Donnel: What most people

don't realize is 70

percent of the greenhouse

gas emissions that are

produced in New York come

from the buildings.

And we can green the

buildings easily.

We just need data

from those buildings to

understand how they are

consuming fossil fuels and

figuring out targeted ways

to reduce their

consumption of fossil fuels.

Donnel: So I am the CEO

and founder of Blocpower.

Blocpower is a tech

company.

We're a tech startup

focused on using machine

learning and structured

financial products to

green American inner

cities and the technology

that we've built,

we think it can reduce

greenhouse gases in

America by 2 to 3 percent

in the next four to five

years.

Donnel: So today we're

going to go to Brownsville.

Over 200 homeowners have

chosen to install solar

panels on their homes

which is awesome.

It's the biggest

community, you know,

neighborhood solar project

in the state

and possibly in the country.

and it's in

one of the lowest income

neighborhoods in New York

City.

Donnel: I'm really moved

because I haven't had the

chance to you know I've

been so busy I never got

to drive out and just kind

of walk the blocks and

see.

I mean you just.

It's so many houses.

Its really good.

Latrice: There's one

woman who when we had a

recent meeting that she

has received a 0 utility

bill from Con Edison.

Donnel: She didn't pay

anything.

Donnel: The solution is to

install solar panels all

throughout Brownsville and

on the public housing

complexes back there.

Donnel: so we are going to

head into the New York

housing authority complex,

here,

its actually a set of

complexes.

There's about 10,000

families that are kind

of all living here

together in these 16,

17 story complexes and I

have a lot of family that

grew up here.

Donnel: Because buildings

in low income communities

have less access to

capital and the buildings

are poorly maintained,

they actually consume more

electricity than the same

size building in a

wealthier neighborhood.

Donnel: If you look at

these windows on the third

floor, fourth floor,

fifth floor and sixth

floor, they're open.

Even on a cold day like

today where its 25 degrees

below freezing,

the windows are open

because these people are

really really hot inside

their apartments and the

heat distribution system

is not working properly.

It's a systemic problem

throughout New York City.

Donnel: Today,

were going to go to a

building that has a really

old system that

hasn't been fixed in

forever.

They have one sensor,

its not working.

We're going to replace

that.

We're going to install a

new set of sensors on the

fourth and fifth floor and

and we're going to connect the

boiler system to those

sensors and to our

software platform so that

we can monitor and

optimize what's going on.

Donnel: This is our

technology system that

we've built,

our software that allows

us to kind of track and

analyze equipment from

particular buildings and

we've done that for 30000

buildings across New York.

Donnel: So we know what's

going on with these

buildings in real time.

So then we can call the

contractor and the

building superintendent to

say nope,

you have to reprogram your

boiler.

It's staying on too long,

you're overheating the

apartment on the fifth

floor.

You should dial it down 30

percent.

You're going to save money

and reduce carbon

emissions.

We're making that building

smarter greener and

healthier.

We're gonna install

solar panels on the roofs

of the towers.

Donnel: We're going to be

installing batteries

throughout Brooklyn,

throughout New York City,

to store the electricity

that's produced by all of

our solar panels.

Donnel: We want to power

this entire complex and

these neighborhoods from

renewable energy and

they'd actually be able to

generate revenue from the

sale of the electricity to

the utility company.

Donnel: To see that the

neighborhood where we grew

up that's afflicted by

poverty and unemployment

and all of these

challenges is leading the

way to get new York state

off of a fossil fuel based

economy and that its

happening here first and

that the work that we've

done here is not only

going to be a template not

only for new York state

but for California and all

of the other states and

the globe,

because if you can

demonstrate that you can

do community solar at

scale in Brownsville,

that means you can do it

anywhere in America,

there's no excuse.