Like many New Yorkers, I’m confident that we need to get a handle on climate change. I am inspired by our city’s commitment to reducing our carbon emissions and dealing with the climate crisis, reflected in the laws setting out a pathway to carbon neutrality — this is important work, and I’m certain it needs to happen. I’m less certain, however, about how we’ll get there.
In New York City, cutting carbon is overwhelmingly about reducing the emissions that come not from cars or heavy industry, but from building operations — the source of two-thirds of our city’s emissions. A good number of these buildings are for commercial use, which makes them relatively easier to retrofit because they have greater access to capital, and renovations can happen when they’re not in use. Yet there are also tens of thousands of residential buildings in our city, most of which are decades old, operating on outdated systems, and constantly occupied — not to mention the variety of ownership models that make big decisions about their future difficult. Taking action in these aging co-ops, condos, and rental buildings is our city’s greatest challenge.
The city’s landmark 2019 legislation Local Law 97 has offered a clear catalyst: It set ambitious new standards for buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the pathway remains strikingly hazy. In a word, we know that we should cut building carbon emissions, especially in residential buildings, but the question remains: How?
Having tried this myself, I’ve been taken aback by how hard it can be to replace systems and tighten building operations. I live in an old building with dozens of other apartments. My neighbors and I have tried to figure out, concretely, what investments we can make and what new systems to install in order to comply with New York City’s exacting building emissions standards. It is work that has taken tons of time, at significant cost, and we have made only partial progress.
In this zone between aspirations and our capacity to realize them, I’ve longed for inspiration — for examples of my neighbors’ work pushing through the research, technical questions, and red tape. Like many others, I’m looking for direction about how we can all take action and actually cut greenhouse gas emissions in the buildings where we live.
From time to time, I hear reports of progress elsewhere. People all over the city are solving complex problems; they are rewiring their buildings, rejiggering the metering, installing efficient new facades, and even switching off oil and gas entirely to heat and cool their buildings with electricity. This work is happening — we just haven’t heard enough about it.
Can a magazine be a roadmap?
What New York City needs to meet this clean energy challenge is a roadmap. We will all move more quickly — with more confidence and better results — if we are able to chart our way by building on the insights and experiences of those who have already started on this work.
Enter Skylight, the digital magazine we’re launching today.
Skylight will tell the stories of the work that New Yorkers are doing to rebuild our city. We all need to know more about who is doing what — about what’s working (and what isn’t) — in order to learn from our friends and peers who are actually making efficiency and clean energy upgrades.
And who better to tell these stories than skilled journalists? Skylight reporters are sleuthing out stories about the first movers driving the clean energy transition in New York City, writing compelling reports about their work and what it took to get it done. Every month, on our website and in our newsletter, we publish rigorous, original reporting about the concrete steps real New Yorkers like you are taking to decarbonize.
At Skylight, you’ll get to know the pioneers behind these building projects. You will read about the residents of a classic white brick building who replaced their building’s crumbling façade with a new, better-insulated porcelain system; a Brooklyn co-operator who worked with her neighbors to replace their failing boiler with electric-powered heat pumps; and the owner of a portfolio of rental buildings in Queens who bundles solar panels into every roofing upgrade he completes. This work is happening now, and these are the stories that can lead the way to inspire further change.
I hope you will follow along with our dispatches from the front lines of the decarbonization work that is happening in the five boroughs as we report on this remarkable new chapter in our city’s history.
Welcome to Skylight.