https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/blocpower-wants-to-evict-fossil-fuels-one-building-at-a-time/

BlocPower founder Donnel Baird grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1980s. The area was so poor that buildings often lacked decent heating systems. People would turn on the stove or use electric heaters to compensate for ineffective central heating.

It wasn’t safe or efficient, but it was reality for many families, most of whom were Black, living in these deficient buildings at the time. Baird says that the sense of inequity and inequality of the situation stuck with him. When he grew up, he recognized that the problem persisted in many poorer neighborhoods, impacting quality of life for the people living there as well as harming the broader environment.