Key informant interviews and document analysis offered insights into three main categories of findings: (1) awareness of air pollution among NYC residents; (2) the process of converting fuel types, including weighing options, decision-making and taking action; and (3) problems associated with compliance, including outreach, awareness, and implementation challenges.
4.2.1. Awareness
Air pollutants from building boilers, and their consequences, have not gone unnoticed by NYC residents and property owners/managers. A resident-advocate in our study recounted her experience living adjacent to a building using #6 oil:
“…I’m on the top floor. I’d never seen emissions before, and March 2006 were the first emissions that I saw. And there was huge, it was like a volcano of black smoke that came directly into my kitchen window… I realized immediately when it smelled like a city bus, like I was standing behind a city bus that we needed to get the heck out of the apartment… I shut the window but it was too late… I developed asthma in the same year, 2006. And I was 43 years old. I’d never had asthma in my life.”
(Resident-advocate)
Indeed, although evidence is mixed, existing studies have suggested that adult onset asthma may be caused or exacerbated by exposure to ambient air pollutants [
23,
24]. The same participant went on to explain:
“…People should know about this [residential boiler fuel type], I doubt they know when they buy, they don’t know when they rent. There’s no way for people to know what they’re stepping into. And once you’re there, like I said, almost like blackmail. If you make noise you might lose your apartment…”
(Resident-advocate)
Over the course of the clean heat transition period, NYC’s government hotline (311) received several air quality complaints suggesting public awareness of pollutants, particularly those likely connected to building-level emissions. For instance, in 2009 there were 8601 air quality-related 311 complaints in NYC, of which 1730 were labeled “Air, Smoke, Residential (AA1)” [
25]. Furthermore, approximately 2200 complaints were made via 311 concerning boiler smoke from neighboring buildings [
26]. In 2015, there were slightly fewer air-quality complaints, 8485 in total, of which 1668 were categorized as “Air, Smoke, Chimney, or Vent” (AS1) [
27]. When plotting these complaints geographically, the majority were issued by lower Manhattan residents (825), followed by northern Manhattan and the Bronx (371) and the remainder scattered throughout Brooklyn and Queens (472). These data suggest that the public is aware of boiler emissions and potential concerned about negative consequences. However, despite the disproportionate concentration of buildings burning dirty fuels in Uptown, the complaints were initiated from areas of the city that are arguably more privileged. Disadvantaged New Yorkers may not fully understand the relationship between boiler fuel types and air quality, while those who do may not feel empowered to take action to address these conditions, so as not to jeopardize their housing.
4.2.2. Process
Weighing Conversion Options: The conversion options from residual fuels including transitions to #2 diesel, natural gas, or cogeneration. Natural gas service was largely available throughout the city, with sporadic geographic regions without service during the implementation period—although plans include full coverage by 2019 [
28]. However, the availability of cogeneration or natural gas was geographically restricted due to infrastructure issues. Cogeneration is limited to those below 96th street in Manhattan [
28]. The vast majority of buildings in NYC, therefore, could only choose between #2 and natural gas as extending pipeline infrastructure is a capital intensive endeavor.
Although ConEdison (the local utility provider) initiated a natural gas zone development program to extend service to new regions, the program required strict compliance and was available only during limited time frame. Even then, many interviewees pointed out that ConEdison often did not adhere to their own timelines. One property manager commented:
“I had one [natural gas hookup] that was more than twelve months late.”
(Building owner)
Several informants opted for dual burners, whereby heating equipment can operate on #2 or natural gas depending on prices and availability. A mortgage lender noted:
“I would never recommend any building sticking with one fuel, because no one ever has been right. The cost of fuel, the cost of gas is going to [fluctuate] over the next 20 years, so I always advocate for full convertibility.”
(Green lender)
Some buildings with dual burners signed up for an interruptible program. This meant that natural gas is their main source of fuel, but they are expected to switch to another fuel source upon the supplier’s request or when temperatures dip below a certain temperature. Challenges arise when the interrupted building may suddenly need service from an oil purveyor. These calls may be unanticipated and emergent. A representative for heating oil companies further explained,
“So if those interruptibles come on, and those 4000 accounts cost me 2 million gallons, which I did not know I was going to have to use…the [oil] price spikes.”
(Heating oil supplier)
Although many individuals believed that natural gas was better for the environment, a home heating oil supplier contended that:
“…ultra-low Sulfur #2 has close to zero soot emissions, the lowest of all conventional heating fuels.”
