NYC’s Grid in Transition

Transcript

Please be aware that this transcript was generated by an AI system and may contain errors or inconsistencies.

Danielle: Hi everybody, and welcome to Urban Green Podcast building Tomorrow, where we have conversations with climate solvers.
Every day we meet people who make a big difference in the built environment and are moving us closer to a low carbon future, and we want you to hear their stories.
Before we begin today’s podcast, I’d like to thank Terrier, our podcast sponsor.
My name is Daniel Manley. I’m the Associate Director of Policy at Urban Green Council.
And today, I’m thrilled to welcome Miranda Miller, who’s the Associate Manager of Policy, and Adam Scheiber, who’s Associate Director of Research. Hello, Adam and Miranda.

Miranda: Hi, thanks for having us.

Adam: Hey, Danielle, happy to talk today.

Danielle: Great. Yeah. So today we wanted to talk about New York City’s electricity grid and our path to renewables powering our city.
Urban Green just published a few recent data stories and an article unpacking the latest, and Miranda and Adam were two of our team members behind those publications.
And so we want to unpack those today with you. So I’ll start, Adam, by asking you if you can just tell us a little bit more about the work that we’ve done recently to understand New York City’s electricity grid and why it’s important for buildings in New York City.

Adam: Yeah, for sure. So at a high level, I guess, why are we talking about the grid and buildings together in New York City? Buildings account for about 70% of carbon emissions for all of New York City and most of that comes from heating in buildings.
So think of boilers that use fossil fuels like gas or oil to heat the building, heat buildings in winter.
And so a key decarbonization policy for the city is building electrification, which involves replacing those boilers that burn gas or oil with electric heat pumps that use electricity from the grid to heat buildings instead. So that kind of policy actively brings the grid in buildings closer. So we’re really going to need to focus a lot more on the grid moving forward when we’re talking about buildings.
So to kind of track progress on the grid and explain its importance, we published 2 recent data stories that look at kind of high level statistics and trends for the grid in New York City.

So the first one looks at peak demand. So peak demand is the idea that the grid needs to be built out to serve the demand when it’s the highest on the day and the hour that is the highest in the city. And right now that happens in summer in New York City. So think about a heat wave whenever it’s turning on their air conditioners, that’s when we are as a city are demanding the most from our electricity grid.

So we’ve been tracking this data for the past five years and the summer, so what’s the what we demand from the grid and summer is actually 42% higher than it is in winter, but we have to build out that infrastructure to serve that highest day in summer.
So kind of that infrastructure is mostly just sitting dormant for most of the year.
So that’s actually good news for building decarbonization policy because that means that we can utilize that extra capacity that’s available in winter to install heat pumps that use electricity.
And we don’t have to think too much about building out that capacity in winter until we go above that summer demand. So one of our data stories looks at that.

And another high level way to look at the grid is what type of fuels are being used in the power plants to supply the electricity to New York City’s grid.So when we last looked at this in 2020, this was right before the Indian Point nuclear power plant was closed down.
So at the time, Indian Point provided about 20% of New York City’s annual electricity use.
So that was a big portion. And in 2020-2021, that was replaced by mostly gas generation.
So our grid actually in the past five years has become more dominated by fossil fuels.
So as of right now, about 20% of our power comes from clean sources. So that’s other nuclear plants, hydropower and renewables mostly upstate. But that leaves about 80% of our current electricity that is being supplied by fossil fuel plants.

Danielle: Great. And so that’s what our first two data stories unpacked and the article that we just published recently talked about how we’re about to see an influx of clean power that starts to change this trend, right?

Miranda: Yes, we’re starting to see the beginnings of a big transition here in New York City. I’m glad we’re starting on that piece of good news.
Before I dive in, it might help understand first touch on something that Adam talked about how New York City gets new clean energy in the 1st place. So New York City is of course very dense. We don’t have a lot of open space for large scale renewables like you might see in upstate New York, solar and wind farms. So much of the renewables that we do have come from upstate, largely hydropower that’s then delivered to the city through admission lines.

Second piece of this is that a lot of those large scale renewables are driven by the state, whether through goals codified in state policy, state investments or the state managed permitting and project approval process. So a transformation of New York City’s grid is really a statewide effort, but it is happening.
And the most immediate example to highlight is the Champlain Hudson Power Express or CHPE. This is a transmission line that will run from Quebec, Canada to Astoria, Queens, bringing clean baseload hydropower power to New York City’s grid. That project is expected to be completed and come online later this year.

And in our most recent article from Urban Green, we discussed exactly what CHPE will mean for New York City’s grid. So looking at the numbers, CHPE alone is expected to meet around 20% of New York City’s annual electricity needs. That’s the same as all of the renewables we currently have in New York City’s grid mix that Adam just highlighted.
So that means it should be will roughly double our share of clean energy and that’s a significant shift that we’ll see just in this year alone.

