It's been a dark few months in the world of domestic renewable energy, as the Trump administration has done as much as possible to kill efforts to build green infrastructure, undoing many of the tax credits that made renewable energy projects financially viable under the Biden administration and canceling permits for wind power. As a result, New York state has recently pulled plans to build new infrastructure to bring offshore wind power over to the city.
But one bright spot, amidst all this gloom, has been the recent progress made possible by the Build Public Renewables Act, which was passed just over two years ago as part of the state budget. The BPRA tasks the New York Power Authority (NYPA), the state-owned energy utility, with building publicly owned renewable energy projects, which is especially needed as the private sector flounders amidst tariff madness and changes in federal policy.
When last we checked in on the state's plan for building renewable energy this past January, advocates were blasting NYPA (which originally was only half-interested in using the expanded authority to build green infrastructure that it received from the passage of the BPRA) for not dreaming big enough—the only projects it had planned would generate a scant 3 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, well short of the 15 gigawatts that advocates said was needed to help the state meet its legally mandated renewable energy goals.
In a mid-year update to its renewables plan published last week, however, NYPA announced that it was now working on projects that would collectively produce 7 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, with more possible projects in the pipeline.
Subscribe to read the full story
Become a paid subscriber to Hell Gate to access all of our posts.
Subscribe