January 2023 Positive Change Recipient: Sustainable Finger Lakes

January 3, 2023

A Note from GreenStar: Sustainable Finger Lakes (Finger Lakes Climate Fund) is one of 10 local nonprofit organizations voted among GreenStar’s membership to be a 2023 Partner for Change. They are also GreenStar’s January 2023 featured Positive Change recipient. Read more about our Partners for Change program here.

Article by: Holly Hutchinson, Finger Lakes Climate Fund Coordinator

Carbon offsetting can feel like a vague concept. What is it really? Is it greenwashing? Sustainable Finger Lakes (formerly Sustainable Tompkins) launched the Finger Lakes Climate Fund in 2010 to provide a transparent and local way to take responsibility for CO2 emissions. You can see exactly where your offset donations go!

Here’s how it works: when you take a trip, use our calculator to determine your CO2 emissions www.fingerlakesclimatefund.org. It will tell you how many pounds of CO2 were emitted in your drive or flight (or your home energy usage) and how much your donation will be. Don’t worry, it is really affordable! Then your donation goes into our fund, which provides grants to low- to-moderate-income residents of the Finger Lakes Region for home energy upgrades.

So far, 81 Finger Lakes families have used our gap funding to upgrade their homes. They now experience greater comfort, safety, health, and long-term affordability from upgrades that include air sealing, insulation, solar arrays, air source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters. The carbon offset from your donation equals the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere by these upgrades. Get it? Perfect balance.

The Finger Lakes Climate Fund is expanding our work this January by launching two exciting pilot projects with goals to (1) upgrade 100 rental units in Ithaca with heat pumps and (2) provide energy upgrades for 50 mobile homes in Tompkins County. If you are a renter in a 1-4 unit building in Ithaca OR you are a mobile home resident in Tompkins County, you may be able to take advantage of one of these programs if you meet income guidelines (80% or less of the county median income for your household size).

We encourage everyone to get in the habit of CO2 offsetting with the Finger Lakes Climate Fund so more families in our region can enjoy the benefits of energy efficiency and we can move more quickly towards the goals set by the Ithaca Green New Deal and the NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

Come talk to us at our GreenStar Partners for Change table in January! You can also contact us at holly@sustainablefingerlakes.org or 607-272-1720.