Clean Energy to Communities Program: City of Cohoes, New York (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video C2C Testimonial: Cohoes, New York.

City Planner Joe Seman-Graves and Director of Operations Theresa Bourgeois share how the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program is helping the City of Cohoes, New York, make energy decisions.

[Text on screen: How Clean Energy to Communities helped Cohoes, New York; C2C: Clean Energy to Communities, U.S. Department of Energy]

>>Joe Seman-Graves, City Planner, City of Cohoes: The City of Cohoes has a lot of the same struggles that a lot of older, upstate New York municipalities have or northeastern municipalities have, including aging infrastructure, high electricity and gas bills, and then just a lack of technical expertise.

>>Theresa Bourgeois, Director of Operations, City of Cohoes: When we were invited by NREL to participate in this inaugural prototype of the C2C program, one of the things they asked us was what would we want to concentrate on.

>>Joe: We were looking for any assistance we could get on a variety of topics, including floating solar, decarbonizing historic buildings, and conversion of our street lights to LED.

>>Theresa: The NREL staff provided just incredible guidance for us to think about.

>>Joe: The types of deliverables we were given included an outline of what size our array should be for our needs. We looked at different structures of sharing that energy with our school district and housing authority.

>>Theresa: There's a variety of solutions, but what's the best one? What's the best one that fits? And sometimes we don't know the right question to ask. It was very helpful information they provided, talked through, introduced us to other experts, and gave us a framework not only to make these initial decisions that we need to make about our city hall transformation to a clean energy building that's more energy efficient but also as we move forward with our other municipal buildings.

>>Joe: It was almost a one-stop shop to get advice, technical assistance that otherwise would have taken months, potentially longer than that, to kind of compile from different sources. I recommend if you are a city that is interested in both sustainability but also the economic benefits of going green or sustainable technology, this would be a great spot for you to apply. And I mean it made all the difference in the world for us, and we couldn't have been more appreciative to have that opportunity.

>>Theresa: There is help out there. There is guidance out there. There are resources out there for under-resourced communities or working-class communities, particularly communities with historic buildings, to make this transformation.

[Text on screen: C2C: Clean Energy to Communities, U.S. Department of Energy]