Multi-Family Building in Flatbush (photo by Keka Marzagão)

This week we spoke with Louis Rizzo, Energy Efficiency Lead Program Manager at National Grid, about the utility’s residential energy efficiency programs. “National Grid has comprehensive programs and generous rebates to help the homeowner reduce their energy costs and increase comfort,” Mr. Rizzo said.

If you are interested in any of these programs, contact National Grid Energy Efficiency at 1-800-292-2032 or visit their website.

Multi-Family Buildings

There are two types of programs for larger buildings (5-50 units):

1) The first type is a straight rebate of $100-$6,000 (this amount could go up!) for certain energy upgrades in your home, such as heating equipment, insulation, boiler reset controls, and more.

The rebate will cover about 50% of the equipment cost and has a 3-7 year payback period depending on how much you do.

2) The second incentive is for customized, comprehensive energy efficiency measures for buildings with larger heating systems, and can include heating system upgrades, weatherization, and much more.  To qualify for this program, you have to promise to meet a certain level of energy savings.

In contrast to the straight rebate, the customized program could cover 50% of project costs–not just equipment–up to $100,000, with a payback period of 3-5 years.

You can choose your own contractor for both of these programs, but National Grid has a helpful list on their website.

1-4 Family Homes

For smaller homes (1-4 families), there is a straight rebate of $200-$1,000. This covers natural gas heating equipment upgrades to pre-qualified high-efficiency units, outdoor reset controls, water heaters, thermostats and more.

You could save 30% or more on total project costs.  Combine this with another 30% covered by a federal tax credit for energy efficiency measures (sometimes capped at  $1,500) and you’re well on your way to meeting your cost.

According to Mr. Rizzo, “Homeowners have been seeing quite a bit of benefit. Customers are seeing savings of 20% to 40% off their heating bills.” Also, National Grid will launch a weatherization program for single family homes this spring. The expected date for the program to start is April 1st. The program describes that “eligible customers receive a comprehensive home energy audit with installed air sealing measures and generous rebates for additional weatherization measures such as insulation.”

National Grid’s pre-qualified weatherization contractors

You can learn more about this program here. Think about all those savings! And not only that, Mr. Rizzo explained, ”The process is very straightforward and easy to do.  There’s not a tremendous amount of paperwork.  We’ll work with you to make your building more energy efficient.”

Ready to get started? Great!

Visit https://www.powerofaction.com/efficiency or call 1-800-292-2032 to learn more about the National Grid Energy efficiency programs.

Relevant Links:

• Neighborhood Energy Forum Registration
• Neighborhood Energy Forum
• On the Path To Energy Efficiency and Affordability
• Neighborhood Energy Forum on March 20th

photo by christheobscure

We’re excited to invite you to another Monthly Volunteer Gathering at Vox Pop Cafe with Sustainable Flatbush! (Our second one, yay!) We’re going to be talking a lot about our next big event of the spring, the Neighborhood Energy Forum on March 20th. We all want to learn about how to make our homes more energy efficient, right? Who doesn’t like saving money and the environment at the same time?

Come learn about the event, share your energy-related stories (or any story, really!), and mingle with others in your community that see the need for change. Also, there’s delicious coffee and food at this one-of-a-kind café we love to hang out in!

Make sure you stay after the talk to enjoy some groovy live Blues music.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 9th, 6:30-8pm
WHERE: Vox Pop Cafe, 1022 Cortelyou Road

See you there!
Maria & Nicole

photo by Afroza Amin

Hi, My name is Afroza Amin and I’m going to be interning with this great organization for the Spring 2010 semester. I’m an undergraduate junior at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and accounting.

I’m ashamed to say I’ve never really thought about sustainability issues as being such a big problem. However, a year ago I went back to my country Bangladesh, a country situated in Southern Asia. The state of poverty and overall environmental degradation in some parts of that country I visited, opened my eyes to the issue. People were struggling to make out a living but still not having enough to eat day to day. The roads were covered with garbage and people would walk by it without giving it a second glance, like its something they were used to. People are so busy struggling to live in such poverty, that they don’t really care what they are doing to their environment.

