a reportlooking into potential projects in composting, urban agriculture, energyefficiency retrofits and solar power.  Here's a summary, starting with lessons from white roof painting.

• Green building expert and Mayoral task force member Alex Wilson explains that energy efficiency isn’t enough.  Here’s how to make NYC buildings more resilient, to prepare for future extreme weather events and other disruptions.

• Seeking urban agriculture business opportunities for community groups with limited budgets. If your group has lots of cash, you can build costly rooftop greenhouses for very profitable year-round production. Can’t afford that? Maybe your group would be satisfied with starting more gardens, boosting local environmental literacy and food security. Combining two innovations could dramatically increase the amount of gardening space in your community, at minimal cost.
  

• Promoting urban agriculture in NYC.   While there are 3,000 acres of flat roof space suitable for farming, it’s easier to start with vacant lots. Here’s how to engage community-based nonprofits as local organizers: movable farming projects on vacant lots.
  

• Food Bank for Westchester has set up vegetable gardens on the lawns of nearby nonprofits. How can we adapt theirmodel for NYC nonprofits to encourage gardening on vacant lots? Starting with green marketing narratives grounded in real community improvements, the goal is identifying micro-business opportunities.  

In June 2013 I accepted an offer to work as District Manager at Manhattan Community Board Six, and left LICP. 

Queens Gazette ran a very positive interview with me, in which I pitched my green projects, and a series of sustainability film screenings I hosted at Coffeed Cafe from fall 2013 to spring 2014.  

Screenings would start with one of these fine short videos:

• "ClimateChange 101" from Climate Reality Project
• "300Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds", Post Carbon Institute.  
• "Don't worry, driveon: fossil fools and fracking lies," PCI 
• "Who Killed EconomicGrowth?," PCI 

Besides the screenings, I also pitched my proposal for community groups to refer their constituents and neighbors for energy conservation and solar energy projects.  Why would they bother? The financial motivation of referral fees from contractors for a small percentage of any jobs that were installed. It had worked in LIC, and the community solar models being touted by the big solar institutions seemed suspiciously optimistic on why community groups would go out of their way to promote solar with nothing in it for them.   

I wrote an article about Transition founder Rob Hopkin's NYC presentation, and the UK movement's focus on local economic development.
 
The Transition movement is a unique organizing method that catalyzes community level responses to climate change.  Co-founded by Rob Hopkins in England in 2005, there are now over 1,400 Transition initiatives in 44 countries.  They all support a transition to clean renewable energy, which is often blocked at national and international levels by politics, the domination of big over small businesses, and the myth that endless economic growth is possible on a finite planet.  As Hopkins explained to a small NYC audience, Transition is increasingly focused on local economic development.  A series of reports on the financial benefits from localizing food production, energy conservation and renewable energy capacity, and case studies of entrepreneurial ventures in these sectors, outline building blocks of a new green economy. 

Carried along by the rare burst of enviro fervor that accompanies Earth Day, in 2014 I did three enviro events in a row: 

• a screening of "Do the Math" at North Presbyterian Church in Flushing, Queens
• was a panelist at World Peace Earth Day Celebration, 230 West 29th Street, NYC
• and was a panelist again at Coalition for Block and Community Leaders annual symposium on the UWS.  

In spring 2014 I attended Age of Limits, a tiny conference in rural Maryland. A big perk was lots of personal time with the presenters - John Michael Greer, Albert Bates, Dmitri Orlov, Gail Tverberg, climate scientist Mark Cochrane, Peter Kilde of Community Action Partnership.  It was everyone's collective honor to have as keynote speaker Dennis Meadows, the lead author of the original Age of Limits report from the 1970s.  That report was one of computer analyses of population, environmental and natural resource trends.  It concluded that either the world slows growth in the 70s and 80s to attain a sustainable plateau of resource use, or if growth continued, would push us over the cliff followed by sharp declines in human population and resource use in the 21st century.  He said recent data was right on track with the original report.  The conference was rare for him in that everyone listening was already thoroughly familiar with this discussion. Albert Bates wrote a great article about it.

Radio podcast host KMO interviewed me.

"KMO welcomes Dan Miner of Beyond Oil NYC to the C-Realm to talk about talking about Peak Oil, Climate Change and other big picture, existential issues with busy New Yorkers. A messenger who presents the situation in its full gravity to people caught up in the collective trance will seem like a lunatic, but how much sugar-coating is too much? Does it make sense to humor people’s expectations that renewable sources of energy will power the lifestyle that citizens in the heart of empire have come to regard as normal? Are minor gains that pale in comparison to the scale of industrial civilization’s dilemma worth the effort? The conversation turns to “Preppers” and the way that they are portrayed as clueless and damaged social rejects in the corporate media…"

In June 2014 I was on a peak oil panel at Left Forum. Here's the video. My 20 minute presentation starts at 39.30.  They asked me back again so I guess someone liked it.  (BTW, here's a short video of me speaking about climate change and fuel depletion for five minutes to a small group in Tompkins Square in Dec. 2012.)

However, the film series didn't start off any sparks and the solar referral pitch didn't have any takers... so at that point I was out of gas.  

Around that time my longtime colleague John Bell, organizer of Transition in Westchester, said that he would introduce me to the new northeast regional organizer for Transition, Pamela Boyce Simms.  Like him, I quickly signed up as a volunteer for the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub, and a new chapter began.