Eastern Generation Scraps Plans for Gowanus Power Plant, Turns Towards Renewables

Though AGC claimed the project would reduce emissions, local elected officials and environmental groups immediately began fighting back. The PEAK Coalition, including the Sunset Park-based UPROSE, advocated for state officials to deny permits for the project and encouraged the company to pursue renewable and clean energy as an alternative.

“In Sunset Park, high levels of local air pollution has caused generations of health problems from asthma, heart disease, diabetes, COVID, and other upper respiratory issues,” said UPROSE, in a release. “For the community, this major victory means cleaner air, less exposure to toxic pollutants that harm our health, and more opportunities to create well-paying local green jobs in clean energy!”

Mayor de Blasio Releases Vision for Sustainable Freight Network

"Rapid and unregulated growth in last mile fulfillment centers is an environmental justice issue. These massive facilities are concentrated in historically marginalized communities- add toxic air pollution and truck congestion to overburdened communities. UPROSE is encouraged to see the City's commitment to address these issues. For decades, frontline community-led solutions have called for clean marine & rail transportation to reduce the number of polluting diesel trucks from our communities.  NYC must lead and be a true partner in operationalizing the community's vision for Green Re-Industrialization of our working waterfront,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE.

Amazon, FedEx and UPS Deliver New NYC Warehouses, Bringing a Package of Environmental Challenges

Online retail may make holiday shopping easy, but the local impact is anything but virtual.

To meet a growing demand for speedy shipping, companies are increasingly putting warehouses and so-called last-mile facilities throughout the city — largely unregulated and without the public’s ability to weigh in on threats to health, safety and the climate.

“This is straight-up environmental racism,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a Sunset Park-based environmental justice group. “When everyone is talking about racial justice and equity and green jobs, this is contrary to how everyone is thinking about how we move forward.”

Mayor de Blasio's record on climate change: it's complicated

Climate justice activists like UPROSE’s Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre also criticize the mayor’s approach, giving him only a passing grade. 

“I would give him a C. I think that he had an opportunity to take the momentum that existed under the Bloomberg administration and amp that up, and what we saw was a level of passivity that was inconsistent to what we were learning about climate change.”

Community Change-Makers: The New Yorkers Combating Climate Crisis, Hunger

“One of the things that I love about UPROSE is that on our staff and on our board are young people growing up in the organization,” Yeampierre said. “That intergenerational part of our cultural practices, you’ll see it show up in the kinds of events that we hold and who facilitates them and how the issues are framed.”

Nyeisha Mallet, a student at Cooper Union, joined the organization six years ago—the position was her first job. Her most memorable campaign was being involved with the fight against Industry City, the complex of old factories  turned into a commercial space which its owners sought to expand through a rezoning last year. 

Concerned that Industry City would gentrify Sunset Park in a way similar to Williamsburg and take away valuable resources for green industrialization, Mallett took part in organizing to voice concerns over the development. 

“Direct action is important, disrupting is important because that’s how we get attention,” said Mallet, “but community-building is the seed to everything else.”

Mallet works with Isabella Correa, a high school junior who joined UPROSE only a year ago but shares her colleague’s passion for community advocacy through intergenerational collaboration.

Correa has attended many climate protests throughout her life, but her involvement with UPROSE felt like a unique opportunity to pursue a just transition where both racial and climate justice are achieved.

“I’m here to learn, and it doesn’t stop once the march is over,” said Correa. 

“If we’re not solving the problem, then these rich white corporations [are] going to do it for us and not in the way that we want or not in the way that we need.”  

Offshore wind developer Equinor cuts ribbon to office in Sunset Park

Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, a Sunset Park-based grassroots community-based organization working on climate change and racial justice, discussed the importance of this collaboration.

She said that to truly operationalize a just transition, unconventional partnerships must be created that genuinely work with community leadership and support frontline community-led priorities.

“Too often, we see frontline communities like Sunset Park get left out of these large billion-dollar infrastructure projects that impact our community,” Yeampierre said. ”We need clean energy but we also need accessible workforce training, education, resources and direct investments to strengthen social cohesion and build long-term community wealth.”

For Sustainable Fashion To Make Real Progress, Cross-Generational Collaboration Is Crucial

Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE since 1996 and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, reflected on this dynamic at an event for the book All We Can Save earlier this year. “We need to be able to share power across the table so that [the youth] don't take 20 years to learn what it took us a minute to learn,” she says. “We don’t have time for them to learn [everything from scratch]; we have to be nimble.”

