Doctoral Dissertation Research: Retro-fix? Urban Climate Finance and Digital Decarbonization in Multi-family Housing

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This project examines how private property management influences decarbonization finance, technology development, and the negotiation of just and equitable low-carbon transitions. The examination analyzes government programs for incentivizing energy upgrades and investigates why owners pursue digital energy upgrades in multi-family buildings. The project tests public climate finance theories and provides insight into building infrastructure change. Increasingly, cities are legislating mandatory building energy performance standards to curb carbon emissions, and understanding the broader social processes of energy upgrade decision-making across various multi-family property tenures contributes knowledge toward climate mitigation efforts.This research investigates how government, private, and civic actors negotiate public, profit, and ethical property interests as they comply with mandatory building performance legislation, Local Law 97, in New York City. The aim is to understand why multi-family building owners choose to install digital energy upgrades and how digital energy systems impact the interests of owners, residents, staff, and government actors. The research asks: 1) How do governments use policy and financing mechanisms to operationalize infrastructure change in privately-owned residential buildings?; 2) Why have digital technologies emerged as a common means to deliver energy upgrades? How do they impact property interests in multi-family buildings?; and 3) How do energy decision-making differ across private land tenure arrangements? The study uses qualitative methods, including participant observation, archival analysis, and semi-structured interviews with professionals in the low-carbon buildings sector, building owners, residents, and staff, to assess energy upgrade projects in several NYC multi-family residential buildings - each with a distinct but common bundle of property interests. Through systematic syntheses of the findings, the research summarizes decision-making structures of energy upgrades in private multi-family housing and identifies recurrent claims to equity and justice regarding decarbonization policies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.