Opinion: NYC’s Next Mayor Can Make a Clean Energy Grid a Reality

Right now New York City s capacity grid is working overtime to keep up with demand that is rising more swiftly by the day because of electric devices electric vehicles and AI That puts the city at real hazard for more blackouts like we saw in and that vulnerability will only grow The Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens which represents more than percent of New York City s generation quota Photo by Adi Talwar Next to skyrocketing rents and economic shockwaves created by the federal regime New York City s mayoral candidates might not think clean ability is an urgent challenge or a complication they can fix They re wrong on both accounts Right now New York City s resource grid is working overtime to keep up with demand that is rising more speedily by the day because of electric devices electric vehicles and AI That puts the city at real threat for more blackouts like we saw in and that vulnerability will only grow The largest part likely outcome is that Con Ed will be required to increase the use of so-called peaker plants this summer This is bad news for New York City residents Peaker plants use oil or natural gas to produce potency spewing much higher rates of greenhouse gases into the air Not surprisingly they re mostly located in the same low-income communities of color already dealing with higher rates of asthma or other problems because of potential production They re also expensive at a time when New Yorkers are facing likely double-digit rate hikes for power costs Other solutions like the city s mandated building retrofits or building new nuclear plants could help solve the strength grid concern But they ll take decades to really get off the ground assuming safety concerns about nuclear plants can be met function d u ac var s d createElement 'script' s type 'text javascript' s src 'https a omappapi com app js api min js' s async true s dataset user u s dataset campaign ac d getElementsByTagName 'head' appendChild s document 'u kmqsczew vunxutxmd' But believe it or not there s a straightforward remedy to the power grid dilemma that we can advance in a sparse years not a scant decades And if we do it right it will return much-needed dollars to the communities that have been greater part affected by the garbage caused by ability creation We can build coalitions and communities of people who absolutely agree to use less vigor This is called demand flexibility For example if enough building owners and tenants agree to allow a utility to raise the temperature via the internet in their building a sparse degrees on a hot day or allow the utility to tap into their EV car or solar battery this has the same effect as having an additional power plant to supply capacity Organizations that put together such agreements between building owners neighborhood residents and utilities are called Virtual Power Plants VPPs Here s where the next mayor comes in With a focused effort New York City s mayor could relieve essential pressure on the vitality grid save New Yorkers money ease contamination in communities of color and light the way forward for more communities New York City has a large number of assets that could be assembled into VPPs The New York City Housing Authority NYCHA has apartment units the Housing and Preservation Department has subsidized apartments over the last years alone and school buildings could be added as well as CUNY campuses As the city transitions to EV school buses seldom used in the summer their batteries could also feed the grid Altogether the city could organize a municipal VPP that would go a long way towards stabilizing the grid at least for now In addition the city has an abundance of region and tenant organizations who are trusted in their communities that could do outreach to sign-up residents to join community-owned or CIVIC VPPs A little over five years ago these same society organizations worked with the City to convince residents to fill out the Census with great success Civic VPPs could partner with local tech start-up companies emerging in the VPP space to connect resident households to the grid Even if only a small portion of people joined right away this Civic VPP effort could at once relieve pressure on the grid allowing closure of peaker plants which create such serious healthcare risks that the state has ordered them to shut down Not only would that keep communities healthier it will also save people a lot of money Over the past years Con Ed has charged ratepayers around billion to operate these peaker plants Once VPPs are put in place and peaker plants closed specific of the savings should be returned to VPPs that help maintain the grid Various of the savings could also be used to beef up general school vocational training in needed green construction skills helping to meet the city s coming green workforce necessities It might also patronage civic development to help strengthen the underlying civic limit that will be needed to broaden such efforts over time A city-supported clean vigor planning initiative could also enable larger more effective and more inclusive clean force collaborations beyond VPPs For example Boston Medicinal Center BMC a safety net hospital not only retrofitted its buildings for potential efficiency lowering its strength bill it also partnered with MIT to build a solar field in North Carolina Revenue from the solar field is being used to subsidize utility bills for patients in Boston unable to afford air conditioning or heat New York could create projects like BMC s hundreds of times over but only if there is leadership from City Hall By providing leadership and patronage City Hall could even help stem the effects of the Trump Administration s move to strip billion worth of EPA Population Change grants designed to advocacy exactly this kind of organizing and work A stable grid and clean air for the city s future will depend on the next mayor With the right leadership from City Hall it can be reality and sooner than we think J Phillip Thompson is a professor of urban planning at MIT and the former deputy mayor for strategic planning initiatives under the de Blasio administration The post Opinion NYC s Next Mayor Can Make a Clean Resource Grid a Reality appeared first on City Limits