It’s hard — and it’s happening

We launched Skylight in January 2025 to tell the stories behind the clean energy tran­si­tion happening in New York City’s resi­den­tial build­ings — one building, one deci­sion, one resi­dent at a time. Our reporters have gone deep into the work of building decar­boniza­tion, docu­menting both the successes and the fail­ures in order to cata­logue the tran­si­tion as it currently stands. 

In that time, much has shifted, both locally and nation­ally. We’ve seen the begin­ning of the first compli­ance period for Local Law 97 (LL97), which imposes limits on large build­ings’ carbon emis­sions; we’ve seen the federal govern­ment cancel millions in funding for offshore wind projects, including one in Staten Island which would have helped clean up the city’s power grid; here at home, we’re also welcoming a new mayor who has loudly stated his commit­ment to upholding our city’s climate goals. All of these factors are bound to alter the course of our energy transition. 

Amidst these changes, we’ve noticed a clear theme: Even if the work is hard, it’s happening. Here’s a summary of what we’ve learned from our first year of reporting at Skylight. 

The energy transition demands a lot

Moving New York City away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy is far more complex than the flip of a switch. It involves not just the revamp of multi­family building systems, but also the infra­struc­ture that supports them — elec­trical grids, gas lines, etc. — along with broader economic trends, like tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts coming to market to run build­ings more efficiently. 

Existing building infra­struc­ture built for oil- and gas-powered systems is diffi­cult and costly to rewire for a clean energy future. Deciding what to replace and when is a juggling act: The old tech is inef­fi­cient, but it’s also the devil we know. Building owners and oper­a­tors funda­men­tally under­stand how a boiler works, and are hesi­tant to decom­mis­sion theirs to opt for newer tech that has just come onto the market in the last few years — espe­cially before existing systems reach the end of their life cycle. In the context of already-rising oper­ating costs, many build­ings might not want to consider adding another finan­cial burden to already-thin margins.

To make matters more complex, all of this work often falls on the shoul­ders of people who aren’t experts in decar­boniza­tion. A big portion of the clean energy tran­si­tion of New York City is being led by the folks sitting on co-op and condo boards, many of whom have little idea where to start, but take the leap anyway. ​“We’ll never dele­gate our way to an excel­lent building,” one co-op share­holder who took the lead on his building’s projects told Skylight. ​“You have to be actively engaged.”

New Yorkers are finding solutions

Despite myriad chal­lenges, retro­fitting is indeed happening all over the city, in apart­ments and homes across all five boroughs. Here are the methods that New Yorkers have employed to move the needle. 

• Financial plan­ning: We’ve learned it’s impor­tant to start putting away cash for large upgrades early; many co-op share­holders and condo boards who choose to plan care­fully, with a long time horizon of several years, have seen success. This strategy worked at the Charlton House, where Chris McGinnis and his fellow coop­er­a­tors were able to bundle several incen­tives over the course of several years to essen­tially get solar as a free perk; simi­larly, plan­ning was a key part of the International Tailoring Building’s strategy for saving money on costs. ​“If you’re spending money reac­tively, you’re just going to be throwing money down the drain,” their project manager told us. 

• Taking advan­tage of free money: The expenses of decar­boniza­tion can be steep, but there are also plenty of ways to miti­gate them, as Skylight has docu­mented. One method is to pursue quickly-drying-up tax credits. As one Brooklyn condo owner who used credits to facil­i­tate the instal­la­tion of rooftop solar put it, ​“It’s kind of like a no-brainer.” Other building owners hope to take advan­tage of the J‑51 tax abate­ment, if it is extended.

• Embracing effi­ciency fixes: In many building projects Skylight has covered, plan­ning major upgrades comes hand-in-hand with smaller-scale effi­ciency improve­ments. Enough cannot be said about the wins that come from focusing on making existing systems work more effi­ciently — getting the maximum amount of heating and cooling results, with the least amount of energy input. In five out of 11 of our case studies, Skylight reported on projects anchored in an effi­ciency first move that cut both emis­sions and costs. These include LED lighting, which lasts longer and lightens the elec­trical load; smart sensors installed on a building’s boiler, which give more insight and control over its usage; and radi­ator covers, which work to trap existing heat, making the boiler run more efficiently.

