There is a race among some U.S. cities to decarbonize almost every facet of their daily operations. From electrifying hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space and deploying home efficiency updates by the hundreds to weening public transportation fleets off fossil fuels, cities of all stripes and sizes (and climate zones) are investing a lot in cleaner futures.

As great as all that might read on a company’s website or similar, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what these endeavors entail. Realizing a clean energy transition on a citywide scale is an enormous undertaking, and one that can’t simply be done with a bunch of industrial-grade heat pumps, some solar panels, and shiny new EV charging stations in the grocery store parking lot. It requires legislative buy-in from civic leaders and the vocal support of business leaders. It demands establishing robust training programs for skilled trade workers. Utility providers need to be on board, as do landlords and small business owners. It requires money and time and more money.

Goals vs. reality

All that is to say, logistics (and often politics) abound, and concerted climate action on a municipal scale is not for the faint of heart. In 2019, the city of Ithaca, New York, unanimously approved a resolution to become a carbon-neutral city by 2030, appropriately titled the Ithaca Green New Deal. That same year, the city issued an RFP for a program manager to oversee the resolution’s Electrify Ithaca portion, which aims to replace all fossil fuel infrastructure—including natural gas in some 6000 buildings within city limits—with electric HVAC equipment, induction stoves, and the like. By all accounts, equitable, carbon-free energy represents the future of Ithaca, and its mobilization efforts thus far are impressive by any measure. However, the likelihood of the city reaching its intended benchmarks is in doubt.

Navigating legislation

The Ithaca Common Council’s unanimous support for the Green New Deal speaks volumes. At the same time, a resolution is “the weakest form of legislation we have available to us,” admits Rebecca Evans, Ithaca’s director of sustainability. “We’re a very small city,” she adds, “so we rely on the state for a lot. There are some things we have in the pipeline that are hung up at the state level.” Evans mentions that the New York State constitution stipulates that local municipalities “cannot provide financial incentives for private property owners” when it comes to electrification and efficiency upgrades. This hurdle is hardly unique to Ithaca, but it does complicate matters, particularly if the city in question obtains grants or other funds through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for those expressed purposes.

Statewide financial incentives through the IRA are mostly administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), with additional projects getting funded through the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Still, local government and Evans’ department in particular have no authority to dole out said funds. “We just don’t have the capacity to do that work,” she says. For that, Ithaca has contracted with outside parties to manage the city’s clean energy transition on the ground, as well as provide education and training for contractors, homeowners, and other constituent groups.

Currently, New York is just one of ten states, plus the District of Columbia, that have received DOE funds through the IRA’s Home Energy Rebates program, which is still being rolled out. Complicating matters further, NYSERDA decided these new federal rebates could not be combined with existing state rebate programs for installing heat pumps and offer efficiency upgrades. “This decision is surprising and frustrating,” says Ethan Bodnaruk, a program manager with BlocPower, the company leading the effort to electrify Ithaca’s 6000+ buildings.

“For a typical home, those [statewide] clean heat rebates could be up to $5000 for a larger single-family home,” Bodnaruk observes. “The IRA rebates are up to $8000 for heat pumps, but NYSERDA won’t let those be stacked. It just seems like a lost opportunity.”

He also points out that as a prominent college town, Ithaca’s home market is largely made up of rentals, which presents “additional hurdles” because many landlords may not have planned or budgeted for the necessary upgrades. “We’ve seen that education is still important … things like electrification and decarbonization are becoming better known, but there’s still a need to educate people on what this means for their buildings. It’s not like we’re selling widgets.”

Getting outside help

BlocPower’s business is helping big clients (cities, utilities, and others) manage complex logistics. Public engagement plays an outsized role, and rightfully so. People tend to trust hard numbers more than slick marketing copy. According to Bodnaruk, “the incentives that we leverage make a big difference because they are specifically designed to bridge the cost difference between a heat pump system and replacing a fossil fuel system. That has definitely been a game changer for non-profits, small commercial companies, and houses of worship to afford these systems where they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.”

The company also had a hand in helping the city establish a community advisory board for Ithaca’s Green New Deal, which has “helped solidify” relationships with contractors in the area. And some of the more high-profile electrification projects that have come out of this effort have effectively become a billboard for future endeavors. “You look around Ithaca now and see heat pumps everywhere. It’s contributing to a growing movement,” Bodnaruk says.

Through its affiliation with BlocPower, Ithaca has also partnered with the Cornell Cooperative Extension to carry out much of the community outreach on the city’s behalf. “They are our clean energy hub,” Evans says. “They won the contract through NYSERDA to do outreach education people.” She refers to the Cooperative’s role in terms of holding consumers’ hands and being an effective “shepherd” for people seeking a reputable contractor or figuring out what incentives are available to them.

Looking to 2030

One of the things Ithaca has going for it, according to BlocPower’s leadership, is a deep-seeded “passion and desire to do something about the environment.” That’s a good starting point. Looking ahead, Evans wants to decentralize the city’s energy resources in the form of virtual power plants, micro-grids, and more, and effectively untether Ithaca from the grid, when the occasion calls for it. “In the event of a natural disaster or power outage, we can flip a switch and say, we’re going to be independent today and tomorrow.”

Of course, getting enough renewable energy to make this a reality won’t happen with solar farms alone. In addition to more renewables coming online, Evans believes a big piece of the pie needs to come from nuclear power. She is quick to concede the controversial nature of this stance, but it doesn’t sway her. “I don’t think that’s wrong!” (Governor Kathy Hochul is pushing for re-adoption of nuclear power to assist in the state’s clean energy transition, which by all accounts, needs a big push.)

The city’s proximity to Niagara Falls and its hydroelectric facilities certainly contributes to Ithaca having a slightly “greener profile” than most other towns in New York. And fortunately, Ithaca’s main utility provider New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG), which is owned by energy juggernaut Avangrid, has not opposed the Green New Deal in any form. But like its home state, Ithaca still largely runs on natural gas. “The pipes are in the roads!” Bodnaruk says. “All the homes in Ithaca are basically fueled by natural gas, which is incredibly cheap because of nearby fracking … natural gas is just so cheap that folks don’t get a monthly energy cost savings by switching to heat pumps.”

Under such conditions, it can be near impossible to account for the social costs of carbon. This is quite possibly the biggest hurdle to Ithaca reaching its 2030 carbon neutral goal.

As for the Ithaca Green New Deal’s tangential goals on matters of climate action planning, waste management, decarbonizing transportation, workforce development, and more, the city’s report card is a mixed bag, with several initiatives currently stalled. (Ongoing building decarbonization efforts are thankfully not one of them.) Even with an invested civic leadership, there is legitimate concern that the resources needed – both local and statewide – to make Ithaca’s transition happen in time simply aren’t in place.

“We need to hit the accelerator,” Evans says with a modest sense of urgency. She is an optimist, for certain, but she is by no means blind to the challenges. “If we can share lessons learned, whether they’re positive or negative, I think that’s a net benefit to other cities. At the end of the day, does it matter if we get to zero? I don’t know. But telling our story is worth something.”

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