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By Edwin J Viera
February 1, 2024
A new online tool is tracking New York’s progress in decarbonization.
The Local Pace of Progress tool examines city, county, and state data to measure how they’re electrifying buildings. It tracks energy for rooftop solar, heat pumps, HVAC systems, and other energy systems. The data is benchmarked against the national 2050 decarbonization goal.
Tarren Peterson, research analyst for Rewiring America, noted the tool makes large-scale climate goals more manageable.
“When we look at more individualized communities, say for instance we’re looking at the city of Buffalo in New York, we can see that we need to install roughly 7,000 heat pumps over the next three years,” Peterson pointed out.
He added breaking the annual figures down makes for a more manageable number for community members and policymakers to work with. Across the country, 24 million machines are needed to stay on course with national climate goals.
As ambitious as the goals are, data show New York is behind on achieving them. Projected sales for various energy-efficient systems are at 142,000. To make the 2050 goals, New York would have to install 391,000 systems by the end of the year.
Despite the tool being relatively new, Peterson is preparing future updates. One would provide data on rooftop solar and electric vehicles at a county level. Another involves tracking community progress against the tool’s benchmarks.
“Right now we are setting targets for all these different communities throughout the U.S., but we are not currently tracking how communities are doing against those targets,” Peterson noted. “Our next goal is being able to count the machines that have actually been installed within communities so that we can determine how well we’re doing when we’re trying to achieve these targets.”
Some of the challenges in setting up the tool could hamper future changes. Peterson acknowledged the biggest challenge was finding data covering the different levels the tool examines. As more data becomes available, it will open up the scope of what the tool can cover.