Pratt Center
September 28, 2018
Talking Energy Retrofits and Designing a Carbon Neutral NYC
Pratt Center’s Rebekah Morris spoke at this year's ASLA, AIA, APA Conference about ramping up small home energy retrofits. Held at the Center for Architecture on September 21, the gathering drew together architects, planners and elected officials to explore ideas and policies for this year’s focus “Designing a Carbon Neutral New York."
Rebekah, who serves as Pratt Center’s Residential Retrofits Program Manager, spoke about EnergyFit NYC and the need for a new approach to implementing energy retrofits in NYC’s small residential buildings. She emphasized the extremely limited impact current City and State energy efficiency programs have had in 1-4 family homes and shared how Pratt Center's EnergyFit NYC and human-centered program design can help increase the numbers of retrofits occurring in this building stock. Her talk was part of a panel session discussing Existing Policy Proposals in which she was joined by Costa Constantinides, Council member for the 22nd District in Queens, and John Lee, Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.
Rebekah’s presentation highlighted the outcomes of Pratt’s EnergyFit NYC Pilot, which found that the use of a Standard Package of energy efficiency measures, coupled with a simple homeowner engagement process were instrumental in helping low- and moderate-income homeowners in retrofitting their buildings. She also discussed the need for a more nuanced, sliding scale incentive structure for moderate-income households, and more support and focus on health and safety improvements in energy efficiency programs.
Links to the EnergyFit NYC Pilot Final Report and the slides from Rebekah's presentation are below.