TCCPI is a multisector collaboration seeking to leverage the climate action commitments made by Cornell University, Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Tompkins County, the City of Ithaca, and the Town of Ithaca to mobilize a countywide energy efficiency effort and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Launched in June 2008 and generously supported by the Park Foundation, TCCPI is a project of the Sustainable Markets Foundation.

With the details ironed out, and the work ready to commence, the goal is for Ithaca and BlocPower to electrify the entire city’s building stock by 2030 which, if renewable energy is powering the city, is estimated to address close to 40% of Ithaca’s carbon emissions.

An initial $100 million for the loan and lease program is coming from Alturus, a financial services company that also provides decarbonization services to companies. These funds, Aguirre-Torres said, are estimated to support retrofitting and electrifying between 1,000 and 1,500 of Ithaca’s 6,000 buildings.

For the plan to work, public buy-in will be necessary, and the city and BlocPower will be approaching home and building owners to encourage them to voluntarily enter the program. The investments in electrification and efficiency, they say, will pay for themselves in the long run.

While an effort to decarbonize the city’s building stock is incredibly ambitious on its own, it is just a component of what is a staggeringly high mark that Ithaca has committed to meet by 2030: 100% city-wide decarbonization. That’s the commitment of the Ithaca Green New Deal (IGND) adopted by the city in 2019.

“That is absolutely nuts, right?” Aguirre-Torres said, excitement carrying his voice to a crowd of 60 people gathered in front of the South Side Community Center.

While it remains unclear if Ithaca will meet the lofty goal of the IGND, the groundwork that has been laid in pursuing it has put Ithaca on the map as a leader in the energy transition and fight against climate change. The City of Menlo Park in California has also partnered with BlocPower to electrify its building stock.

“We’re gonna do something that nobody has tried before, because that’s what this community is about,” said Aguirre-Torres.

Being first will come with its challenges. In the immediate future, the persistence of the national labor shortage, supply chain disruptions, and rising inflation are hurdles that need to be navigated as the electrification program is pursued.

BlocPower’s roots are in providing job training within the communities the company has worked within, and focusing on electrifying low-income buildings. The company has committed to carrying that approach forward in Ithaca by training workers to execute energy audits and building electrification projects.

The opportunity to carry out a city-wide electrification and energy efficiency has been one BlocPower has been looking for a long time, said the company’s CFO, Cullen Kasunic.

“We’ve been working in community organizing, community development for a very long time. And I think it really will be a very successful model for fighting climate and building decarbonization,” said Kasunic.

The model Ithaca is championing comes with the promise to prioritize the needs of households and individuals that the effects of climate change stand to impact the most. Now the Ithaca Green New Deal has the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to that promise as it embarks on electrifying its building stock.

“At the end of the day equity has to be at the core of everything that we do with the [Ithaca] Green New Deal,” said Aguirre-Torres.

Due to the current pandemic, the monthly TCCPI meetings have moved online. Contact Peter Bardaglio, the TCCPI coordinator, for further details at pbardaglio@gmail.com.

The grand opening of the ReUse MegaCenter at Triphammer Marketplace took place last October. Photo courtesy of Finger Lakes ReUse.

Community member and UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report author Rachel Bezner Kerr shared, “One of the core messages of the IPCC report is: all food systems are already being affected by climate change and there is an urgent need to take action now. The food system plan put forward today reflects some of the key ideas put forth in this report.”

The Food System Plan offers a community-driven vision for our food future while providing a voluntary framework for collaboration and action toward meaningful change.

Climate change, equity, and community food security are the central issues impacting our food system and the key areas where transformation is needed. Alongside the countless partners who have been advancing local food system efforts for years, food system planning provides an opportunity to improve the lives of the people here in Tompkins County and to steward the land that sustains the community.

Through intentional planning, Tompkins County can create synergies in a complex system and make meaningful progress on the issues that matter most.

Engaging over 2,000 members of the community and 50-plus businesses and organizations, the plan marks the first comprehensive approach to addressing the key concerns in our community food system and expanding upon our many strengths to build resilience, cultivate equity and economic opportunity and promote human and ecosystem health.

