BlocPower's CEO on Building Hope

At BlocPower, you’re greening buildings across America by replacing fossil fuel infrastructure with energy efficient and sustainable equipment. Why are buildings such an important challenge to tackle when it comes to climate change? How are fossil-fuel dependent buildings affecting both our individual health and the health of the planet?

Between single-family houses, multifamily residential units, and commercial spaces, there are well over 125 million buildings in the United States. The vast majority of those buildings use fossil fuels for their source of energy, which contributes to approximately 30% of America's greenhouse gas emissions. At BlocPower, we use our machine learning and A.I. enabled building analytics platform, BlocMaps, to identify buildings most in need of cost effective clean energy upgrades. With these insights, we’ve worked across the country with governments, utilities, building owners, and community members to upgrade buildings and homes. In particular, we focus our work in on low-income neighborhoods to help support communities where people are exposed to high levels of air pollution and where people are at a risk of chronic illness and premature death.

Americans spend about 90% of our time inside of buildings. We believe that the places where we eat, sleep, work, worship, learn, and heal should not be sources of poisoning the planet and poisoning our families. Indoor spaces can have two to five times higher levels of dangerous pollution than outside spaces. Numerous studies have shown that indoor air pollution from fossil fuel appliances can have as much, if not more, of a negative impact on our health as outdoor air pollution.

Outdated, inadequate HVAC systems and fossil fuel appliances that leak benzene, methane, and nitrogen dioxide have long been cited as causes of Sick Building Syndrome, which affects about one in four Americans. Stanford researchers estimate that the amount of methane leaking from gas stoves inside U.S. homes has the same climate impact as about 500,000 gasoline-powered cars — even when these gas stoves are not in use. Recent studies have linked gas stoves to 13% of childhood asthma cases. Half the buildings that will exist in 2050 have already been built, so there isn’t a path forward to achieving decarbonization targets and better health outcomes without addressing our existing building stock.

Tell us more about BlocPower’s commitment to green workforce development. How can decarbonization lead to job and wealth creation in underserved communities? 

Our economy is facing a massive shortage of skilled workers, especially in the industries that will be at the forefront of climate action. The green building industry in particular is facing a widening skills gap, with the percentage of construction workers who were aged 55 and over nearly doubling from 2003 to 2020, and low levels of Millennial and Gen Z trade workers. In an industry that already struggles to adopt new technology, the skills gap will only grow as young people most familiar with innovation opt out of construction engineering.

To address this workforce gap, and to solve interconnected issues of public safety and economic distress, the New York City Mayor's Office selected BlocPower to lead a precision employment initiative in the summer of 2021. The Civilian Climate Corps program was designed to build a clean energy workforce in communities most impacted by gun violence, and to provide New Yorkers with critical skills to help make their communities greener and healthier.

Our Civilian Climate Corps participants are paid a living wage to receive training for good, local jobs in the expanding green economy that can’t be outsourced. In the past two and a half years, we’ve enrolled over 6,000 members and have a 94% graduation rate. Our members are 97% Black and Brown, and 25% women — all populations that have been historically underrepresented in the construction industry. 

We focus on training people in the use of cutting-edge hardware and software tools, and the installation of all-electric, distributed energy resource systems as they emerge as a new financial and energy asset class. Trainees acquire the skills to use innovative construction program management software, the Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality. We are setting people up to thrive now and in the future.

In reflecting on your career path, you said that you wanted to combine your passions for civil rights and climate change. What led you to residential buildings as the nexus of these passions? And how does your training as a community organizer influence how you approach BlocPower’s work?

My family lived in an apartment building in Bed-Stuy with an ancient, constantly broken heating system. My parents both worked nights, so when I was five years old I was taught that if it got really cold, I should strike a match to light the gas oven and open the oven door to heat the apartment. But I was also taught to open up the apartment windows, so that carbon monoxide could escape and we wouldn't suffocate while we slept. 

Years later, walking around those same Brooklyn streets as a community organizer, I saw many of those same apartment buildings with the windows open in the middle of winter and it struck me just how many of my neighbors were still heating their homes the same way I did as a kid. I realized we needed a solution that could make cleaner and more efficient heating available and affordable to everyone — especially low-income communities who carry the heaviest burden of energy cost and poor air quality and are too often left out of conversations around climate solutions.

I read a book in college about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) work during the Civil Rights Movement to raise capital from large labor unions and progressive social foundations. They would also go into the rural areas of Alabama or Mississippi and hold organizing meetings in the churches that farmers and sharecroppers attended. At these meetings, they would often pass around the collection plate, and the congregants — who didn’t have much to spare — would contribute because they wanted to build a future world for Black people and all Americans in this country.

Early on, I asked myself: if impact investors and Wall Street weren’t funding solar panels for buildings in Bed-Stuy or Brownsville, Brooklyn, why couldn't we turn to local residents to invest back into their communities? If local congregants are already donating $100 to the ministry, why wouldn't they also invest $100 for an energy efficient upgrade to the sanctuary? Community organizing has been a powerful source of strength and resiliency for Black people throughout our history; why can’t we apply it to solving the problem of clean energy? Grassroots civic engagement has always made a significant — if not the most significant — impact on socio-political achievement in America.

Like low-income communities, our neighborhood associations, faith communities, and educational organizations should not be considered an afterthought — they're central to conversations about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our country. By forming a new kind of coalition between environmentalists, tech companies, impact investors, and community organizations, BlocPower has been able to chart a different path forward to make electrification possible for everyone.

When reflecting on what hope means to you in the context of climate change, you said, “there can be some real hope. Not hope because we’re being optimistic and we’re crossing our fingers…Hope combined with will and willpower, that we can go building to building and do this. We don’t need to invent new technology. We don’t need new software. There’s plenty of money to do it, it’s just will.” In the spirit of actionable hope, what are the projects you’re most excited about? Where do you hope BlocPower will be in the future?

We have several projects I’m excited about in 2024 and beyond. Importantly, we will continue our work to electrify buildings in cities across the country. We made progress in 2023 as our first full year of work in Ithaca, NY, one of the first cities to pledge to fully decarbonize by 2030. We look forward to making more headway in other major markets like San Jose, Chicago, and Atlanta, and I’m excited that we are part of the team to expand EV charging infrastructure across all of Los Angeles. We are launching a nationwide “decarbonization challenge” amongst U.S. cities who will race to achieve their 2030 climate goals, and announce the results in Davos. 

We’re also expanding our workforce development programs nationwide. Later this spring, in Boston, Massachusetts, we will launch a $1.2 million workforce development pilot program for returning citizens, in addition to a new national workforce partnership with Goodwill and Accenture. Once completed and pressure-tested, our new heat pump curriculum can potentially be distributed to Goodwill locations all over the country. 

We’re constantly working to rapidly scale decarbonization efforts across the country, based on the incredible framework that President Biden has given us. I’m excited about 2024!

The views and opinions of the author are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Aspen Institute.

By Maya Kobe-Rundio, Digital Editor and Producer, Aspen Ideas