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

Right now New York City s ability 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 liability 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 authorities New York City s mayoral candidates might not think clean capacity is an urgent trouble or a obstacle they can fix They re wrong on both accounts Right now New York City s capacity grid is working overtime to keep up with demand that is rising more rapidly by the day because of electric devices electric vehicles and AI That puts the city at real liability for more blackouts like we saw in and that jeopardy will only grow The the bulk 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 potential 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 potency production They re also expensive at a time when New Yorkers are facing foreseen 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 vitality grid predicament 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 resolution to the potential grid predicament that we can advance in a sparse years not a sparse decades And if we do it right it will return much-needed dollars to the communities that have been greater part affected by the impurity caused by ability creation We can build coalitions and communities of people who just agree to use less capacity 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 minimal 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 ability Organizations that put together such agreements between building owners locality 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 crucial pressure on the capacity grid save New Yorkers money ease defilement 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 area 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 neighborhood 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 instantly relieve pressure on the grid allowing closure of peaker plants which create such serious strength 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 certain of the savings should be returned to VPPs that help maintain the grid Chosen of the savings could also be used to beef up populace school vocational guidance in needed green construction skills helping to meet the city s coming green workforce necessities It might also patronage civic coaching to help strengthen the underlying civic quota 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 power collaborations beyond VPPs For example Boston Curative Center BMC a safety net hospital not only retrofitted its buildings for potential efficiency lowering its resource 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 Group Change grants designed to sponsorship 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 Vigor Grid a Reality appeared first on City Limits