The TCCPI Newsletter
Issue #66: September-October 2021
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. 
Ithaca's $100M Building Energy Efficiency and
Electrification Plan Heads to Common Council
by Jimmy Jordan, Ithaca Voice, 10/21/21
Ithaca’s ambitious plan to decarbonize its building stock garnered the unanimous approval of the City’s Planning and Economic Development Committee at their Oct. 20 meeting and is now set to go before the Common Council.

The council will vote on Nov. 3 to give Mayor Svante Myrick the power to authorize an unprecedented relationship between government, business, and private equity as outlined in the Energy Efficiency Retrofitting and Thermal Load Electrification Program.

Details of the Efficiency and Electrification Program are outlined in a previous article here.
The proposed plan would provide financing for the electrification of both commercial and residential buildings in the city. Photo courtesy of Ithaca Voice.
The plan to address the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions coming from Ithaca’s building stock, in essence, aims to turn this massive undertaking into a low-risk investment opportunity to attract private equity. Funds from private investors would back opt-in loan and leasing programs that Ithaca’s home and building owners would be able to utilize to pay for energy efficiency and thermal load electrification projects. These projects—replacing poorly insulated windows, swapping out a furnace for a heat pump, or ditching a gas range for one that runs on electric induction, for example—have steep upfront costs but, typically, are advertised as paying for themselves through energy savings while also reducing GHG emissions.

This strategy to make Ithaca’s buildings go green en masse is Luis Aguirre-Torres’ vision. He’s been tasked with implementing the Ithaca Green New Deal (IGND), which aims to decarbonize Ithaca’s economy by 2030 while also putting social equity at the forefront of the City’s efforts to fight climate change. According to Aguirre-Torres’ estimates, Ithaca needs to account for 400,000 metric tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere every year. Around 40 percent of that is coming from the 6,000+ homes and buildings in the City.

The City has attracted capital commitments for $100 million from private investors, with the potential of an additional $250 million if the program is successful in its initial implementation. Given the magnitude and complexity of the project, the City has opted to hire a third party to manage the entire program - in coordination with the office of sustainability - including all operational and financial aspects.

With Common Council’s approval, Mayor Myrick would sign a contract with the winner of the City’s Energy Efficiency and Thermal Load Electrification RFP, to be designated as Program Manager, and who will be tasked with setting up a financing facility to administer capital calls to private investors, and to manage all operational aspects including outreach, energy assessments, contracting, financing, implementation and quality control. A key element of the program is the need to collaborate with diverse institutions currently focused on developing a green workforce, as the program is expected to generate at least 400 job opportunities within the next several years.

Aguirre-Torres has put forward a recommended program manager consisting of a consortium of companies and organizations: BlocPower, Guidehouse, Taitem Engineering, Alturus, and Energetic Insurance, with support provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension, NYSERDA, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

This consortium was identified through a competitive Request for Proposals, for which Ithaca received three submissions total. Aguirre-Torres has described this group of organizations and companies as ideal for fulfilling the goals of the Energy Efficiency and Thermal Load Electrification Program.

Utilizing a Program Manager addresses two key issues: (1) It allows the City to attract specialized operational and financial expertise it wouldn’t otherwise be able to put on its payroll; and (2) The financial facility, along with investors, will bear the risks of the loan and leasing program.

The resolution coming to the Council specifies that any agreement between the City and Program Manager “will not include an obligation of the City of Ithaca to provide loan guarantees, or include any obligation that would negatively affect the City’s financial liability and credit rating.”
Next TCCPI Meeting

Friday, December 10, 2021
9 to 11 am
Due to the current pandemic, the monthly TCCPI meetings have moved online. Contact Peter Bardaglio, the TCCPI coordinator, for further details at pbardaglio@gmail.com.
Cornell and Ithaca Join Together in Finger Lakes Energy Compact
by Meher Bhatia, Cornell Daily Sun, 10/19/21
Cayuga Lake looking northeast. Photo by Peter Bardaglio.
Cornell University and the City and Town of Ithaca on Sept. 24 officially became the first partnership between a college campus and city to be recognized by the United Nations in support of the international organization's sustainability goals.

