Courtesy of City of New Haven

The recently-created New Haven Office of Climate and Sustainability has brought more electric bikes to New Haven, facilitated an electric vehicle pilot program and electrified city-owned buildings.

In December 2022, following city-wide advocacy, Mayor Justin Elicker announced the creation of the Office of Climate and Sustainability and tapped then-alder Steven Winter ’11 to be its executive director. In the past nine months, Winter has worked with city departments to push for climate-related initiatives, with a focus on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Three environmental city leaders who spoke to the News agreed that Winter had so far achieved strong results in his executive director role.

“I see the role of Steve Winter’s position as a Climate Director as being a bridge across [city] departments,” Colleen Murphy-Dunning, program director at Urban Resources Initiative, told the News. “Whether it’s looking at energy efficiencies from transit, or buildings, or tree canopy, … Steve’s position provides an important nexus to work across [different] sectors.”

Chris Schweitzer, the head of the New Haven Climate Movement, said that the advocacy group has found Winter to be a “huge ally,” adding that they were happy he was in charge of the new office. Schweitzer said that the office is vital because no one else in the city, he believes, is working to combat climate change.

Murphy-Dunning started working with Winter when he was still an alder and would help constituents plant trees for free and take care of them through URI’s program. 

“[Winter has been] quite a champion as a tree ambassador in his community,” Murphy-Dunning says. 

This year, to increase canopy cover in New Haven, URI organized a series of workshops and applied for federal grants with officials who Winter brought together from several city agencies. 

With URI, Winter also led a community effort to turn a vacant lot on Shelton Avenue into a small park.  

That experience helps Winter now, as community engagement is a big part of his work in the office. Many New Haven residents are unaware of resources available to them, Winter said. Over the summer, he canvassed New Haven neighborhoods and got 70 households to sign up for the “I Heart My Home” program, which helps people make their homes energy-efficient. Talking to the News, Winter stressed that housing electrification advocacy is a priority of his.

The office also works on electrifying city-owned buildings. Recently, Atwater Senior Center in Fair Haven switched from a gas furnace to high-efficiency electric heat pumps. A heat pump repair mount vernon wa is all you need when it breaks down.

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Winter also collaborates with local businesses to help them become more energy efficient by optimizing lightning, heating and cooling systems to cut costs and reduce the impact on the climate, he said.

Alex Rodriguez, an environmental justice specialist at New Haven nonprofit Save the Sound, told the News that he appreciates Winter’s work on green buildings.

“In a lot of situations, we are asking people … to do things differently or use a new technology,” Winter said. “There is a lot of education that needs to be done.”

Such education efforts pay off, Winter argued. After one such education campaign, 50 residents of the city secured electric bike rebates through the state-funded program.

Transition to energy efficiency and electrification of the city also requires a lot of planning.

The office is working on electrifying New Haven’s vehicle fleet — at the end of the year, the city’s first electric garbage truck will go into service. To accomplish this, Winter worked to install the needed charging systems and communicated with the Parks and Public Works department to ensure that the vehicle would be able to adequately pick up trash. He hopes that this pilot project will become a model for other city departments. 

While Schweitzer spoke positively about Winter’s work, he told the News that reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a massive undertaking. Besides Winter, there is only one other employee in the office, which Schweitzer thinks is emblematic of a broader problem. The city’s administration, he argued, does not have a sense of urgency to address the climate crisis. 

“We need to be doing more at all levels of government, if we are going to meet the 1.5 degree celsius goal that was set out in the Paris Agreement,” Winter acknowledged. “There is so much more work to be done, but we do acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis and have made real commitment to addressing emissions in New Haven.”

Last year, the city allocated $5 million of federal American Rescue Plan funding toward city-wide climate projects, including initiatives to reduce New Haven’s carbon footprint and the creation of the office Winter now runs. 

Mayor Elicker did not respond to a request to comment on the city’s future plans to fight climate change. 

Winter hopes to expand existing efforts, as well as launch new initiatives, especially increasing the use of renewable energy and creating more clean transportation options for New Haven residents, all to decrease the carbon footprint of the city.

As a result of human activity, Earth’s global average temperature is currently increasing by more than 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.