Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, our Climate Story of the Week. Today, a New York City climate fight that also has implications for cities around the whole country. Back in 2019, New York City council, under the de Blasio administration enacted a law designed to tackle the top source of climate pollution in the city buildings. Buildings, as you may or may not know, account for approximately two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in New York City according to city data.

The law called Local Law 97, is the first of its kind in the nation to set specific, enforceable limits on air pollution, specifically climate pollution from buildings, residential, and commercial, but it's unclear whether or not the Mayor Eric Adams' administration will do what advocates think is needed to actually enact and enforce the Bill de Blasio era law. With climate policy changing from one presidential administration to the next, so much for better or worse, worse, is up to cities and states themselves.

That's the argument of my next guest and joining me now is Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director at the advocacy group, New York Communities for Change. Pete, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Pete: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: In a recent New York Focus article, which I will begin with, you write that Local Law 97 is the world's most important municipal level, climate and jobs law. Wow. What are some of the most important provisions?

Pete: It's a very big deal because it tackles the top source of climate heating pollution from New York City, which is large buildings as you pointed out. It creates tens of thousands of jobs in design, renovation, and construction in upgrading those buildings to high energy efficiency over the coming years. It sets specific per square foot limits on climate heating pollution and then enforces those limits. That's an incredibly important thing.

Brian Lehrer: Where does this fit in, in a national context before we drill down on some of the specifics of the law after the general intro you just gave? Where does this fit in, in a national context? How much is it a groundbreaking model for cities around the country, or are many cities with bigger buildings already doing some version of this?

Pete: Oh, this is a huge first law. About 40% of climate heating pollution nationwide derives from energy use in buildings. In New York City, as you pointed out, it's about 70%. Many people think cars and trucks are the top source of pollution and that's true nationally, but here in New York City, it's buildings. This law sets a huge precedent, a first precedent in tackling that source of pollution, which is a dominant source of pollution nationwide. It's incredibly important. It's very hard to overstate how big a deal it is.

Brian Lehrer: According to the city, Local Law 97 will require most buildings over 25,000 square feet to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits by 2024. That's very soon, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030. The goal is to reduce the emissions produced by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Take us into this on the practical level. How would some of the city's biggest buildings go about reducing their emissions and especially in this first wave by 2024, which obviously is just two years from now?

Pete: Oh, sure. The law stimulates what could become the beginning of a green new deal in New York City in overhauling buildings, cutting pollution and creating new jobs. If you're a New Yorker like me, you've probably lived in an apartment that's so hot in the winter that you open up the window to cool it down, which is like a crazy waste of energy and throws a lot of money out the window too. Closing that type of energy waste is the path to reducing pollution from these large buildings.

On the buildings, it depends on what shape the building is in, but the law sets an overall limit and then allows building owners the flexibility to figure out how exactly they want to bring down pollution. Depending on the building, that can be everything from very simple stuff like LED light bulbs instead of incandescent light bulbs, insulating heating pipes. Those are very low-cost, very quick payback solutions to reducing your energy waste.

Then more complicated stuff down the line on a multi-decade level is new windows, green roofs, better HVAC systems, sensors, all of those kinds of things. Building owners should take a multi-decade approach to figuring out the capital plan upgrades necessary to reduce their energy waste, which will also end up saving the money too.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you there. There are various paths that building owners can take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Just for context, if this Local Law 97 applies to buildings over 25,000 square feet, how does that translate for the lay person? How tall an apartment or office building with 25,000 total square feet be?

Pete: It's bigger than a bread basket, Brian. Well, it's half a football field in size. A six-story tall building common in New York City would be covered. My four-unit co-op, a brownstone-type townhouse is not covered. There are a million buildings in a city, 50,000 of them are over 25,000 square feet. They're just 5% of buildings, but they're the majority of the pollution coming from buildings from the city.

Brian Lehrer: How much of this only pertains to new construction and how much will current buildings have to retrofit?

Pete: The city just passed a fantastic new law that ends gas in all new construction. New buildings are going to be built fossil-free, which is fantastic. That's now practical and affordable and saves money on gas bills, but about 90% of the buildings that are going to be up in 2050 are already built. While the city is building about 2,000 new buildings per year, and they're all covered by that gas ban or will be in the coming years and Local Law 97's provisions, it's really the existing buildings that are the dominant opportunity for cutting pollution and creating good jobs.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls on Local Law 97 in New York City. Our Climate Story of the Week topic for today, 212-433-WNYC. Building owners, we want your voices. Can you do this? How can you do this? How are you planning to do this? How are you trying to get the Adams administration not to make you do this or anyone else? 212-433- WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Pete Sikora from New York Communities for Change who's advocating for the implementation of Local Law 97. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

In your recent piece, you argue that Mayor Eric Adams, who was supported by the real estate lobby during his candidacy, you say is now in the critical implementation period of this law and his intentions you write are "clear as mud." Your phrase, "clear as mud." How is the mayor sending muddy signals on what he intends to do?

