The Finger Lakes Clean Energy Hub (AMPED) celebrated its third year of offering comprehensive, unbiased guidance to residents, businesses, and organizations to save money, energy, and the planet through energy efficiency and clean energy technology upgrades. Over the past year, the Finger Lakes Hub and its volunteers engaged more than 4,500 residents across the region at over 130 events, with 72 percent occurring in state-designated Disadvantaged Communities. As a result, energy advisor calls increased by 21 percent from last year. With more than 144 installation measures, over twice as many as last year, our work weatherizing and electrifying buildings helped reduce our second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and strengthened our region’s climate resiliency for decades to come.

The Department of Public Service renewed the Regional Clean Energy Hubs through 2030, and we were pleased to expand our capacity as a key community resource. Our success in connecting with regional residents has been made possible through the trust built by our partners within their communities and their ability to connect residents and businesses to resource networks for support. We are especially grateful for the partnerships we have formed with subcontractors at Connected Communities, Ibero-American Action League, BluePrint Geneva, Causewave Community Partners, PathStone, and Rochester ENergy Efficiency and Weatherization. Our vetted contractors also rose to meet the challenges of retrofitting the region’s aging and complicated housing stock and responded quickly during one of the most severe no-heat emergency winters we have experienced.

This year we also developed new ways of reaching community members. We hosted our first Health and Energy Fair with EE Pathways to help residents understand the connection between climate, energy, and home health. We built relationships with agencies that serve residents most vulnerable to climate impacts, including Cornell Cooperative Extension Orleans County, the Town of Albion Sustainable Energy Committee, and Green Orleans. We created a referral process with Community Action of Orleans & Genesee, a Weatherization Assistance Program provider, to expand their service network. Through our collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension Orleans County, we participated in a food distribution event that allowed us to reach more than 200 low- and moderate-income households in a single day. Our work with the Town of Albion’s Sustainable Energy Committee also resulted in several outreach events delivered jointly with Green Orleans.

As part of our commitment to advancing equitable access for low- and moderate-income renters and homeowners, we released the Regional Assessment and Barriers Analysis in October 2024. The report outlined the challenges and opportunities of transitioning the region to clean energy at scale. As we worked to implement these recommendations, federal changes created uncertainty in the rollout of Inflation Reduction Act incentives and strained state agencies and resources to fill in gaps. Budget cuts across multiple state funding sources also threatened the future of EmPower+, New York’s primary program for reducing energy costs, addressing health and safety issues, resolving no-heat emergencies, and electrifying one-to-four-unit low- and moderate-income homes. To help address these challenges, we added a fourth energy advisor to our team and expanded our ability to provide comprehensive support for equitable access to renewable energy and clean heating and cooling technologies.

In the coming year, we will continue to provide energy advisement services and engage residents in learning how energy efficiency and clean energy can help save money, improve comfort and health, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We plan to launch the Hub’s first “office hours” in Albion to offer on-the-spot energy advisor meetings and application support. We are also seeking to add a local Orleans County installer to our vetted contractor pool to ensure residents are connected with a trusted local contractor. Finally, we will continue working with all levels of government to emphasize the importance of investing in the energy future of all New Yorkers so that we achieve a just clean energy transition without leaving any of our neighbors behind.