The solar farm at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York was surrounded by trees Wednesday night. The city voted to decarbonize the city’s buildings and install more energy-efficient appliances and more solar panels. The city stated that the move will reduce carbon emissions by 40%. Heather Ainsworth/Associated Press hide caption

The solar farm at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York was surrounded by trees Wednesday night. The city voted to decarbonize the city’s buildings and install more energy-efficient appliances and more solar panels. The city stated that the move will reduce carbon emissions by 40%.

This week, the city of Ithaca, New York, took a groundbreaking initiative to vote to achieve the decarbonization and electrification of the city’s buildings by the end of the decade-this goal is part of the city’s own Green New Deal, and it’s also the city’s Green New Deal. a part of. Plan to help cities achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

Ithaca is the first city in the United States to develop such a plan, which the city claims will reduce Ithaca's annual carbon dioxide emissions by 40% by 400,000 tons. The timetable for achieving its goals is much faster than promised by other cities in the world.

Ithaca's distance from natural gas and propane is being waged in a broader political struggle surrounding the transition to renewable energy. In more than a dozen states, lawmakers backed by the natural gas industry have battled local efforts to ban natural gas connections and the electrification of buildings. However, in Ithaca, the New York State Electricity and Natural Gas Company stated that they are working with the city to achieve decarbonization.

"In order to combat climate change, we need to reduce carbon emissions," Luis Aguirre-Torres, the city's director of sustainable development, told NPR. "The whole world is looking forward to 2050. [Ithaca] is looking forward to 2030, so this is a very difficult thing."

The process of decarbonization and electrification of urban buildings will mean installing solar panels and replacing natural gas stoves with electric stoves. It also involves installing more energy-efficient heat pumps. Aguirre-Torres said that in June of this year, the city passed a legislation that prohibits the use of natural gas and propane in new buildings and buildings that are being renovated, which means that the entire city will be completely away from natural gas and propane.

"To be honest, I believe we are the first people in the world to try such crazy things," he said.

Aguirre-Torres said Wednesday night’s vote is worth celebrating because of their unique achievements-but he is also celebrating what he believes is the reproducibility of the project.

"We showed this work, and it can be replicated all over the United States."

Timur Dogan of Cornell University is one of the researchers helping the city of Ithaca to achieve carbon neutrality.

He said that reducing the energy use of a building instead of focusing on other emissions is a "low-hanging fruit"-this is easier to achieve because the technology to repair it already exists. And the impact is huge.

"More than 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated by or related to buildings, using natural gas or fuel oil for heating and electricity used by buildings," said Dogen.

He said that the timetable for achieving carbon neutrality in cities by 2030 is a "very ambitious agenda." Since last summer, Dogan has been collecting data to help the city complete the process, and will present his findings to the city in the next few months.

For Aguirre-Torres, decarbonization voting is important in itself, but he is also excited about who is doing this work with him behind the scenes.

BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based climate technology startup, was selected in 2019 to work with the City of Ithaca to implement a decarbonization plan for its buildings. BlocPower was founded by Donnel Baird and mainly cooperates with low-income communities and communities of colored people to achieve safer and healthier decarbonized buildings.

Aguirre-Torres is Latino, and he said that working with Baird and others at BlocPower gave him great hope, especially when working in a predominantly white city like Ithaca.

Statistics show that the vast majority of people engaged in environmental protection activities are white. The work he and Baird's team did in Ithaca also showed a "social reorganization," he said.

"When you consider the demographic composition of upstate New York... and then you have a brown man like me and a few black people in BlocPower driving this transition, it makes you hope that a lot of things are happening, not only technology and finance. Our community is undergoing social restructuring," he said.

"The core of everything is the structural change we are witnessing, and I think this is a very wonderful thing."