Pete: Well, it's mostly his spokespeople who represent him on this issue. To paraphrase, they say a variety generally of something along the lines of this law is great. It's fantastic. It needs to be implemented, but we're very concerned about the penalties and some of the requirements may be unfair. I'm paraphrasing here, but that's their general thrust. The mayor is, of course, very close to the real estate lobby which supported him heavily in his election run and is now filling up his campaign account.

We want him to fully implement and enforce the law. That means making sure that as the key regulations that he decides, his department of buildings decides what to put into place, that those regulations are done in a manner that protects the public, not developers' interests.

Brian Lehrer: For example, what would he need to do specifically between now and 2024 in order to show that he is serious about implementation?

Pete: Well, at the end of this year, the first set of key rules and regulations that govern how the law is implemented are due to be put into place and there will be more following that. These are very detailed regulatory decisions that have to be made in a manner that will actually reduce pollution in a way that's fair to everybody. There's some very key examples of how that could be done properly or improperly. You could either protect the public and reduce pollution, or you could open up big loopholes that building owners could use to evade the requirement to reduce pollution.

Brian Lehrer: Reading from your article, I notice that you write only one-fifth of large buildings or about 3,000 large buildings are currently over the cap set for their buildings from 2024 to 2029. Just about any building making a good faith effort can make these limits and avoid the law's penalty. That's an optimistic sentence from your article. We're almost all there already for 2024.

Pete: Well, that's correct. Just on the numbers, the city under mayor Bloomberg passed legislation that requires building owners to disclose their energy use, that's called benchmarking legislation. You can look up what buildings emit, how much energy use they use, and that data is accurate. It shows that 80% of buildings are already at the limit set for 2024 to 2029, which was set at a purposely high level to just cover the worst per square foot polluters.

Most of those buildings and there's about 3000 of them that are over that limit are barely over that limit. They're just a few ticks over it. It shouldn't be too terribly difficult for them to come down under that limit. These are the most inefficient worst polluting buildings in the city. It makes sense to have them do the simple work first. That can include things like insulating heating pipes, tuning the boiler properly, installing LEDs. Many of these are buildings that have really not done even the basics.

Brian Lehrer: How about the percentage that seem well set to meet the greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030, because that's just eight years away.

Pete: Much harder.

Brian Lehrer: That's actually going to come up on us pretty quick.

Pete: Yes, and that's actually where the rubber really hits the road. One of the things that the mayor has to be willing to do is to impose penalties at the level that is set in the law and not have any funny business about letting people off from their obligations to follow the law. The first limits are in 2024. If people break the law in 2024, then they face a penalty which would be assessed in 2025, but the 2030 limits get a lot tighter.

They're actually set at a level that mirrors the pace and scale of the Paris climate agreement, which is also embodied in city law. What those limits do is they are low enough and they're set by building typology. They're set low enough that about three-quarters of buildings are above that limit right now. They have eight years to start to figure out a path to reduce their pollution and then continue on that path of cutting pollution through 2050. That's a big job.

That's why this law really is at a green new deal type scale because it requires a level of energy efficiency that will create a lot of jobs in design, renovation, and construction in upgrading buildings. That's a very good thing on job creation and economic development and air pollution and fighting the climate prices. It's also nice because it saves money over time. Building owners by doing these kinds of upgrades can reduce their operating costs and their utility bills and that's what most building owners will see in this process.

That payback may take about 10 or 15 years for some buildings for the more complicated stuff, but it does save you money and you can finance those improvements. For most building owners, they can finance the improvements and then over time actually save money over and above the costs of the financing.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners. If you're just joining us, it's our climate story of the week on the Brian Lehrer show. We're talking today about Local Law 97 in New York City passed during the de Blasio administration. People in other cities take note too. This is the first of its kind in the nation and if it works here, it may be coming to you there. First of its kind in the nation to set specific and forcible limits on air pollution, specifically climate pollution from buildings, both residential and commercial.

In this case, buildings of about six stories or more, 25,000 square feet or more. Our guest is Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director at the advocacy group, New York Communities for Change asking whether Mayor Eric Adams is serious about implementing this law. Let's take a phone call, Angie in Flushing. You're on WNYC. Hi, Angie.