Danielle: That’s very cool. And it sounds like that’s enough to make up for Indian Point going offline before. And CHPE isn’t the only thing that’s transforming the grid. Adam, our analysis talks are how we’ve been expecting a lot of offshore wind development to help reshape the city’s grid. We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about offshore wind that’s making that picture really uncertain right now. But can you talk about what is going on in the near term for offshore wind?

Adam: Yeah, you’re right. There’s been a lot of news about offshore wind and there’s a lot of things going on. So to start in like the very near, near term, there’s actually some good news. We are expecting the first offshore wind project to serve New York City to come online next year. So in 2027, this project is called Empire Wind One, it’s 810 MW project and it’s going to deliver this electricity directly into New York City via the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. And our estimates show that when this project comes online, it’s going to account for about 7% of New York City’s annual electricity needs.
So that’s on top of what Miranda just said about CHPE.
Over the next two years, we’re going to see a pretty big increase in the renewables that are coming into New York City.
And I just want to reiterate that Empire Wind is happening despite what we’ve heard in the past few years.

This project has already gone through the federal and state we’ve seen in permitting process and is under construction.
Now. I can’t predict the future. This is still a year away, but we are fully expecting as of this moment for this power to come online in 2027. And so just taking a step back, looking at the kind of near term when CHPE and Empire Wind come online, about half of New York City’s electricity, annual electricity is going to be supplied from clean sources.
So going back to 2020 when I started this and today and then just a few years, we’re seeing a kind of a big transformation in New York City’s grid.

Danielle: And that’s a really major shift and I think is likely surprising for some people to realize because it’s been overshadowed by other stories in the news quite a bit in the city and the state. But that’s largely the reason we wanted to start working on these stories because these projects will make such a big impact for New York City’s electricity grid.

So our article also does look at future grid needs. Wind was intended to be part of the city’s future grid. And lately we’re seeing offshore wind projects being cancelled or facing lawsuits. Thankfully, that Empire Wind was able to get through all those processes.
But given the state of play at the federal level, Miranda, how should we be thinking about offshore wind for New York?

Miranda: That’s a great question. And as you said, it really does get to the heart of the challenge of how do we close this gap and decarbonize that second-half of our New York City fuel mix. So up until recently, Empire Wind One was going to be one of a few offshore wind projects that would have brought really historic levels of renewable energy to New York City.
But as you mentioned, the offshore wind industry has faced a really turbulent few years that includes grappling with inflationary pressures and supply chain constraints coming out of the pandemic and the more recent federal pause on new offshore wind leases and permits. For New York City specifically, there were three offshore wind projects in various stages of receiving product awards and permits that would have served New York City’s grid directly. That’s Beacon wind, attentive energy and Community Offshore wind.
They totaled up to 5000 megawatts of total project capacity, which is about 6 times the capacity of Empire wins one 810 megawatts.

These were projects that had been through substantial project development, including federal leasing and permitting, receiving provisional or final awards from New York State, but were cancelled or put on pause for various reasons.
So our analysis looked at what those projects would have actually meant for New York City had they been constructed and and continued with those planned interconnection points in New York City.

And what our article showed is that those three projects would have made a really substantial dent in cleaning New York City’s grid. With today’s total electricity use in the city, those three projects would flip the city’s grid to rely predominantly on renewables with just about a little, 10% still relying on fossil fuels.
So while offshore wind is put more or less on pause, that puts into perspective the amount of clean energy that we’re basically missing, missing out on right now without those three projects.

Adam: And I think that’s such an important point to emphasize is that offshore wind, it was going to be kind of like the biggest piece of this puzzle for New York City.
And I think that’s especially important because all of our projections are based so far we’ve talked about our based on New York City’s current electricity use, but where we expect that electricity use as we do building decarbonization and as we electrify a lot of our economy is going to increase in the next two decades.
The New York Independent System Operator, NYISO, which is responsible for running New York State’s grid estimates that we could see in the New York City area about a 40% increase in electricity use by 2040.
So we’re going to need the projects that Miranda just talked about are going to be necessary plus more so offshore wind really still needs to be part of New York City’s long term decarbonization pathway. And there isn’t a clear alternative right now.
And I think even more these projects, even though they’re paused or canceled or in a state of kind of pause, to restart these wouldn’t be starting from scratch.
There’s already developers who were in the process of getting federal leases and have gone through stages of federal and state permitting.
So when we get an opportunity, when offshore wind is possible again, I think these projects would still make a big difference for New York City.

Danielle: And you know, some of these developments on offshore wind were happening in real time while we were working on this analysis. You know, how can we be sure that there is a long term future for offshore wind? In just the past few weeks, 1 project from Total Energies accepted money to give up its federal lease and no longer pursue offshore wind. There’s so much uncertainty here that people might be inclined to give up on offshore wind in the United States entirely or here in New York.
Why is it important to keep offshore wind in the conversation? Why do we think we can still be talking about this right now?

