 Hi, good evening everyone. Thanks so much for joining the power up NYC community town hall tonight. We're just going to give folks a few more minutes to join and we'll get started around 605. Okay, well it seems like the trickle has slowed so I'm happy to kick us off. Hi everyone, my name is Claudia VJad Lehman. I'm an energy policy advisor at the New York City Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. And thanks so much for joining us on this rainy evening to talk about the city's energy transition. We had a lot of fun at the in person community town hall last Thursday so thanks to those of you that were able to make it I see some familiar names. We're really excited to dig in on the more technical side of things this evening. So I'll kick us off with a brief overview of New York City's energy goals and how the power up initiative fits into that and then pass it over to our consultant team at E3 to get into the specifics of the research topic that we're going to be talking about today, relating to greening the grid. So, if you could go to the next slide I'll just talk briefly about our energy goals so I of course feel very fortunate to work for the city of New York where I was born and raised New York City is taking the climate crisis seriously. We have a goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, which includes 100% clean electricity by 2040. And we're really focused on making sure that the transition is equitable one that prioritizes clean air and healthier environments for frontline communities. And also one that enables broader participation and energy planning which is part of the reason that we're here today. We want to make sure that our energy system is more affordable as we transition right now we have about a million and a half residents who are energy cost burdened, which means that they pay too large of a percentage of their income on energy bills. So there's an exciting opportunity in this transition to change that and make costs more affordable for residents and direct savings towards those who need it most. So we're focused on on that and doing that while maintaining a reliable and resilient energy system, even as we're bringing more solar and went on to the grid and as climate impacts are continuing to intensify. We've got our work cut out for us on the next slide I'll talk a little bit more about our office so we are now the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice, you may have heard of us in our previous iterations which were the offices of sustainability and the office of resiliency. We're now combined into one office that thinks more holistically about climate mitigation mitigation and adaptation through a justice lens. So, society has a long history of pushing a disproportionate share of environmental burdens onto communities with low income residents with communities of color, often communities that have the least amount of political power and the least contribution to environmental degradation. So environmental justice really works to address that by ensuring access and inclusion for people throughout the planning process and really closing the gap on some of the exposures to environmental hazards like air pollution and water pollution. Climate justice kind of extends that to recognize that the same historically overburdened communities are the ones that are also most vulnerable to a rapidly changing climate, because climate change tends to exacerbate a lot of socioeconomic and health inequities so so we're really focused on prioritizing frontline communities in this transition. So what does the energy transition entail. On the next slide. I'll show some pillars of the energy transition that are pretty widely agreed upon. First we need to reduce demand. So the less energy that you use the less new clean energy that you need to build and pay for so that can range from something as simple as installing high efficiency light bulbs like the ones shown here. You can use the green city force handing these out in the Bronx, or it could be a more complicated weatherization process like upgrading to more efficient windows or improving installation things like that. Then once we've reduced demand we need to switch to electricity wherever feasible. So that could be heating your building with electric heat pumps instead of natural gas boilers or switching to electric buses instead of diesel ones like the one shown here on 42nd street. So basically we need to make sure that all that new electricity that we're using is clean. So the state mandates 70% clean by 2030 and 100% clean by 2040. So I'll just pause for a second to note the enormity of this task. The electricity industry has not really changed significantly since its inception over 100 years ago and now we're really needing to transform it at lightning speed. We're moving and it's an exciting time to really think about how we can put the muscle behind the transition so that the system that unfolds is one that's more equitable that it has been to date and one that can meet our justice mandates. So where does power up fit in on the next slide. This is basically an inclusive planning process for the energy transition part based on engagement and part based on research. So first is understanding and you know fighting for New York City's New Yorkers priorities when it comes to an energy transition. So for this project we've partnered with five exceptional CBOs throughout the five boroughs shown here and received their feedback as well as leaned on their expertise and community trust and on the ground networks to engage more New Yorkers in this important conversation. And then the second piece of this process which will really be focused on today is the research. So there's been a lot of analysis done already by both the city and the state to understand what needs to be done for the energy transition. And we really don't want to be reinventing the wheel or doing modeling that just confirms what we already know. We're really aiming to build off of what's already been established and then develop deep dive research topics that fill in the gaps that we know exist and sort of stand in the way of creating concrete actionable strategies that we can move forward. So