Kind: captions
Language: en
on rooftops all over New York City there
is evidence that electricity is gaining
currency
in 2022 Americans bought more heat pumps
than gas furnaces
landlord Lincoln Echols was thinking
about his son Ace when he made the
decision
we've built an infrastructure based on
oil gas burning things that's what we're
used to but it doesn't have to be that
way
it's the third iteration for the early
20th century building he owns in Crown
Heights Brooklyn
when it was built they burned coal in a
boiler to stay warm now there's a heat
pump for each of the 14 units
pumps work not by creating heat but by
moving it from one place to another
inside there's a fluid called
refrigerant that boils at 40 degrees
below zero fahrenheit
as long as it is warmer than -40 outside
the refrigerant picks up heat from Air
as it becomes a gas
it flows into an electric compressor
where it is put under pressure adding
more warmth to the gas
the warm gas flows into the room unit
as it heats the space the gas itself
condenses back into a liquid now the
liquid travels back out flowing through
a valve that lowers the pressure and
thus the temperature
and the cycle starts all over again
so in the winter it can pump heat inside
and in the summer the process is
reversed to pump heat outside cooling
the room
in Lincoln's building each unit has its
own wireless thermostat
is he enough for his son to operate
Lincoln hopes Ace will be the landlord
here someday
so you think when Ace is your age
everything around us here will be
electric definitely these two behind us
are green these developments over here
they're green if they could do my
building they could do every building on
the Block
but heat pumps are not cheap and for us
to reach Net Zero nearly every building
will need to make the transition
so how can this technology become
accessible to everyone
that is precisely the goal for Donnell
Baird if we can do one building we can
do a whole block of buildings and if we
can do a block of buildings we can do a
whole city he is the CEO of a startup
called block power block bar wants to
turn buildings into Teslas we want to
make them smart green healthy all
electric
founded in 2014 block power is making it
more affordable for landlords to make
the switch
Lincoln Echols old building is one of
about 2 000 conversions the company says
it has spearheaded so far
we have everything that we need to Green
all the buildings now that's why it's so
important that we focus on buildings
because we don't need any more
Innovation
Danelle was able to mix the pressing
needs of a landlord with a bad boiler
and a planet boiling over into something
attractive to Wall Street investors
it's a company committed to executing
the conversion at scale bundling a lot
of projects together to lower the cost
and lower the risk we show up and we say
look we've got capital from Goldman
Sachs and Microsoft to finance moving
you to a functioning better system and
it costs you nothing as a matter of fact
you're going to save money because the
payment that you make to us over 15
years is going to be less than what you
would pay to the oil company or to the
gas company as an alternative
the arithmetic relies on incentives from
the government and assumptions that the
cost of heat pump manufacturing and
installation will decline
for block power the goal and the risks
are big he's in favor Lincoln Echols
says it's working for him
they just made it work at the end of the
day it was a lot of back and forth but
it can be done it's not an impossible
task