"We had to tell a good story."

Fifteen years ago, Lucas Parra began conjuring up ideas for how to use the rooftop of his condo’s building to the advan­tage of both the envi­ron­ment and the building’s resi­dents. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that the roof actu­ally needed a repair — suffi­cient time for Parra, a faculty member at City College in Biomedical Engineering, to join the board and lead the initiative. 

Driven by his long-held values of envi­ron­mental sustain­ability due to his upbringing in Germany, Parra joined his condo board specif­i­cally to see this project get done. It wasn’t without its chal­lenges, though. 

While Local Law 97 wasn’t the primary moti­vator for Parra and the board as they under­took this project, the new solar panels will help them meet the first set of building emis­sions stan­dards set by the law. They’re cognizant, however, that the emis­sions stan­dards will get stricter over time. 

“The solar panels, I think, helped us avoid the 2027 fines, but we’re still sched­uled to get a fine of $10,000 in 2030,” said Parra.

The board’s primary moti­va­tion was to reduce energy bills, which Parra believes to be of greater import and finan­cial incen­tive than the fines themselves.

“That was my argu­ment. It doesn’t matter what you think about the envi­ron­ment, you’re going to save money,” said Parra. ​“But I had to allay fears. People were afraid that we were taking a big loan. So I had to make spread­sheets on how it is going to pay off and how we’re going to do the loan. And the reality is, our roof needed to be replaced anyway.”

As Parra tried to convince resi­dents of the project’s merit ahead of a building-wide vote, his leading argu­ment for solar was the tax break that would come with it for investing in energy efficiency.

“We had to tell a good story,” said Parra. ​“There was always a possi­bility that the meeting wouldn’t be persua­sive enough, and the whole thing wouldn’t have happened. Some people felt like we shouldn’t be spending money on this. But I kept coming back to [the idea that] this gives us a way of getting cheap money for the roof. And as a bonus, we’re going to have solar. And you’re going to get a tax break, because it’s a capital invest­ment. Since the roof work was also for energy, we bundled a fair bit of the total cost into this tax credit.”

In the end, the project created a symbi­otic rela­tion­ship: Solar was a great doorway for the building to get a larger loan for the roof repair, and the roof repair allowed them to add insu­la­tion under­neath, which broad­ened the reach of energy-saving capabilities.

Parra hopes for a more straight­for­ward, city-driven process that will allow for more compre­hen­sive, acces­sible infor­ma­tion for build­ings seeking to greenify their energy.

“Solar is the thing that every­body under­stands,” he said. ​“But along with insu­la­tion and heating, I now realize it’s only a small frac­tion of what you need to do about energy.”

And the learning curve for each green energy project is steep.

“Every single project is indi­vid­u­ally initi­ated — it doesn’t scale,” said Parra. ​“The current approach is, ​‘We’re going to fine you if you don’t do it.’ It’s not well conceived. The city should come up with some­thing that’s like, ​‘Here’s the website, if you want to do some­thing about the envi­ron­ment, click yes, yes, and yes.’ And now you’re in busi­ness. That would scale. The city passing laws and giving people fines is, I think, not the way to go about it.”