Keeping the faith: Metro IAF, BlocPower talk plans to decarbonize New York’s religious institutions

For the nation's frontline neighborhoods, religious institutions often serve as an anchor and oasis, providing critical support and services across communities. Houses of worship have often stepped in to fill the void, offering crucial programming and resources like food assistance, daycare, and medical services.

Transitioning these buildings from fossil fuels to clean, sustainable solutions has increasingly become an imperative, both as a way to address carbon emissions and lower operating costs, enabling these critical institutions to keep the lights on and their doors open to those that need them most.

A new initiative in New York State seeks to work with faith communities and other anchor institutions to advance energy efficiency initiatives, transition off fossil fuels, and adopt retrofit projects. Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (Metro IAF), in partnership with NYSERDA, BlocPower, and the Community Purchasing Alliance, will allocate USD 4m to more than 80 building owners in disadvantaged communities to develop and implement long-range energy plans and energy efficiency demonstration projects for their properties.

The energy efficiency work is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars in economic activity, as well as significant jobs and health benefits.

“These communities are on the frontlines of our climate crisis, our job crisis, our economic crisis, our health crisis, which we’ve seen through Covid-19, and then our racial crisis in terms of generational wealth and barriers,” Keith Kinch, BlocPower Co-Founder and General Manager, told NPM. “When we think about working with LMI communities and houses of worship, we’re checking off all those boxes. We’re making the buildings energy efficient, and doing so with jobs created locally. We’re making the air cleaner in the buildings. A lot of the places we work in are not just houses of worship--there’s a school, there are other programs, so the building is a community stakeholder. In that sense, we’re trying to connect all the dots in one shot in these communities.”

The Brooklyn-based climate technology startup has completed more than 1,200 projects since 2014--primarily in disadvantaged communities--with more projects underway in two dozen cities.

This latest effort will include electric heat-pump heating and cooling systems, along with additional energy-efficiency upgrades. The initiative will also use completed retrofits as demonstration projects to spur the ongoing development of a project pipeline, and identify institutions interested in creating a model of retrofits involving heat pumps and aggregated solar development.

“Building owners trust other building owners, but they also trust their community stakeholders,” Kinch said. “We can talk about energy efficiency all day, but if the imam or rabbi or priest says, ‘hey, this works,’ that's the first thing they're going to trust.”

St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, located in White Plains, currently serves as a prime energy efficiency model. Facing an emergency from loss of heat, and in the middle of a natural gas moratorium, St Bart’s recently transitioned from fossil fuels to a new VRF (Variable Refrigerant Flow) system, which uses electricity efficiently to heat and cool the building.

The 19,251 square-foot facility, built in 1928, includes a nave, an assembly hall, five classrooms and three offices. Prior to the VRF project, an oversized, aging oil boiler and portable electric space heaters were supplying heat to the facility. The church was also not fully air conditioned, making spaces uncomfortable during the hottest days of summer.

St. Bart's 15-year agreement with BlocPower to implement the retrofit project has already seen USD 8,500 in annual savings with zero money down, substantial utility bill savings, and a 70 percent reduction in GHG emissions.

“In the last nine years, two big events have happened--Superstorm Sandy and then Covid-19, which we’re still not through with,” Kinch said. “In both situations, many houses of worship became resource centers to provide food assistance, and now we see that many of these places are vaccination centers. Those buildings are going to be important to communities, not just during difficult times. We want to make sure those buildings are the best they can be. And for them, it’s lowering their operating costs. For every dollar that isn't going to pay for energy, it goes into a program or goes back into the community. So even that upfront investment for that house of worship returns to the community.”

Growing the pipeline

Joe Morris, Lead Organizer for Metro IAF’s Clean Energy Initiative, said the organization's members have a growing interest in tackling climate impacts.

“Increasingly, they care about climate change,” Morris told NPM. “We’ve built a relationship over the last few years with BlocPower. As they've gotten more expert in heat pumps, and as they've succeeded in raising financing for these projects, we’ve sent more congregations to them. We saw a way to scale up solutions where our member congregations and other congregations could be involved in improving their properties, but also making a difference on climate change.”

Morris said the St. Bart’s project serves as an important demonstration model for other communities to launch similar upgrades.

“They’re an important glue in their communities--they just hold things together,” he said. “I think there’s a public interest in their survival, so these upgrades are an investment. They're also just really influential in their communities, not just for their own parishioners, but beyond. They can be powerful demonstration projects. We’re trying to target the asthma zones in places like the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan where bad air is kind of a way of life, both indoors and out. And if we can improve the indoor air, that takes some of the burden off people.”

Metro IAF will oversee each project, with contractors performing the work and entering into agreements committing to workforce development standards that include ensuring that the project benefits those served by the congregation. The agreements will also require 40 percent of total worker hours for the project be performed by residents of disadvantaged communities or those previously unemployed or underemployed.

“The impact that we’re trying to have here is showing other states and the federal government a model for how to do this,” Morris said. “We think there's a ton of money coming down if the infrastructure bill passes later this year, and I think a lot of it will go to mega-projects. We just want to make sure that small and mid-sized buildings are included, because most buildings are not mega.”

Through NYSERDA and utility programs, over USD 6.8b is being invested to decarbonize buildings across New York. And with the state's plan to reduce carbon pollution projected to result in an additional USD 1.8b in societal and environmental benefits, BlocPower has seen interest in energy efficiency grow exponentially, particularly from government entities.

“We’ve definitely seen more of an appetite for it over the last year because Covid put a more public light on the inequalities across communities on top of climate change,” Kinch said. “As we've seen, many folks that had to deal with Covid are from the poorer communities and communities of color, so the question is, what are we doing to lower carbon emissions and make sustainable neighborhoods? These neighborhoods have taken the brunt over the years, and that doesn't have to happen again. We'd love to do more projects this year in houses of worship across the state and show people that we all can do this."