Fulfilling New York’s Renewable Energy Promises

Fully implementing the Build Public Renewables Act would propel New York State to decarbonize

By Luca GoldMansour

12/29/2024

(pexels.com)

It’s time to call bullshit on New York’s climate strategy. As a state report admitted in July, we’re now unlikely to reach 70% renewable energy by 2030. That means we’re blowing past the first sustainability benchmark laid out in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

So far, New York’s strategy has relied on incentivizing private companies to invest in constructing new solar, wind, and geothermal projects through a cap-and-invest approach. It’s better than nothing, but it doesn’t come close to meeting the urgency of the climate crisis. It also fails to unleash decarbonization’s potential to transform New York and national politics.

That’s because the climate crisis can’t wait for the private market–which has had decades to act yet hasn’t–to see profit in saving the planet. The power plant owners the state is relying on for this strategy would like you to believe that the three boogeymen of macroeconomics–inflation, supply chain issues, and high interest rates–mean they can skirt their legal responsibility to meet the state’s goals. In the past two years, numerous new renewables projects have been cancelled on these grounds.

Luckily, there’s a law on the books that anticipated the failures of this climate strategy. The Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) of 2022 was specifically designed to make up for the private market’s unwillingness to meet the severity of the moment. It requires New York’s publicly owned power generating entity, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to construct, operate, and own renewable energy plants at a pace that makes up for the ever-widening gap between the private market’s unhurried pace and the state’s justifiably ambitious climate goals. 

The coalition of unions, environmentalists, and progressives responsible for BPRA’s passage believe that NYPA is better suited than the private sector to reach the state’s climate goals. They also say it will produce more affordable–and democratically controlled–energy for the state’s residents, all while creating industry-standard union jobs. If those predictions bear out, BPRA could be the start of a national Green New Deal type of political constituency that might be able to pull the rug out from under the MAGA agenda.

Indeed, NYPA itself was created in 1931 by then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt and served as a model of the kinds of public works programs that would typify his New Deal as President. The public renewables advocates seeking to advance decarbonization through those FDR-style projects hope that they can help form tangible relationships between different interest groups like labor, electricity consumers, environmentalists, and progressives to make real the type of mass politics that is the best hope against fascism.

But in order for that theory to be tested, BPRA would need to be implemented properly. So far, that’s hardly the case. In late November, 40 state senators and assembly members signed a letter addressed to Governor Kathy Hochul raising the alarm that NYPA’s current plan to build 3.5 gigawatts worth of new renewable energy sources falls far short of its mandate and “is not in the spirit” of BPRA. To help the state reach its target, the lawmakers urged Hochul to ensure that NYPA takes an all-hands-on-deck approach and produces 15GW.

BPRA’s supporters always knew implementation was going to be tough. They have little faith in NYPA’s current CEO, Justin Driscoll, who was appointed by Hochul and has contributed to Republican campaigns. They’re letting their dissatisfaction be heard in more than just one way.

An initial part of BPRA would have mandated that NYPA’s drafting process be run by the state legislature and non-profit advocacy groups. Those so-called “democracy” measures were scrapped from the final bill as a concession to Hochul. Still, the current process, run by NYPA itself, requires a comment period from the public. That period is currently underway.

On November 21, hundreds of New Yorkers took advantage of this by staging a rally outside NYPA’s public hearing at CUNY’s John Jay University before submitting their testimony. Overall, thousands of residents across the state have submitted public comments.

Those New Yorkers noted that aside from a lack of zeal, NYPA’s draft fails to include another requirement from BPRA: a plan to close the entity’s remaining peaker power plants located in the South Bronx. Peaker plants are especially polluting power plants that run on fossil fuels and operate for a short duration when there is high demand. The ones located in the South Bronx are part of a legacy of pollution in marginalized communities across the state, leading to high rates of illnesses like asthma. BPRA accelerated the state’s timeframe for closing these relics of a shameful past, but NYPA has yet to provide specifics.

With Democrats bleeding working class voters of all races, marrying public works programs with environmental sustainability goals and cutting out the corporate entities that rip off consumers could be a sign for the national electorate that the party is getting serious about labor again. Doing so wouldn’t just be electorally prudent, it could help save us from ourselves.