A new report, Meeting New York City’s Energy Demand Challenge, from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine recommends that the city adopt a strategy in which city-owned property doubles as an energy asset capable of generating electricity, storing energy, supporting electric vehicle charging, participating in energy markets, and strengthening neighbourhood resilience.
In other words, the garage where people park or the school their kids attend also acts as a power plant by virtue of the solar, batteries and other clean energy assets.
Importantly, the plan goes beyond just creating more distributed energy to designing a coordinated portfolio of energy assets, which Levine says are apt to attract long-term institutional investors and lower financing and procurement costs.
Key Findings
- New York City faces a growing energy reliability, affordability, and economic competitiveness challenge.
- Electrification, projected long-term data center growth (currently under a one-year pause in New York State)[2], and building decarbonization are increasing electricity demand faster than major infrastructure can be deployed.
- Grid planners increasingly identify smaller reliability margins (the extra power-generating capacity a power grid keeps running above the maximum expected consumer demand) and growing exposure to extreme weather, while rising energy costs underscore the need for affordable and resilient local solutions.[3]
- Energy prices, in particular electricity prices, have been a major driver of local inflation: energy prices overall were up 6.1% locally over the 12 months ending December 2025, versus just 2.3% nationally, according to the Office of the Comptroller.[4]
- Distributed energy resources are essential to maintaining a reliable and resilient electric grid in a dense urban environment.
- Solar, battery storage, and virtual power plants are particularly relevant in a land-constrained dense urban environment. These resources can reduce peak demand, relieve localized grid constraints, improve resilience during outages, and reduce reliance on peaker plants, particularly given the current reliability constraints identified by NYISO.
- Solar and battery storage can turn community institutions into resilience hubs that protect vulnerable New Yorkers during power outages and extreme weather.
- The City is underutilizing its public assets.
- There are 14,900 City owned parcels in New York City. Together, these parcels make up a total area of around 14% of the city overall. Municipal rooftops, parking lots, fleet depots, wastewater facilities, and other public properties represent significant opportunities for solar generation, battery storage, resilience hubs, and revenue-generating public-private partnerships.
- Developing these assets as coordinated portfolios rather than individual projects can attract institutional investment, reduce costs through economies of scale, and accelerate deployment.
- Permitting and interconnection reform represent the greatest opportunities to accelerate deployment and meet city climate goals.
- New York City has developed one of the nation’s most rigorous safety frameworks for solar and battery energy storage systems and maintaining those standards should remain a top priority. At the same time, operational improvements at FDNY can preserve public safety while reducing unnecessary delays.
- Lengthy agency permitting processes at FDNY in some battery storage cases, interconnection delays with Con Edison, and limited transparency on these processes continue to slow projects and increase development costs.
- Coordinated reforms, including clearer standards and streamlined reviews at FDNY, support for staffing levels to review applications, and greater accountability, could accelerate deployment while making New York City more competitive for clean energy investment.
- Distributed solar and storage can lower costs for ratepayers and taxpayers.
- Expanded deployment of distributed solar and storage is projected to generate approximately $1 billion annually in avoided energy costs statewide by 2035 while lowering electricity bills and reducing exposure to volatile natural gas markets. [5]
- Maximizing available federal and state incentives, even with federal tax credit clawbacks, can further improve project economics and reduce long-term fiscal costs.
- Strategic and equitable public-private partnerships can reduce long-term fiscal and infrastructure risks.
- Partnerships that leverage City assets, incorporate community benefits, and attract private capital can expand clean energy deployment while minimizing public expenditures and support environmental justice objectives.
- A predictable clean energy pipeline is essential for local workforce development and economic mobility.
- A reliable, long-term rollout of solar and battery storage, as well as grid upgrades, is critical to unlocking New York City’s economic potential and creating stable, middle-class careers.
- With a predictable project pipeline, unions can expand advanced apprenticeships and re-training, equipping workers with transferable skills that strengthen the city’s broader infrastructure and non-profits and universities can introduce clean energy career pathways to students.
- The clean energy transition requires both large-scale infrastructure and neighborhood-scale solutions.
- Projects such as CHPE and Empire Wind will be essential to supplying clean electricity, as well as statewide transmission upgrades, but distributed energy resources are equally important to ensuring that power is delivered reliably, affordably, and equitably where it is needed most. As evidenced through the recent heatwave, projects like CHPE cannot by themselves eliminate every reliability challenge.
Are these findings useful in your city?
The report is here.
External link
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 