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Just In! for April 27 2024
The weekly newsletter of the New York Geothermal Energy Organization (NY-GEO)
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Just In! is NY-GEO's weekly news feed for members. See more information on memberships here. If we send you a complimentary copy and you're not a member of NY-GEO, it means we value your role in the transition to renewable heating, but without a membership, please don't count on getting Just In! weekly. For past issues, check out the Just In! Archive available on the NY-GEO.org website. | |
Regulations Lag For ‘All-Electric Buildings’ Law – David Lombardo – Capitol Pressroom – Interview with Michael Hernandez, New York Policy Director for Rewiring America – Lombardo states: “While state laws may get headlines, real government nerds know that regulations are where the rubber meets the road.” Hernandez notes “We’re still anxiously waiting for them (the NY Codes Council) to actually incorporate the All-Electric Buildings Act into the Building Code update.” Link to 14-minute video here. | |
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From the NY Assembly web page on the All-Electric Buildings Act
NY Homes & Community Renewal (HCR) Comes Through with All-Electric Affordable Housing in Buffalo - “Governor Kathy Hochul today announced progress toward redeveloping the Commodore Perry Homes in Buffalo’s First Ward neighborhood into a 27-building, all-electric housing development with 405 affordable homes. After closing on financing, the project is set to begin its first phase of construction – the demolition of the existing, long-vacant, 24-building development – on Monday, April 15… Perry Homes I is designed to be a highly efficient, all-electric project… As part of New York State’s Homes and Community Renewal Clean Energy Initiative the new buildings will have high performance windows, enhanced insulation, a combination of high efficiency building mounted LED lighting to promote safety, and solar panels on each of the three mid-rise buildings. Every apartment will be equipped with inverter-driven air source heat pumps for air conditioning and heating and electric hot water heaters, ENERGY STAR certified dishwashers, refrigerators, washers and dryers, low-flow plumbing fixtures.” HCR is walking the decarbonization talk ! Press release here.
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“Before” and “proposed after” at Buffalo’s Perry Projects
NY HEAT Cited as Bill That Might Yet Pass – Rebecca C. Lewis - City & State First Read – “The NY HEAT Act could still be passed before the end of session, though higher taxes on the wealthy are likely dead… While debating the budget, Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chair Helene Weinstein said the issue was too complex for the budget. The legislation does have fiscal implications, but it remains possible for lawmakers to address it post-budget, though it has stalled in the Assembly in the past.” Article link here.
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New Federal Buildings: Emission Free by 2030 – Zach Burdyk - The Hill - “The Biden administration has finalized standards for federal buildings that will eliminate onsite fossil fuel usage for new projects by the end of the decade, the Energy Department confirmed Wednesday. In the announcement, first shared with The Hill, the Energy Department said the rule will require 90 percent cuts to emissions from new construction between fiscal 2025 and 2029, with onsite emissions eliminated from all new projects and major renovations beginning in 2030.” Article link here.
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NYSERDA Embraces National Geothermal Month – NYSERDA has posted a National Geothermal Month web page. Among the resources listed: “Looking for more tax credit information? Visit the NY-GEO website for general information and links to geothermal tax incentives and credit resources.” NY-GEO tax credit web page link here.
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Capitol Pressroom Interviews New DEC Interim Commissioner – NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos recently resigned after serving over 8 years over the agency that is charged with implementing NY’s Climate Law. His interim successor, Sean Mahar, talks about his new leadership role and the short-term challenges he faces. 14-minue video link here.
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Bedrock Energy on Geo for Big Buildings - Dave Roberts – Volts – “In this episode, Joselyn Lai of Bedrock Energy describes hardware and software improvements that enable geothermal heat pumps to be installed more quickly and less expensively, even in large commercial and industrial buildings in tight urban spaces… We're going to get into how exactly to shrink the physical and capital footprint of geothermal heat pumps so that many more buildings can use them to go carbon-free.” Article link here.
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Joselyn Lai, the CEO of Bedrock Energy
Pumping Up the Desire for Heat Pumps – Michael T. Roberts & Will Hammond, Jr. – “In honor of Earth Day, the Building Decarbonization Coalition has released a music video for ‘(I’m Your) Heat Pump.’ The video for the funk-fueled song, written by The Switch Is On volunteer ambassador Michael T. Roberts and Will Hammond Jr., seeks to inspire desire for electrification and heat pump technology, driving the heat pump-curious to The Switch Is On to begin their electrification journey.” Song video link here.
