The TCCPI Newsletter January-February 2023: NYS Climate Action, Heat Pump Pilot, Thwaites Glacier Melt, Six Mile Creek, Turning Up the Heat

The TCCPI Newsletter

Issue #74: January-February 2023

TCCPI is a multisector collaboration seeking to leverage the climate action commitments made by Cornell University, Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Tompkins County, the City of Ithaca, and the Town of Ithaca to mobilize a countywide energy efficiency effort and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Launched in June 2008 and generously supported by the Park Foundation, TCCPI is a project of the Sustainable Markets Foundation.

We are committed to helping Tompkins County achieve a dynamic economy, healthy environment, and resilient community through a focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Albany Lawmakers Advance State Climate Priorities

in New Legislative Session

by Samantha Maldonado, The City, 1/19/23

State legislators welcome Gov. Hochul for her 2023 State of the State address. Photo courtesy of NYS Senate Media Services licensed under CC By 2.0.

New York passed its nation-leading climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), over three years ago. This past December, the Climate Action Council, established by the CLCPA, finalized its scoping plan for achieving the mandates of that law. And Gov. Kathy Hochul kicked off 2023 by laying out her climate priorities in the State of the State address on January 10.

Now, as the legislative session gets into full swing, state lawmakers are expected to write and pass bills to accelerate specific emission-reducing initiatives that touch on all sectors of the economy — including power, housing, and transportation — and greenlight dollars to fund climate spending.

“Everybody’s going through the [scoping] document right now, [asking] what should be done through rules? What should be done through legislation?” state Sen. Pete Harckham (D-Westchester), chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, told The City.

While the outcomes of the climate law are mandated, the scoping plan is not. It serves to inform lawmakers about policy options for ensuring those outcomes — though the governor can order agencies to carry out some of the suggested measures. Lawmakers enjoy greater leverage over the executive branch in the budget process, which involves lengthy negotiations.

The Senate Committees on Finance, Environmental Conservation, and Energy and Telecommunications on Thursday held a hearing over more than eight hours on how to use the scoping plan — which maps a route for how the state can meet its climate goals — as a resource for plotting legislative and budget priorities.

Lawmakers, some expressing skepticism and some getting up to speed with the components of the climate plan, grilled scientists, lawyers, environmental advocates, and executives from the clean energy and fossil fuel industries about what the legislature should prioritize.

“We think it’s important for people to have an opportunity to go on record with what they think the state of New York wants to be doing in this year’s budget, as we just are beginning that process,” said Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), chair of the finance committee, during the hearing.

Costs of Action and Inaction

The state’s 2019 CLCPA mandates that New York must get 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and achieve a zero-emissions electric grid a decade after that. With the first deadlines less than a decade away, lawmakers and advocates have acknowledged there’s no time to waste in generating revenue to fund the initiatives that will transition the state to a cleaner future.

“Now that we’ve passed the CLCPA, let’s think through what it costs,” Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), chair of the energy committee, said at the hearing. “I’m particularly interested in the issues around economic justice and environmental justice and equity.”

Questions about how to fund the transition away from fossil fuels and how to lessen the cost to consumers loomed large.

“I have many constituents that would definitely struggle with that cost,” said Sen. Daniel Stec (R-Adirondacks), referring to the expenses of converting a fossil-fuel powered home to use all or almost all electricity.

“We still have to figure out how to make sure that the cost is not borne in an unreasonable way or an inequitable way by consumers,” said Sen. Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn).

Robert Howarth, an ecology professor at Cornell University and member of the group that approved the scoping plan, emphasized the need for the state to come up with a way to help New Yorkers with upfront costs of such a transition. Howarth suggested having utilities cover those costs and recoup them later.

He reminded the lawmakers the cost of inaction will likely outweigh the cost of action, which the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has estimated to be $270 billion over the next 30 years. But senators still questioned what that idea means for state spending.

“How do we evaluate that within the context of the state budget? Like, what savings to taxpayers are there if we do act as opposed to if we don’t act?” asked Sen. Rachel May (D-Syracuse).

The scoping plan envisioned a statewide cap-and-invest program, which aims to limit greenhouse gas emissions across the economy, using the revenue to pay for climate action. The governor’s budget, due February 1, is expected to provide more details about possible funding.

Hochul has directed the Department of Environmental Conservation and NYSERDA to begin a process to implement that system, but called in her State of the State for the legislature to create an associated rebate program to direct some of the money generated to families to offset costs of energy and upgrades.

Next TCCPI Meeting

Friday, March 31, 2023

9 to 11 am

TCCPI meetings have moved online. Contact Peter Bardaglio, the TCCPI coordinator, for further details at pbardaglio@gmail.com.

Sustainable Finger Lakes Launches Affordable Heat Pump Pilot

By Mikayla-Mack Rovenolt, Tompkins Weekly, 2/15/23

Sustainable Finger Lakes (SFLX) has launched a state-supported pilot to install high-efficiency heat pumps in 100 lower-income rental units in the City and Town of Ithaca.

The organization was recently awarded a $585,000 performance-based grant by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) through its Innovative Market Strategies program.