you'll hear more about the research that fills in those gaps tonight. And then where we're headed. We're publishing a report. The goal is to get it out by April of 2023 that will outline specific strategies city government can take in the near term to advance an equitable energy transition. This is the first but not the last of these energy plans were required by local law to publish an energy plan every four years, which is a good thing because this is going to take a lot of iteration. What's needed today is going to be different than what's needed eight or 12 years from now. So we're in it for the long haul and hope you guys are too. So today we're going to talk about the research questions that are specifically related to greening the grid. Tomorrow we have another session focused on electrification of buildings and vehicles. I'll just note before I pass it over is that you guys should feel free to add your questions into the chat at any time we want this to be interactive so we're happy to answer questions as we go. And with that, I'm happy to introduce Zach Satilli, who is the lead consultant on this project at the firm energy and environmental economics or E3 to kick off our discussion on the research. Thanks, Claudia and good evening. So tonight, as Claudia mentioned, we'll be talking about three topics. The first will be energy storage. The second will be public lands and the third will be in city wind. So we'll present each and then there'll be time for Q&A after each as well will pause and take questions to keep this orderly. What we'd suggest is if you have a comment during our presentation, please put that comment into the chat. And then at the end of each presentation will take the comments in order. And then with there's available time will call on anybody with raised hands. And with that said, I'm going to now turn it over to my colleague Kevin Steinberger to discuss our energy storage research. Kevin, let me see if I can get you off mute looks like you may be stuck. I think I was stuck on mute. Can you hear me okay now, Zach. Great. Thanks so much and thanks, Claudia and Zach for that introduction. My name is Kevin Steinberger based in E3's New York office. And I'm excited to be leading this energy storage research topic and be discussing that with you all tonight. So first as context, our overall goal with this research topic is to assess opportunities for energy storage to facilitate the replacement of in city fossil fuel power generation. And I'll start by providing more context around what energy storage is, and the role that it can play in reducing New York City's reliance on fossil fuels in the electricity sector. Our systems are large batteries that are fundamentally the same chemistry and technology as the batteries in our phones or computers, and also the same batteries that are being used in most electric vehicles today. So the large scale or grid scale energy storage systems can play an important role in our electricity system by charging and storing energy during times of high renewable energy output, like a really sunny afternoon, and then discharging or providing power during times of highest demand, like when everyone gets home and turns on their air conditioners during a hot summer day. So the power plants that run on fossil fuels have played that role of ramping up during times of peak electricity demand. And as a result are often referred to as peaking power plants or simply peakers. And the goal of this research topic is to focus on how installing new energy storage systems can reduce the city's reliance on all fossil plants with a focus on these peaker power plants, which often represent the easiest candidates for replacement with battery storage given their limited run times, and many of which are already very old and have some of the highest pollution rates of the city's generation fleet. So several of these plants are also located in disadvantaged communities and so removing those plans from the system would also deliver benefits to these communities. But we've split this research area into more targeted and more specific questions, including an examination of how the impacts of the planned new clean energy resources and new transmission lines that are being built on the electricity system will impact the impact of the fossil generation plants in New York City, how installing new and additional battery storage can enable the replacement or reduction of fossil fuel generation in the city, and what factors the city should take in order to support the deployment of battery storage with the focus on how those deployments of new storage resources can also provide the greatest benefits to disadvantaged communities. In the next slide, we've provided some detail on how we're examining the operations of the New York electricity system. And so to study those questions we've developed a modeling simulation that takes into account the expected changes on the New York electricity system between today and 2030. And so that we can kind of think about that in on both the supply and demand side of the equation. So starting with demand, we know that electricity demand is going to increase between now and 2030 because we're working on electrifying building heating demand. And also trying to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, both of which will contribute to increases in total electricity consumption. And we can see that in terms of how the total stack is increasing in this chart on the right between 2021 and 2030. When we focus on the supply side of the equation, we know that the contributions of renewable electricity will increase because we're in the process of procuring new resources to meet the state's 70% renewable electricity goal by 2030, which is set into law by the New York State Climate Act. And so we can see in this chart on the right the significant expansion of renewable resources, including onshore and offshore wind in the shades of light blue, as well as increases in both large scale solar projects and behind the meter customer solar projects in the different shades of gold at the top there. And so as a result of those expansions in the electricity that we're receiving from renewables, even as demand is increasing