Sustainability may be a popular trend, but for Charles Copeland, he was already working on the ideas behind energy efficiency 40 years ago.
Copeland, president and CEO of engineering firm Goldman Copeland, helped a group of East Village residents revive a dilapidated and abandoned apartment building at 519 East 11th and make it into a self-sustaining structure.
And he became a part of local folklore as one of those responsible for erecting a windmill that kept the lights on during the 1977 blackout.
Copeland was hired by a local tenant group as the engineer overseeing the alternative energy aspect. He oversaw the work of installing solar collectors on the building that would capture solar energy to heat the water used in building at a time when solar power was as alien to New Yorkers as, well, an alien.
To make the building even more sustainable, the residents installed a windmill on the roof that generated power for their property and sent the excess into Con Edison’s grid.
