Reinvesting in our cities with renewable energy with Donnel Baird of BlocPower (2022)

Hey everyone, the how I built this lab team is taking a little bit of time off this summer, but don't worry. We'll be back in your feed with fresh new How I Built This Lab episodes in just a few weeks. Meantime, I hope you enjoy one of our favorites from last year with Danielle Baird, the founder of Block Power. It's a company that's electrifying buildings across the country as a way to fight climate change. Hope you enjoy. Now on to the show. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz.

Almost a third of all the carbon emissions released by Americans each year Come from buildings. Homes, apartments, offices, to keep them lit and heated or cooled. And this is a big problem. But there is a solution, which isn't as complicated as you might think. And the solution is to electrify our buildings, and making sure that that electricity comes from renewable sources like wind or solar or hydropower or even nuclear power. Most of our energy still comes from burning coal and gas, but advances in technology in recent years has made it possible within our grasp to decarbonize all of our buildings and to do it quickly.

About eight years ago, Danelle Baird, an entrepreneur from Brooklyn, saw an opportunity to focus on decarbonizing buildings in low income neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like the one he grew up in. He founded a company called Block Power that converts any building into a carbon-free building by electrifying it. So far, Black Powers has converted more than 1200 buildings, and recently signed a deal with the city of Ithaca, New York to electrify and decarbonize every single building in the city. Dannelle Baird, welcome to the show.

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