New York City Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice – Piyush Narang – 2023
Goals
As a Climate Corps at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ), Piyush led work on the NYC Carbon Challenge to strengthen the program, build efficiency, and improve impact. His primary goal was to restructure the data management and visualization system, enhance partner engagement, standardize data collection methods, and improve the program design.
This initiative, a public-private partnership, aims to reduce building greenhouse gas emissions across various sectors in New York City. Piyush was tasked with organizing an all-partner convening (the first in four years), addressing data challenges, and creating actionable plans to bring more value to program partners.
Solutions
In tackling the challenges of the NYC Carbon Challenge, Piyush innovated multiple solutions to enhance the robustness, efficiency, and stakeholder engagement in the program. First, Piyush helped in reestablishing in-person partner meetings, overcoming the inertia of the virtual format adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. He supported the NYC Carbon Challenge Convening at Google’s Pier 47 headquarters in New York City. This created a more dynamic and collaborative platform for stakeholders.
Second, he designed a new GHG inventory dashboard for the program that helped address the challenges in data management. This new GHG inventory system included a master tracker of GHG emissions, a feature that optimized data analysis and enabled easier benchmarking and visualization of the progress. Piyush also worked on creating a strategic action plan for creating more value and incentivizing the participating partners of NYC Carbon Challenge. Through these strategic moves, Piyush strengthened the program’s infrastructure, improved partner engagement, and set the groundwork for future growth.
Potential Impact
Piyush’s work in NYC Carbon Challenge would allow MOCEJ to analyze the GHG emissions data of more than 1500 buildings across over 100 program partners effectively. His work on the new GHG inventory would enable the program team to accurately analyze the year-on-year emissions and energy intensity data for the program participants. The redesigned Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory template alone could help increase partner compliance, owing to its simplified data input process and automated validation checks. His strategic plan on incentivizing partners to decarbonize their facilities further lays down a strong foundation for the future of the program.
His work will enable NYC Carbon Challenge to scale up with a more robust program design. The improved structure of the program would enable NYC Carbon Challenge partners to meet its carbon reduction goals more effectively, potentially reducing the city’s carbon emissions by thousands of tons annually.