Once I got back to New York I did some research on sustainability groups or if there was any sort of action being taken for this state of Bangladesh. There wasn’t much being done about it and that got me thinking more about the issues. In the end, not really knowing what to do, I pushed the thought to the back of my head until I was in one of my psychology classes last semester. Professor Nancy Romer was offering a class for individuals who were interested in interning with sustainability groups.

Sustainable Flatbush was one of the organizations I was interested in because it was close to my neighborhood, so I emailed Anne. She replied back to me saying that they were interested in spreading the word to the South Asian community so my language skills would be needed. I was thrilled to hear this and after doing some research about the organization, I just knew this was the organization I wanted to intern with. The goals of this organization greatly interested me because it was the things I thought needed to be addressed in my country. Energy solution, zero waste, livable street; these goals of the organization are things I became interested in and would like to find out more about. All in all, I’m hoping to gain more knowledge so that I can help others in my community understand these things and become aware about what they can do.

About a year ago, Sustainable Flatbush’s Executive Director Anne Pope and I sat at Sycamore Bar and Flower Shop on Cortelyou Road.

I had just become the Director of Energy Solutions at SF, and we were strategizing about the best ways to meet the urgent need for energy efficiency upgrades in our neighborhood, to bring down soaring energy costs and reduce our carbon emissions.  With new incentive programs from government and utilities, Anne and I realized the time was right to leverage funds that would bring major energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to Flatbush.

So we conceived the Neighborhood Energy Forum.  For the past year, SF’s Energy Solutions Initiative has been working diligently to bring the Neighborhood Energy Forum to fruition.  We’ve been fortunate to join forces with a fantastic group of sponsors and partners, the Flatbush Development Corporation, the Energy Smart Communities program of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), ConEd,  and National Grid.

Join us on March 20 at the Brooklyn College Student Center, from 9:30 to 2:00.
Admission is free!  Here’s what it’s about:

Multi-Family and 1-4 Family Tracks

We understand that large buildings face different challenges than smaller homes, so depending on the size of your residence, we have information tailored to your needs.  Representatives from NYSERDA, National Grid, and ConEd will highlight low- and middle-income incentive programs to help building owners, co-op boards, tenant groups and other stakeholders understand what needs to be done and how to take the first steps.

Meet Contractors Who Can Do the Work at Our Energy Fair

Energy auditors, building engineers, renewable energy installers—basically anyone you need to talk to—will be on hand offering their services.  You will gain important knowledge about how to move forward by talking to the experts, and may even find someone to work with on your project.

A Perfect Storm for Renewables in NYC

With federal, state, and local tax credits and abatements, plus a solar-electric (photovoltaic, or PV) incentive rebate program, 2010 is the year for solar–not just PV but solar heat and hot water too.  So if you’re one of those people who have asked us, “How can I get solar for my home,” come to the Neighborhood Energy Forum and catch up with renewable energy vendors at the Energy Fair.

Check-in with Your Elected Officials

Members of the New York State Assembly and Senate as well as New York City Council will be on hand to let you know what they’re doing to support energy efficiency and renewables in our city.  See the Neighborhood Energy Forum page to get the story on who will be there.

To find out more, visit our Energy Forum page, or jump right to our registration form.  Send me an email if you have any questions.  See you there!

Relevant Links:

• Neighborhood Energy Forum Registration
• Neighborhood Energy Forum
• What National Grid Can Do For You
• Neighborhood Energy Forum on March 20th

While we were getting ready for our second annual Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are Event, we had to decide what would make our space look like Sustainable Flatbush was coming through without creating a lot of waste.

Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. (Clean Air Council)  We wanted to reduce that amount of waste, not add to it by buying brand new decorations! New York City already throws away enough garbage every day to fill the Empire State Building! (Clean Air Council)  How could we add to that in good conscience with our Zero Waste Initiative begging people to divert usable resources from the waste stream?

Flowers from Recycled Bottles (photo by Keka)

Keka had a great idea! We would use materials that people would have sent to landfills or recycling centers and instead, we would turn them into art.  During our arts & crafts party at Vox Pop, we cut water bottles into flowers, cut used paper into flowers, and even learned how to fold origami! One person’s garbage is another person’s reusable decorations!

