The conversion of the built environment for greater energy-efficiency and renewable energy consumption is a key facet of urban climate action. This paper focuses on residential building decarbonization in New York City to theorize how energy retrofits are shaped by existing property regimes and the financial capacity of buildings and their inhabitants. In New York City, one of the United States’ most robust real estate markets and home to one of the nation’s first mandatory building energy performance laws for existing buildings, a plethora of public and private financial mechanisms for energy retrofits are in use. Climate finance is delivered to building owners through a range of vehicles, including public and private debt, rebates, tax incentives, and energy service agreements – all meant to leverage private finance while stimulating the green economy. This approach effectively alienates property owners that do not have the financial capacity to access capital. Meanwhile, the drive to decarbonize and a lack of liquid capital leads other property owners to engage in contracts that enroll their buildings into novel rent payments on energy. The uneven application of a patchwork of climate financing mechanisms has impacts on the social relations of housing with implications for the geographies and politics of decarbonization in urban contexts.
ADL Ventures (2022) Financial Products to Unlock the Value of Deep Energy Retrofits: A Feasibility Study. ADL Ventures.
2.
AndreucciDGarcía-LamarcaMWedekindJ, et al. (2017) “Value grabbing”: A political ecology of rent. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism28(3): 28–47.
3.
ArboledaMPurcellTF (2021) The turbulent circulation of rent: Towards a political economy of property and ownership in supply chain capitalism. Antipode53(6): 1599–1618.
BouzarovskiSFrankowskiJTirado HerreroS (2018) Low-carbon gentrification: When climate change encounters residential displacement. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research42(5): 845–863.
6.
BridgeGBulkeleyHLangleyP, et al. (2020) Pluralizing and problematizing carbon finance. Progress in Human Geography44(4): 724–742.
7.
BryantGWebberS (2024) Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures. Agenda Publishing.
8.
Building Energy Exchange, NYC Accelerator and NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development (2021) Multifamily Passive House: Connecting Performance to Financing: How Energy Efficiency and Operational Savings Can Provide Additional, Ongoing Cash Flow. Building Energy Exchange.
9.
CastreeNoelChristophersB (2015) Banking spatially on the future: Capital switching, infrastructure, and the ecological fix. Annals of the Association of American Geographers105(2): 378–386.
10.
ChristophersB (2020) Rentier Capitalism Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?Verso.
11.
ChuaCDanylukMCowenD, et al. (2018) Introduction: Turbulent circulation: Building a critical engagement with logistics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space36(4): 617–629.
12.
CohenDNelsonSRosenmanE (2022) Reparative accumulation? Financial risk and investment across socio-environmental crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space5(4): 2356–2382.
13.
CoxS (2023) Bonding out the future: Tracing the politics of urban climate finance in Miami, Florida. Journal of Urban Affairs47: 70–86.
14.
CPC (n.d.) Underwriting Efficiency: A Mortgage Lender’s Handbook for Realizing Energy and Water Efficiency Opportunities in Multifamily Housing. Community Preservation Corporation.
15.
DanylukM (2018) Capital’s logistical fix: Accumulation, globalization, and the survival of capitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space36(4): 630–647.
FelliR (2014) On climate rent. Historical Materialism22(3–4): 251–280.
18.
FieldsD (2022) Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space54(1): 160–181.
19.
García-LamarcaM (2025) Urban political ecologies of housing decarbonisation: Towards radical housing repair. Progress in Human Geography. Epub ahead of print 10 July 2025. DOI: 10.1177/03091325251358409.
20.
García-LamarcaMAnguelovskiIVennerK (2022) Challenging the financial capture of urban greening. Nature Communications13(1): 1–4.
21.
HailaA (1990) The theory of land rent at the crossroads. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space8(3): 275–296.
22.
HailaA (2015) Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State. Wiley-Blackwell.
HarveyD (1978) The urban process under capitalism: A framework for analysis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research2(3): 101–131.
25.
HarveyD (2006) The Limits to Capital. Verso.
26.
JohnsonL (2015) Catastrophic fixes: Cyclical devaluation and accumulation through climate change impacts. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space47(12): 2503–2521.
27.
KearMMeyerDWilderMO (2023) Real property supremacy: Manufactured housing and the limits of inclusion through finance. Annals of the American Association of Geographers113(8): 1900–1917.
