NY Change Lab

We aim to empower and improve the lives of low-income communities and households in New York in a clean energy future using a social change lab method.

What is the NY Change Lab?

The NY Change Lab is a convening platform for the key organizations working at the nexus of clean energy and low-income communities in New York State. The Change Lab brings these participants together to help them develop a shared understanding of complex problems, identify mutual opportunities, propose new partnerships and work initiatives, and build stakeholders’ capacity to work together toward common solutions.

WHY IT MATTERS

Today, deeply entrenched barriers continue to make it difficult for low-income communities and households in New York (over 30 percent of the total and rising) to access clean energy benefits like better health, environmental resilience, and economic growth. At the same time, a number of recent developments present interesting opportunities to address how low-income households participate in and benefit from clean energy choices. These include landmark regulatory shifts like New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) proceeding, post-Superstorm Sandy resilience efforts, ambitious state climate goals, local and city plans, and an increasing range of customer choices and emerging business models around distributed energy resources (DERs).
Today’s shifting energy landscape in New York is demanding new things of policy makers, practitioners, and communities alike. With that comes a greater need for new and nontraditional working partnerships between a broader set of stakeholders.

WHO’S INVOLVED

The NY Change Lab engages a diverse group of organizations throughout the state, including low-income and consumer advocates; environmental groups; community-based organizations; federal, state, and local government entities; housing authorities; housing developers and managers; utilities; regulatory agencies; foundations; financiers; and distributed energy resource service providers.

What We're Doing

Supporting NY Change Lab Initiatives

Initiatives are prototyped during meetings to drive forward innovative and collaborative solutions to low-income energy challenges.

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NY Change Lab Events

Events are the primary convening platform for participants to share and discuss innovative ideas.

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RESOURCES

Meeting Notes

A synthesis of notes and activities from the third meeting of the e-Lab Leap NY Change Lab, convened June 2016 in New York City.

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Meeting Notes

A synthesis of notes and activities from the second meeting of the e-Lab Leap NY Change Lab, convened November 2015 in New York City.

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Meeting Notes

A synthesis of notes and activities from the first meeting of the e-Lab Leap NY Change Lab, convened June 2015 in New York City.

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Interviews

Highlights from over 30 interviews with key NY stakeholders in 2015, investigating the viewpoints, feelings, and relationships of practitioners working in this space.

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Webinar

Clean Energy for Low-Income: Insights from 8 Business Models, 2016

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