BlocPower: Using Community Rooted Technology to Scale Clean Energy and Better Health Outcomes in NYC.

Pastor Leo Curry of the Fordham United Methodist Church in the Bronx examines a new energy-efficient boiler system installed in the church with financing through BlocPower.

“We want to help people that have not had the chance to leverage the new clean tech innovation and clean energy.”

Who is BlocPower?

Donnel Baird is the founder of BlocPower, and began this company with the context of a Brooklyn community organizer, former worker for Obama For America, and partner with the Department of Energy, working to create greater energy efficiency financing and green construction jobs for out of work communities.

Donnel’s new venture began with a call from a pastor asking him how he could apply to stimulus capital allocated to low income communities in NYC. Donnel secured funding for the church to receive a retrofit and learned of a more complex issue: social impact sustainability programs had a difficult time staying afloat because of the amount that inefficient energy systems strain budgets.

“Very few entities in low income communities can afford hiring an engineering firm. We feel that, that instead of sending an expensive engineer on-site to collect information on environmental systems, that we can instead use publicly available data (building dimensions, equipment data, etc.) combined with energy bill data and sensor data to calculate the cost and savings.”

Why clean-tech innovation and clean energy?

BlocPower has identified two key reasons for why this clean-tech innovation and clean energy based company exists: Energy Efficiency Services Market is expensive and fragmented, and the current investors who care about financial returns and the environment have no options to invest in energy efficiency at scale. There focus on urban cities with financially underserved communities of color is grounded in the recognition that innovation in clean-tech has left behind these communities:

“We want to help people that have not had the chance to leverage the new clean tech innovation and clean energy.”

Technology at play

BlocPower’s Technology Platform Uses IOT enabled sensors and proprietary engineering algorithms to create energy efficiency and clean energy projects in urban buildings, lowering building energy costs by 20–60%.

Additionally, they connect portfolios of their clean energy projects to investors searching for social, environmental and financial returns. BlocPower connects online investors to solar and energy efficiency project micro-finance opportunities, and trains and hires local unemployed workers to install all BlocPower retrofits.

How it works

http://blocpower.io/

BlocPower + Bronx: Reducing Childhood Asthma

BlocPower has partnered with Montefiore Medical Center and other private and public partners to establish the Bronx Healthy Buildings Fund, which will invest in installing clean energy technologies in buildings across the Bronx.

Asthma is an alarming public health concern in the Bronx. Rates of child asthma emergency department visits outpace that of NYC, as do avoidable hospitalizations among children.

Bronx residents living with asthma also face exposure to social determinants of health like poor housing and environmental conditions that may exacerbate asthma symptoms. In Mott Haven and Melrose, Bronx only 24% of renter-occupied homes are adequately maintained by landlords — free from heating breakdowns, cracks, holes, peeling paint and other defects.

Another factor exacerbating health conditions in the Bronx is air quality. Air quality problems are prevalent in low-income communities, and as mentioned in a recent PNAS published study, “pollution, much like wealth, is not distributed equally.”

BlocPower is currently assessing the health risks and energy efficiency of 150 high asthma rate buildings in the South Bronx. They then will design retrofits according to the needs of individual building occupants to best ensure that Bronx community members benefit most. The use of BlocPower’s IOT technology to assess health risks and energy efficiency, development of close community partnerships, strong community organizing efforts, local job creation, and strong structured financing, will result in the Bronx community leading healthier and safer lives.

BlocPower illustrates the power of technology when utilized with communities to address their existing concerns, and the importance of communities remaining at the center of global and national issues such as racial disparities in health and climate change, because they are most knowledgable about these issues that are disproportionately impacting their lives everyday.