(Heating oil supplier)
This perspective was shared by a green mortgage lender, who noted issues on the supply side of the clean energy equation:
“Not everybody is a fan of natural gas, ultra-low Sulfur diesel #2 is certainly even a cleaner source of energy than natural gas, without the implications that bother people about fracking.”
(Green lender)
Another participant felt that natural gas was not “green” enough stating that biodiesel was a better, albeit underutilized, alternative:
“…as we increase our biodiesel level we will in fact be cleaner than natural gas at all levels.”
(City subcontractor supporting the Clean Heat Program)
Whether #2 is indeed cleaner than natural gas is challenging to assess. To our knowledge, no scientific literature has established differences in pollutants, i.e., PM, NO
x, and CO
2, specific to boiler transitions. Instead the literature has seemed to focus on mobile sources [
29]. Furthermore, the ‘cleanliness’ of an energy source is typically judged by pollutants at the demand side of the energy spectrum. As alluded to by the green mortgage lender, some might suggest that a more holistic approach be taken to consider both supply and demand dynamics of environmental pollution, health, and justice consequences [
30].
Cost Considerations: The process of conversion is complicated by the fact that boilers can have a 30+ years lifespan in relatively old buildings that are ill-suited for today’s heating technology. As a result, property owners and managers would have little familiarity with the financial or logistical considerations involved with heating oil conversions. Some landlords believed the process to be relatively straightforward,
“Going from 6 to 4 is relatively inexpensive, I can say around $5000. Going from 6 to 2, more expensive, could be as much as 15 to 20 thousand depending on the equipment.”
(Building owner)
A lingering contention between #2 and natural gas proponents is the price point.
“…last year at this time you were paying maybe $3.50 a gallon of oil, converting to gas you’re paying $2, you know, $1.70, $1.80.”
(Heating oil supplier)
The prices have indeed fluctuated over the years and, for different reasons, many stakeholders fear continued priced volatility in the natural gas market.
Going beyond the Clean Heat Call: Energy efficiency is a worthy goal and the Clean Heat Program specified measures to incentivize its implementation. Numerous lenders were recruited into the Program in order to offer financing alternatives, and they explained having promoted energy efficiency whenever it was a financially viable strategy for building owners. In fact, one employee for a lender mentioned:
“When we do a loan we try to put energy efficiency or retrofits into every loan. We’re not a government program so we can’t force it, but we benchmark the building before we loan them the money…so we approach owners with common sense money saving approaches.”
(Green lender)
Another lender noted that prospective borrowers approached the banks for refinancing, and it was indeed the lender who mentioned the need to transition away from #6. The lender reported that this was a successful approach when applicable.
Collaborations were also vital to the success of many projects. Government and non-profit programs allowed the buildings to conduct efficiency upgrades in a cost-effective manner. The mainstream lender commented that:
“…the majority of our buildings were in conjunction with weatherizing the building with [weatherization organizations]… replacing windows, boilers, [etc.] can get very expensive, so having the help of [nonprofits] enabled us to do all of the work we wanted to do…”
[Traditional lender]
A community-based weatherization organization made sure to point out the importance of incentives and considering the property managers’ profits:
“There are very few building owners of multifamily buildings that are environmentalists. They are capitalists, they want to make money.”
(Building owner)
The process of converting home heating oils was, therefore, not necessarily intuitive to property managers and landlords. Indeed, costs and logistics of conversions were context-specific and require assessment by professionals who privilege the owner perspective and economic returns rather than the resident experience or justice concerns.
4.2.3. Problems
Lack of Information: Building owners/managers that were required to convert to cleaner fuels varied in their understanding and justification for doing so. A consistent message expressed by almost all of the stakeholders suggested that landlords were unclear about their options and how to go about the conversion process. Respondent notes:
“…one of the biggest challenges is that buildings [owners] just didn’t quite understand, they understood that they needed to convert but they didn’t understand what their options were.”
(City subcontractor supporting the Clean Heat Program)
“…one of the things that we’ve also discovered is that nobody knows how a boiler works, and nobody knows what it actually takes to convert your boiler, if it even takes anything.”
(Representative from elected official’s office)
Landlords were often reliant on service professionals to provide pertinent information about the details of the policy and how to undertake the heating oil conversion.
