Our programs are supported through two general mechanisms – long term sponsorship or discrete grants.
Sponsored
Sponsored programs are generally long-standing initiatives that are close collaborations with our sponsors – usually City of New York agencies.
NYC GHG Emissions Reduction
The NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services Division of Energy Management (DCAS DEM) is a prime example. As sponsor of the Energy Data Lab and the Technical Services Team (to name just two), the agency works with CUNY BPL leadership to define research questions and deliverables that directly support DCAS DEM’s mandate to reduce GHG emissions in municipal buildings.
Training and Compliance
On the Training and Compliance side, the NYC Department of Small Business Services and the Mayors’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice are longtime sponsors of Building Operator Training, while the Sustainability Help Center is sponsored by the NYC Department of Buildings. Both initiatives are at the intersection of public service and training, designed to support the buildings community as its members work to reduce GHG emissions and comply with recent local building laws.
Grant Funded
Grant-funded programs are generally stand-alone initiatives designed to answer specific research questions or develop technologies or training products.
CUNY BPL itself began as a seed grant from NYSERDA to our parent organization, the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, to create a New York City hub for building performance and operations research and promotion. NYSERDA has awarded BPL many grants in the years since and the relationship continues to this day; currently, a NYSERDA grant supports BPL’s work at the City College of New York under the REV Campus Challenge.
A grant from the U.S. Department of Energy is supporting the development of BuildingCoach, an online training and coaching platform that uses energy data from participants’ buildings.
A sampling of past grant-funded programs in which BPL was either the primary or a secondary awardee include:
- Integrating Building Re-tuning into Building Operator training under a grant from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Building systems research under the SIBS Center, a National Science Foundation Industry-University Collaborative Research Center
- Development of training products and support for the Center for Building Operations Excellence under various National Institute of Standard and Technology grants