Environmental Justice Communities are Leading OSW, Advocate Says

Environmental justice communities are already doing the work needed to make renewable energy industries like offshore wind equitable in their workforce and community benefits, according to Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance.

“We have questions; we have solutions; and we have concerns,” Yeampierre said during a panel on environmental justice in the development of the U.S. OSW industry. “Anyone who is coming into the sector needs to be able to support that and not manage our expectations or give us a voice — we have a voice, and we are leading this work nationally.”

Developers should advise environmental justice communities on financing, costs and technical construction work, because “we’re leading this movement,” Yeampierre said, herself a leader from a community on the frontline of climate change in Brooklyn, N.Y. “We are not here to advise you.”

Conversations on how to equitably include environmental justice communities are not just about the disparate impacts of the energy industry on people of color and low-income workers, but a matter of allowing people in these communities to speak for themselves, she added.

“Really, the national initiatives and the state initiatives are being shaped by the work that is being done in vulnerable communities like ours,” Yeampierre said.

“Success for environmental justice communities equals having access to training, workforce development and education in all levels of employment,” she said. “Our communities can’t be boxed into bonuses or only have access to minimum wage or entry-level jobs.”

Lights Out Feared for NYC New Community Solar Projects as State Credits Fade

In Sunset Park, 150 customers will see a 15% discount on their electricity bills next year when a community solar project developed by UPROSE, Solar One, Co-op Power, 770 Electric Corp., and Resonant Energy atop the Brooklyn Army Terminal goes online.

The developers secured the community credit as part of the financing, which is part of what made the project possible, said Summer Sandoval, UPROSE’s energy democracy coordinator.

“We don’t want Big Oil to become Big Renewable Energy,” Sandoval said. “We have to create an equitable market for local energy that is going to be centered on, how do we move both public and private investment and resources to frontline community projects?”

Five ways to build joyous neighborhood community

“All of UPROSE's work is done in the interest of a Just Transition, a move away from the extraction economy and towards climate solutions that put frontline communities in positions of leadership. Our work occurs at the intersection of social, racial, economic, environmental, and climate justice, where different campaigns and initiatives naturally feed into, complement, and support one another.”

"I live here and I come from struggle, I have lived the lives that a lot of the people in our community live, and I'm very privileged to have had access to formal education and to get to do the work that I love and dream about. So I feel very blessed, but it's hard for me to accept more. Eric, you don't know me, and some people may think I'm a pain in the ass, but I just think that I wake up every single day thinking about climate change, and I think if everybody was working as hard as we were, and they weren't navel gazing, and they weren't trying to supplant leadership or duplicate efforts, if they were working in a way that was complimentary, we would be moving a lot faster with each other."

The work at UPROSE is all about relationship building, imagining what the community's goal is for themselves 10 days or 10 years from now, what they want their neighborhood to be like, and then building backwards from that. Like Yeampierre told me, "they may not see it yet, but we know how important they are."

Announcements and Investments During NY’s Climate Week

“For generations, black, brown, and low-income communities have been the reluctant hosts of polluting infrastructure and toxic emissions from fossil fuel plants, highways, solid waste, and diesel trucks to name a few, creating a legacy of historic health disparities,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, director of the Sunset Park–based group UPROSE, in a press release. Earlier this summer, Yeampierre met with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and expressed the need for local, community involvement in creating solutions to the climate crisis. 

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.

$191 Million Offshore Wind Plan Puts New York City On Path to Leading Role

The OSW Vision Plan looks to attract additional federal, state, and private investments to drive industry growth. To help ensure progress is made, NYCEDC will establish an Offshore Wind Industry Advisory Council led by co-chairs Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE, and KC Sahl, Northeast Energy Market Leader at VHB, a civil engineering firm active in the offshore wind industry. The council will be made up of additional community, business and nonprofit leaders with relevant expertise and experience.

“The commitment to new Offshore wind development in NYC is the result of frontline, community-led planning and leadership for environmental justice and the ‘green reindustrialization’ of our waterfront over the past decades. The struggle now is for a just transition, ensuring from day 1 our people are both at the table and working in this industry” said NYC OSW Industry Advisory Council Co-Chair, Elizabeth Yeampierre.

Hydrogen threatens to drive wedge between Democrats, climate activists

After U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm met with grassroots organizers in Brooklyn in June, the leader of Latino community organization UPROSE was optimistic about the Biden administration's outreach to citizens on climate policy. However, the community leader expressed concerns over one of the administration's energy policy priorities: harnessing the potential of hydrogen coupled with carbon capture and sequestration.

