Years ago, Mayor Bloomberg announced that New York City’s closed landfills would be the future locations of solar parks, and now that’s coming to fruition.
The largest solar installation in NYC will be built on its largest closed landfill, Freshkills, which is being converted into a 2200-acre park.
SunEdison won the bid to build and operate a 10 megawatt (MW) solar park on 47 acres on Staten Island. It will sell the electricity to NYC. There’s room for another 10 MW of renewable energy there, which probably will come from wind.
"Freshkills was once the site of the largest landfill in the world. Soon it will be one of the City’s largest parks, and the site of the largest solar power installation in the five boroughs," says Mayor Bloomberg. "Over the last 12 years we’ve restored wetlands and vegetation and opened new parks and soccer fields at the edges of the site. Thanks to the agreement today we will increase the amount of solar energy produced in New York City by 50% and it is only fitting that Freshkills, once a daily dumping ground, will become a showcase urban renewal and sustainability."
Although this solar park will electrify only 2000 homes, the longer term plan is to use NYC Solar Maps to find 250 acres appropriate for solar, generating electricity for 50,000 homes.
The Freshkills project "will help us understand how renewables can integrate into our energy networks at a much greater scale, and sends a signal to the market place that renewable energy is both achievable within the city, and that it will continue to grow and become a major component of New York City’s energy supply," says Sergej Mahnovski, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. "This project will also push existing regulations to their boundaries. Interconnection with the utility system will have to be clarified, State programs aimed at increasing renewable energy will have to be expanded, and landfill post-closure care will have to be rewritten; and these are only a few of the challenges ahead. But this is a necessary undertaking in order to shift our power sector to a cleaner, more reliable energy future."
NYC has about 700 kilowatts of solar on the roofs of police precincts, park buildings and firehouses. Recently, it signed an agreement to install 2 MW of solar on four city-owned buildings – a wastewater treatment plant, two high schools in the Bronx, and on the Staten Island Ferry Maintenance Building.
Mayor Bloomberg’s ambitious PlaNYC sustainability plan targets a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases in NYC by 2030. The updated PlaNYC includes initiatives and targets for: Land, Water, Air, Energy and Transportation, including the very creative Zone Green, which fosters green buildings.
Loading...