Join Emmaia Gelman, Policy Director of the Center for Working Families who will talk about Green Jobs/Green NY, an unprecedented statewide initiative to retrofit one million homes and small businesses in five years.

Emmaia Gelman guides the Center for Working Families’ portfolio of policy ideas and strategy linking jobs, housing, economic development, equity, and climate change.

The Center for Working Families works with community based organizations and policy advocates to provide elected leaders with the research support to make bold policy proposals, and to strategize with organizations and activists to enact them.

One of the Center’s big achievements is the policy blueprint for Green Jobs/Green NY program, an unprecedented statewide initiative to retrofit one million homes and small businesses in five years. The program will make New York homes energy efficient, lower fossil fuel emissions, and combat climate change. It will save households an average of 30-40% of energy consumption, create around 60,000 quality green job-years and obviate the need for new power plants. Most importantly, the upfront costs of the retrofit work will be paid for through third-party investor, such as pension funds or private investors, and fully paid back through energy bill savings — all off of the state’s budget. This public/private initiative is the largest residential retrofit program ever initiated: a model for the nation at a critical moment in national energy planning.