My first summer internship, in my freshman year of high school for none other than the Brooklyn Eagle, came with a tough lesson — what it felt like to have to wear pants on the subway in summer. After a short lifetime of summers frolicking in shorts in Prospect Park, it came as a shock. I remember that summer as much for all the time I spent commuting to report stories in the hellhole that the subway platform becomes in summer as for the work experience. 

Suit-loving Mayor Mamdani must have had a similar experience. This week, the mayor, alongside Governor Hochul and the MTA, announced a study to try to use that heat for something good. 

The idea: Absorb heat from subway platforms, thus cooling them, and then use it to heat municipal buildings through the winter. 

It’s a flashy idea, but it’s not new. Thermal Energy Networks, or TENs, as they’re known, link buildings together in a kind of energy-sharing loop. TENs efficiently move and regulate heat in a series of buildings through water-filled pipes that connect the buildings to one another and often to the heat of the earth. Extra heat can be drawn out of one building and stored or transferred to heat another building with minimal energy use or emissions. The most exciting part to me is that TENs can utilize waste energy, like the heat generated by a refrigerator, instead of letting it go to, well, waste.

These systems are efficient, clean, more stable than wind or solar power, and reliable even when the grid falters, as it will continue to do in New York City as extreme heat events become more frequent.

In the $800,000 study, funded in part by congestion pricing (!), the city and MTA will test whether they can cool two especially hot subway stations (the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 4/5/6 and Chambers Street J/Z stations) through radiant cooling, which moves chilled water through ceilings and walls to absorb heat. Then, they’ll store that heat in “geothermal boreholes” — deep holes that harness the earth as a sort of natural battery — to be used later when city buildings need heating in the winter. This would be the first time TENs are implemented in American public transit (several European cities have already caught on!). 

Technicalities aside, it’s just kind of a cool concept. There’s heat we don’t want, and there’s heat we need. It almost feels like a no-brainer to connect the two problems. Or, as Governor Hochul said, it’s “cutting-edge climate technology.”

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, the workings of city government often feel almost excruciatingly slow. But I’m still excited to see New York pioneer some innovation in an old, old system.

– Ella Spungen, Editor, Bluedot Living Brooklyn

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There’s a parcel of land on the edge of the Gowanus Canal that was once the site of the Citizens Manufactured Gas Plant.

Now, public affordable housing is slated to be built on that land. 

But the grassroots activist group Voices of Gowanus says it hasn’t been sufficiently cleaned up and filed a lawsuit demanding National Grid pay for further remediation of the former gas plant, which is contaminated with carcinogenic coal tar and other pollutants. 

Read more about the lawsuit.

Dear Dot,
How can I save money on groceries?
– Janice

Dear Janice, 
Dot has long believed that most environmentalists act a lot like someone who lived through the Depression. You know, that whole “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” ethos. And while grocery prices remain high (with threats of higher prices still, due to a global oil shock resulting from the war on Iran, tariffs, wildfires, and migrant workers forced to miss work for fear of deportation), let’s remember that ways to live lighter on the Earth are often lighter on the wallet, too: Avoid food waste. Buy in season and as close to home as possible. Cultivate skills like canning and preserving. And eat whole foods, which are typically far cheaper than ultra-processed foods.

Want more tips? Read on. 

The Bluedot Brooklyn newsletter is edited by Ella Spungen. If you have any questions, suggestions, ideas, or want to tell us what you’re doing, email [email protected].