Angie: Hi, I live in a condominium, two buildings, 13 floors, 450 apartments. We have an energy rating of D and everybody has his own electric heat, which of course gets us broke in winter. What can we do? What help can we get?

Brian Lehrer: Angie, thank you very much. Pete, for New Yorkers who've seen these energy ratings posted on the doors of buildings and aren't unsure what they mean. What do they mean? Are they related to climate and what would a D rating in Angie's building signify?

Pete: A D is bad The city council law that-- You try to avoid your Ds. There's no F by the way.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, no F.

Pete: Yes, I don't believe there is but the law there for energy grading is modeled off the city's very successful grading law for restaurants, for food safety. The idea here is to give people a sense of what their rating is based on energy start, which is an EPA system that shows you how relative to other buildings you're doing on energy efficiency. A D-rating is bad and it means that you're doing worse than other buildings of your type, an A is obviously the highest rating and good.

Brian Lehrer: Is electric heat good for the climate or bad for the climate?

Pete: It's bad if it is inefficient, baseboard heating. As Angie pointed out that will cost a lot of money because it's resistance heating that is not good. It's inefficient. On the other hand, what this law pushes buildings towards is the use of heat pumps. These are heating and air conditioning systems that you see all over the city now. They're usually that wide white-looking air conditioner thing on a wall, and it's paired with a compressor, a fan in a box outside. Those are super, super energy efficient.

They work on the same principles as the coils in the back of your refrigerator, so they move heat in and out of the building. Those are really, really good for reducing bills. What this law does is it induces over time electrification via heat pumps and energy efficiency. A building like Angie's where people pay high bills, and maybe it's pretty uneven the heating I'm going to guess in the building. It might not be the most comfortable building. Overtime should overhaul two heat pumps and higher energy efficiency.

There are federal state and local programs to help with that. New York City has a program called the New York City Accelerator that I would urge Angie to go to as a first stop in any listener here to figure out how can I improve my building? There's lots of other programs including grants and loans and financing and advice. That is just the beginning and it needs to grow very rapidly. There needs to be a lot more money allocated into this type of green new deal overhaul.

The federal bill that is passing right now does a little smidgen of money, but that money is not enough. It's a good beginning, but even $9 billion in that bill will go pretty fast nationwide. That kind of money needs to be increased at the federal state and local level, but Angie's building is a perfect example of the kind of building that over time with careful work and financing and professionals working with the building owners with the co-op, they could do a lot of good for themselves by complying with this law.

Brian Lehrer: Angie, I hope that's helpful. Thank you for your call. Here's Scott in Soho, who says he works in HVAC. Scott you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Scott: Hi. Well, you can let Angie know when she switches from baseboard to she just has a regular one bedroom apartment say, I don't know, 500 square feet. That's about 15 grand if it's just a regular building. I have a couple of questions because I do work in HVAC and there's a lot of people out in Williamsburg that they've built these brand new buildings and put heat pumps in like you just said, and they have brownouts out there all the time because the electric grid isn't upgrading.

They have power going in. It's too much. Everybody gets home from work. They put the AC on, or they put the heat on, put the heat pump, which is drawing electricity. Then it overwhelms the system and it damages everything. On top of that where do you think they get the electricity from? Where do we get electricity from in New York? What do we burn? We burn natural gas? Do we burn coal?

Brian Lehrer: You mean power?

Scott: It's not magic.

Pete: Yes. These are great questions.

Scott: You have to burn a fossil fuel to get it. It's not a question. I'm telling you what it is, we're not ready for all of that yet. You would put the infrastructure in first, you upgrade the electric system and then you can start doing this. People will put in more efficient systems and by the way, landlords would gladly do that. They're greedy. They're always looking to save money. They're going to upgrade wherever they can. If you force landlords to do this, when they don't have a bunch of money, who do you think is going to pay for it? What [crosstalk] building?

Brian Lehrer: Scott, thank you. Let me get you some answers. Interesting points as you started to acknowledge there, Pete, what do you say?

Pete: Oh, well there's a lot of folks out there in energy efficiency in HVAC world and it is a very diverse world. Some people love this law. Many people really don't like this law. Just on the very simple answers, the grid in down state New York right now is very, very dirty.

The gentleman is absolutely right about that. It is overwhelmingly fossil fuel powered, but that is going to shift very, very rapidly this coming decade. When you put a heat pump on a dirty fossil-fueled grid, you would think that that's actually dirtier than a gas-powered boiler, but it's not because it's very similar to how an electric car works. The electric car battery is so efficient, that even if it's charging off of a dirty grid, it's still a lot cleaner than a gasoline-powered car, and the same is true of a heat pump.

