Decarbonizing a city with heat pumps and thermal energy networks

For a building owner, building decarbonization has myriad benefits: lower utility bills, lower maintenance, healthier and more comfortable living. But the barriers to reaching those benefits are large, particularly the high upfront costs and complicated renovation process (many inspections, many permits, coordinating with many contractors). Scale up to trying to decarbonize every building in a city, and the problems scale up, too - each building has its unique challenges to decarbonization, based on location, age, state of repair, and use. But - it turns out that by decarbonizing buildings on a city level, the solutions can scale up, too.

In this final installment of our three-part series examining Ithaca, New York’s road to full building decarbonization, we are joined by the team of people who are identifying solutions to these pain points in Ithaca. We will explore how bulk purchasing power, streamlined contracting, and development of communal clean energy infrastructure can clear the pathway to the city’s net-zero goals, and how these principles might serve as a blueprint to other cities in the U.S.

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