After we had a bunch of flowers cut, we got to paint, sew paper flowers together, and talk about how great we hoped the event would be.  Our flowers were made with love and they filled the room with an air of DIY as all of the attendees and talented tablers discussed the upcoming gardening season.

Making Decorations at Brooklyn College (photo by Keka)

Thanks so much to everyone who helped and attended the event!!

Campus Road Community Garden welcome sign

The Campus Road Community Garden was founded in 1997, under the auspices of the South Midwood Residents Association (SMRA), according to the Daily News. The agreement to build the garden was negotiated between the then-current President of Brooklyn College and Ms. Toby Sanchez. The plot’s location was considered provisional — it would be moved to a more permanent location when the college had more money.

As the years passed, the college left the garden alone. It grew slowly, about two or three thousand square feet more than its original 6000 feet, and now encompasses about forty members. Growers, who pay $30 a year for a plot, raise vegetables, flowers, and herbs. The garden hosts collaborative learning experiences for high school students, and this past September, hosted a Brooklyn College Slow Food eat-in.

The Garden, as viewed from the outside

But the Campus Road Community Garden is now in danger. Brooklyn College has awoken from its green-dreams slumber and discovered that, in order to broaden its running track, it must cut into its parking lot. How to create more parking spots to compensate for the old ones taken down? Why of course — demolish the Campus Road Community Garden!

I had the privilege of speaking to Madeline Nelson, a community-oriented activist and a staunch supporter of all the Campus Road Community Garden symbolizes, about the situation. She read me excerpts of the original contract – and some of the requirements are so unusual, I have to share them. Did you know that the gardeners must leave plots for academic programs, and  if Brooklyn College’s president wants flowers from the garden, the growers are required to give some?

She also shared with me the growers’ response to Brooklyn College’s claim that the gardeners have extended their boundaries beyond what the contract permitted. Madeline pointed out that the contract never specified borders for the garden’s northern and southern sides; only the eastern and western sides had specifications, and to ensure the garden kept within those boundaries, a pathway was built in the spring of 1997. In any case, Madeline explained, the garden expanded slowly, and Brooklyn College was aware of every foot the garden grew. The growers never attempted to hide the gradual plot-by-plot expansion, and besides, Brooklyn College received an annual list participants – they were fully aware of when more people where added to the garden’s roster.

I asked Madeline if she could explain Brooklyn College’s affirmation that the garden’s current location was always considered provisional, and growers thus could not protest when the college announced the garden would be moved.

She explained that it was “verbally understood” that the garden was on a ten-year plan, and eventually something was going to be done so the school could expand its athletic field. But, she went on to say, the gardeners understood that the expansion would be for academic purposes – for the students to have a better athletic area. But not for a parking lot!

Touring the Garden

Brooklyn College’s official stance on the creation of a new parking lot is that they are legally required to add more spots to make up for those lost to the new athletic field – a question of state law. The growers, however, question this sudden need for more parking. Mass transportation and the recent surge of bike-riding have lessened the need for parking. And, if it is indeed a matter of state law, Madeline asked me, has Brooklyn College done its “due diligence”? Has the college asked the state for an exemption? Have they explained times have changed – that with more buses, bicycles, and trains, the parking lot just isn’t necessary?

Madeline also outlined several of the gardeners’ own proposals, all of which would protect the garden while still getting the parking that Brooklyn College insists it needs.

First, there is the massive Target parking lot right next to the university, which never seems to be at anywhere near full capacity – a “hugely underutilized” facility, Madeline calls it. As it is, Target offers special rates for those who come to park early, but has the college ever attempted to negotiate a special student lot in Target’s parking area? Target would get more potential consumers, and Brooklyn College would have a place to which they can send students’ cars.

If Target will not cooperate – and we don’t know if they won’t, because the college has not taken up the proposal – Madeline pointed out that by the new West Quad Building, there is more empty land, full of trees and shrubs that are not as developed at the ones in the garden. She actually suggested to Brooklyn College personnel that the athletic track be expanded there, and then the parking be put elsewhere, but the response was negative: “Nice idea, ain’t gonna happen.”

One flower, one bee. One garden, an entire ecosystem.