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HUD and USDA Adopt More Energy Efficient Building Codes for Affordable Housing – Celebratory press release - “Lowell Ungar, federal policy director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said: ‘This long-overdue action will protect homeowners and renters from high energy costs while making a real dent in climate pollution. It makes no sense for the government to help people move into new homes that waste energy and can be dangerous in extreme temperatures’… By improving energy efficiency, the congressionally mandated requirements will save residents an estimated $15,071 for single-family homes and $5,886 per multifamily unit over 30 years, net of costs (compared to homes under existing U.S. requirements), the agencies said. Residents of single-family homes would save $963 every year on energy costs, on average.” The code reportedly doesn’t include electrification provisions, but the advance it represents sets the stage for further progress. Article link here
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Electrification with Clean Power Is Key for a Growing, Competitive Industrial Sector - Nora Wang Esram, Senior Director for Research, & Anna Johnson, Senior Researcher, Industrial Program, ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) - “Directly electrifying industrial process heat to avoid combustion of fossil fuels is essential. Some green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage will be needed but, due to their expense and other challenges, should generally be limited to applications that are hard to electrify. specially in the case of low- to medium-temperature process heating (below 300°C), electrification technologies are commercially available today. The Department of Energy recently gave its vote of confidence, awarding more than half of a $6 billion decarbonization funding pot to electrification projects—but even this investment will only be a start.” Article link here.
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Greenwashing Fracked Gas in Pittsburgh - Quinn Glabicki, PublicSource – Inside Climate News – EQT, a “Pittsburgh corporation, says its natural gas is saving the world, countering Russian aggression and solving the climate crisis. Numerous experts say that’s not true…Scientists have long warned that methane, the main ingredient in the gas fracked out of Appalachia, is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year span. The International Energy Agency [IEA] has said that if the world is to stay within safe limits of global heating and have a chance at achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, new fossil fuel development must stop immediately.” Article link here.
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More on the Step Back from Three Major NY Offshore Wind Projects – Maria Gallucci – Canary Media - “GE pivoted away from making huge offshore wind turbines. Now, New York authorities have denied contracts to three major projects banking on the design. A month ago, officials in New York celebrated the completion of South Fork Wind, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm to operate in the state — and nationwide. The milestone marked what they hoped would be a fresh start after a year of setbacks and disappointments for the industry, not just in New York but across the Eastern Seaboard. But the emerging offshore wind sector hasn’t escaped the tumult just yet." Article link here.
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Renewables Continue To Be Cheaper – Alison F. Takemura – Canary Media – Renewable electricity already beats fossil fuels on cost globally — and according to analysts, the gap is only going to grow. By 2030, technology improvements could slash today’s prices by a quarter for wind and by half for solar. 62 percent of global energy investment is expected to flow to clean energy technologies this year. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency, global clean energy capacity is expected to jump 107 gigawatts to more than 440 gigawatts this year. Article link here.
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Illinois Wind Weakened Last Year - Brett Chase, Dan Gearino – Inside Climate News – “Electricity from renewable sources dropped last year even as Illinois and surrounding Midwest states pushed to replace fossil fuels… and climate change may have played a part. The amount of electricity generated from wind power—the state’s biggest source of renewable energy—took a surprising 6 percent dip from the previous year, while natural gas-generated electricity had a 43 percent jump in 2023, government data show. A pressure system in Canada—the same weather pattern that helped spur wildfires up north, filling Chicago skies with smoke last summer—was a big reason wind power was down in 2023. The shifting wind direction affected how much wind powered all those nearly 300-foot turbines dotting the Illinois countryside.” Article link here.
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NY-GEO Conference Highlights:
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Surface Water & Wastewater Heat Exchange - Presented at NY-GEO 2023 in Albany
Geothermal heat pump systems have been described as “opportunistic” since they can often find a way to leverage a variety of thermal resources, depending on what’s available for a building or networked geothermal application. Surface water resources including lakes, rivers, and oceans can be an abundant source of heat or act as very effective heat sinks. Waste water can also take many forms from exchanging with a storm or sanitary sewer main, the effluent from a water treatment facility, or perhaps condenser cooling water from a large building or industrial process. This panel will present examples of using these important resources, highlighting both the benefits and challenges of the design, permitting, installation and operation of systems that leverage the opportunities to lower cost and increase performance.
Moderator:
- Mitchell DeWein / CHA Consulting
Panel:
- Karl Neubert / Renewable Resource Recovery Corp.
