By Phil Roberts for Next City.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

BlocPower, a clean technology start-up, is greening buildings in New York City and beyond. About 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings. And when buildings use oil or natural gas as a heating fuel, they also produce smoke that can cause or worsen asthma and other health problems.

In New York City alone, more than 10,000 multifamily buildings still use boilers that run on fuel oil or natural gas, and buildings that primarily serve low-income tenants are least positioned to pay for the expensive upgrades that would eliminate these emissions.

Enter BlocPower, a Black-owned, cleantech startup that works with these buildings to turn them green, swapping oil or gas for heat pumps. The startup helps buildings transition away from fossil-fuel-powered boilers and toward electric heat pumps, without paying large sums of money upfront. BlocPower - and its investors - are repaid from the savings on buildings' utility bills. In New York City, BlocPower has made it work for over 1,000 buildings, with 24 ongoing projects in other U.S. cities.

"Two of the barriers that we break down are customer acquisition costs and the lack of capital by building owners," explains Keith Kinch, General Manager and co-Founder at BlocPower. Building owners complete a survey on the BlocPower website and get an analysis of their building's energy savings potential. But many building owners don't have capital to finance these projects on their own, so BlocPower provides a no money down lease option. Building owners get a new heating or cooling system and save up to 70 percent on their energy bills. Kinch explains the importance of overcoming those two barriers with the company's unofficial motto: "We are turning buildings into Teslas!"

Once the heat pumps are installed, BlocPower uses the leasing revenue to cover all maintenance and repairs for 15 years. A proprietary software determines which buildings would benefit most from such a retrofit, and after installation, monitors, analyzes, and manages the heat pumps on every project to ensure optimal performance. BlocPower's revenues come from the installation profits, financing fees, and the enterprise contracts.

Heat pump technology - which is essentially an air conditioner (or a reverse air conditioner when used to heat a space) is not without its criticisms, depending on the existing energy source of a geographic location. Since heat pumps use electricity, if a home's electricity source comes from a coal-burning power plant, critics say that a heat pump simply moves emissions from one place to another. BlocPower still believes that heat pumps are important because they provide heat in the winter, cool air in the summer, and they run on electricity.

The scale of what BlocPower has done would not be possible without the NY Green Bank, a state-sponsored entity dedicated to helping finance investments in clean energy, which loaned the company $5 million. "They provide capital that traditional banks do not provide. They've done tremendous work in allowing us to complete projects," says Kinch.

It also helps that the company managed to partner with Goldman Sachs, which loaned them $50 million. It is hard to believe there was a time when BlocPower was not on Wall Street's radar, but those days are a mere memory now. When asked what changed, Kinch describes the simple way they got the attention of major investors.

"We had to prove that we're a viable company and have a record of accomplishments. We have both now," Kinch declares. "When we talk about the work it's not what we might do. We've done this work and we plan to do more. From Wall Street's end, I think there's more of an interest in investing in clean energy projects, because it's a market that will grow."

In a November 2020 interview, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird said that he sees a new asset class developing around national clean energy technology projects for investment banks and pension funds, independent of the fluctuations of the stock market. He believes that with the reduction in costs of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, solar energy, and smart heating technologies, this new asset class will become a long-term investment strategy, similar to a bond. (BlocPower did not make Baird available for an interview with Next City.)

BlocPower has done projects for nonprofit organizations, churches, and small commercial properties, but residential is where Kinch says the company looks at the most. "Owners of multi-family buildings in dense urban areas have the most to lose, because they've been underserved for years and don't have the capital."

For Kinch, the more money they receive, the more they can take their community level solution national. "It (the VC money) gave us more capital to finance projects across New York state. It allows us to expand the company by hiring the right people and build out our software tools so we can expand to other states like Pennsylvania and California."

Phil Roberts wrote this article for Next City.


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Montana's environmental advocates are criticizing Gov. Greg Gianforte for signing a bill they said will allow the state to ignore the impacts of climate change when developers construct large-scale energy projects such as coal mines and power plants. The measure received a lot of attention during the legislative session, most of it in opposition.

