Clinton Presidential Center "Clinton Foundation Partnership to Make New York Public Housing Energy-Efficient"

On December 7, President Clinton announced that the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), in collaboration with Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York, has partnered with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to retrofit the city’s public housing units. CCI will bring together NYCHA with partner energy service companies, banks, product suppliers, and green building organizations, enabling the housing authority to perform retrofits more efficiently, quickly, and cheaply. These retrofits will help NYCHA’s buildings to become more energy efficient, in the process easing operating costs, creating green collar jobs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York have also committed to support the program, which will advance their PlaNYC 2030 (LINK) vision for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring a sustainable public housing stock and quality of life for New York City residents.

In New York, buildings account for up to 80 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted in the city. NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in America, representing more than 8.4 percent of all of New York City’s rental apartments and housing more than 5.1 percent of the city’s residents. Consequently, retrofitting NYCHA’s holdings will have a tremendous impact on energy efficiency in New York City.

In the past, many private building owners did not undertake building retrofit projects because of the need for a large initial financial investment coupled with a fear of uncertain savings in the long run. To remedy this problem, CCI has entered into agreements with banks to provide financing, as well as with eight of the world’s largest energy service companies (ESCOs) to provide energy savings guarantees for the building retrofit projects that they manage. CCI will help NYCHA partner with banks and one or more ESCOs to implement and meet energy-saving benchmarks quickly, effectively and cheaply.

New York is just one of the many cities joining CCI in these efforts to make a measurable difference in combating climate change. Paris is retrofitting more than 600 of its nursery and primary schools. Chicago is retrofitting multi-tenant housing in the Windy City. These projects are proof that the business of fighting climate change can be lucrative— not only for the bottom line, but for the future of our planet.