The Finger Lakes Energy Compact was made to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 and transition to sustainable energy for all of Ithaca, aiming to support the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and impart solutions towards a clean, just, renewable energy future.
“[The compact is] nothing more than a couple of stakeholders getting together in a group before the United Nations to do the best they can do to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and increase access to clean energy,” said Luis Aguirre-Torres, the City of Ithaca’s new director of sustainability.

As part of the compact, the City of Ithaca is in the process of integrating community choice aggregation — purchasing renewable energy in bulk on behalf of all its residents to make the transition to more sustainable energy sources cheaper.

Another plan the compact implements is the Energy Efficiency Retrofit and Thermal Load Electrification Program, which aims to replace the use of natural gas in homes with electricity, Aguirre-Torres explained.

To accomplish this, the City and Town of Ithaca are in the process of creating the Ithaca Electrification Fund, which would offset some of the costs of replacing fossil fuel energy with renewables for its residents. The fund, in conjunction with providing financial assistance to lower-income communities, will help cover costs for the replacement of fossil fuel-based space and water heating systems with zero-cost energy performance lending and leasing programs.

Part of moving forward, Aguirre-Torres said, is showing the people of Ithaca what is possible.

“Everybody knows about climate change, but the next level is education on what’s possible and what’s not,” Aguirre-Torres said. “And what’s possible [is] figuring out a way of making it cheaper. That’s the way we make progress.”

The programs are only two of several steps being taken to move toward affordable and clean energy by 2030 — Sustainable Development Goal 7 of the United Nations Development Program.

“I’m very happy and proud to say [this is] the most aggressive program … in the entire country,” Aguirre-Torres said. “Nobody else in the U.S. is doing this.”

Aguirre-Torres sees the compact as essential because federal climate legislation is stagnating, which necessitates more local solutions.

“[Local governments] are literally the last line of defense,” Aguirre-Torres said. “If [the federal government is] not going to do it, I’m going to do it, because it’s not going to happen at the macro level. We tried that and we failed.”

Editor's note: David Kay, senior extension associate at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a member of the Ithaca Green New Deal (IGND) steering committee, is representing the IGND at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
New Section of Dryden Rail Trail Opens
by Matt Steeker, Ithaca Journal, 10/26/21
Following decades of work to reclaim a 0.4 mile section of an abandoned railroad corridor, Dryden officials opened the newest part of the Dryden Rail Trail in October.

The property includes a rail bed that runs through the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC) Reynolds Game Farm — the last operating game farm in the state, according to Dan Lamb, Dryden Town Board Deputy Supervisor.

When completed, the Dryden Rail Trail will span the entire town, connecting the East Ithaca Recreation Way on the west all the way to the Jim Schug section on the east. The trail will connect the Village of Dryden to Freeville, Etna, Varna, Cornell, and the City of Ithaca, and it will form a key linkage across the County’s 240 miles of interconnected trails.
Town Supervisor Jason Leifer, Council members Dan Lamb and Leonardo Vargas Mendez, and Highway Supervisor Rick Young on the restored bridge on the Rail Trail. Photo courtesy of Ithaca Journal.
The Town of Dryden and the DEC reached a 20-year agreement for the trail after years of meetings and negotiations. In order to reach this agreement, the town had to convince supporters of the game farm that the trail would support rather than threaten the state’s last pheasant raise and release program.

The scenic stretch crosses Cascadilla Creek and features two restored historic railroad timber-trestle bridges. The trail is covered with a stone dust surface and is ADA accessible, inviting activities such as hiking, cycling, skiing, horseback riding, e-bikes, and bird watching.

Lamb called the agreement unprecedented for how the town and the state collaborated on the project. The state had to enter in a certificate of occupancy and use permit, which is usually used for buildings instead of trails. 

