Published January 18, 2022
Listen to our thirteenth episode of Urban Green Live! Hosted by Urban Green Council CEO John Mandyck, this interview series features international industry experts to answer your questions about a low carbon future.
On January 18, 2022, we welcomed NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen Harris and Vice President for Strategy and Market Development Janet Joseph. In this episode, Doreen, Janet and John discussed New York’s 2022 climate agenda and what it means for New Yorkers.
Key Takeaways
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a bold climate agenda for 2022, including achieving zero onsite carbon emissions for new buildings and doubling energy storage.
-> New York State has set an ambitious goal to decarbonize 2 million homes by 2030.
-> This includes making 1 million homes electric and efficient and another 1 million homes electrification-ready, with a particular focus on low and moderate-income households.
-> The strategy involves retrofitting existing buildings and constructing new buildings with zero onsite greenhouse gas emissions, powered by clean electricity.
Energy storage and fossil fuel phase out is critical for New York’s renewable energy future.
-> The current goal is to achieve 6 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030.
-> The state is working on phasing out fossil fuel plants, especially in disadvantaged communities, by promoting alternatives like renewable energy and energy storage.
Speakers
John Mandyck
Chief Executive Officer
Doreen Harris
President and CEO, NYSERDA
Janet Joseph
Senior Vice President for Strategy and Market Development, NYSERDA
Q&A
John Mandyck: What policies and mandates will be in place for existing commercial buildings to expedite decarbonization practices?
Janet Joseph: I know the listeners in this webinar are well aware of Local Law 97 at the city level. So let’s assume that’s in place. Certainly at the state level, the Climate Action Council has a number of potential policies for large commercial buildings. Statewide, we are looking at benchmarking. The Climate Action Council has also teed up the potential for a performance standard on the large commercial and multifamily existing buildings focusing on on-site energy efficiency and on-site greenhouse gas emissions. Those are a few of the policy tools that are under consideration at the state level.
John Mandyck: How many green jobs does NYSERDA estimate New York will create and how can one be prepared?
Doreen Harris: Part of the Just Transition Working Group that I mentioned earlier, one of the deliverables was a job study that was released at the end of last year alongside the draft scoping plan. The good news is that we saw significant employment increases on the order of 60% from 2019 to 2030, adding at least 211,000 new jobs in the state. There were losses in certain subsectors, but far more growth on a net basis. We’re going to need a massive amount of expertise to achieve these building decarbonization goals that we have laid out.
Janet Joseph: The other conclusion from the job study that we did is that on balance, these 200,000 jobs that we expect to create by 2030 have higher median wages than the rest of the economy. Just to put that building’s growth in context, it’s sort of a doubling of the number of people that are employed today in kind of the building’s space around energy efficiency. We really do need to bring more people into this sector. The opportunities are there.
John Mandyck: How is New York navigating the lack of support for Build Back Better? What does New York need the federal government to do, and what can New York do without the federal government?
Doreen Harris: We’ve made tremendous progress as a state, even under the Trump administration. I would say our work is bolstered by a strong federal alignment. We really have an alignment from the perspective of policy objectives. The fact that we have this alignment– local, state, and federal–is a really good thing and one that gives us strong bolstering of our objectives.
John Mandyck: As a homeowner in New York City, my understanding is the FDNY won’t currently allow me to put a home battery in my basement due to safety concerns. What needs to be done to sync our codes for the future that we want here?
Janet Joseph: We have been working with New York City and FDNY for a number of years, really advancing some testing and safety issues for batteries. When you boil it down, a battery is a little bundle of energy, so it’s not crazy that we’re taking this very seriously in terms of where we cite them, where we don’t cite them.
As a society we are going to need to work through the protections that are needed to deploy batteries safely throughout our energy system. We are going to have to work through this and we are going to have to align our building codes and fire safety practices in a way that supports the safe deployment of batteries and electric vehicles throughout the state of New York. We have work to do, we’re taking it seriously, we’re taking it cautiously, and we are going to have to look to and build a future that has far more energy storage devices spread throughout New York State.
John Mandyck: Will the new building codes include charging infrastructure for EVs?
Janet Joseph: At the state level, we look at the uniform building code and we look at the energy code. We expect to be advancing changes within the uniform code that do indeed provide for electric vehicle charging in the state of New York. Through the energy code we will be advancing the most efficient, tightest envelope that we can support. When we look at constructing a new building, that’s the time to get the electrification in place, vehicular heating and cooling, that’s the time to make the building efficient, that’s the time to make the building have a healthy indoor air quality environment. That was a specific recommendation that the Climate Action Council outlined in its draft scoping plan. We expect to be advancing that.
John Mandyck: What transmission upgrades are needed in New York to get to 100% renewables?
Doreen Harris: Earlier in 2021, we released a power grid study in consultation with our colleagues at the Department of Public Service that looked at just this topic and built on an increasingly robust body of knowledge around what is really needed from a grid perspective. Earlier in this discussion, I quoted some of the metrics. It’s going to be an entirely different grid in the future and it is on the basis of this massive electrification that is inherent in any possible future that we see forward, irrespective of the question around clean fuels that I described.
Long story short, I think the good news from that power grid study would indicate that in the near term, we’re in good shape in large part. Certainly there are some bulk upgrades that are needed, notably between New York City and Long Island. In the longer term, there are significant needs both in the distributed and in the bulk perspective once we head past 2030, but I’m pleased to say we’re already investing in these solutions.
John Mandyck: With thermal energy being over 50%of any large building’s energy usage, is thermal energy storage a part of the state’s energy storage initiative?
Janet Joseph: I will say that when we look at decarbonizing buildings, we are very attuned to the increased role that thermal energy storage will need to play in buildings. Thermal energy storage is very much a part of our building decarbonization agenda. I think there are some solutions on the market. I think there are some more advances that we need to make on the thermal energy storage front.
John Mandyck: Will the next energy code be tied to carbon?
Janet Joseph: You may know that in the discussions that we’ve had with the Climate Action Council, we have been very focused on looking at on-site carbon. A building owner cannot control what happens in the power grid. Doreen talked about all the things that we are doing to decarbonize the power grid, and we are going to do that in New York state. We believe that a building code needs to focus on what the building owner has control of; what they have control of is the construction of their building, how they use energy, how much energy efficiency they have, and whether they have on-site sources of carbon. So we will be focusing on carbon for sure.
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