Retrofit Bedford Stuyvesant

A Model Block for Energy Efficiency

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, America's first community development corporation, and the Coalition for the Improvement of Bedford Stuyvesant are working with the Pratt Center to make the neighborhood a model for improving energy efficiency in low-income urban neighborhoods. By focusing our efforts in a defined geographic neighborhood, we will take advantage of urban proximity, common and attached building types, social networking and word-of-mouth marketing to dramatically reduce energy use, thereby reducing homeowner and tenant costs and improving indoor and outdoor air quality. Our ten-year goal is to retrofit over 5,000 homes and serve as a model for urban neighborhoods throughout the United States.

The initiative includes four components:

Model Green Block: We are planning to pilot our initiative by designating a Green Block where we will provide participating homeowners with free energy audits, facilitated access to existing incentive programs to reduce energy use, and other environmental improvements. We plan to launch a Green Block competition for the next round of Green Blocks by the end of 2009. We are currently reaching out to our first block in Bed-Stuy: Herkimer Street, between Bedford and New York Avenues.
Lighting the Way community education campaign: We will distribute 5,000 CFL light bulbs, which last for approximately seven years and save 75% of the energy that an incandescent bulb uses.
Grow green businesses and jobs by providing opportunities to local residents to join the growing energy retrofit field.
Document and disseminate results to learn about and share findings on how to dramatically increase the scale of energy saving building retrofits in dense neighborhoods typical of NYC and other US cities.