During an Earth Day event, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the city’s commitment to install window heat pumps in 20,000 apartments and 10,000 induction stoves across the city’s public housing stock over the next five years.
Climate action and affordability are often framed as opposing priorities, yet continued dependence on fossil fuels is not only accelerating climate change but also increasing the cost of living and housing due to extreme weather damage, insurance costs, and volatile fuel prices.
In several major cities—including New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia—public housing authorities (PHAs) are the largest owners and operators of rental housing. Nationwide, an estimated 1.7 million Americans live in about 900,000 public housing units.
PHAs have long suffered from inadequate federal funding to maintain and repair their properties—and are often dismissed in housing policy debates as legacy agencies too under-resourced to transform the housing stock—or worse, as unworthy of investment. Yet PHAs are not powerless. New research from the Climate and Community Institute points to how New York City’s PHA is leveraging its procurement power to speed up green retrofits, improve residents’ quality of life, and lower costs—advancing the adoption of innovative green technology in the process.
Priming the Pump: How Mass Procurement Speeds Adaptation
When it comes to addressing the climate crisis, buildings are critical. Commercial and residential buildings are key contributors to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for over 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through heating, cooling, cooking, and electricity use. In large cities such as New York City, buildings contribute nearly 70 percent of emissions.
Heat pumps can reduce emissions by enabling a transition from gas-powered boilers, running on renewable electricity, and providing both heating and cooling.
While there are a variety of heat pump models, they all extract heat from a source—air, ground, or water—and then amplify and transfer it where it is needed. In this respect, heat pumps work much like a refrigerator or air conditioner. According to the International Energy Agency, heat pumps are more efficient and can be cheaper than traditional heating sources. While older heat pumps struggle in cold weather, modern versions can operate in freezing weather without difficulty.
Heat pumps are increasingly being incorporated into buildings as a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning solution. However, standard heat pump technologies can be difficult to incorporate into older multifamily buildings because they require substantial work in resident-occupied apartments, invasive wall openings to install refrigerant pipes, and costly electrical upgrades. Innovative public procurement policies, such as those taking root in New York City’s public housing, can ensure that residents of modest means have green, healthy homes.
NYCHA Leads on Green Building
New York City is the nation’s public housing capital. All told, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) provides homes to 1 in 16 New Yorkers, and the traditional public housing program houses nearly 300,000 residents in about 153,000 apartments. At the same time, like other PHAs, NYCHA faces major challenges, including deferred maintenance stemming from decades of federal disinvestment.
Based on 2025 estimates, NYCHA has identified a need for nearly $80 billion in major repairs across its portfolio. NYCHA public housing is also threatened by increasingly extreme weather, from damaging floods to life-threatening heat. Inadequate heating and cooling are major issues for some NYCHA residents, with serious potential health consequences. NYCHA is also subject to Local Law 97, a city decarbonization law that directs the agency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and by 80 percent by 2050. Existing multifamily rental housing is widely seen as one of the most difficult building segments to decarbonize. Yet, due to the political deprioritization of tenants and expediency concerns, climate policy has mostly channeled its benefits toward property owners and homeowners in single-family housing.
Nonetheless, New York City has shown that decarbonization in public housing is viable. The city’s PHA has a long history of sustainability leadership. In the 1990s, NYCHA launched a product challenge to produce some of the first Energy Star-rated fridges for apartments and purchased 150,000 units over several years, successfully slashing energy costs. Drawing on this history, NYCHA’s robust sustainability agenda explicitly calls out “market transformation”—the use of NYCHA’s purchasing power to drive and influence industry—as a key principle.
Responding to the lack of suitable products on the market, NYCHA partnered with two New York state agencies in 2021 to launch the Clean Heat for All Challenge, a technology competition aimed at spurring heating and cooling equipment manufacturers to produce a new, innovative heat pump designed to better serve existing multifamily buildings. NYCHA’s commitment to purchase thousands of window heat pump units incentivized competition entrants to participate. Ultimately, the large-scale manufacturer Midea America and the U.S. start-up Gradient were selected as the two awardees tasked with developing and manufacturing the new heat pumps.
Heat Pump Pilot Benefits: Climate, Cost, and Health
To ensure real-world feasibility and resident input, the Clean Heat for All Challenge set up a demonstration project in an NYCHA building. From 2023 to 2024, heat pumps were installed at NYCHA’s Woodside Houses in Queens and evaluated against a variety of metrics.
The pilot results were highly successful. From a technical and operational standpoint, the new heat pumps were simple and fast to install; provided consistent, comfortable temperatures in summer and winter; and achieved major reductions in both energy use and cost. The demonstration pilot found 87 percent reductions in energy use and 50 percent reductions in energy cost compared to the building’s existing heating system. Equally important, residents provided overwhelmingly positive feedback, with 89 percent reporting satisfaction.
The new heat pumps benefit both NYCHA and residents. Because NYCHA is responsible for residents’ energy costs, it can capture long-term operational savings. The residents benefit from improved comfort; access to efficient cooling; the ability to control their own thermostats; and improved indoor air circulation, filtration, and quality.