“Last spring, this section was overgrown and completely impassable," said Rick Young, Dryden Town Highway Superintendent, in a press release. "Our guys cleared their way to the two old railroad bridges."

Funding for the section is part of a $182,000 grant from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation through the Environmental Protection Fund. That grant, awarded in 2017, required an equal match by the town which the town has offered to meet by providing its own labor, according to Lamb. 

The trail was first proposed in 2005, but didn't make substantial progress until 2016 due to challenges town leaders faced with getting through the game farm, getting over Route 13 and obtaining easements from private landowners, according to Lamb. In 2016, Lamb created the Rail Trail Task Force after being appointed as deputy town supervisor.
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One Last Thing: COP26, Youth, and the Failure of Governments
As international leaders gather in Glasgow, Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, which U.S. climate envoy John Kerry calls “the last best hope for the world to get its act together,” perhaps the most important thing they can keep in mind is a landmark study issued in September that underscores the deep anxiety, distress, and anger that young people are experiencing about climate change and government inaction to deal with it. 
In New York City, ahead of COP26, activists unfurled a giant banner in front of the United Nations headquarters. Photo by Rainforest Action Network licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
The survey—the largest global investigation of its kind—asked 1,000 16- to 25-year-olds in each of ten countries how they felt about the climate crisis and government responses to it. The results found that 59% of respondents said they felt “very worried” or “extremely worried” about climate change and over 45% of them said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives. Thirty-nine percent indicated they were “hesitant to have children.” Underlying the distress of young people was the perception, in the words of the report, “that they have no future, that humanity is doomed, that governments are failing to respond adequately, and with feelings of betrayal and abandonment by governments and adults.”
Caroline Hickman, a researcher in climate psychology at the University of Bath and one of the authors, acknowledged in an NPR interview ​that they were aware children and young people around the world were upset about climate change. “What we didn't realize was quite how frightened they were,” she said. “We didn't realize the depth of the feeling. And we didn't realize how that was impacting on their thinking and their daily functioning."

The sad fact is that young people have substantial cause to be worried. Greenhouse gas emissions reached a new record high last year and a U.N. emissions gap analysis—what U.N. secretary general Antonio Guterres called a “thundering wake-up call”—released just before the opening of COP26 demonstrated that commitments made under the Paris Agreement will fail to keep the global warming under 1.5C this century. Indeed, it concluded that the world was on track to heat up about 2.7C, which would have disastrous consequences. Another U.N. report found that fossil fuel production planned by the world’s governments “vastly exceeds” the limit needed to keep the rise in global temperature to 1.5C.

As might be expected, the survey of young people revealed some variation from country to country. The largest proportion of respondents who felt “very worried” or “extremely worried” lived in countries extremely vulnerable to climate destabilization: the Philippines (84%), India (68%) and Brazil (67%). But even young people from the wealthier nations included in the survey (Australia, Finland, France, Portugal, the U.K., and the U.S.) expressed a great deal of concern. Sixty-five percent of young Portuguese, for example, indicated high degrees of climate anxiety.

Especially troubling is the revelation that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed believed their governments were not telling them the truth about the effectiveness of the measures they were undertaking on climate change. A news report in Nature succinctly summarized the findings: “65% of respondents agreed with the statement that governments are failing young people, 64% agreed that they are lying about the impact of actions taken, and 60% agreed they were dismissing people’s distress. Only 36% agreed that governments are acting according to science.”

Pause for a moment to consider the meaning of these data: most young people in the world believe that their governments are deceiving them about the most critical issue of our time, an unprecedented crisis that threatens the very future of human civilization. Don’t be surprised if a lot of these youth show up in Glasgow to express their frustration and anger about this situation. In fact, let’s hope they do. It may be the only way to finally get politicians and policymakers to pay attention and take the steps necessary to head off runaway climate chaos.

Peter Bardaglio
TCCPI Coordinator
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.
309 N. Aurora St.,
Ithaca, NY 14850
207-229-6183