our modeling projects that generation from fossil based resources will decline significantly by over 60% between now and 2030 across New York State. So our analysis also allows us to zoom in on New York City specifically. So when we zoom in from the statewide level to New York City, if we advance to the next slide. We find that the increases in clean energy across the state also contribute to significant reductions in fossil generation in New York City. So the generation from fossil fuel power plants in New York City declines by more than 40%. So, well that's less than the decline statewide, due to continued constraints on delivering power from upstate New York into the city, as well as certain constraints on delivering power within certain areas of the city. The decline in fossil generation in New York City are really significant achievement driven by the additional clean energy over that that's expected to be built over the next several years, and we're well on our way to contracting and building many of those resources. The other thing that I think is important about this chart is that we've broken out the contributions of fossil generation in New York City by technology type. So the light gray at the bottom of this chart referred to combined cycle power plants, which are often some of the most efficient power plants in the city and have low, relatively low rates of pollution per unit of generation. Then in the middle shade of gray combustion turbine plants are often a little bit newer. And, you know, while less efficient than combined cycle units. Some of these have lower rates of pollution in the last category here which is steam turbine units. Many of these plants are plants that were built in the 60s, some of which were even built as early as the 50s. And so these are some of the oldest, often some of the oldest power plants in the city, and often also have some of the highest rates of pollution per unit of generation and so notably the largest declines in output across these generation technologies occur in these steam turbine power plants. And so that means that there may be significant opportunities to replace the operations of these units with battery storage for events to the next slide. This slide is in this this map on the right is another way of sharing the same information from the analysis that's been shown on the previous two slides through a different lens. And so what we're focused on here is the percent of the year that power plants are operating in 2030. And if we focus on the plants in the city in this lightest shade of blue. These are plants that are operating for less than 1% of the year. And so this brings us back to the role of energy storage and the capabilities of those technologies. Storage technologies today are often technologies that can store and discharge energy for four hours at a time, or sometimes up to eight hours at a time. And so for storage to be able to replace fossil power plants. It's important that the plants are not running very frequently. What we find in our analysis is that many plants across the city are running infrequently at rates at utilization rates of less than 1% of the year. So when we look at the operations of these units we we often find that the capabilities of energy storage are well suited to mimic the operations of these fossil power plants and provide the same capabilities and services to the grid that these plants are providing. And so that's really important because we all want the electricity system to be just as reliable or even more reliable as it is today and provide the same services that it is today. So we want to make this energy transition while maintaining reliability or keeping the lights on for for all customers. And so what's going to be really critical to achieve that is to ensure that the city is well positioned to site and build energy storage that can again provide many of the same capabilities as these fossil plants and enable the replacement of these units and removal of these units from the system to deliver concrete health benefits to our communities by reducing their pollution. I'm noticing a question in the in the chat we've covered a lot of ground already so I'll pause for a minute before turning to the remainder of our analysis. So this is a question around a disruptions to the grid and backup energy. And one of the things that we think again is critical is that as we're making this clean energy transition the system is just as or more reliable and resilient as it is today to these types of disruptions. I think in terms of tackling resilience to to blackout is going to depend on on the specific conditions but we do think that you know in some cases having distributed storage across the city can play a role in meeting what ConEd is calling resilience hubs and trying to make sure that we're increasing the resilience of the grid because we know that climate change is going to intensify storms and lead to increasing challenges on the grid and we want to again make sure that we're ensuring the same or higher quality of service and reliability and resiliency as we are today. So, in this research topic where we're also focused on how we can site and build energy storage in New York City. Again, in order to be able to remove these fossil units from the system, we need to identify key siting considerations for storage and make New York City an attractive and viable place for project developers to build new battery storage projects. So, you know, we know that there's a lot of competition for first base in New York City and land is expensive and and what we're working on in this research topic is developing a framework that can help prioritize opportunities where there's vacant land and there may not be competing uses and where there are good opportunities to build battery storage given its importance in the clean energy transition and so what we're showing on this map on the right is, you know, the starting same layer of where power plants are across the city and you know they're associated runtimes and then layering on vacant land that's you know managed by the city in in red here and in the gray or teal substations which represent grid infrastructure where you know ideally we would site