Hydrogen derived from fossil fuels and the supporting technology are "false solutions" in the view of UPROSE Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre. The efforts would benefit big corporations at the expense of communities of color like hers in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. "They haven't even been able to show that these interventions work," Yeampierre said in an interview after the meeting. "But what we do know for certain is that they don't produce the benefit that is necessary for climate change, and they harm our communities."

New York City reveals offshore wind vision

The 15-year Offshore Wind Vision (OSW) plan aims to put the city on a path to create over 13,000 jobs and generate $1.3bn in average annual investment.

It also aims to ensure 40% of job and investment benefits are directed toward women, minorities, and environmental justice communities, as well as reduce 34.5 million tons of CO2.

New York City will make commitments focused on three core areas – sites and infrastructure, business and workforce, and research and innovation.

The city will work to develop best-in-class infrastructure that will support the construction and operation of offshore wind farms.

The plan outlines how the city will expand its manufacturing sector to build, stage, and install wind turbines, and ensure they can be serviced and powered locally.

It also commits the city to developing public-private partnerships with communities to create good-paying, green jobs in disadvantaged neighborhoods historically impacted by climate injustice.

he OSW Vision Plan wants to attract additional federal, state, and private investments to drive industry growth to make the long-term vision a reality.

NYCEDC will establish an Offshore Wind Industry Advisory Council led by co-chairs Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, and KC Sahl, northeast energy market leader at VHB, a civil engineering company active in the offshore wind industry.

SUNSET PARKERS CALL FOR GREEN WATERFRONT DURING CLIMATE WEEK MARCH

UPROSE executive director Elizabeth Yeampierre said that these efforts should be implemented and scaled up massively.

“The time to act is now,” Yeampierre said. “Climate legislation must turn away from propping up outdated and unproven techno-fixes and instead center and be accountable to those who have been hit first and worst for decades. These are the largely BIPOC communities who continue to face the brunt of the storms, quite literally, and whose innovative solutions are rarely resourced and brought to scale. Comprehensive and bold initiatives such as community-controlled renewables like we have here in Sunset Park must be scaled up. It’s time to follow the frontlines — we have the solutions.”

Mayor de Blasio Announces Offshore Wind Vision for New York City

The OSW Vision Plan looks ahead to attract additional federal, state, and private investments to drive industry growth to make the long-term vision a reality. To help ensure progress is made, NYCEDC will establish an Offshore Wind Industry Advisory Council led by co-chairs Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE, and KC Sahl, Northeast Energy Market Leader at VHB, a civil engineering firm active in the offshore wind industry. The council will be made up of additional community, business and nonprofit leaders with relevant expertise and experience. 

“The commitment to a new OSW facility in NYC is the result of Sunset Park’s two-decade struggle for environmental justice and the “green reindustrialization” of our waterfront. The struggle now is for a just transition, ensuring from day 1 our people are both at the table and working in this industry,” said NYC OSW Industry Advisory Council Co-Chair, Elizabeth Yeampierre.  

The Dems’ clean energy plan can do better on environmental justice. Here’s how.

Co-written by Elizabeth Yeampierre

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A clean energy standard is a market-oriented policy in an economy that pervasively and persistently violates the human rights and needs of people of color.

Governor Hochul Announces New Statewide Community Air Monitoring Initiative, First of its Kind in the U.S.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director, UPROSE, said, "For generations, black, brown, and low-income communities have been the reluctant hosts of polluting infrastructure and toxic emissions from fossil fuel plants, highways, solid waste, and diesel trucks to name a few- creating a legacy of historic health disparities. We are encouraged to hear that the years of frontline community leadership that passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019 has now been realized in the State's announcement today. There is no excuse or alternative to investing in and working with disadvantaged communities to operationalize local climate solutions that are deeply rooted in equity."

BROOKLYNITES SEE CLEAR SKIES AND LOTS OF WATER IN AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IDA

Elizabeth Yeampierre of Uprose, a  Sunset Park-based climate justice group, told Brooklyn Paper this is just another example of the impacts of climate change and stressed the need for climate resiliency to be at the forefront of all decision-making for Brooklyn, and the city at large. 

“This is that moment right now where I hope people understand where we can no longer be making economic decisions that are going to continue to harm us,” she said, “that we are going to have to be really thoughtful about how we use space so we are protected from extreme winds, from extreme weather events, rising water, all of the things that are going to come bold with climate change.”