28.
KearMPonderCSHilbrandtH (2025) Making climate finance: Toward everyday, historically informed, and reparative understandings. City29(1–2): 262–277.
29.
KirkC (2021) Renovictions are worsening L.A.’s housing crisis. It’s time for City Council to Act. SAJE. Available at: https://www.saje.net/renoviction/ (accessed 13 October 2025).
30.
KnuthS (2019) Cities and planetary repair: The problem with climate retrofitting. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space51(2): 487–504.
31.
KnuthS (2023) Rentiers of the low-carbon economy? Renewable energy’s extractive fiscal geographies. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space55(6): 1548–1564.
32.
KnuthSPottsSGoldsteinJE (2019) In value’s shadows: Devaluation as accumulation frontier. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space51(2): 461–466.
33.
LaiKP (2025) Financial geography II – Green finance and climate transition. Progress in Human Geography49(2): 215–226.
34.
LangleyPBridgeGBulkeleyH, et al. (2021) Decarbonizing capital: Investment, divestment and the qualification of carbon assets. Economy and Society50(3): 494–516.
MaldonadoS (2023) New York City’s government is not on pace to comply with the city’s own climate law by the required deadline, officials concede. The City.
37.
MelvinJ (2018) The split incentives energy efficiency problem: Evidence of underinvestment by landlords. Energy Policy115: 342–352.
38.
MillsCKScottJ (2022) Sustainable affordable housing: Strategies for financing an inclusive transition. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, October.
39.
MitchellJNissenW (2011) Enabling Energy Efficiency in Rental Housing. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.
NY DPS (2024) System Benefits Charge. New York State Department of Public Service. Available at: https://dps.ny.gov/system-benefits-charge (accessed 13 October 2025).
42.
NYSERDA (2016) New York State Homeowner’s Guide to Solar Leases, Loans, and Power Purchase Agreements. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
43.
NYSERDA (2023) Measuring and Evaluating Indirect Benefits. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
44.
NYSERDA (2024) History of NYSERDA. Available at: https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/About/History-of-NYSERDA#:~:text=The SBC is collected by, the majority of NYSERDA’s programs (accessed 13 October 2025).
45.
PonderCS (2021) Spatializing the municipal bond market: Urban resilience under racial rapitalism. Annals of the American Association of Geographers111(7): 2112–2129.
46.
RichardsonL (2020) Coordinating the city: Platforms as flexible spatial arrangements. Urban Geography41(3): 458–461.
47.
SadowskiJ (2020) The internet of landlords: Digital platforms and new mechanisms of rentier capitalism. Antipode52(2): 562–580.
48.
ScottJMillsCK (2023) Window of Opportunity: New York’s Small Multifamily Buildings, Expiring Equipment, and Clean Energy Goals. Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
SmithN (1996) The New Urban Frontier. Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Routledge.
51.
SovacoolBKMartiskainenMHookA, et al. (2019) Decarbonization and its discontents: A critical energy justice perspective on four low-carbon transitions. Climatic Change155(4): 581–619.
TaylorZJ (2020) The real estate risk fix: Residential insurance-linked securitization in the Florida metropolis. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space52(6): 1131–1149.
55.
TaylorZJAalbersMB (2022) Climate gentrification: Risk, rent, and restructuring in Greater Miami. Annals of the American Association of Geographers112(6): 1685–1701.
56.
TaylorZJKnuthSE (2023) Financing “climate-proof” housing? The premises and pitfalls of PACE finance in Florida. Journal of Urban Affairs: 1–17.
VogellHCoryneHLittleR (2022) Rent going up? One company’s algorithm could be why. ProPublica, 1–16.
61.
WagnerJKearMKnuthS, et al. (2025) Grappling with real property supremacy in US urban climate finance. City29(1–2): 219–240.
62.
WagnerJSantacruz del ValleL (2025) Cooperating through transition: Limited-equity cooperatives, climate finance, and multi-family decarbonization in NYC. Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy4(1): 151–171.
63.
WardCAalbersMB (2016) Virtual special issue editorial essay: “The shitty rent business”: What’s the point of land rent theory?Urban Studies53(9): 1760–1783.
64.
WebberSNelsonSMillingtonN, et al. (2022) Financing reparative climate infrastructures: Capital switching, repair, and decommodification. Antipode54(3): 934–958.
