The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a grant to a team of distinguished and ecologically committed researchers that includes Yehuda Klein, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences and executive officer of the program. The team will assess the value of green technology, green methods of generating and conserving energy, in relieving the pressure on the City’s electric grid and reducing local emissions.

In partnering government, academia, and research labs—New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), CUNY, and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)—the project will facilitate the introduction and adoption of advanced energy-efficient technologies that will both help New Yorkers conserve energy and lead to an overall improvement in public health.
“We’ll be trying to establish the priorities of local communities, discussing alternatives that might work for them, and one of the alternatives will be green roofs,” said Klein. “We’ll be working on pilot studies on several CUNY campuses, starting with City College and Community Planning Board 9 in West Harlem, where many people suffer from asthma.”

The project will require complex calculations of such things as fuel and electricity use and environmental emissions of the City’s entire electricity supply system. Klein’s Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and his thirty years’ experience in environmental and energy issues make him uniquely qualified to lead the CUNY team.

CUNY faculty and graduate students across a range of collaborating departments and programs will be involved: at the GC, the Ph.D. programs in earth and environmental sciences, environmental psychology, and public health; at Hunter, the departments of geography and urban affairs and planning; at City College, the Grove School of Engineering; and at Baruch, the Zicklin School of Business. The CUNY Sustainability Initiative is also lending its support to this project.
Klein’s course on environmental economics, which will be offered again in the spring of 2010, provided the major impetus for this initiative.