Can Mamdani supercharge New York’s clean energy revolution?

On one of the first cool nights of fall, labor activists, democratic socialists, scientists and teachers gathered in the pews of a Brooklyn church for what they called “the people’s hearing for public renewable energy.” Zohran Mamdani – who just won his Democratic primary and is expected to become New York’s next mayor – wasn’t there, but he dominated the festivities. Many in the crowd believed they were about to finally find an ally with the power to help them achieve their long-held goal: a New York almost entirely powered by public, regulated renewable energy.

New York’s public campaign for renewable energy “was instrumental in Zohran’s election,” state Assembly member Marcela Mitaynes said of Mamdani’s primary victory that night. They want an expanded public electricity system, utilities and renewable energy generation owned and regulated by community stakeholders, not corporations. That campaign, which began in earnest four years ago, was led by a small group of progressive and socialist Albany lawmakers: among them, Zohran Mamdani, who was elected to the Assembly in 2020. He has since rallied that same base — experienced canvassers, people accustomed to climbing six-story buildings and texting their friends to rally for a policy or a candidate — for his mayoral run.

Now, as Mamdani is poised to take office, the question is whether he and the state can live up to those hopes. The town hall does not carry out public energy projects. That work belongs to the New York Power Authority, a state agency created in 1931 as an early experiment in public power generation and a model for better-known projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Throughout the 20th century, the agency built transmission infrastructure, supported massive hydroelectric projects, and led energy efficiency initiatives in public buildings.

In recent years, advocates of public green energy sometimes viewed the New York Power Authority less as an ally than as a stumbling block. But in 2023, the Legislature passed the Build Public Renewables Act, or BPRA, which requires the New York Power Authority to accelerate and finance clean energy projects — enough, by law, to power 70 percent of the state by 2030. The question now is if and when this law will be implemented.

In July, the authority released a plan to build 7 gigawatts of solar and wind power with battery storage. Critics of that plan — many of whom helped write and pass the BPRA — say there isn’t enough electricity to meet the state’s energy needs or meet the legal deadline of 2030. In 2023, the state comptroller has indicated that the ambitious 70 percent goal would require the state to at least triple its renewable energy capacity — at that point, only about 25 percent of New York came from renewable energy, largely hydroelectric power. That figure hasn’t changed much — and last year, a state agency estimated it would take the authority another three years to meet the 2030 deadline.

Still, with a powerful ally about to take office, activists like Johanna Bozuwa, executive director of the Climate and Communities Institute, believe now is a “key moment” to advance the ruling authority, NYPA. With federal clean energy tax credits set to expire in 2027, “there’s a real incentive right now to act as quickly as possible. If there was ever a time to mobilize as quickly as possible, this is the time to do it.” So, on that cool September night in Brooklyn, public power activists wanted to take advantage of the moment of Mamdani’s victory to tell the New York Power Authority to go even further: instead of a 7 gigawatt plan, they wanted 15.

Mamdani won’t have a direct impact on how power authorities carry out the public renewable energy construction law, but as mayor of the nation’s largest city, he can determine where and how New York City supports the transition. Much of what it can do lies on the consumer side: not only helping to build more public power, but limiting the city’s consumption of it. His administration could require rooftop solar installations on municipal buildings, align city permitting and zoning with the state’s clean energy priorities and use his green schools plan to advance the agenda. Mamdani can also control enforcement of Local Law 97 — a city law requiring buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to cut their emissions nearly in half by 2030. For activists, that makes City Hall a crucial partner.

“I often call schools the charismatic megafauna of the building decarburizationBozuwa said: These are places where students, parents and teachers interact, and where other community members can go vote, attend a town hall or otherwise participate in the world beyond their homes and jobs. “I really see this as a key opportunity for the new administration to show the power of collaboration with an entity like NYPA, to leverage its power and its relationships to decarbonize these schools.” The Connecticut Green Bank already has a similar program, a said Bozuwa. “So this is a model that already exists: putting public renewable energy on top of public schools.” And in New York, similar programs already exist on a smaller scale: the New York Power Authority is working with a municipal agency to install solar panels on 47 schools.

The Authority’s board of directors will vote on its next strategic plan on December 9. “The plan will be updated regularly and it is anticipated that projects will continually be added or dropped during the project development process,” NYPA spokeswoman Susan Craig said.

But the current financing environment for clean energy projects is hostile. Some experts say the current seven-gigawatt plan is too ambitious and that the power authority “simply can’t meet those kinds of goals,” as a former member of the state’s Climate Action Council told Inside Climate News. Others fear that offering too much, too quickly could jeopardize the agency’s bond rating, making it less able to finance future projects.

And just three days after Mamdani’s election, Gov. Kathy Hochul granted a thrice-rejected permit for the Northeast Supply Enhancement, a proposed fracked natural gas pipeline that would add to a 10,000-mile network stretching from Texas to New York, paving the way for the state to rely even more on fossil fuels than in previous years.

Although climate has been a key issue for Mamdani during his five years in the Assembly, he has said little about it on the campaign trail. Yet his election has raised expectations among climate advocates – and questions about how much he can actually change. New York City remains far more dependent on fossil fuels than the rest of the state, largely because transportation bottlenecks prevent the arrival of renewable energy generation, and the city has failed to meet its own clean energy goals to go 100% clean energy by 2040. “It’s like a tale of two grids,” said Andrea Johnson, a researcher at the Public Power New York Coalition. But a state-local partnership to provide more clean energy, reduce consumption of that energy, and perhaps even reduce bills doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.

This wouldn’t be the first time New York City has partnered with a state agency to meet its climate goals. This year alone, the power authority worked with New York City Public Schools to install energy-efficient lighting throughout the school system — the lighting, the agency estimates, will save the city about $10 million a year. It partnered with the city’s housing authority to replace gas stoves in 10,000 apartments with energy-efficient induction models, as they announced on November 13. And these collaborations go back decades: in the 1990s, for example, an energy-efficient refrigerator program that began with funding from electric authorities in New York City public housing eventually paved the way for the development of a refrigerator model that used 30 percent less energy than the Department of Energy standard at the time. The city could turn to a similar model to purchase subsidized heat pumps for buildings struggling to meet emissions standards — but in order to reduce electricity bills across the board, Mamdani’s administration will also need to address the generation problem. So far, NYPA has committed to building one major solar array within New York City limits: a ten-megawatt array of panels at a wastewater treatment facility.

When Mamdani’s first City Hall budget proposal is made public in early February, we could see the first signs of how this new administration plans to build on these efforts. With a city budget deficit of $5 billion to $8 billion, threats from President Donald Trump to cut billions in federal aid to New York City and the state, and lawmakers in Albany worried about overspending. But selling climate policy as affordability policy is a strategy that has recently paid off.

“We cannot separate climate from the cost of living,” Bozuwa said. “The Mamdani administration really has the opportunity to show what a new form of climate policy looks like, one that truly brings climate and the cost of living together. »