- Aaron Miller / SHARC Energy
- Cary Smith / The GreyEdge Group
- Brendan Hall / CHA Consulting
Session YouTube Recording
Download Presentation Deck
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New York Local Law 97: Its Implications and Opportunities for Campuses - Arthur Pearson, Regulatory Affairs Lead - Blueprint Power – “Local Law 97 (LL97), which requires NYC buildings over 25,000 square feet to significantly reduce their carbon emissions, will notably impact higher education campuses in NYC starting this year…Universities could have a win-win-win scenario in meeting LL97 requirements. The concepts presented (in this article) could not only help meet city objectives, but could also improve campus facilities, make them more attractive to students and educators, and provide new sources of income for an institution, while also supporting grid and campus resiliency.” Article link here. | |
Treasury Finalizes Tax Credit Transferability Rule – Sean Wolfe – Renewable Energy World – “The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued new guidance on Section 6418 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that allows clean energy tax credits to be monetized by directly transferring the credit to a taxpaying entity… Treasury finalized the definition of ‘taxpayer’ eligible for transferring credits; clarified that energy storage technologies are eligible for credits; kept the “paid in cash” requirement and rejected the addition of advanced payments; in addition to many other adjustments or clarifications made in response to comments received.” Article link here. | |
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Bill McKibben’s Earth Day 2024 – Author McKibben gives a moving review of climate action since his 1989 publication of The End of Nature, the first book on global warming written for a general audience. McKibben articulates numerous key points on what has become the climate emergency, and concludes with the importance of intergenerational action, and the opportunity for older adults to contribute through the 3rd Act campaign. 10-minute video link here.
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Asia’s Heat Wave Scorches Hundreds of Millions – Saif Hasnat and Mike Ives - NY Times - “Hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia were suffering on Monday (4/21) from a punishing heat wave that has forced schools to close, disrupted agriculture, and raised the risk of heat strokes and other health complications. The weather across the region in April is generally hot, and comes before Asia’s annual summer monsoon, which dumps rain on parched soil. But this April’s temperatures have so far been unusually high.” Article link here.
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Carbon Dioxide Levels Have Passed a New Milestone - By Aatish Bhatia - NY Times – "Carbon dioxide acts like Earth’s thermostat: The more of it in the air, the more the planet warms. In 2023, global levels of the greenhouse gas rose to 419 parts per million, around 50 percent more than before the Industrial Revolution. That means there are roughly 50 percent more carbon dioxide molecules in the air than there were in 1750. As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it traps heat and warms the planet.” Article link here.
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If you don’t mind your mind being blown, take a look at the animated version of this graph here.
Nixon Considered Climate Initiative – Marianne Lavelle - Inside Climate News – “In 1971, President Richard Nixon’s science advisers proposed a multimillion dollar climate change research project with benefits they said were too ‘immense’ to be quantified, since they involved ‘ensuring man’s survival,’ according to a White House document newly obtained by the nonprofit National Security Archive and shared exclusively with Inside Climate News”. While this article doesn’t provide a clear explanation of how Nixon’s Administration failed to follow through, it does uncover an interesting link to subsequent climate research by Exxon. Article link here.
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New Federal Tool Could Help Cities Prepare for Scorching Summer Heat – Kiley Price – Inside Climate News – “NOAA and the CDC teamed up to create ‘HeatRisk,’ a tool that can forecast potentially threatening heat up to a week in advance…The interactive dashboard allows users to plug in their zip code to learn what the heat threats are for an upcoming week, denoted by different colors depending on the level of risk…Medical experts often call heat a ‘silent killer’ because many people don’t notice the signs of heat stress until it is too late. But as climate change accelerates, the impacts of excessive heat are deafening.” Article link here.
|  | Worst Wine Harvest in 62 Years Blamed on ‘Extreme’ Weather and Climate Change – Rosie Frost – Euronews green – “Global wine production reached a historic low in 2023 and climate change could be to blame, a new report has revealed. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) says the drink hit its lowest level since 1962. This intergovernmental organisation has 50 member states, representing 75 per cent of the world’s vineyard area. Experts blame ‘extreme environmental conditions’ including droughts and fires that have been driving the downward trend in production.” Article link here. |  | Climate, Flooding, Death and Taxes in NY City -Ethan Geringer-Sameth – City & State - “Along with death and taxes, New Yorkers can be certain of flooding when it rains, said Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit ‘Rit’ Aggarwala in sobering testimony before the City Council Friday morning. And that could lead to more death and taxes…Despite $18 billion flowing into coastal resiliency projects over the 12 years since Superstorm Sandy bludgeoned New York City, the city’s spending on major sewer infrastructure has been insufficient, Aggarwala said.” Funding for this type of need could be provided by the Climate Change Superfund Act, S2129A/A3351A (Krueger/Dinowitz), which would make polluters pay $3 billion a year for climate repair, resilience & protection. The recently adopted state budget failed to include this initiative, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. Article link here. |  | |
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"We know from a recent study that every tenth of a degree in temperature rise that we prevent keeps 140 million of our brothers and sisters in habitable zones on this planet. And nothing has changed my basic conviction about the key: we need to keep building huge movements to finally break the political power of the fossil fuel industry and force the emergency conversion to clean energy." —Bill McKibben
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You've Got To Be Kidding:
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"When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick."