Even on today's grid, which is dirty, heat pumps are cleaner than gas or oil boilers. The grid is going to get much much much cleaner in the coming decade and out. By 2030, state law says that the grid has to be 70% renewable energy. Experts will disagree whether it's going to get exactly there or over it or just under but the directionality is very, very clear, the grid is going to get a lot cleaner over time. We need to accelerate that and make it happen faster, but heat pumps are safe pollution right from the jump. I'm happy to talk about the other detailed issues he raised as well.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, well talk about the brownouts if you see that is actually happening and his concern that if everybody's coming home and turning on their all electric utilities, that the grid can't even support that right now, and it's subject to blackouts or brownouts.

Pete: I can't speak to a specific building that may be having electrical problems, but the city enacted a ban on gas and new construction, which moves new construction onto heat pumps as the alternative after doing a ton of careful study, ConEd says the grid is ready. The city's modeling says the grid is ready, and common sense also says the grid is ready because the grid is designed for a summer peak of electrical use, and heat pumps move that peak to the winter.

There's about 40% headroom available right now on that winter peaking. There's plenty of space available to avoid blackouts over the long run, this is a multi-decade future. The grid is going to have to be upgraded to carry more electricity to use or to be able to supply power for all of those heat pumps for the entire city and state, but that's not an immediate problem. That's something that there's time for to plan.

Brian Lehrer: Let's keep going down this path because here's another caller who says he's an HVAC tech. Joseph in Ozone Park. Joseph, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Joseph: Gentlemen, how are we doing? Actually little [unintelligible 00:22:44] stolen on the last one, but I'm fully on board with this thing. It feels like the program is a good one, the intentions are fabulous, and truly everybody's comfort level across an entire year will be better with heating and cooling and stuff. These heat pumps are so efficient that the turning on and turning off thing is actually, they're most energy efficient when you just leave them at a set temperature, and there isn't any sort of surge. That's the way they work. My concerns are just the day-to-day thing.

I'm literally standing outside of a three-storey building right now where I'm chasing line sets and electric on an 80-year-old building trying to find a way to adapt an old steam-heated building. Electric doesn't work. We have tremendous amounts of steam heat in the city, tremendous amounts of old brownstones, row houses, Queens is just loaded with this stuff. My issue is basically these subsidies, that 9 billion isn't an atom in the drop of the ocean and what is going to happen.

I realize we're talking about specific six-storey buildings or whatever it is, but eventually, this rolls into every single thing that every homeowner, one family, two family houses, I always deal with a ton of landlords, one apartment on the second floor or something. These are the folks that are just going to get jammed up. Where the money comes from. That's the issue. Nobody's doing this.

When you replace a boiler to a boiler right now, if you've got a good person that you're working with, maybe you're working around 7,000, 8,000, but most people just jam it right to you to around 9,000, 10,000. Now, the gentleman right before me is absolutely right about these numbers. When you're starting to chase the amount of labor that it takes to adapt a 100-year-old building to a heat pump, is incredible. I'll talk till I'm dead, so I appreciate your time.

Brian Lehrer: Joseph, thank you very much.

Pete: Me too, Joe. Me too.

Brian Lehrer: All right, glad the engineers are calling in. What do you say to Joseph?

Pete: We want to create a lot of work for contractors and for people who work for contractors through this law because it requires a lot of capital investment and pays off over time. One of the big benefits is an economic development benefit, where people are going to see an increase in employment in the construction and renovation industry, which really benefits NYCC's members who are predominantly low-income people in communities of color in New York City.

That increased hiring and increased work is a very valuable thing from an economic development perspective, but of course, it can't be impossible to do. Joe is pointing out in the previous caller, how labor intense a lot of this stuff is and complex. That's why a law actually is necessary, because for most building owners, even though a professional can show you how you would save money over time, when you start to see what might be necessary, it's a little bit intimidating, so it becomes much easier to just run the building the same way you've run it over time.

If we had started to deal with this challenge in the '80s and '90s when Exxon was burying the fact that climate change was such a looming disaster, then it would be a lot easier today, but now we have to cut our pollution by about at least 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. That is a very big job, but it is a job that we can do, and that working with the city, the state, and the Feds, it can get done properly subsidized and create a lot of jobs and save a lot of money in air pollution. Those are all really good things.