But it gets worse. In the new garden, Brooklyn College wants a new organizer – instead of the current one, who is part of the community and has over sixteen years of experience in the garden, the college wants to put in a faculty coordinator. What does a teacher from the college know about a garden that someone who actually works in the garden does not? Furthermore, the garden would also fall under the jurisdiction of Brooklyn College Facilities Planning and Operations – the very same Facilities whose Assistant Vice President, Steve Czirak, called the garden a “weed patch”!

What has gone wrong? How can Brooklyn College sacrifice this working ecosystem, as Madeline calls it, for a parking lot? Where has the college failed?

What Brooklyn College has failed to see is that the community garden has done just that – created a community. Growers, nature lovers, and curious students all bond over the patch of greenery; people find new roles as planters, as admirers, and as eaters. The community garden has taken what we all know – that food must be grown before it can be eaten – and made it something we understand. But by dismantling years of devotion, sweat, and hard work, Brooklyn College is refusing to see just how valuable the community garden is – something so much more meaningful than fifty parking spots!

Are you prepared to let the college raze all this -- for a parking lot?

The gardeners are not taking this sitting down, and neither must you. Destroying a valuable piece of local culture  – not to mention a haven for flora and fauna in the veritable desert that is the college — to build more parking spots is the ultimate in cruel ironies. And you can help! From the comfort of your own home, sign an electronic petition here, and join the Facebook group devoted to the garden here. Interested in taking a more active role? On Wednesday, February 24, 2010, Community Board 14 (at the CB14 District Office, 810 E 16th Street) is holding a meeting at 7 PM – and the life of the community garden is the hot topic of the night. So show your face, and your support, and let Brooklyn College know that a garden is a thing of beauty – and should be enjoyed, if not forever, for at least many years to come.

All photos courtesy of Flatbush Gardener. Thanks to Madeline Nelson for graciously giving her time and allowing me to interview her for this piece.

Greening Flatbush 2010 (photo by Maria Bergenhem)

Hello Sustainable Flatbush community!

Thank you so much to everyone that joined us at the second annual Greening Flatbush event on Sunday, February 21st! I hope you all enjoyed yourselves and learned a lot about what we can do to actively ensure that our food is local–grow it ourselves:) I had a lot of fun spending my afternoon with you all!

Barry's sprouts (photo by Flatbush Gardener)

What was your favorite part of the event? I have to say the food samples excited me the most. Barry’s sprouts were so tasty and fresh, it really proved to me that we can grow quality stuff right in our apartments/homes. And the Moroccan carrot and orange salad was like nothing I’ve ever tasted, I’m going to look up Just Food Chef Nicole Caruth’s blog ASAP to find out more recipes. I’m having people over for dinner next weekend, I’m totally going to try and make it for them! I also enjoyed speaking to Pieranna about composting with worms, I was skeptical before but she made it sounds so doable. She mentioned that Brooklyn Botanical Garden has a hotline you can call for composting questions, so you’ll always have help there if you need it.

Thank you all for making this a great event! I look forward to starting to recognize some of your faces at future events:)

ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Thank you to our sponsors: Kings County Nurseries, Flatbush Food Co-op (for providing tasty snacks and ingredients for Nicole’s cooking demo), and Vox Pop for the coffee!

Thank you to our DJ Azmatec for the musical soundscape!

Thank you to our venue, Dorchester Senior Center!

Emily Goodman in Gardening for Children (photo by Flatbush Gardener)

PRESENTERS and WORKSHOPS

Maikel Carder
“Seeds, Soil, and Sunshine”
This workshop will cover what to grow, where to grow it [indoors, outdoors, in the ground, in containers] and how to grow it. Participants will learn how to prepare soil, plant seeds and care for seedlings, and how to grow herbs and microgreens on the windowsill.
Maikel Carder has been gardening all his life [60+ years] and is a confirmed “foodie”. He is active in local urban gardening and other efforts to re-invent daily life on a more simple, sustainable and satisfying basis.

Emily Goodman
“Gardening for Children”
Park Slope resident Emily Goodman never really appreciated plants until she moved to New York City and realized she missed seeing green. She studied horticulture at the New York Botanic Garden, worked briefly as a professional gardener, and is now a full-time freelance writer and editor with a special interest in writing and teaching about plants. Her award-winning children’s book PLANT SECRETS was published by Charlesbridge in 2009.