—George Burns
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Frequent Sources for Just In! briefs:
Green Energy Times
City & State First Read
POLITICO Weekly NY & NJ Energy email)
Canary Media
National Building Electrification Network & Sunstone Strategies
Just in! thanks NY-GEO board member John Ciovacco of Aztech Geothermal for his frequent proofreading contributions to this publication and Paul Maliszewski for his work on the briefs.
EVENTS:
*Indicates a New Listing or Updated Information
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2024 05 22 – Ontario Geothermal Association 2024 Conference – OGA 2024 Conference in Hamilton, Ontario is all about bringing stakeholders together with a theme of GeoThermal “The New Normal”. Join us for networking, collaborations and initiatives that will help Municipal advisors, HVACR professionals, consulting engineers & designers, as well as developers, educators and utilities Canada reach its 2030 and 2050 climate action goals. OGA 2024 Conference website including registration here.
2024 05 22 - 05 24 - IGSHPA Accredited Installer (AI) Course - 8:00 am to 5:00 pm ET each day - Held at the Energy Catalyst Training Facility in Troy, NY, this 3-day course will allow attendees to take a test to become an IGSHPA certified contractor. This certification is required to be a participant in the NYS Clean Heat Program and is recognized by most rebate agencies, including Mass Save and Efficiency Vermont. This Accredited Installer training will be provided by NY-GEO member and IGSHPA Certified Trainer Jacquie Scherer. HDPE pipe fusion training is included. Register through the IGSHPA events page.
2024 05 28 to 30 – IGSHPA Research Conference - The International Ground Source Heat Pump Association (IGSHPA) is pleased to announce that the next IGSHPA Research Conference will be held at Polytechnique Montréal. This is the fourth in a series of research conferences held in Denver (2017), Stockholm (2018), and Las Vegas (2022). Conference website here
2024 10 21 to 23 – NY-GEO 2024 – Fall Conference – New York City – The New York Brooklyn Bridge Marriott will host a two-day conference with a day of local project site tours, over 40 educational sessions, and the NY-GEO Annual Dinner. This is NY-GEO's first conference Downstate and will emphasize content on how to address densely populated areas and large commercial buildings. To register for NYC and learn more about becoming a sponsor and or exhibitor click here.
NY-GEO Members can attend the conference at a discounted rate, so now is a good time to renew your membership through 2024.
NY-GEO members: to receive the discounted member rates, employees of your organization must be populated in the member database. Reach out to NY-GEO Executive Director Christine Hoffer at christine@ny-geo.org for assistance.
Not a Member? Click Here to Join!
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We NEED Your NY-GEO Member Job Postings – Please add any job openings you may have to our NY-GEO Job Listings to gain visibility and help recruit new employees to your organization. This feature is available to all NY-GEO members, simply log into your account, select the NY-GEO Job Listings in the left toolbar, select Add in the upper right, and complete the form. If you need assistance, let us know at christine@ny-geo.org.
The Building Performance Contractors Association (BPCA) Career Center is here.
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Ongoing – NYSERDA is hiring! The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has ongoing recruitment opportunities. All qualified individuals will be evaluated for each relevant position for which they apply. Check this page periodically to learn about new career opportunities. | |
Become an NY-GEO Member
NY GEO is the driving force in the mass adoption of Ground Source (Geothermal) Heat Pumps for residential, commercial, and utility-scale heating and cooling in New York State. NY-GEO's mission is to grow the geothermal heat pump industry and develop its workforce while educating policymakers building/property developers and residents about the benefits of geothermal heat pumps.
We are a member-funded, non-profit trade organization and we depend on YOUR SUPPORT to expand the use of clean, renewable, geothermal heating and cooling systems for the benefit
of all.
Learn more about the benefits of becoming an NY-GEO member and why your membership is important to advancing GHP, Click here.
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