Power Players in Climate, Energy and Sustainability

Rohit T. “Rit” Aggarwala is a widely recognized expert on urban sustainability, technology, and mobility. He led the creation of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, founded the environmental grantmaking program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, and served as president of the Board of Directors of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. He was part of the founding team at Sidewalk Labs—Google’s urban technology startup—and more recently was a senior urban tech fellow at the Jacobs Cornell-Technion Institute. He has provided advice and assistance to a number of foundations and impact investment funds and chaired the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Regional Plan for the New York region. Aggarwala holds a PhD, MBA, and BA from Columbia University and an MA from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

What does sustainability mean to you?
Sustainability is acting in ways that you can keep doing without hitting a wall or impoverishing future generations. Ultimately, it means something you’d be willing to do even if you have to account for externalities – those costs that you impose on others, like pollution. It’s like depreciation in accounting; running down an asset without reinvesting is unsustainable just like pumping greenhouse gases into the environment is.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
Getting Local Law 97 implemented in the right way is clearly a top priority. Buildings are our largest source of carbon emissions, so we cannot slow down on the retrofits that LL97 will require. But we know that many buildings, especially middle-class co-ops and condos, face a difficult set of challenges. We need to get buildings mobilized across the city in a way that is constructive and not just punitive.

What is one thing everyone can do to help protect the environment?
Eat less meat. What we eat is a daily choice with huge climate impacts, and nothing is worse for the planet than raising cattle. I’m not vegetarian, but I make the choice to avoid meat when possible. It’s also healthier, and usually cheaper. But, if you own a car, drive less. Just replacing a few trips with walking, biking, or transit helps the planet, the city, and your body.

What steps are your organization taking to ensure a sustainable future?
The City is leading by example in many ways: electrifying our fleet, greening our buildings, replacing meat with vegetables at schools. At DEP, we’re planning both to manage more severe storms and deal with the potential for more severe droughts. One thing this requires is ensuring that our procurement and other processes work well; we’ll never be able to achieve resilience if we can’t deliver capital projects on time and at scale.

Vincent has been an advocate for the Laborers‘ in a variety of sectors and industries for over a decade. While the Laborers’ members work in virtually every related construction field, the past few years there has been a major focus on creating opportunities in the renewable space. Vincent has become one of New York’s leading voices for a sustainable industry that also includes opportunities for the middle class.

What does sustainability mean to you?
Sustainability for the Laborers’ is about how we inextricably link good paying union careers to the green economy in a way that works for everyone. In our view, it would be “unsustainable” to revamp our energy generation and transmission sectors without ensuring that it also creates prosperity for workers.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
The most important thing the Laborers’ are trying to do for the climate is get shovels in the ground for our major transmission and generation projects. This is the single most important thing we have to do to begin to meet our goals in NYS and elsewhere.

What is one thing everyone can do to help protect the environment?
I think we can all start by just being more mindful of the small, everyday decisions we all make. These are the choices we make in transportation, the foods we consume, the amount of waste we produce, etc. It can seem daunting to think about how our singular behaviors can impact a global problem but it’s a pretty good place to start.

What steps are your organization taking to ensure a sustainable future?
We believe that the most important thing we can do to bring about a sustainable future is ensure that our renewable economy works for working people. We can lower our carbon footprint while creating good, middle-class, union jobs for the current and future members of the Laborers’ and other unions. These things are not mutually exclusive. This is in fact the model that defines sustainability for us.

Vincent Alvarez is president of the NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest regional labor federation, bringing together 300 local unions and 1.3 million workers from across the NYC economy. An IBEW member since 1990, he is a principal Officer of Climate Jobs NY, a director of the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, and serves as a class c director and board chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

What does sustainability mean to you?
Sustainability means building a clean energy economy at the scale climate science demands, creating good union jobs, and supporting equitable communities and a more resilient New York. We have a once in a generation opportunity to ensure that the path to an environmentally sustainable future results in good jobs that provide family-sustaining wages and benefits for communities across the state, while protecting and supporting impacted workers through the clean energy transition.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
Through one of Climate Jobs NY’s campaigns, Carbon Free and Healthy Schools (www.carbonfreehealthyschoolsnyc.org), our goal is to implement energy-efficiency retrofits and solar power across our school buildings in order to make New York City schools a model of green infrastructure, make schools healthier and safer for students and the school community, create good union jobs, and save schools millions in energy costs.

Jessica Azulay has led AGREE since its launch, living and working in Syracuse. With 20+ years of experience in multi-issue grassroots organizing, she now leads AGREE’s hard-hitting policy campaigns and regulatory interventions, putting the tools for changing New York’s energy system into the hands of grassroots organizations and activists across NY. Jessica is a published author on participatory workplace practice and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a focus on political economy and international economics. 

What does sustainability mean to you?
A world where everyone is prosperous, safe, and healthy. A society that lives in balance with the ecosystems of our amazing planet and all the precious life that depends on her. That means using the tools of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy sources to end our reliance on wasteful and environmentally destructive forms of energy. As we make our economy more equitable and just, we won’t leave anyone behind.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
Since AGREE works both from the ground up to help residents switch to clean energy, and in high level policy discussions with lawmakers, regulators, and experts, there are many! But right now, we’re especially focused on ending reliance on fossil fuels used for heating, and providing affordable ways for people to switch to heat pumps. Buildings are the biggest source of climate pollution and the most challenging sector to transition, and we love a challenge!  

