In Queens, a culture-driven approach to energy efficiency changed everything

One key benefit of living in a coop­er­a­tive is having a built-in commu­nity to tap into and resolve big issues with together. At least, that’s how Michael Parrella, who serves as board pres­i­dent of the Madison, a 42-unit co-op in Jackson Heights, sees it. The co-op advan­tage has proven true as Parrella’s building has under­taken a series of energy effi­ciency improve­ments over the past decade — every­thing from improving boiler func­tion to replacing lighting, all made possible by buy-in from that community.

In that time, the building has secured a grade A energy effi­ciency rating, is set up to be fully compliant with Local Law 97 into the near future, and has managed to cut its yearly energy bills by tens of thou­sands of dollars, trans­lating into real cost savings for share­holders. And perhaps most signif­i­cantly, in the course of these projects to improve building systems, the share­holders have built a commu­nity-oriented culture around taking owner­ship of clean energy goals, which will serve them not just today but over years to come.

“There’s a mindset for some folks who don’t under­stand how co-ops work where they think, ​‘Oh, manage­ment takes care of this for us. The board dele­gates to manage­ment.’ And that’s not wrong, but it’s also very incom­plete,” says Parrella. ​“We’ll never dele­gate our way to an excel­lent building. You have to be actively engaged.” 

It’s that direct engage­ment with the details — led by Parrella and his colleagues on the board — that has anchored the culture of clean energy at the Madison. The co-op is still in the midst of its energy effi­ciency revamp, with several larger projects still to come. But its share­holders are encour­aged by the signif­i­cant energy and cost savings they have already reaped. In a co-op envi­ron­ment where every upgrade needs to be explained, voted on, and approved by a board that repre­sents the share­holders’ communal inter­ests, these types of struc­tural upgrades can’t happen overnight. Yet by starting small, building good will, and devel­oping a well thought-out plan, the Madison has charted a course for these future changes. 

Laying a foundation for energy efficiency 

The energy and cost savings that were achieved by the Madison did not come easily; action toward them first began out of neces­sity. Like many prewar low-rise resi­den­tial build­ings in the city, the co-op building relies on a one-pipe steam heating distri­b­u­tion system with a central boiler for its heating. But in 2013, the uneven heat distri­b­u­tion caused temper­a­tures inside some of the building’s units to over­heat, and others to remain too cold. Following the recom­men­da­tion of a new building manager, the co-op installed an energy manage­ment control system (EMCS) to regu­late its boiler. The EMCS is composed of a moni­toring computer in the base­ment that is connected to a dozen sensors located around the building; these sensors track temper­a­tures, and are inte­grated with the building’s old boiler, enabling it to turn on and off with greater precision.

There had been some initial skep­ti­cism when the projects were first intro­duced by the Madison’s manage­ment company, but atti­tudes shifted as they were assured of the real cost savings that came from those endeavors.

Parrella remem­bered, ​“We said, ​‘Are you sure?’ ​‘Is this right?’, and manage­ment said, ​‘Absolutely, you will defi­nitely save money on this,’ so the board said, ​‘Okay, we’ll trust you.’”

The building managers controlled the new system at first, but once they turned controls over directly to the board, their more focused atten­tion led to small but effec­tive changes that helped cut the building’s energy consump­tion signif­i­cantly. The cultural shift began in 2016, once Parrella and other board members began engaging share­holders to be more involved in the building’s upkeep. ​“I would get texts from people saying ​‘I’m cold’ or ​‘I’m hot. What do I do?’,” Parrella said. ​“We started investing our time into fixing the prob­lems in the apart­ments and educating people about how things work.” 

A big part of this educa­tion, Parrella says, was encour­aging resi­dents to change the ways they approached solving prob­lems. The board led resi­dents through minor reme­dies like patching up drafty spots, taking air condi­tioning units out of the windows, and fixing faulty radi­a­tors inside the units. ​“If someone says they’re cold, but they haven’t taken out their air condi­tioner, it would be wrong, poten­tially, to turn the boiler on exces­sively when we know there’s a situ­a­tion in that indi­vidual unit that has not been addressed,” he said.

Key to building a culture of effi­ciency is ensuring that indi­vid­uals who are expe­ri­encing prob­lems feel heard — and then working with them to take action and find a solu­tion. ​“We’re not saying, ​‘It’s your problem, go fix it,” Parrella explained about the board’s lead­er­ship style. ​“We’re saying, ​‘Let’s work with you to find a solu­tion.’ It’s a collab­o­ra­tive approach, and it’s coop­er­a­tive, which could not be more apt for our building.”

With the addi­tion of the EMCS, the Madison’s share­holders saw a remark­able drop in the building’s annual energy costs — from over $40,000 down to $23,000. ​“I was able to show we had actu­ally reduced our energy bill by, like, 45 percent. It was honest-to-God savings,” said Parrella. ​“And people started to under­stand what was happening.” 

Shortly after this initial project, the co-op adopted another manage­ment sugges­tion to replace incan­des­cent lighting in the building’s common areas with LED and compact fluo­res­cent lights, another ​“low-hanging fruit” endeavor that reduced their lighting bill by an extra 20 percent.

This persis­tent trou­bleshooting by share­holders, control over the EMCS data, and the modest lighting upgrade helped cut down the co-op’s energy consump­tion tremen­dously, trans­lating into lower energy bills and more consis­tent resi­dent comfort. But the work couldn’t stop there. As board pres­i­dent, Parrella had to be cognizant of city regu­la­tion that the building would be subject to, and he knew that LL97 would soon come knocking. After the initial wins with the boiler controls, Parrella and the board wanted to push their effi­ciency gains further. They just weren’t sure where to start — or how to get all the share­holders onboard. 