House Bill 971 builds on a decade-old law prohibiting the state from including actual or potential impacts which are "regional, national or global in nature" in environmental reviews of big energy projects.

Anne Hedges, spokesperson for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the measure is a direct attack on the state's most precious natural resources and leaves them unprotected.

"You're telling the public and you're telling the state their rights don't matter," Hedges asserted. "That they don't really have a right to a clean and healthful environment and the state has no obligation to protect people from the very real dangers of the climate crisis."

The bill prohibits regulators such as the state's environmental quality department from measuring greenhouse-gas emissions and the effects of climate change when they review the overall impacts of large projects such as coal mines and power plants. The bill's supporters argued they are trying to avoid excessive state regulation and contend measuring and regulating greenhouse-gas emissions and other impacts on the climate should be left up to federal laws like the Clean Air Act.

Hedges countered the state understands local issues better than the federal government does, and added the whole purpose of Montana's environmental agencies doing these sorts of studies is to be able to educate residents who live here about the impacts of a major energy project.

"On the land, on the air, water, wildlife, economy, cultural resources, et cetera," Hedges outlined.

Hedges pointed out ultimately, the bill will create longer and more dangerous wildfire seasons, a shrinking snowpack, and reduced stream flows as emissions from power plants add to a warming climate and unstable atmosphere.

A law known as the "Halliburton Loophole" is under growing scrutiny. It exempts oil and gas companies from revealing the chemicals they use in the hydraulic fracking process.

The latest study finds between 2014 and 2021, companies used hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals - without any governmental oversight.

Another report published last year by scientists and medical organizations says living near fracking sites increases risks for cancer, respiratory diseases, heart problems, birth defects and more.

Leatra Harper, managing director of the Freshwater Accountability Project, explained that the loophole prevents communities from understanding potential harms.

"People need to know what the exposures could be," said Harper. "We need to know what the chemicals are to look for when we find water contamination. And we don't even know how to test for it, because we don't know what to test for."

The Independent Petroleum Association of America and other industry groups argue that fracking poses little to no risk of harmful health effects.

The group FracTracker estimates hydraulically fractured wells produce about 2.3% of the oil and gas output in Ohio.

Harper added that previously proposed federal legislation would have addressed the issue by requiring companies to reveal which chemicals they use in the fracking process.

"There's something called the FRAC Act that has just basically been mothballed," said Harper. "And we need to revive that and fix this problem that started at the federal level, that allowed this industry to take off."

As of 2022, hydraulic fracturing techniques have been used on an estimated 1.7 million wells across the U.S.

Memorial Day is considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States, with many Texans keeping an eye on what the weather has in store.

Federal forecasters said there is a 40% chance of a "near-normal" hurricane season for Texas and the rest of the Gulf and East coasts, and are more concerned about what the development of an El Niño could bring.

Brad Pugh, meteorologist at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, said before El Niño's arrival, drought is still a factor for the Southwest.

"The seasonal drought outlook, which is valid through the end of August, calls for persistence of ongoing drought through much of New Mexico and Texas," Pugh reported. "Although we are forecasting improving drought conditions over the northeast Texas panhandle."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting between 12 and 17 named tropical storms will form this season. One to four of those storms could become hurricanes rated Category 3 or higher, with wind speeds of at least 111 miles per hour. Much of Texas is considered vulnerable to the impacts of storms, made worse by rising sea levels.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern, but could send global average temperatures soaring to a record high.

Johnna Infanti, also a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, said the chance for it to develop is about 55%, likely producing the chance for excessive rain and snow starting in the fall.

"So with the El Niño, we expect a transition between the May through July season," Infanti noted. "We're expecting that to form during the May through July season and we're expecting that to persist into winter."

As might be expected because of climate change, NOAA predicts this summer will bring hotter-than-average temperatures across most U.S. states, including Texas.


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