While this high-efficiency heat pump program is in its early stages, it has ambitious goals that will benefit the local community by improving rental properties while focusing on low-to-moderate income (LMI) tenants.

Milena Bimpong, the tenant engagement coordinator at Sustainable Finger Lakes, tabling at a recent Southside Community Center event. Photo courtesy of Sustainable Finger Lakes.

The new grant will provide extra incentives for heat pumps, electric panel upgrades, and heat pump water heaters in Ithaca rentals occupied by tenants earning less than 80% of median income for their household size.

The project is focused on rentals in buildings with one to four units. Apartments must be brought up to minimum standards for insulation and air sealing before installing heat pumps, but landlords can tap into generous existing subsidies to get that work done as well.

Split Incentive Issue

One of the benefits of the program is that it is designed to address the “split incentive” barrier that often prevents energy efficiency improvements in rental properties. In this case, the “split incentive” is landlords paying to upgrade units and installing the new pumps so that everything can work at its most efficient level, resulting in lower energy bills for tenants. Without an incentive for landlords, they are less likely to make upgrades outside of basic maintenance requirements.

Gay Nicholson, president of Sustainable Finger Lakes, has been involved with combating the climate crisis for 30 years. Nicholson also serves on the board of HeatSmart Tompkins and the Tompkins County Planning Advisory Board. Part of her efforts have been focused on including LMI households in the transition to clean energy.

“I have always felt that climate change and inequality are our two biggest problems, and so I try to take a systems approach to address linked problems,” Nicholson said.

To make the upgrades happen, the SFLX team plans to take a whole-systems approach by working directly with landlords, tenants, and their equipment installers. They will also work to address the split incentive.

“It’s a pretty complex pilot project,” Nicholson said, “but it’s important work because this category that we’re working on is one- to four-unit buildings — older houses that have been cut up into apartments — that’s 24% of the LMI housing in New York state.”

Nicholson continued that the pilot’s goal, with the various teams on this project, is to study what does and does not work so that as the project grows they can apply what does work to other regions and help low-income tenants across the state of New York.

In other conversations with SFLX, landlords have raised concerns about investing in new energy systems when tenant behaviors are not always efficient.

“Many Ithaca landlords are renting to students, so there’s a lot of young people in rentals where doors and windows are left open, lights are left on, that kind of thing,” Nicholson said. “So then, the landlord is like, ‘Why should I invest in energy efficiency? It’s meaningless with this behavior.’ We’re saying we will provide education to your tenants about energy and climate issues, and specifically about best practices for cooling and heating with the heat pump.”

This tenant education will hopefully make landlords more comfortable with investing if they know their investments will be used properly by tenants. This is important because, while there are significant monetary incentives for landlords to be involved in the pilot, they have to agree not to raise the tenant’s rent for two years, except to recover documented increases in property taxes, if applicable.

Residents must agree to attend a climate information session that educates residents on climate issues and how to change their energy consumption to better the planet and their wallets.

Accepted tenants must also sign an agreement to share their story about their experience in the pilot and how their comfort and indoor air quality issues were addressed, along with providing reasonable accommodation for the contractors accessing their homes to make the energy improvements.

Performance Systems Development (PSD) is an Ithaca-based, national business that is supporting the project with energy and heat pump performance modeling software. PSD translates building science information into innovative efficiency programs, engineering services, training and software tools. The modeling software used in this project was developed with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NYSERDA.

Cornell Research Team Investigates Antarctic Glacier's Retreat

by James Dean, Cornell Chronicle, 2/15/23

Collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica could contribute significantly to sea-level rise. Photo courtesy of Cornell Chronicle.

First-of-their-kind observations beneath the floating shelf of a vulnerable Antarctic glacier reveal widespread cracks and crevasses where melting occurs more rapidly, contributing to the Florida-sized glacier’s retreat and potentially to sea-level rise, according to a Cornell research team and international collaborators.

Deploying the remotely operated Icefin underwater robot through a nearly 2,000-foot-deep borehole drilled in the ice, the team captured the first close-up views of the critical point near the grounding line where Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica — one of the continent’s fastest changing and most unstable glaciers — meets the Amundsen Sea.

From that area, the researchers concluded that Thwaites has retreated smoothly and steadily up the ocean floor since at least 2011. They found that flat sections covering much of the ice shelf’s base were thinning, though not as quickly as computer models had suggested. Meanwhile, the walls of steeply sloped crevasses and staircase-like features were melting outward at much faster rates.

The findings, reported February 15 in the journal Nature, provide new insight into melting processes at glaciers exposed to relatively warm ocean water, and promise to improve models predicting Thwaites’ potentially significant contribution to sea-level rise.

A New Understanding

“These new ways of observing the glacier allow us to understand that it’s not just how much melting is happening, but how and where it is happening that matters in these very warm parts of Antarctica,” said Britney Schmidt, associate professor of astronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and Cornell Engineering. “We see crevasses, and probably terraces, across warming glaciers like Thwaites. Warm water is getting into the cracks, helping wear down the glacier at its weakest points.”

