Businesses and Nonprofits

A groundbreaking partnership to make New Yorkers' homes energy efficient

Retrofit NYC Block by Block brings six neighborhoods in four boroughs into an unprecedented campaign to get New Yorkers to reduce their energy use through smart investments in their homes. Energy retrofits — home improvements that reduce the use of heating fuel, electricity, and water — can significantly reduce energy bills, make homes healthier and more comfortable, and reduce greenhouse gas and other emissions.

The Pratt Center for Community Development is working with community-based organizations to tap each neighborhood’s social networks — block associations, houses of worship, businesses, and other local institutions — to get the word out to community residents and to demystify the retrofit process so that residents can create "green blocks."

For more on Sustainable Houses of Worship, see the Pratt Center's in-depth report on the project's implementation and results.

The Pratt Center is collaborating with New York City religious institutions to help them reduce their buildings’ energy consumption, set maintenance priorities, develop space utilization strategies, and turn the institutions into centers of education and advocacy for sustainability in their communities.

The Sustainable Houses of Worship program's pilot phase in in Bedford-Stuyvesant, home to more than 100 houses of worship, is now complete. Read the stories of three churches that received free energy audits and are already realizing savings on their fuel and electricity bills as a result of recommended improvements:

Friendship Baptist Church

Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church

Siloam Presbyterian Church

Since then, another six congregations have received assessments of their lighting from Con Edison and two others have had their energy use audited by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority or other auditor.

Solar in New York City

Residential and commercial building owners in NYC are increasingly using the sun to meet their energy needs, reduce their costs, be part of the solution to our environmental crisis, and maximize the value of their property.