ADVANCING THE ISSUES THAT HIT CLOSEST TO HOME
The Western Queens Co-op Coalition (WQCC) is an entirely grassroots organization started by concerned co-op board members Alicia Fernandez (Queensview, LIC), Charles Herzog (Celtic Park, Sunnyside), and Jane Menton (Sunnyside Towers, Sunnyside). Its mission is to educate and advocate for shareholders, particularly regarding the Climate Mobilization Act, or Local Law 97, which is the biggest issue facing co-ops over the next decade.
Our goal is to represent concerned stakeholders in Western Queens and use our collective voice to effect change with local politicians. The co-op community is facing several challenges during the next few election cycles. We must work together to advocate for our future.
Per NYC.gov: Under this groundbreaking law, most buildings over 25,000 square feet will be required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits by 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030. The goal is to reduce the emissions produced by the city’s largest buildings 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. The law also established the Local Law 97 Advisory Board and Climate Working Groups to advise the city on how best to meet these aggressive sustainability goals.
What it means: Over the next decade, all buildings over 25,000 square feet will be required to fully electrify their infrastructure. All systems that might currently run on natural gas or oil, including heat, hot waters and cooking, will need to be retrofitted to an electric system via heat pumps and electric stoves in order to avoid strict and exacting annual penalties.
Why you should care: The cost to fully retrofit a building to electric infrastructure is enormous, totaling several million dollars per building. All of the money for these renovations would have to be levied as assessments or maintenance increases on co-op shareholders and condo owners.
Additionally, these mandates would require doubling or tripling demand on New York City’s existing electric grid, which already suffers from reliability issues when energy demand peaks during the hottest days of the year.
To top it off, New York City’s electric grid is dependent on fossil fuels, and currently runs 80-85% on gas and oil. As long as the grid runs on fossil fuels, electricity mandates are not a solution to climate change, and will only result in increased carbon emissions. Politicians writing this legislation have yet to prove that they can build and scale a grid that is renewable, emission-free, and reliable. They should be required to do that before mandating that co-ops pay millions of dollars for costly renovations. Otherwise, these policies will not address climate change, and will likely leave buildings without the power they need to function.