From 2022-2024 EnergySmart CNY used a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain insight into our region’s access to clean energy barriers and opportunities, including one-to-one conversations with local organizations, community-based conversations with residents, surveys, stakeholder meetings, and roundtables. In all, our engagement activities gathered feedback by reaching well over 1,100 Central New York residents, the majority of whom live in disadvantaged communities (DACs) as defined by New York’s Climate Justice Working Group.
The Regional Assessment and Barriers Analysis (RABA) guides the development of EnergySmart CNY. The RABA provides regional context for our program operations, identifies trends and other important factors that impact our work in the region, develops recommendations for local and state program administrators, and outlines next steps for our program to maximize our reach and impact.
The region is on the cusp of two major projects: a New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) intensive highway reconfiguration project (I-81), and the siting of a gigantic microchip fabrication facility for Micron Technology (hereafter referred to as Micron). Both projects will change the region, creating generational opportunities for economic development and enormous challenges as the region undergoes population growth and new demands on local resources. This development will have major energy, housing, transportation, workforce, and environmental implications that intersect with our work.
There is a great need for the information provided by EnergySmart CNY – many residents have not heard about the programs we can connect them with. Longstanding programs like Home Energy
Assistance Program (HEAP) and the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) are most known by residents while newer programs like EmPower+ or Comfort Home have less name recognition. There is a general lack of knowledge about program eligibility, project costs/benefits, and how to access programs, and many residents assume programs are not for them due to a variety of factors detailed in this report.
Old housing stock and a lack of resources for home investments make our work to help residents insulate their homes and adopt clean heating and electricity sources challenging, especially when working to prioritize low-income residents and residents living in DACs. At the same time, projects completed for these residents can dramatically improve quality of life.
Program incentives have not kept up with inflation and are insufficient to cover the measures that many homes need to become adequately insulated and efficient. Our program struggles to find solutions for situations involving broken, unsafe, or inadequate heating systems for low-income residents due to gaps in the programs covering heating systems.
Our region’s clean energy employers struggle to recruit and retain employees in a tough job market, while residents who could benefit from available jobs face transportation, childcare, and other resource constraints that make employment difficult. Clean energy employers such as home performance and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) contractors who work with state and utility incentive programs like EmPower+ face challenges with high administrative burdens and sudden program rule changes that decrease the economic viability of projects.
Despite these challenges, our region has many assets to draw upon and build from as we seek to better serve residents and scale our outreach and operations. Central New York has a rich history of energy and technological innovation, and previous Solarize and HeatSmart campaigns have built familiarity with clean energy technologies and established strong relationships with contractors. The region offers numerous redevelopment sites, including brownfields and capped landfills for community solar, and approximately 56 publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities that could support thermal energy networks. Notably, National Grid’s Thermal Energy Network pilot project at the Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant aims to harness wastewater heat exchange technology for heating and cooling new residential and commercial buildings.
The RABA identifies multiple strategies for addressing these barriers through strengthening our local partnerships, focusing and honing our marketing, streamlining our processes, and providing workforce connections and wraparound services. Some highlights include:
It is also clear in the findings of the RABA that overcoming our identified barriers will require strong collaboration and responsiveness from our state partners in this work. Some of the solutions identified will need technical and material support from NYSERDA and/or programmatic changes developed in consultation with our program, our sister hubs across the state, and other stakeholders.