Contributions from residents formed the basis for the nine goals that aim to fight climate change, grow local food production capacity and strengthen systems to support collaboration; support deep reductions in food insecurity, grow opportunities for and prioritize community members who have been historically excluded, especially Black, Indigenous and people of color in Tompkins; and provide strategies for protecting natural resources, reducing food waste and integrating broad nutritional support.

The 47 recommendations include priority actions for the Tompkins County food system, spanning educational efforts, new policy tools, programmatic expansion and shifts in funding mechanisms among others.

Sarah DeFrank of the Food Bank of the Southern Tier shared, “We see this work as essential to the success and longevity of our communities. The food system touches every aspect of our lives. … It’s important we work together with our local governments for the communities we serve.”

The food system planning effort — a partnership between Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County and the Food Policy Council of Tompkins County — is funded by the Tompkins County Legislature and the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, with in-kind support from Tompkins County Recycling and Materials Management.

Anne Koreman, legislator for District 5, also spoke to the importance of the plan. “We need a food system plan because I believe access to healthy food is not a privilege but a right for everyone who resides in our county,” she said. “A well-thought-out plan with community input, such as this Food System Plan, can help create more equitable accessibility and distribution of food so families can thrive, not just barely survive. A local Food System Plan will help prepare us for a changing climate and provide fair compensation for farmers and their workers, which are both priorities for this legislature.”

Tompkins Food Future will hold a celebratory community gathering in the fall to share the plan and hear ideas on priorities and next steps including ways to show your support and get involved. In the meantime, connect with us at tompkinsfoodfuture.org/get-involved or contact coordinator Katie Hallas at kh788@cornell.edu or (607) 272-2292 x281.

The latest report from the climate front is a doozy. According to a new study, the global warming that has already occurred will cause a sea level rise of more than 10 inches from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet alone. That much is baked in. How much worse can it get? "With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean," the Guardian warns, "a multi-metre sea-level rise appears likely."

Obviously, this is very bad news for the nearly 600 million people who live in coastal zones worldwide.

It comes on top of record-breaking heat waves in China and South Asia, the worst drought in Europe in 500 years, the continuing megadrought in the U.S. Southwest, massive wildfires in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, France, and Germany, and catastrophic floods in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Evidence of a climate emergency could hardly be clearer. In Bill McKibben's words, "We live on a different planet than we used to."

Fortunately, there are solutions at hand that don't require bleeding edge technologies. They do, however, require political will to implement, and that's why the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is so important.

Signed into law by President Biden earlier this month, the IRA commits $369 billion to carrying out climate and clean energy measures, by far the largest such investment in U.S. history. Adopting a carrots rather than stick approach, it represents a major change in policy direction. Instead of calling for carbon taxes to discourage fossil fuel use, it focuses on incentives to spur investments in renewables and energy efficiency, mainly in form of tax credits.

The IRA is far more modest than the Build Back Better Act and it includes significant concessions to the fossil fuel industry. Even so it's projected to cut U.S. emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. Economists, furthermore, estimate that Americans will save as much as $200 billion over the next decade on electricity bills thanks to the new law, challenging the belief that the energy transition will mean higher prices.

Perhaps the best thing about the IRA is the fact that it comes right as the adoption of renewables has picked up dramatic speed. As David Wallace-Wells observes, the public investment will benefit from "much broader tailwinds" than just a few years ago. For example, the amount of electricity generated by renewable resources in the U.S., which was only 8.6% in April 2001, hit a record 28% this April.

In fact, wind and solar installations have made up an impressive majority of new power plants added to the national grid in recent years. In the first six months of 2022 wind and solar accounted for two-thirds of the new U.S. electrical generating capacity. The country's investments in clean energy have grown from $10 billion in 2004 to $105 billion in 2021.

Globally, the picture is similarly positive; renewable energy production has increased 400% in the past decade. The renewable investment of $226 billion worldwide in the first half of 2022 set a new record, jumping 11% in the first six months relative to same period in 2021. Investment in solar was up 33% and 16% in wind. Renewables are now the cheapest form of power in many countries, including the U.S.

So, yes, the sea level is rising and that's scary. But the shift to renewables is accelerating and that's exciting. There's little question that climate chaos is causing great damage and will continue to do so. If we work hard to push the energy transition forward, however, we can limit this destruction and bequeath a better world to the generations that follow us.

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