storage near so that it can connect to the grid and provide those those same services that that power plants today are currently providing so as we move forward with this research topic we are looking at a whole host of different setting considerations in addition to the ones shown on this map. So the size of the lot is of course important and how much storage you can provide or build on on the lot and whether it the economics pencil out, given the size of the lot, as well as you know where in different zones across the city where storage can be can be permitted, you know whether that's a commercial zone or a manufacturing zone, given various safety systems depending on the size of the project. And of course you know we want to take into account potential computing uses and community consideration to make sure that storage is being built in an equitable way. So as we move to the next slide, we provided a little bit more detail on how we're breaking out battery storage by different use cases. So, the first column here is showing large scale or grid scale utility scale projects user projects that are larger than than five megawatts. So often need to be on either repurposed land like land that was previously used for large manufacturing facilities, or other vacant lots and often need to be in the range of 7000 square feet or higher so that kind of narrows the pool of potential facilities and storage projects at this size would likely need to be cited either in manufacturing zones or certain commercial zones. We also are considering projects that are eligible for the value stack which is a tariff that the state defines an compensation mechanism that that storage projects would be eligible for. Those projects are slightly smaller than the prior category, but still fairly large. And so those projects are, you know, between 1000 and 2000 square feet. And again, you know, could be cited in any factoring zones as well as, you know, a broader subset of of commercial zones across the city. The distribution scale and building integrated projects are by definition much smaller and more scalable across the city and in our implementation recommendations will identify steps that the city can potentially take to facilitate their deployment. So for the purpose of thinking about this analytically and where potential projects can be cited. We're really focused on these, these larger two categories and trying to identify the size of the potential opportunities set across tax lots across the city. I'll move to the next slide just just briefly speak to this and now we're getting a little deeper into the, into the weeds here. But, you know, tying this back to how we're thinking about this from the perspective of our analytical framework. This is a preliminary analysis and is probably over inclusive relative to where we'll land once we apply all the different setting considerations we've been discussing but you know what we're working on is using publicly available information about tax lots across the city. We're able to apply those different categories of market use cases for storage and apply our screening criteria around, you know, projects of different sizes being in different zones based on permitting and safety considerations. And we're able to then, you know, use all that information and the tax lot database to identify the total available potential to build storage across the city by layering on those different geospatial considerations. And so we're in the process of examining where those opportunities exist, applying, you know, additional considerations such as proximity to transmission infrastructure overlap with environmental justice areas and varying community locations and think about how we can develop a framework that identifies these opportunities makes it easy for developers to site and build storage where there are opportunities that align with all those, those different considerations and objectives. And, you know, as we move forward in this energy transition, accelerate the build out of storage in a way that can drive the replacement and a fossil unit and reduce the city's reliance on fossil fuel power plants over the coming years. So I'll pause there and not seeing any questions in the chat but please enter any questions you all may have and happy to address those as best we can. Seeing any questions in the chat or any hands up. Someone can correct me if that's not the case. Also saying, yeah, if folks want to just unmute and ask questions that that works to give it another minute or so before we turn it over to my colleague Sam for the next research area. Okay, I see a question around why steam turbines are are maybe the best candidates for replacement. So, many of the steam turbines in in New York City were built in the, in the 60s, even in the 50s. And so these are fairly inefficient units and often have higher rates of air pollution per unit of generation. Even though they're not necessarily running very much. They often contribute a disproportionate share of the air pollution that's harmful to to folks health. And that in addition to their age, I think makes them some of the strongest candidates for potential replacement with with battery storage. The next question is, are there any safety concerns regarding the battery technology. And that's something that the fire department has been actively working on and so they developed a set of regulations around how the storage project needs to be configured to ensure that it's, and that there are steps that are taken to, you know, with prevent fires and to, to address those if an accident does occur. Claudia, feel free to jump in if there's more you want to add around all the work that I know is being being done on that front. Sure, so we are very supportive of energy storage because we know it's critical to meeting our clean energy goals but that being said the city is very focused on ensuring that any energy storage that is built in the five boroughs is done so in a safe way. So the fire department and the department of buildings have a lot of regulatory processes by which the developer and the manufacturers of the batteries have to go through strict fire safety testing and design the battery to be to meet the most