Miranda: Well, as you’ve both noted, it’s certainly a landscape that is constantly evolving, but I think there are a few dynamics worth touching on here.
The first is what Adam just mentioned. There are these more or less shovel ready projects the developers have poured resources and time into to develop and permit.
And in many cases, with the exception, Danielle, of the attentive project that you mentioned from Total Energies, they still hold federal leases.
So it would be certainly challenging to fill that gap in New York City’s grid mix with other brand and new energy projects.

The second dynamic I’ll mention is that we think the data will be on our side.
So we’re just now getting the first real operational data from New York’s first offshore wind farm, that’s South Fork Wind, which serves Long Island.
And we’re about to have these two even larger projects online in the coming years.
Empire Wind One, which we’ve talked about and Sunrise Wind that’s just in New York.

Well, we’ll have even more data on things like improved capacity factors, grid reliability, the actual impact of these projects on local electricity mix and and energy cost savings.
I’ll highlight that this past winter, we saw record low temperatures, cold snaps in New York, as well as some of the lowest electricity costs in Eastern Long Island, where they have offshore wind from South Fork.
And not surprisingly, wind continues to blow in the cold and those communities continued receiving renewable energy from that project this past winter.
And then lastly, of course, we haven’t even touched on the economic and workforce benefits that make offshore wind such an opportunity for New York.
We’re seeing that with the South Brooklyn Green terminal for Empire Wind one, for example. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So those kinds of fundamentals that have made offshore wind such an opportunity for New York haven’t gone anywhere.
And they’re all these reasons that some might say offshore wind is an inevitable part of our long term strategy for New York City. And we think the evidence once more projects are in line, we’ll just continue to point to that.

Danielle: Thanks, Miranda.
So I really like how you put that, that the data is going to show us the many benefits that offshore wind coming online right now is going to give for New Yorkers in terms of how much power it provides, its ability to lower utility rates in the winter time.

So we do have to confront the reality that offshore wind is on pause right now in the short term, and New York State and New York City have little control over that. But we are in a climate crisis and our energy needs are growing and we need to continue to make progress. So what can we be doing right now that’s within city and state control to promote renewable development for New York City?

Miranda: Right. So, well, offshore wind is facing all of this uncertainty.
Of course, there is still a lot that we can and should be doing to continue making progress, decarbonizing New York City’s grid and bringing affordable clean energy to New York.
I’ll touch just on the generation side and then pass it off to you, Adam.

One piece of the puzzle that we haven’t talked about yet today is distributed solar, where New York has really seen a success story in recent years.
So New York State is on track to hit its statewide solar target 10 1/2 gigawatts by 20-30.
There’s even been momentum behind taking that target further, increasing it to 20 gigawatts by 2035. And New York City could do more to tap into the potential distributed solar here. We set a goal to deploy 1000 megawatts of solar back in 2016, and we’ve made good progress there, nearing 700 megawatts installed as of last year.
So while the state looks at increasing its solar goal, could be time for New York City to do the same.

Adam: Yeah, for sure. And like you mentioned Miranda, our data stories in our article are mostly on the generation side. But as we know that’s not the full story.
When it comes to renewable development in the grid, transmission and distribution within New York City is really important as well.
So on the transmission side, we know that there is a lot of potential and a lot of existing land based wind and utility scale storage and solar upstate New York and there.
But right now there’s not enough transmission lines to bring that down into New York City.
So we could look at bringing back projects that could bring this power down into New York City. There was the Clean Path project that was proposed but got cancelled a year or two ago. So we could bring parts of that back.

And then also storage within New York City, people might have heard of the Ravenwood Ravenswood project, which was actually the site of an old power plant that’s now being transitioned into a massive storage battery.
So that’s going to increase the capacity of intermittent renewables so we can store electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
So really building that resilience into New York City’s grid.
And then the final piece is on demand response and energy efficiency.
It’s not just about what we can produce. Can we produce more? But it’s like, can we use less? And can we be smarter about what we use so we can build out batteries in buildings? We can improve the energy efficiency of our building so that they require less power and electricity at the 1st place.
So there’s a lot that the city and the state can do on these other non-generation elements of this story as well.

Danielle: Amazing. Well, thanks, Adam and Miranda for leaving us feeling a little positive about the state of play right now.
If I can just kind of summarize what the series of articles on packs for our audience.
So right now our city’s grid is predominantly fossil fuels, but that’s changing immediately in the next couple of months as Tippy comes online.
These major projects are radically transforming the city’s grid, and that is a really big story.And while offshore wind was supposed to be part of the plan and it’s uncertain right now, we’re pretty confident we can’t lose sight of offshore wind.

And I think it’s really helpful for our listeners to hear what we can be doing right now, what we have control over.
So thanks for unpacking that a little bit.
Everyone listening can find more information in the articles that are linked here in the podcast description.
They have data and figures to unpack some of the details that Adam and Miranda just walked us through. Please go check them out.

Thank you again, both Adam and Miranda for unpacking this great research for us.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
Again, I’d like to thank Carrier for sponsoring this podcast and thank you to Urban Green members and sponsors.
If you would like to become a member, please visit urbangreencouncil.org.

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• NYC’s electricity supply
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• NYC’s grid in transition