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America's buildings use a lot of energy, mostly for heating and cooling. Homes and businesses are responsible for over 30% of climate warming emissions in the U.S. Cutting those emissions is a huge challenge, and the city of Ithaca, New York, thought it had a solution. Rebecca Redelmeier, from member station WSKG, has the story on what happened next.
REBECCA REDELMEIER, BYLINE: The boiler in the basement of the St. James AME Zion Church in Ithaca is so old that the church's pastor, Reverend Terrance King, has given it a nickname.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
TERRANCE KING: (Vocalizing). This is The Beast.
REDELMEIER: The Beast - it's a giant, antique-looking boiler that heats the nearly 200-year-old church. King says the problem with The Beast is it costs a lot of money to run.
KING: We struggle with the electric bills, the gas bills, that are sometimes astronomically high.
REDELMEIER: Plus, The Beast burns natural gas, which contributes to climate change. So King has been trying to replace the old boiler with more efficient electric heat pumps, and he wants to add insulation. He says those upgrades could save the church a lot of money over time, but the upfront costs are really expensive. That's why King says his whole congregation was excited about an opportunity to replace The Beast affordably.
KING: They were like, what are we going to do with The Beast after, you know, it's removed? I'm like, it's probably going to go to a museum.
REDELMEIER: The church's plan was connected to Ithaca's Green New Deal. That resolution, first adopted in 2019, committed to slashing the city's climate pollution. Ithaca announced it would become the first city in the nation to electrify all of its buildings by 2030, and it partnered with a company called BlocPower to manage that effort. That commitment got a lot of attention.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And the city of Ithaca is going electric.
REDELMEIER: Ithaca appeared in Rolling Stone and The Washington Post and on NPR. BlocPower's then CEO, Donnel Baird, even did a TED Talk sharing his vision.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
DONNEL BAIRD: We want to make buildings smarter, healthier, greener, and we want to do that by making buildings 100% electric.
REDELMEIER: Baird called it turning buildings into Teslas. Basically, BlocPower planned to assess Ithaca's old buildings. It would figure out which ones needed insulation and where they could swap out gas furnaces for electric heat pumps. Those are upgrades that many homeowners usually can't afford, especially in low-income neighborhoods. BlocPower's pitch was that it had a model to make electrification affordable for everyone. Ithaca would be the test case.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
BAIRD: If we can electrify a neighborhood, it means that we can electrify a city. And if we can electrify a city, that means we can electrify a country.
REDELMEIER: BlocPower raised money from big outside investors to offer low-interest loans for homeowners, and it had new software designed to streamline the process. Rebecca Evans is Ithaca's sustainability director.
REBECCA EVANS: It was a dream. I mean, on paper, everything worked.
REDELMEIER: At first, she says Ithaca was thrilled. BlocPower started working with other cities, like Milwaukee and Menlo Park, California. But two years after the Ithaca program launch, BlocPower had only worked on 14 buildings. Then, last November, the company left town. Evans says the company never even officially told the city it was leaving.
EVANS: We helped BlocPower make headlines and really created a national market for BlocPower based on this program, and to not get more support of any kind felt not great.
REDELMEIER: Donnel Baird left BlocPower last year. He did not answer questions for this story. In a statement, BlocPower's chief operating officer, Sydney Tanaka, said the company has changed direction and ended most of its city electrification programs. Experts say Ithaca's experience has some key lessons. For one, it's really hard to make money updating old buildings.
IAN SHAPIRO: The underlying model was a private-sector model that was doomed to failure.
REDELMEIER: That's Ian Shapiro, an engineering professor at Syracuse University. He sees electrifying buildings as a public health intervention with benefits for the whole community. It reduces pollution, which helps people live healthier and contribute less to climate change. That's why he argues it deserves more public funding.
SHAPIRO: It is our shared health, and that is why the government can and should and is involved.
REDELMEIER: The federal government and states have put more money towards this in recent years, but President Trump has said he wants to end some of those programs.
Back in Ithaca, the city is still moving forward with its Green New Deal. Its new plan focuses less on electrifying all buildings and more on helping residents adapt to climate change. For now, Reverend King and his church are stuck with expensive heating bills and the old boiler.
KING: Now, The Beast stays (laughter), when we really wanted to see The Beast go.
REDELMEIER: King says he still hopes to upgrade the church's heating system, but he first has to figure out how to pay for it.
For NPR News, I'm Rebecca Redelmeier in Ithaca, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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