City Energy Co-Op Follows Rural Examples

A new power initiative seeks to bring renewable energy to Brooklyn, N.Y.'s waterfront neighborhood Sunset Park, based on a blueprint of cooperative energy ownership used in rural communities.

The site will harness energy on top of the redeveloped, decommissioned Brooklyn Army Terminal through an 80,000-square foot solar garden, organized by nonprofit NYC Economic Development Corporation, nonprofit Solar One, the cooperative financing agency Co-op Power, and local environmental advocacy group Uprose.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Uprose and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance tells Fast Company, “We’re living in a time when we have to make nontraditional partnerships and doing really big things, because climate change and environmental concerns are a huge issue and they’re demanding that we step up.”

Innovating energy resources, particularly in communities with a sizable portion of its residents below the poverty line as in Sunset Park (roughly 30 percent), is not a new phenomenon. In many of America's rural areas, cooperative ownership of utilities emerged nearly 90 years ago, when private utility corporations did not service their communities for fear of poor return on investment. These programs are the source of inspiration for the Brooklyn initiative.

In the U.S., households that have to devote between 6 percent to 11 percent of their annual income to electric bills are considered energy-cost burdened. Their energy costs are high enough to sometimes force them to make trade-offs on food or other necessities to pay their bills. People who are energy-cost burdened are disproportionately people of color living at or below the poverty line. In New York City, for instance, people living below the poverty line of $31,756 have to devote nearly 10 percent of their income to energy costs.

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