• Focusing on the façade: Gaps in the building enve­lope can allow condi­tioned air to escape and force existing heating and cooling systems to work harder, wasting oil and gas. Closing up holes in the building façade, or air sealing, is a step that building effi­ciency expert Tom Sahagian says all build­ings should take, regard­less of whether they plan larger improve­ments to go along with it. Larger-scale façade change is also possible through recladding, which entails strip­ping a building of its exte­rior skin and replacing it entirely. Though ambi­tious and costly, recladding can see huge bene­fits, as it did in a former white-brick building at 201 E. 79th St., where falling bricks have been replaced by porce­lain tiles that better insu­late the building and have cut the amount of energy needed for façade-related heating and cooling by about 37 percent.

• Taking the leap to elec­trify: For many cases, the final step is making the switch — turning off that oil- or gas-fueled boiler, and relying instead on elec­tricity. In build­ings all over the city — from public housing in Woodside, to co-op housing in Brooklyn Heights — this has meant switching to heat pumps, which run on elec­tricity and provide both heating and cooling. Installing tradi­tional heat pumps throughout a building requires unit access, which is some­times disrup­tive, though not always. New inno­va­tions address this problem: One legacy New York boiler company has created a brand-new heat pump that uses existing infra­struc­ture to deliver heat from the base­ment; and NYCHA led an inno­va­tion compe­ti­tion that resulted in the inven­tion of heat pumps that plug into a regular elec­trical socket and slot over one’s windowsill.

People drive change

Moving the energy tran­si­tion forward in our homes requires both grit and time — the will­ing­ness to engage with highly-tech­nical topics, work with unlikely collab­o­ra­tors, and think in twenty-year time­frames. How does a move­ment like this main­tain momentum?

Early adapters — passionate, self-taught New Yorkers — are rising to the chal­lenge to find the answer to this ques­tion. Both home­owners and tenants are pushing this tran­si­tion forward; as a group, these home­grown experts have taken it upon them­selves to uphold New York City’s climate commit­ments in their own homes, for bene­fits that often feel abstract. Motivations can differ: For some home­owners, like those in a Jackson Heights co-op that painstak­ingly built a culture of energy effi­ciency, avoiding costs and fines is always front of mind; for others, like those at one of the first build­ings in Manhattan to fully elec­trify heating and cooling, it’s an invest­ment in a clean energy future. 

“Don’t be afraid of starting some­where and asking ques­tions,” reminds Eric Einstein, of the International Tailoring Building. ​“Even if you run into a bunch of walls at first, even­tu­ally, hope­fully, you come to some­thing that will work.”

We’re all looking for role models

What’s stop­ping other home­owners from moving forward? We decided to get in touch to find out. Over a series of inter­views conducted in part­ner­ship with Public Policy Lab, what we heard over and over is the desire for exam­ples of work that is rele­vant and specific, essen­tially ​“role models” — build­ings of a similar profile to their own that have already taken on energy projects. 

That’s true for coop­er­a­tors, building boards, and tenants in rental build­ings. According to one home­owner we inter­viewed, ​“You need to find people that look like you. You need to find similar-shaped build­ings, people, and [finan­cial] profiles that these stories resonate with.”

Owners of rental build­ings, too, need rele­vant exam­ples that help them under­stand a path forward in the build­ings they own. Said Eric Bluestone, of the Bluestone Group: ​“Being able to have some­body say, ​‘I own a building that’s a similar size. Why can’t I do that?’… A‑ha moment.” 

What’s next?

A lack of rele­vant infor­ma­tion is a huge barrier to partic­i­pa­tion for would-be retro­fitters. Skylight approaches this chal­lenge through our rigor­ously researched, reported and fact-checked jour­nalism, based in the belief that seeing is believing, and that deep under­standing requires clearly-written, acces­sible resources. In the new year, Skylight plans to keep deliv­ering stories that inspire and moti­vate. We’ll also be hosting more events like our first clean energy building tour, and contin­uing to collect data docu­menting the status of New York’s clean energy transition.

Our nonprofit news­room is made up of an edito­rial team of four, along with a robust roster of free­lance reporters who specialize in the clean energy housing beat. To date, we’ve engaged over twenty writers and fact-checkers, covered stories in over twenty build­ings, and published over sixty arti­cles docu­menting the clean energy tran­si­tion in New York City apart­ments — and we’re just getting started. 

The clean energy tran­si­tion may not be assured in our city, but it is well underway. As this work continues, Skylight will be tracking it doggedly, reporting out what readers like you care most about. We hope you will see your­self reflected. Until then, keep reading, sharing, and tracking the tran­si­tion along with us.