Home, green home
Like many people who live in the Adirondacks, Betsy Lowe loves the place and wants to protect its natural beauty. She loves the park so much, in fact, that she founded the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, where visitors can learn more about the natural world surrounding them.
Lowe’s 100-year-old house in Lake Placid, however, wasn’t particularly environmentally friendly. Its leaky frame raised her fuel bills—and her climate footprint—and left her cold much of the time. “I used to get gigantic icicles on the front of my house,” Lowe said.
That changed in 2016 when she undertook a project to make her home more energy-efficient, adding insulation throughout and putting new windows on her porch.
Lowe’s was among almost 11,000 North Country households that have received some type of help since 2011 to make energy efficiency or renewable energy improvements through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. NYSERDA-subsidized projects can range from insulation to solar panels to geothermal heat pumps.
In the U.S., buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly because of the fuel used
