Archive: Around Town

The Snug Planet truck was parked out front and the backyard was full of sawhorses and stacks of insulation, but no one was in sight. After a few more shouted greetings, a muffled response was heard from the depths under the house, followed by the masked visage of Phil Allmendinger, one of the limber and hard-working crew from this successful local green energy business.

Phil was hard at work in the crawlspace of the Buckholtz home in the Town of Ithaca. Max Buckholtz, a noted local musician and composer, had recently received the fifth grant from the Finger Lakes Climate Fund, which allowed Snug Planet to proceed with desperately needed work to address unhealthy and energy-wasting conditions under the house. This household of five includes a small child with health issues intensified by the mold and mildew from the damp crawlspace polluting their indoor air.


Thanks to the recent donors to the Climate Fund, Sustainable Tompkins was able to award $1,751 at the rate of $20/ton in CO2 reductions coming from the project. Combined with their NYSERDA incentive, this allowed the family to proceed with this much-needed professional assistance from Snug Planet. Max added plenty of “sweat equity” to the project by taking on the hazardous work of removing all the debris from the crawlspace before the crew came in.

Every one of the Climate Fund grant awards has a similar story of gracious collaboration among homeowners of modest means, local green-collar workers, and generous donors who take responsibility for their own carbon emissions by helping others reduce theirs. The projects may seem small in the face of the major climate impacts developing, but it is precisely this type of grassroots collaboration that is shifting the trajectory of the climate movement and underwriting our moral claims on political leaders for massive reform on energy policy.

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