Getting off fossil fuels is hard, but this city is doing it — building by building
ITHACA, NY – Ithaca Tattoo & Piercing is closed on Mondays. But the downtown two-story brick building was bustling recently, even without customers around.
Heating and air conditioning vans were parked on the street, and crews brought equipment to replace the building's natural gas furnace with more efficient electric heat pumps. The workers sawed through flexible yellow gas hose, pulled it from the walls and hauled it out to the sidewalk. That's where building owner John Guttridge was standing and looking proudly at the growing pile of hose and old equipment.
"We have just torn out the very last of the gas appliances in this building, which we have just replaced with all air source heat pumps. So we are going fully electric," he says. Asked what this moment means to him, Guttridge says, "That my children are going to have a sustainable future on this planet.
A liberal college town in upstate New York, Ithaca pulled together widespread support for an ambitious plan to eliminate to address climate change, Ithaca has seen how difficult it is to move off fossil fuels.