strict rules in terms of design and installation. So our job now as a city is to figure out how can we streamline those permitting and regulatory processes so that they're not so strict so as to not allow any energy storage to be built in the city, but to make sure that we're not sacrificing any safety considerations as we open up the doors for energy storage to be built in the five boroughs. So the question about rooftop residential batteries I know that there is a proposal in Williamsburg that's currently under review by the Board of Standard and Appeals for putting a battery on the roof of a building. That has also undergone strict review by both Department of Buildings and the fire department so I don't believe that has completed but if it were to get through both of those regulatory processes and I think we could be fairly confident that the battery is safe since those processes are quite strict. But that being said, I know that there have been instances of accidents around the world, particularly in New York City recently with e-bikes which are sort of a different regulatory framework and don't have as strict regulation as the stationary energy storage batteries. So all of this to say that safety is absolutely a top priority when it comes to building out energy storage in the city. And we also know that it is critical to meeting our clean energy goals so I don't think it's one or the other I think we can have both. Thanks everyone. I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat so I'll just just set the wire I'll address this last question and then turn it over. So how long are renewables expected to last? I think that's a question around the lifetime of the plants. Many of these, it's a little bit different for wind and solar than it is for battery storage actually. So solar and wind projects I think are generally expected to last at least 20 or 30 years and often longer battery storage projects because of the way they're operated. Like we need to be either augmented on kind of an annual or biannual basis and kind of upgraded throughout, which just requires a little bit of expense each year or you know replaced every, you know, around 10 years and so a lot of that is already kind of built into the economic picture that developers are considering and and you know factoring that into the project economics to make sure that those projects are viable not just at the installation date but throughout the 20 or 30 year lifetime that they're expecting to be available on the electricity system. So we're now just about at time so I'll turn it over to my colleague Sam Lang to speak about our public land research area. Thanks again everyone. Thanks Kevin. Hi everyone, my name is Sam and today I'm going to be talking about the public land research topic within power up. I'm going to switch for a little bit of kind of context before I dive into the research. So currently the city has a goal of installing 100 megawatts of solar capacity on public rooftops by 2025. Currently there's about 17 megawatts installed and about 46 megawatts in progress. There's also a goal of installing 500 megawatts of energy storage capacity within New York City by 2025. Although this would be across both public and private land. So I think that clean energy development would have multiple benefits for New Yorkers would reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as other non greenhouse gas pollutants and it would improve air quality. And there are also opportunities to utilize community solar, which can provide bill savings for subscribers as well as non energy benefits, including creating green jobs as well as educational and vocational training. The city owned property does have the potential to be a huge resource for developing clean energy, especially because the city is the largest property owner within New York City. And so all that being said, our research is looking at how city real estate can be utilized, most effectively in support of clean energy, particularly storage and community solar slide please. And so just for a little bit more background information on how city land is currently used for clean energy development. It's currently done with what's called a site access agreement. So a site access agreement access a license that allows private developers access to public land and enables the city to enter into a power purchase agreement or a PPA, which is basically just a contract to buy solar power. And this enables solar development on city owned rooftops. This type of agreement is slightly riskier for developers, there's no formal lease, ensuring their long term access to the roofs. However, this does not require a formal land use review and it's a quicker development process than the alternative. The alternative approach would be to use a formal lease agreement. This is a more concrete agreement between the city and the developer, and the city is locked into providing access to the land for a specified period of time. So this is less risky for developers and potentially a more attractive deal as a result. However, it is more administratively difficult and it does require that extensive land use review process that I mentioned, which can extend an already relatively lengthy development timeline. So through the power of research, we will be looking at development options for solar and storage through two primary administrative pathways. The first would be looking in the short term and it's focused on community solar development on public land. So community solar basically allows residents to subscribe to purchase solar power without having to install solar panels on their property. And our research will be looking into the existing administrative structure that site access agreement pathway that I mentioned, which is currently used by the city to develop rooftop solar and how that process can be extended to be a development pathway for community solar. We're also working on a complimentary financial analysis that will measure potential energy bill savings for community solar subscribers, as well as the optimal financing structure that would maximize these savings. And this financial analysis will be taking into consideration existing state level solar incentives, as