Grantee Profile
Center for Working Families
With the dual purpose of fighting climate change and boosting quality employment, the Center for Working Families (CWF), with Rockefeller Foundation support, led a broad coalition to develop a blueprint for an innovative energy efficiency program. This blueprint was so promising that, in late 2009, the governor of New York used it as a model for the Green Jobs Green NY (GJGNY) program that he signed into law.
“The United States faces rising energy costs, an economy that increasingly produces low-wage jobs that lack opportunities for advancement, and energy consumption patterns that harm our planet,” CWF Policy Director Emmaia Gelman notes.
As we confront these challenges in New York, the landmark GJGNY program could be replicated in cities and states around the country. The program is based on the premise that a key to improving energy efficiency lies in the construction and operation of buildings—which use 40% of our energy and produce 38% of our CO2 emissions. Residential structures account for more than 50% of that impact. In New York, home energy costs eat up anywhere from a sixth to half of many residents’ incomes.
Yet relatively small interventions—whether providing better insulation or installing solar panels—can cut the energy use of a typical home by as much as 30-40%. This not only lowers energy bills but also decreases climate change by significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
On top of that, these interventions can create thousands of green jobs, with training opportunities and career paths, for low- and moderate-income American workers with a wide variety of skills. CWF (a project of the Progressive America Fund) and its partners are now assisting the state in implementing GJGNY, which is expected to employ some 14,000 people to make one million New York homes more energy efficient.
What’s more, the program offers impact investors a means of bringing about positive social and environmental change while realizing a financial return. GJGNY uses private capital to make New York homes more energy efficient. Lenders—not credit-strapped homeowners, landlords, or state budgets—pay the up-front costs of the energy-efficiency construction. In exchange, investors receive market-rate returns backed by revenues from home energy savings over ten years.