Nicole J. Caruth
“Cooking Tips from a Just Food Community Chef”
Nicole J. Caruth has been a Community Chef with Just Food since 2009. When she’s not giving cooking demos, she primarily works as a freelance writer and visual art curator. She contributes a monthly food-art column to the PBS-affiliated blog, Art:21; and frequently pens reviews for the contemporary art e-journal …might be good. Her writing has been published by the Brooklyn Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem; Brooklyn Fine Arts Magazine, and Gastronomica to name only a few. She is currently organizing an exhibition about food for the Center for Book Arts in New York. Her companion book — a cookbook featuring recipes by contemporary artists and art world professionals — will be the first in an ongoing series. Both projects debut next spring. Caruth resides in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

Maya Nayak
“The Windowfarms Project”
Windowfarms are vertical hydroponic systems made of recycled bottles and used indoors to grow veggies year-round. The Windowfarms Project combines social media, urban farming and open-source product development to provide city dwellers with the tools to grow food and cultivate their understanding of agriculture and collaborative change-making. Please visit www.windowfarms.org to see photos/additional information.

Pieranna Pieroni
“Composting with Worms in Your Apartment”
Working with residents, schools, community gardens, and other organizations, the Brooklyn Compost Project offers workshops on both indoor and outdoor composting and provides technical assistance to gardeners, building managers, landscapers, and institutions who wish to compost.
Pieranna Pieroni is a Brooklyn Botanic Garden-trained Master Composter and educator who works with New York City public school students around school-community gardening and ecoliteracy.

Barry Schwartz
“Seed for Change”
Barry Schwartz is a recent transplant to the Peoples Republic of Brooklyn, having moved here from being the medical director for a socialist youth movement camp in Liberty, NY, and before that cooking for Ananda Ashram in Monroe, NY. The skills he has learned along the way have culminated in starting “Seed for Change”, a sprouting and microgreen workshop which features “Garden in a Bag”, a simple way to grow sprouts. He also makes fresh tempeh out of many different types of beans and makes wonderful ghee. He is looking to start a collective kitchen in the area if anyone is interested or has feedback.

Lisa Maya Knauer
“How (and Why) to Join the Flatbush Farm Share CSA”
The mission of Flatbush Farm Share is to make fresh organic produce available to any Brooklyn resident, regardless of economic status.
Lisa Maya Knauer is a member of the core group of Flatbush Farmshare. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where she is also involved in sustainability initiatives. She is currently helping develop a women’s weaving cooperative and a micro-enterprise incubator focusing on women, immigrants and low-income residents in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Madeline Nelson
“Save the Campus Road Community Garden”
This gorgeous community garden and functioning ecosystem has graced Brooklyn College since 1991. It’s now endangered by the College’s plan to build a parking lot on the garden site. The gardeners welcome you to see why we want to save the peaches and mulberries, azaleas and daylillies, a refuge for people, bees, and Brooklyn parrots.
Madeline Nelson is a freegan, bicycle activist, forager and avid gardener. She’s especially interested in growing plants native to Brooklyn, as well as no-cost and very-low-cost food gathering and growing.

If the designers of our telegraph and telephone system traveled more than hundred years into our time, they could not begin to imagine how our “smart phones” put the world into our hands.  But our electrical grid has pretty much remained the same since its inception in the late 1800s.  And it’s time to make a change.

source: US Green Building Council Central Texas

Bob Catell, a speaker at a forum earlier this month called “Smart Grid for Smart Cities” at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, used that jarring comparison to bring home a point that everyone in the energy industry understands.  With electricity costs and demand growing out of control, the urgent need to reduce our emissions in a carbon-constrained world, and a growing mandate to use more renewable resources, our electrical grid needs a revolution like the one that has transformed the way we communicate.  With a Smart Grid, we can meet our energy efficiency goals, stem the tide of global warming, and make energy affordable.

