A new competition promises to both challenge, and reward, heating and cooling equipment manufacturers which come up with innovations in multifamily housing electrification and energy efficiency tools.
The Clean Heat for All Challenge will utilize the New York City Housing Authority’s building portfolio to be early adopters of the best and workable new ideas for reducing greenhouse emissions from housing appliances, heating and air. The NYCHA is a partner in the initiative with the public utility New York Power Authority (NYPA) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
The three entities will invest more than $263 million to advanced electrification solutions on the heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) side of the multifamily housing equation.
“Heating residential buildings through the use of fossil fuels is responsible for a massive amount of greenhouse emissions," said King County Housing Authority Executive Director Stephen Norman. “We applaud NYCHA’s leadership in developing new heat pump technology that will provide energy-efficient options for both heating and cooling. This is a crucial step in reducing the carbon footprint of public housing and holds tremendous promise for our nation’s inventory of over one million federally subsidized housing units.”
The NYCHA portfolio includes nearly 2,200 residential dwelling buildings.
The challenge calls upon manufacturers to develop a packaged cold climate heat pump that can be installed through an existing window opening to provide heating and cooling on a room-by-room basis. The envisioned product would enable rapid, low-cost electrification of multifamily buildings by reducing or eliminating many of the cost drivers inherent to existing heat pump technologies when used in resident occupied apartments.
These include costly electrical upgrades, long refrigerant pipe runs, drilling through walls and floors and other construction aspects which result in high project costs, and significant disruption to residents.
“New York state law mandates that we move away from fossil fuels and binds us to an aggressive, ambitious timeline for carbon neutrality,” said NYS Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner, RuthAnne Visnauskas. “I congratulate and thank Governor Hochul, NYSERDA, NYPA and NYCHA for taking us to this next step in the challenge to create clean retrofit technology that we can apply to all of our aging buildings. Our fight against the negative impact of climate change – and our future - depends upon partnerships like this one.”