What is one thing everyone can do to help protect the environment? 
First, join the movement! However much or little time you can offer, there’s something you can do to help win the system wide changes to build a green economy—from giving a small bit of economic support to your favorite organization, to showing up for events. Second, see what you can do to green your own home. We can all lead by example. Our renewable energy hubs will help you do just that!

What steps are your organization taking to ensure a sustainable future? 
We’re bringing as many people and organizations as possible into the green economy. We’re helping them both make changes in their own lives, and to fight together for the funding, programs, and laws to build the sustainable future we want. Some current priorities include standing up the Central New York Regional Clean Energy Hub, pushing utilities to provide affordable energy while replacing gas systems with renewable heating, and passing legislation implementing the state’s Climate Act. 

Conor has spent a decade at Environmental Advocates NY responsible for policy development and advocacy related to climate change, air quality and energy policy. He is well known for helping write and pass the State’s climate law as well as for his expertise on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Conor is a graduate of the University at Albany with a degree in political science.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
We are working to ensure the equitable implementation of New York’s climate law. As we move to electrify our economy it is critical that the communities most harmed by fossil fuel pollution have access to the resources necessary for a just and equitable transition.

What is one thing everyone can do to help protect the environment?
Vote.

Manish Bapna is the president and chief executive officer of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization of more than 700 attorneys, scientists, advocates, and policy experts. Throughout Mr. Bapna’s career he has held leadership roles that focused on designing sustainable development strategies that are equitable, durable, and scalable. Mr. Bapna holds master’s degrees in business and political and economic development from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT.

Mary Barber currently serves as the state director for New York and New Jersey for Environmental Defense Fund. In this role, Ms. Barber focuses on climate, clean energy and resilience policy, working alongside government agencies, nonprofits and businesses to develop sound, science-based climate policies. Ms. Barber is active in advancing the policies and programs to electrify trucks and buses and decarbonizing the natural gas distribution system to achieve New York’s ambitious climate goals. She was also instrumental in advocating for the passage of Congestion Pricing in New York and is working to ensure the program is implemented fairly to reduce traffic congestion and fund public transportation improvements.

Assembly Member Didi Barrett was elected March 2012 and is now in her sixth full term in office. As a member of the Assembly, she is chair of the Assembly’s Energy Committee, and also serves on the committees on agriculture, environmental conservation, and tourism, parks, arts and sports development. Prior to her election, Assembly Member Barrett held a career as a writer, museum professional and leader of non-profit organizations.

David Bauer currently serves as president and CEO of National Fuel Gas Company. An employee of National Fuel Gas Company since 2001, Mr. Bauer has served as a member of the executive team since 2004 and was appointed to his current role in 2019. Mr. Bauer, an active member of the Western New York community, serves on numerous local boards and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Boston College.

Eddie Bautista is executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), a network of community organizations of color fighting for environmental equity.  Under Eddie’s leadership, NYC-EJA’s campaign accomplishments re-defined environmental/climate justice advocacy in NY – we helped co-lead coalitions that championed: NYC’s 1st “Waste Equity” law, Commercial Waste Zones, Congestion Pricing, the NYC Climate Mobilization Act and the NYS Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act, the most aggressive climate action law in the nation. 

What does sustainability mean to you?
Environmental and climate justice drives my allies and I more than sustainability. The national Climate Justice Alliance has said that while transitions are inevitable, justice is not. By centering society’s most climate vulnerable Black and Brown communities in our policy and infrastructure campaigns, we are addressing the root causes of multiple systemic failures that are killing our people and our planet.

Is there one major climate issue your organization is looking to tackle?
The threats posed by climate change are so pervasive and insidious that we don’t have the luxury of tackling just one issue. NYC-EJA was founded in 1991 by community based organizations of color with two clear, yet profound charges: to identify the systemic reasons why communities of color were environmentally and economically overburdened, and to develop strategies to dismantle those inequitable systems. Systems change demands multi-issue intersectional strategies.

What is one thing everyone can do to help protect the environment?
The one thing everyone must do to advance environmental protection is to demand political action. While individual efforts to curb one’s carbon footprint are always welcome, the largest contributions to climate change are systemic and societal dependencies on fossil fuels – so we must break our systemic and societal addictions. To do so broadly, we need wholesale political, legal and economic transformation – which is starting to happen.

What steps are your organization taking to ensure a sustainable future?
For over 30 years, NYC-EJA has been at the forefront of City and State campaigns to advance environmental and climate justice, integrating policy analysis, organizing, and advocacy to address the unique and disproportionate vulnerabilities of environmentally overburdened low-income communities of color. NYC-EJA empowers its members to advocate for improved conditions by coordinating campaigns designed to inform policies. Through our efforts, members coalesce around common issues that threaten the ability of communities of color to thrive.