Indeed, it does cost money upfront. It is a complicated process to overhaul an old building, but it doesn't have to be complicated for most buildings in the city, one or two-family home is actually not that complicated to do and go fossil free. There's no requirement to do that right now, but you can bet that down the line, the city is going to be looking at creating a set of equitable requirements on smaller and medium-sized buildings. That's stuff that we'll be working on in the future as Local Law 97 on the big buildings is implemented.

Brian Lehrer: We have time for one more caller on our climate story of the week as we talk about New York City Local Law 97 passed in the de Blasio administration, the first of its kind in the nation to set specific enforceable limits on air pollution, specifically climate pollution from buildings, residential, and commercial. Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director at the advocacy group New York Communities for Change is talking about what will be needed to meet the 2024 goals and to meet the 2030 goals, and whether Mayor Adams is serious enough in his opinion, in Pete's opinion about implementing Local Law 97. One more caller. Troy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Troy.

Troy: Hey, how's it going, Brian? I just think that there is a good intention, but this has got to just transfer expenses to tenants. I lived in a new building, the insulation was horrible, so heating was a challenge with a forced air unit, and also cooling, was also a challenge. My utility bills were ridiculous. On top of the fact cooking on an electric stove actually is horrible.

It's easier and it's beneficial for new building constructions in good Ecuador buildings without having to worry about the expensive heating and cooling because the expense is just been transferred to the tenant, but we get no protection as far as the quality of insulation. There is no standard protecting the tenant as far as utility bills, and you don't know what you're walking into until you move in and you start getting those bills.

Brian Lehrer: Troy, thank you very much. In addition to Troy's questions that he spoke there, he asked our screener something else. That was, what happens in the event of a blackout if buildings are heated via electricity?

Pete: Well, new buildings are covered by new building code, which is much much much more energy efficient than what Troy is describing as [unintelligible 00:29:27] building code that is probably from many years ago. New buildings were built much more energy efficient. Those types of problems should not exist, because building code is followed by developers when they first build the building. In terms of a blackout hitting a building, New York city requires large buildings to have a backup in new buildings so that they can handle a blackout.

A highly energy efficient building like new buildings are required to be and like Local Law 97 pushes buildings towards, actually is much better performing in a blackout because it doesn't lose heat energy as fast because it's so much better insulated and air sealed that it stays comfortable even in very cold weather. The cutting edge of this is called passive house. That's a construction standard that is super duper energy efficient and a building like that will be just fine in a blackout for a couple of days even in very cold weather. 

Those are really detailed issues, but they can all be worked out and answered. From a large-scale perspective, the thing that we're sounding the alarm on here is that this is a job that is difficult, but it has huge upsides and it's got to get done and the Mayor has got to actually require and put in the right regulations to make sure that building owners or big developers are not let off the hook here. That actually these laws are going to be enforced and implemented properly and as a result, we'll see the benefits of the law. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let me throw in one follow-up question because I think the listeners will find it really interesting from your article on New York Focus. You are worried that there's going to be a loophole for the building owners because Local Law 97 allows landlords to use something called renewable energy credits. What are renewable energy credits and how would they actually allow buildings to escape the conversions that are good for the climate that this law otherwise requires?

Pete: It's a very big concern. Those rules are going to have to be set in the coming months or years or so and they have to be rules that protect the public. A renewable energy credit is a title to a specific amount of renewable energy that was generated from some project, wind, solar, hydro, somewhere in the state. You can buy a REC that's short for renewable energy credit. That REC shows that you're supporting that renewable energy, which is a good thing, but it's not the energy that you are getting per se.

It's not a substitute for reducing your energy use in your building and actually directly reducing the amount of fossil fuel that's being produced by the boiler or the furnace that is working off of oil or gas. This law allows building owners to use renewable energy credits to satisfy the law's requirements. They can buy them, but it says to the Mayor that he has to set a process and regulations into place for that.

We're very disturbed because the Mayor's spokespeople have been hinting that that is going to be a far too lax process that would allow building owners to simply buy out of their obligations and not upgrade their buildings. That would mean we would lose tens of thousands of jobs and pollution would not be reduced in New York City which would be worse air quality and cause climate problems. That's the detailed regulatory decision where the Mayor has to do the right thing and listen to the people and the experts, not the real estate developers and the lobbyists.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We will see how it's implemented in New York under Mayor Eric Adams, and how that sets a model for the country since this is the first of its kind law in any major city in the United States. That's our climate story of the week. We thank Pete Sikora climate and inequality campaigns director at the advocacy group, New York Communities for Change. Pete, thanks so much.

Pete: Thank you.

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