“We’ve gone as far as we can as volun­teers researching all of this, and we hit right into a wall,” Parrella remem­bered thinking. ​“We need profes­sional guid­ance to help us.” 

Building a roadmap to comply with Local Law 97

For that profes­sional guid­ance, the Madison’s board worked with NYC Accelerator, a city-backed program that provides cost-free support for building owners to comply with LL97. In 2023, the Accelerator provided a list of vetted energy consul­tants to perform an energy audit and helped find a way to finance it. Based on these offer­ings, the board hired energy consulting firm Bright Power to perform an energy audit and iden­tify other upgrades they could do to lower their energy consump­tion further to ensure compli­ance with LL97. 

Representatives from Bright Power came out to the co-op, eval­u­ated building systems including hot water heaters, the boiler, the building enve­lope, and also looked at publicly avail­able data to get a holistic picture of the building’s emissions.

To convince share­holders of the value of the audit — and to approve the projects that would come out of it — board lead­er­ship had to engage consis­tently, explaining the high stakes of LL97 compli­ance and how the upgrades will benefit the building’s commu­nity over the long term. In quar­terly share­holder meet­ings, the board main­tained a consis­tent dialogue with resi­dents, making the case for these upgrades, while also — crit­i­cally — hearing their concerns. 

At least one share­holder had been skep­tical about why this problem should be their concern until Parrella began speaking with them more directly about why the upgrades were neces­sary, making the case for being method­ical about long-term plan­ning in the new reality under LL97. ​“People sort of realize, ​‘Oh my god, this is an enor­mous thing’ and plan­ning for it takes time,” Parrella said. 

Others were explicit that they cared most about the bottom line — how soon would they see a return on invest­ment? To these share­holders, Parrella argued that being equipped with data insights from the report meant the board would provide people with a tangible cost-benefit to make informed decisions. 

“I always come from a data driven perspec­tive. What was impor­tant was that we under­stand the value that there is because of the data we have,” said David Spawn, a share­holder who serves as trea­surer on The Madison’s board. ​“The insights that we get from that infor­ma­tion show us the return on the investment.”

“I don’t think the messaging ​‘You need to reduce your emis­sions’ is as impor­tant as saying, ​‘These systems will help tenant comfort and reduce the amount of money you spend every month,’” says Laura Sauer, an accounts manager at NYC Accelerator who worked with the Madison’s board to find a way to finance its energy audit. ​“That’s always the biggest driver. And being able to say, ​‘Hey, I can help with financing these upgrades’ — that’s how I’ve been successful with all of the build­ings that I’ve worked with.” 

Parrella sees it as part of the work of collec­tive owner­ship. ​“My big thing is recog­nizing that as share­holders, we are owners — which enti­tles us to certain rights and priv­i­leges, but also that comes with respon­si­bility,” Parrella said.

The results of an energy audit: The ability to plan for future projects

The Bright Power audit showed that the incre­mental changes the co-op had already made would keep the building in compli­ance with the city’s LL97 energy regu­la­tions until 2035. The Madison’s reduced carbon foot­print meant the building will remain fine-free for the next ten years. 

The audit’s find­ings reaf­firmed the co-op’s decar­boniza­tion efforts and how effec­tive a culture of effi­ciency can actu­ally be. The report also iden­ti­fied mean­ingful upgrades they can make to further improve effi­ciency once 2035 rolls around to stave off future fines. But these next poten­tial energy upgrades are several orders of magni­tude larger than the work they’ve already completed. The building is now pursuing replacing its old windows in an effort to better insu­late the building enve­lope. With 400 windows dotting the building’s façade, the upgrade is a colossal under­taking, with a cost in the ball­park of $1 million or more; a project like this will take multiple years to complete. Complicating matters is the fact that the Madison’s board is voted on every year, which would mean constant lead­er­ship change in over­seeing the window project’s completion. 

“It’s an unprece­dented way for us to work together, where the board has to make a multi-year plan and multiple boards have to come to power, weigh in on that plan, learn about it, and then adjust it,” says Parrella. ​“That’s a very different way for us to work.”

As it stands, the windows project has yet to be voted on for approval by the board. While some share­holders under­stand the value of the window upgrade and are ready to move forward, others still need convincing. But through regular meet­ings, the board continues to do outreach with share­holders, offering plan­ning and time­line options, and explaining the project’s long-term value — but also listening to resi­dents’ concerns, as is their practice. 

And even when they’re not directly talking about plan­ning energy effi­ciency projects, the share­holders also main­tain open lines of commu­ni­ca­tion by simply being in commu­nity with one another at holiday parties and potlucks — tradi­tions they hope to restart with more frequency after slowing down during the pandemic. 

“You’re constantly educating, giving and sharing infor­ma­tion hoping that people get it. Some people just don’t want to be involved and that’s their choice,” said Spawn, the board’s trea­surer. ​“But we hope if you choose to live in a commu­nity where you all own some­thing that you would choose to be a bigger part of it.”

One of the board’s biggest consid­er­a­tions for the window replace­ment project is how the co-op will pay for such a large-scale energy upgrade. At this point, they’re keeping a number of options on the table, including addi­tional share­holder assess­ments, accessing credit through refi­nancing, and taking advan­tage of various state and federal tax credits. 

In the mean­time, the building’s good standing with city emis­sions stan­dards leaves them plenty of time to figure out the specifics of funding the larger projects, and the current board’s emphasis on taking proac­tive steps, prior­i­tizing savings, and commu­ni­cating frequently has earned them good­will with fellow shareholders. 

“We don’t want a civil war,” Parrella said. ​“We want to make sure that at the end of day, we’re still a commu­nity of people who care about one another, care about our corpo­ra­tion, and [care about] moving it forward.”