Building the Strategy
As of February, 150 heat pumps have been installed at Woodside Houses; over $38 million was designated to install heat pumps in 712 additional NYCHA homes; and 5,000 more heat pumps have been purchased for future installations. NYCHA aims to invest tens of millions of dollars in heat pump purchases, installation, and related green improvements to building weatherization and hot water systems. New York State grants helped fund the pilot demonstration, and NYCHA will reallocate part of its capital budget previously dedicated to boiler replacements to fund heat pump purchases.
Mayor Mamdani has signaled the potential for additional action—and has made clear the links between affordability and greening public housing early in his administration.
With manufacturers committed to making product improvements based on performance results from already-deployed units, these window heat pumps will be an important tool for expanding building decarbonization across multifamily buildings in New York City and nationwide.
In addition to NYCHA’s purchase commitment and an estimated internal demand for 156,000 heat pumps, the agency coordinated demand aggregation by sourcing letters of interest from 13 public and private stakeholders representing over 75,000 housing units. Both elements were critical in convincing manufacturers that it would be worthwhile to devote the time and resources to create this new product offering.
In 2023, NYCHA launched an Induction Stove Challenge with state agencies to produce energy-efficient, electric induction stoves suitable for older buildings that use standard, 120-volt electrical outlets. Appliance manufacturer Copper was selected after a competitive process, and in 2026 a $32 million commitment to develop, pilot, and produce these stoves for NYCHA’s portfolio was announced.
Getting to Scale
New York City is making impressive strides to green public housing while reducing housing costs for working people. As the country’s largest PHA, NYCHA benefits from substantial in-house expertise and capacity, and it can influence manufacturers through the scale of its procurement. Still, NYCHA is not alone. Other PHAs embracing greening and sustainable practices include those in Boston and Chicago.
Of course, even a large PHA such as NYCHA needs federal support to comprehensively transform public housing into healthy, green homes. The authority’s 2026 sustainability agenda report identified a $650 million funding gap to meet its ambitious heat pump goals. In the last Congress, the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, spearheaded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), would deliver the scale of investment needed to green and preserve existing public housing.
The legislation would finance green investments in public housing by dedicating around $16.2 to $23.4 billion annually for 10 years to support preservation, upgrades, and climate resiliency. It would eliminate an estimated 5.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to taking 1.26 million cars off the road. The bill would enable the public sector to play a leading role in transforming the market for building decarbonization.
Transforming the Broader Green Building Sector
Zooming out, efforts to develop new types of induction stoves, heat pumps, and low-cost, energy-efficient building materials could transform the housing market. In New York City alone, an estimated 2.4 million housing units could be well suited for window heat pumps. So-called “green industrial policy”—which, simply put, means using public planning and dollars to guide the green transition—would also help grow a green, unionized construction workforce in the trades. In short, public provisioning, combined with strategic coordination of the building sectors, reduces emissions and costs and generates employment.
PHAs can move this vision forward by hiring in-house sustainability champions. The operational savings from enhanced energy efficiency offset at least some of the staff costs.
Mission-driven PHAs are uniquely suited to drive this transformation. While imperfect, they have a relatively high degree of tenant oversight and protections, and they exist in urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country.
Rather than wait for green technological advancements to trickle down, PHAs can ensure residents receive those benefits directly.
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3 thoughts on “What NYCHA’s Heat Pump Strategy Says About the Future of Green Affordable Housing”
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The 50% reduction in energy costs that resulted from heat pump installation is impressive. What was the legacy equipment that was replaced? If the heat pump replaced electric resistance heat and early generation or window unit air conditioning that is great. If it replaced gas heat and early generation or window unit air conditioning then that is truly impressive. (Tenants that pay for their own energy costs will be reluctant to support equipment upgrades of any kind if it leads to higher energy costs.)
Thanks for the comment and question. According to the Clean Heat for All demonstration project evaluation, the legacy equipment used as a baseline for comparison was a central gas-fired steam boiler plant and distribution system. Your point about tenant energy costs is a very important consideration. In this case, the buildings used master meters for electricity and NYCHA pays all utility costs. You can read more granular details about the demonstration project in the evaluation that was commissioned by NYSERDA. See the link below:
https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/-/media/Project/Nyserda/Files/About/Publications/Research-and-Technical-Reports/Clean-Heating-and-Cooling-Reports/Large-Scale-Thermal/PON-4614/25-21-Clean-Heat-for-All–Taitem-Measurement-and-Verification.pdf
Thanks for this heartening article.
You write “In addition to NYCHA’s purchase commitment and an estimated internal demand for 156,000 heat pumps, the agency coordinated demand aggregation by sourcing letters of interest from 13 public and private stakeholders representing over 75,000 housing units. Both elements were critical in convincing manufacturers that it would be worthwhile to devote the time and resources to create this new product offering.”
Have any private nonprofit housing complexes benefited from the Midea (or whatever the new model is) heat pumps yet?
Thanks.