Last year, NY Governor Cuomo announced the state’s visionary and groundbreaking plan to transition to distributed, renewable energy, "Reforming the Energy Vision," hailed as the most aggressive in the country.
Now there’s a path to make it reality.
Under the NY State Energy Plan, by 2030:
- cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% from 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% by 2050 – from electricity, heating, industry, buildings and transportation
- renewable energy supplies 50% of energy (up from 25% now, including hydro) from solar, onshore and offshore wind, biomass and hydro
- energy efficiency in buildings 23% below 2012 levels
Plan Components
1. Transform utilities to market-based role: Rather than selling energy that’s under centralized control, utilities will buy electricity from thousands of small generators that have, for example, solar on their roof. Utilities will make money by linking them together and integrating the energy into the grid.
Utilities must submit their plans to meet these goals by the end of this year.
2. Clean Energy Fund: $5 billion over 10 years to support NY-Sun and K-Solar, NY Green Bank , plus $1.5 billion for large scale solar and wind projects.
3. Building Efficiency: implement advanced building codes, raise efficiency in affordable housing, move to combined heat and power, and BuildSmart NY program.
4. Minimize methane emissions from natural gas infrastructure
5. Research, development and commercialization of energy storage technologies through NY-BEST and Brookhaven National Lab.
6. Investments in electric vehicles and infrastructure – 3000 charging stations across the state over the next five years.
Read our article, New York Sets California-Like Path for Solar Energy.
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