The Smart Grid Controls Costs

New York City residents pay more than almost anyone else in the country for electricity.  With demand projected to rise a couple of percentage points a year in the foreseeable future, New York City energy planners say costs could go up 20% over the next 5 years. The Smart Grid brings detailed information about how much energy we’re using and how much it’s costing us right into our kitchens and living rooms, and runs on “auto-pilot” to limit our consumption they way we tell it to. Controlling our consumption is the key to keeping costs down in the future.

In the Smart Grid, functions are automated system-wide also, to level out the hills and valleys of our city’s daily and seasonal demand.  That’s good news, because right now the system has to have enough capacity to meet our electrical needs at times of peak demand–afternoons in the middle of summer when everyone is cranking the AC, or winter evenings when we get home from work and turn on the lights.  The rest of the time we have excess capacity that doesn’t get used.  The Smart Grid promises to optimize what we have so we don’t have to keep building more power plants just to meet our growing peak demand.

Making Renewables a Reality

Finally, we won’t be able to realize the full potential of renewable energy without the Smart Grid.  While the current system can handle some integration of small solar and wind installations, electricity is really meant to travel from large power plants in one direction to electrical consumers.  In the 21st century, we need “distributed generation,” for electricity to travel in all directions from large and small generators to wherever it’s needed.  And for that we need the automated system controls of the Smart Grid.

While there are a number of pilot projects right now, we won’t see full implementation of the Smart Grid for about twenty years.  Getting us there is the job of New York State’s Smart Grid Consortium of utilities, corporations, governments, academic instutions and non-profits.  It’s an expensive proposition, and we’ll all have to share the cost burden in the short-term.

But as the head of the Smart Grid Consortium Bob Catell said at yesterday’s forum, “The question isn’t, how much is this going to cost if we do it, but how much will it cost if we don’t?”

I’ve been interested in urban sustainability, especially public parks and recycling/composting, since I was in elementary school. I remember that when I was about ten or so, my family had our postage stamp-sized backyard paved over. Previously, it had been a scrap of green heaven for me, full of weeds and bees and basketballs and wonderful childhood memories. I actually cried as three men in blue overalls pulled out our tiny swing set from the ground. I trace my love of public parks to that incident — it was as if I was determined that if my own private parkland was wiped out, there would at least always be a patch of park for me to go to, to explore, to love, to adopt as my own.

photo by Dassa Gutwirth

When I’m not out doing my part to save the world (or at least save the parks), I enjoying reading, bike-riding, and volunteering with children with disabilities. I hope to be back here on SF’s site soon, with more information on their events — and of course, with good, green news!

Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are is an afternoon of short demonstrations and hands-on workshops on a variety of gardening and urban agriculture topics, including:

• - gardening for kids
• - starting seeds indoors
• - growing herbs and microgreens on your windowsill
• - vertical gardening
• - growing sprouts in your kitchen
• - composting with worms in your apartment
• - how to join the Flatbush Farm Share CSA
• - preparing healthy food (cooking demo with a Just Food Community Chef)

… and much more!

“Garden is a verb,” says Chris Kreussling, Director of our Urban Gardens & Farms Initiative, which is sponsoring the event. “It’s not just a place you visit. It’s something you do.” The Urban Gardens & Farms Initiative is centered on modeling sustainable horticulture practices, promoting urban agriculture and food sovereignty, and building community through neighborhood gardening and beautification.

Sustainable Flatbush programs provide opportunities for residents to learn about and get involved in working toward the goal of a sustainable neighborhood, while simultaneously building community and fostering local self-sufficiency.

“Hearing about what others are already doing can inspire people to work with their neighbors to take action,” says Kreussling, who also authors a local gardening blog, Flatbush Gardener. “We want to build community through gardening.”

Snacks and coffee will be available (courtesy of Flatbush Food Co-op and Vox Pop Café).  Bring your own mug!

Greening Flatbush is on Sunday, February 21, from 2 to 4 pm, at the Dorchester Senior Center, 1419 Dorchester Road, located on the corner of Dorchester Road and Marlborough Road. Take the Q train to Cortelyou Road.

$3 suggested donation. Space is limited, click HERE to register.

If you have questions about this event, feel free to contact us.

Help us spread the word! Click here to download a PDF version of the flyer to print and put up in your building, community center, congregation, etc. Invite your neighbors to join in the fun!