Understanding the New York City electric grid is crucial. New York State’s nation-leading climate targets require an unprecedented greening of the state’s electric grid over the next two decades, while the emissions caps in Local Law 97 will soon make building owners accountable for carbon emissions from electricity use.
Fossil fuels dominate the current sources of NYC’s electricity. Building large-scale renewables nearby is challenging, and the current transmission bottleneck limits how much upstate clean energy makes it to NYC. In the near term the grid will also get dirtier: Indian Point nuclear facility—which historically provided a quarter of NYC’s electricity—closed in April 2021.
Cleaning the grid will require dramatic changes to electricity generation, transmission and distribution to NYC buildings, all while maintaining grid reliability.
To learn more, read our latest policy brief which gives a snapshot of where our grid is today.
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