The 2022 Energy & Environment Power 100

52. Elizabeth Yeampierre

Few environmental advocates have had as significant an impact fighting inequities in their community as Elizabeth Yeampierre. The climate justice leader helped the Sunset Park community get behind a new plan to turn the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into an offshore wind hub while also creating jobs. Yeampierre has sought to shutter peaker plants that pollute the air and make the fashion industry more sustainable as well. She is also backing pending state legislation that would require fashion companies to track their environmental impact.

The Power of Diversity: Latino 100

67. Elizabeth Yeampierre

Executive Director, UPROSE

As a national spokesperson on environmental justice, Elizabeth Yeampierre is executive director of Sunset Park-based climate justice group UPROSE. After successfully lobbying the state to turn the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a wind turbine manufacturing hub by 2025, Yeampierre met with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to discuss bringing even more green businesses to the area. Also, as an attorney, she  co-chairs the Climate Justice Alliance and was the first Latina to chair the Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

The Community Engagement Power 50

The 55-year-old environmental justice organization Uprose has long had an influential presence in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, as illustrated by Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre’s successful effort to block a proposed rezoning of Industry City. She argued that the space should be used instead to promote jobs in renewable energy production and improve resilience in response to climate change. Before leading Uprose, Yeampierre served as the director of legal education and training at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The 2021 Brooklyn Power 100

63. Elizabeth Yeampierre

Executive Director, UPROSE

UPROSE Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre met with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in June to discuss how federal agencies could encourage local renewable energy efforts like wind power and other green energy businesses in Sunset Park. For now, she’s more concerned with the city’s leadership and hopes the next administration approaches climate change with “humility.” Yeampierre has already gotten the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and a private energy manufacturer to upgrade the Brooklyn Army Terminal into a wind turbine manufacturing hub by 2025, adding 1,200 jobs to the borough’s economy.

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“In the era of COVID-19 and climate change, Black, brown and Indigenous communities have been the most adversely impacted by the public health and economic crisis,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the Brooklyn-based organization Uprose, told lawmakers at the hearing. About two dozen people testified in support of the bill, including representatives of New York Renews, Environmental Advocates NY, United University Professions, and a litany of community advocacy groups from cities across the state. “It is these same communities who suffer first and worst from recurrent extreme weather disasters,” Yeampierre said. Passing the bill means at least 150,000 more jobs could be created over the next decade to benefit such people, according to the Communications Workers of America District 1.

Climate activists celebrate Brooklyn wind turbine plant

“This is an example that another world really is possible,” Elizabeth Yeampierre, the president of Uprose, a Sunset Park-based advocacy organization that promotes for racial and environmental justice and sustainable development, said at a press conference Thursday. “New York City is going to position itself as a leader on climate justice, and it’s going to send a message to other industrial waterfront communities that have been surrounded by petrochemical industries, waste transfer stations and powerplants, they’re going to show that it’s not only possible to bring in infrastructure, but to reduce carbon, coal pollutants, but to hire people and pay them decent wages.”

“Had the rezoning had gone through, it would have severely limited the supply chain and expansive impacts that offshore wind will bring to Sunset Park,” said Summer Sandoval, energy democracy coordinator at Uprose. Down the line, Uprose would like to see “manufacturing and decommissioning of wind turbines somewhere on the waterfront,” as opposed to having parts imported from abroad. “The long-term opportunities would have been much more difficult,” she said.

Brooklyn Power 50

All politics is local – Elizabeth Yeampierre is helping New Yorkers realize that climate change is, too. The Climate Justice Alliance co-chair has long drawn attention to the links between systemic racism, inequality, and environmental degradation. She opposes the Industry City rezoning plan, questioning developer commitments to hire locally and the wisdom of building in a flood zone, preferring the city instead create jobs to curb climate change at the site.

Industry City and the future of member deference

Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of the Brooklyn community group Uprose that has been fighting the rezoning, agreed. She found the input of members from outside the district and borough on the Industry City project incredibly troubling. “I think it’s stunning that elected officials from other communities undermined the leadership of a council member doing exactly what his community has been asking for,” Yeampierre said. “It isn’t as if Menchaca (made) this decision easily.” She added, though, that member deference was only preferable when the member actually listened to what the community wanted. While some parts of Sunset Park have supported the rezoning, the local community board partially rejected the application. “You’ve got the council member standing with the community, and people saying, ‘Hey, you know what, no, we know what’s better for your community than your community knows,’” Yeampierre said, questioning whether this would have happened if Sunset Park were not a community of color.

Why Industry City rezoning is failing

In 2019, Uprose released its own proposal for a “Green Resilient Industrial District,” or GRID, that aims to retain the waterfront’s maritime and industrial character, creating opportunities for jobs in renewable energy production, sustainable business, and recycling and waste management. The plan would also incorporate green infrastructure to reduce flooding, such as installing rain gardens, wetlands, porous surfaces, and bioswales, which decrease stormwater runoff and remove debris and pollution. Yeampierre said the initiative would not only help improve the area’s resilience to climate-related events – it experienced significant damage during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 – but would provide higher wages than the retail and office jobs created by Industry City.