“So the good news is I think at this point, hopefully nobody doesn’t know about the local law 43, because their boiler maintenance group, that service the boilers and the oil services groups who deliver the fuel have certainly, I think, been keeping people abreast of what they need to do… They generally will talk to a contractor about what their options are, [such as] is there gas availability?”
(Community-based non-profit outreach staffer)
These professionals provide technical services with regard to boiler upkeep and resupplying fuel, and while service professionals were an important source of information, the process remained confusing and risky for landlords. An outreach worker recounted a conversation with a landlord indicating:
“And one [property management] company, the guy told me that he gets confused by all of the different companies that are contacting him with services that are supposedly gonna help them meet or comply with these local laws, and at the same time save them money on their energy bills. So that was one of the things, he’s like ‘I got all these people sending me messages via email, via regular mail, and I don’t know which ones are actually trying to scam me, which ones are the real deal. I wish they could provide us a list of which companies are actually worth my time and energy as opposed to having to figure it out by trial and error.’”
(Community-based non-profit outreach staffer)
Similarly, stakeholders noted that some building owners were confused about how the three laws—one state and two local—worked, and how these regulations affected them. Landlords cited lack of knowledge, financial hardship, and bureaucratic red tape as critical barriers, a perspective also shared by those charged with supporting the transition. One respondent noted:
“…a lot of buildings that didn’t have the resources, or didn’t somehow get the message that they had to do something, or have realized that #4 is a short term solution that is not ideal.”
(City subcontractor supporting the Clean Heat Program)
While the policy was accompanied by numerous resources to help landlords, including financing and outreach support, landlords were often distrustful and found it difficult to identify credible sources. Property managers were often amenable to change, but were hampered by bureaucracy and resident politics to transition from heating fuel. Still, despite the fact that the Clean Heat Program was designed with financing tools and incentives to support building transitions to cleaner fuel sources, some property owners found that the options remained “prohibitively expensive.”
Inadequate Outreach: The NYC Clean Heat Program contracted with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for outreach and support efforts to help overcome various hurdles associated with the clean heat conversation. Incentivizing transitions was sometimes challenging when residents did not have the knowledge base or perspective to adequately weigh the options as noted by.one key informant who described working with a co-op board:
“…property managers really appreciate it when we go to co-op and condo boards since they have to vote on everything and it can be really difficult to get them to move. … they said they will not do it [transition heating fuel], it costs too much money… It’s difficult to get people to realize that it costs less to use grade 2 oil than to maintain a boiler using grade 6.”
(City subcontractor supporting the Clean Heat Program)
Multi-pronged outreach efforts were built into the Clean Heat Program to avoid misunderstanding and misinformation. Related resources were delivered by community-based nonprofits, consulting firms, banks, and contractors. As previously mentioned, some banks informed potential borrowers about the Clean Heat Program and described related financing incentives. However, multiple community-based nonprofits identified important challenges for outreach, noting that they did not provide goods or services, nor did they enforce any laws. This inability to compel compliance served as a challenge to some. Successful strategies to overcome this challenge included arrangement of building owners forums, which included a spectrum of participants. One interviewee who organized these forums with HPD recounted:
“…there were about 10 panelists from various non-profits and government agencies that do provide services for buildings. And that’s when a lot of property management companies and also coop shareholders came out…”
(Community-based non-profit outreach staffer)
Despite the success of these forums, a persistent and disappointing trend identified by outreach organizations was that many more buildings did not convert on time. One interviewee of a city-contracted consulting agency noted:
“…we’ve been tracking the data and seeing that buildings were converting and we saw that particularly rent stabilized buildings were converting more slowly.”
(City subcontractor supporting the Clean Heat Program)
These comments demonstrate that outreach may have been focused on the need for fuel transition, but less so on the mechanics/logistics of achieving conversion. Overall, interviewees agreed:
“Clean Heat resources that the city put together has been fantastic. I mean they’ve done a really good job just getting out there with outreach and education and targeting building owners…”
(Representative from elected official’s office)
Overall, the stakeholders identified numerous contextual factors that facilitated and detracted from the success of the program. However, qualitative analysis revealed that static elements were not the only issues of interest.
Table 4 summarizes these findings. We found that processes of program implementation were integral to understanding the outcomes associated with the Clean Heat Program. Further, several problems hindered full and equal program implementation, including unsuccessful outreach efforts, and high costs associated with cleaner fuels. Despite these challenges, the program was an innovative and rather successful public-private partnership which achieved a near universal compliance with the #6 ban.