Schmidt, whose team developed Icefin, is the lead author of “Heterogeneous Melting Near the Thwaites Glacier Grounding Line,” the Nature article that has received widespread media attention. Additional co-authors from the Department of Astronomy (A&S) and Schmidt’s Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab include Research Scientist Peter Washam; Senior Research Engineers Andrew Mullen and Matthew Meister; Research Engineers Frances Bryson ’17 and Daniel Dichek; Program Manager Enrica Quartini; and Justin Lawrence, a former doctoral student and visiting scholar.

“Icefin is collecting data as close to the ice as possible in locations no other tool can currently reach,” said Washam, who led analysis of Icefin data used to calculate melt rates. “It’s showing us that this system is very complex and requires a rethinking of how the ocean is melting the ice, especially in a location like Thwaites.”

The robotic under-ice observations were collected in early 2020 as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), the largest international field campaign ever undertaken in Antarctica, funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council. Complementing Icefin’s observations, partners on ITGC’s MELT project also collected data using radar, ocean moorings and other sensors at multiple sites.

Since the 1990s, the Thwaites grounding line has retreated nearly 9 miles and the amount of ice flowing out of the 75-mile-wide region has nearly doubled, according to ITGC. Because much of the glacier sits below sea level, it is considered susceptible to rapid ice loss that could raise sea levels by more than 1.5 feet. Collapse of the ice sheet behind Thwaites could add substantially more, “with profound consequences for humanity,” according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

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One Last Thing: Turning Up the Heat on Climate Action in Albany

The Climate Action Council has delivered a sound and comprehensive plan for meeting the crucial targets of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which established the Council and charged it with putting together the plan. The question now is whether Gov. Hochul and the state legislature will step up and provide the necessary backing to ensure the plan's success.

This year's legislative session has been underway for too little time to reach any conclusions about the work of the General Assembly and State Senate, but the governor has laid out her priorities in the January 10th State of the State address, as well as in the proposed executive budget issued on February 1st. It's a mixed record so far.

Renewable Heat Now rally at the state capitol on January 24. Photo credit: Sane Energy Project.

Hochul underscored once again her support for phasing out fossil fuel heating and appliances in new construction, a position she announced in last year's executive budget. In addition, she backed the Climate Action Council's call for a cap-and-invest program, a vehicle for funding climate action, and proposed modest programs to improve energy affordability.

But the governor's actions fell short on several key fronts. Most important, she wants to push back the date for a phase-out of fossil fuels in newly-constructed small buildings to 2026 and to 2029 for high rise buildings.

These dates are one year longer than proposed in the final scoping plan and two years more than initially laid out in the draft plan. It's a disappointing move, and flies in the face of mounting evidence that we need to speed up, not slow down, meaningful efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately, the state legislature has the opportunity to rectify the matter and restore the dates originally called for the in the draft scoping plan. The All-Electric Building Act excludes fossil fuel from new buildings, starting in 2024 with buildings under 7 stories and then 2027 for larger buildings.

The Renewable Heat Now campaign, which has brought together over 220 organizations (including TCCPI), strongly backs this approach, urging legislators to stick with the earlier dates. It also proposes the following:

A funding package that includes a Green Affordable Pre-Electrification (GAP) fund, low interest financing, and additional funding for the NYSERDA’s Regional Clean Energy Hubs. Many homes in New York State have crucial health and safety issues, including mold, lead, gas, and/or carbon monoxide leaks. These issues must be remedied before an energy audit can be done to determine how to weatherize the home, save money, and make it electrification-ready. Families need financial and technical help to afford these critical retrofits addressing health and safety issues in existing buildings. This funding is necessary to ensure a just energy transition for all New Yorkers.

The NY Home Energy Equitable Transition (HEAT) Act eliminates over $200 million per year in subsidies for new gas hookups, enables neighborhood-scale building decarbonization, and improves energy affordability by eliminating the costly “obligation to serve” gas regulation, and ensuring no household pays more than 6% of their income for energy.

The Energy Efficiency, Equity, and Jobs Act deploys funding for cost-saving energy efficiency retrofits where they are most needed, removes health hazards from homes so they can undergo energy efficiency retrofits, and ensures that the workers hired for energy efficiency upgrades come from disadvantaged communities.

Another important bill, part of NY Renews' Climate, Jobs, and Justice campaign (and also supported by TCCPI), would eliminate over $330 million of the most egregious state subsidies handed out each year to the fossil fuel industry. The Stop Climate Polluter Handouts Act preserves tax exemptions that help low- to moderate-income households, including a home-heating credit and an agricultural exemption for small- to mid-sized farmers.

Together these proposals will significantly strengthen the state's climate action plan and correct some of the serious flaws in Gov. Hochul's climate agenda. The next few weeks in Albany will be telling, so now is the time to make our voices heard.

Be sure to visit the website for TCCPI's latest project, the Ithaca 2030 District, an interdisciplinary public-private collaboration working to create a groundbreaking high-performance building district in Downtown Ithaca.

Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative

309 N. Aurora St.,

Ithaca, NY 14850

207-229-6183