Most old buildings in New York are heated by furnaces or boilers, which burn fossil fuels. For landlords who rent their properties, upgrading to less-polluting electric systems is often an expensive and logistically challenging process.
That’s the challenge Ithaca homeowner Ruth Yarrow faced last year. Her pumpkin-colored house in the city’s Southside neighborhood relied on a gas furnace. That meant that heating her two-unit home — split between herself and a tenant — required burning fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change.
Then, last year, Yarrow found an opportunity to help her upgrade to an all-electric system. Now, the furnace in her home is switched off, replaced with two electric heat pumps for each unit of her house.
“I like the fact that I'm not using fossil fuels,” said Yarrow. She added that she appreciates other benefits too, like the ease of controlling the temperature, as well as the air conditioning the unit provides in the summer.
During the winter, the heat pumps extract heat from outside and transfer it into each unit. In the summer, they work the opposite way, keeping the home cool.
Yarrow is one of over a dozen landlords and tenants in Tompkins County who participated in a pilot program run by the local organization Sustainable Finger Lakes and funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
The program, called the Clean Energy and Equity Pilot, aims to help landlords and tenants work together to make lower-income rental units more energy efficient. It helps landlords and tenants access funding from the state and other organizations to lower the cost of installing heat pumps, and provides assistance throughout the process.
Yarrow’s tenant participates in the federal affordable housing program called Section 8, which meant the upgrades to her home qualified for around $20,000 in grant funding. Although she had to pay some money out of pocket on top of that, Yarrow said the grants made it affordable.
The program addresses a key area where electrification efforts are often slow. Renters rarely have control over where they get their heat from, and landlords may find it complicated to get their tenants to agree to upgrades that could impact their utility bills.
The point of the pilot program is to help both landlords and tenants navigate and afford the process, according to Nicole Collins, tenant engagement coordinator at Sustainable Finger Lakes.
“When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint, it sounds like this expensive thing that usually middle to upper class [people] can only do,” said Collins. “This program was really great in helping these lower income tenants feel like they're still [playing] a part in reducing their carbon footprint.”
Additionally, the pilot has allowed the team to collect data that can be used to improve similar programs in the future, Collins said. The program has already unearthed some key lessons, she said, like how important it is to ensure that landlords and tenants understand how their electric utility bills could change so they can determine an equitable way to approach the cost.
The Clean Energy Equity Pilot is now closed to applications. However, some of the state grants for home electrification are still available.
For Ruth Yarrow, who cares deeply about curbing climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the program has been a clear win. She hopes more of her neighbors will make similar upgrades — and that they’ll be able to access support and funding to make the process just as seamless as hers.
“I would welcome people coming and seeing what I have and talking to me if that would help them see what a good thing this is, and how really positive it could be for our planet,” Yarrow said.