well as new incentives that have been made available through the inflation reduction act of 2022. So digging into some of the results from the financial analysis. The main finding here is that opportunities for greater say greater savings have been opened up by the inflation reduction act or the IRA. So the IRA has extended what's called the investment tax credit or the ITC, which has been available for solar energy generation, but the IRA has made it available through at least 2032. So these incentives have also been added to improve the profitability of projects that serve low and middle income customers. So these incentives are all broken out on the figure to the right. On the top of the standard on top of the standard ITC. There are now additional tax credits for enrolling low and middle income customers in community solar, citing projects in low income communities and using materials that have been manufactured and so these incentives if optimized and stacked with state level incentives provided by NYSERDA can cover from about 50 to 80% of project costs, depending on the amount of solar capacity installed per project. The IRA also introduced new pathways for solar projects to receive federal tax credits, including direct payments to municipalities that own projects that could open up new doors for New York City. And our financial analysis will essentially evaluate these new and pre existing finance instructors and identify which incentives are available across different site locations, just in order to maximize and avail maximize available revenue streams and make community solar as affordable as possible, and also maximize energy bill savings for subscribers. And so the recommendations that come out of this analysis can provide a roadmap for the city for rate payer advocates and developers to achieve sustainability goals and benefit communities at the same time. Next slide please. And then the rest of the public land research will be focusing on a long term view so looking kind of beyond community solar. This will be a long term view of storage and solar development on city owned property. The approach that we're looking into would involve bundling multiple properties into a single development project. So this would mean one land use change review for multiple properties. This could speed up the development process significantly and kind of allow more bang for your buck in terms of energy development for a given review process. This would involve the more formal administrative structure I mentioned earlier the lease agreement, which is not currently used for solar development. But ideally could, you know, be used going forward for both solar and storage. And this type of development would use the storage citing considerations discussed previously that Kevin mentioned and could open up the opportunity to combine solar and storage, which could help maximize the energy benefits of solar development. So I will pause here, I know I just talked a lot but I'm happy to take any questions and discuss anything further than anybody is curious about. It doesn't look like there's any new questions in the chat but feel free to throw a question in the chat or just speak out. Okay there's a question in the chat please repeat what has already happened versus what's needed. Sorry Jennifer I don't know if you can speak up could you clarify, are you asking about what administrative pathways are currently being used for what options are available. I'll assume Jennifer that your question is kind of about what's already been happening versus what could happen going forward. Basically what's currently happening is the city uses. Yes 46 megawatts. No so the goal is to have 100 megawatts of solar established on community or I'm sorry on city on rooftops by 2025. Currently 17 are done but 46 are in progress. And then there's also a study of looking at which roofs are considered solar ready in New York, and those kind of provide an option for once those 46 are done, kind of moving on, what roofs could be prioritized in the future. Another question is how does climate justice play into sighting and who gets to participate in community solar. So currently we are based on, first of all just environmental justice concerns and second of all, how IRA benefits work, citing projects in low income communities is aiming we're aiming for that to be the priority just because there are more benefits for community members and also more tax incentives. So it also would be a priority to allow a low or middle income customer subscribe to community solar. Just with priority just to kind of provide those energy bill savings where possible. Yes, thank you Claudia just posted a link in the chat so if anybody has any other is curious about more information on where solar is installed in public land, you can visit that site. And if there are no other questions, which it looks like there aren't I will pass it off to my colleague Hayden. So thank you. Hello, can you hear me now. Yes, we can hit it. Thank you. And can you see my video. I cannot see. There we go. It's been a while since I use zoom hi everyone. My name is Hayden and others the final presentation for the evening here. I'll be looking at the potential for actually installing wind turbines here in New York City. So this is a little different from what you might typically think of in terms of wind energy. The average wind turbine in a wind farm that's being installed right now is absolutely huge three megawatts which is enough to power 1000 homes. And you may have also heard about how New York State is pushing to have 9000 megawatts of offshore wind installed by 2035. Those are big and great and supportive of New York City but what we're interested here is, could we actually install smaller turbines are 10 or 1000 times smaller than those large projects, actually here in the city on rooftops or along waterfronts, so we could generate electricity closer to where it's actually being consumed. And so we're trying to take a large scale assessment of what's the possibility there we don't want to leave anything out on the table. And while it's an interesting idea there are, of course, some unique conditions in the urban environment that need to be a factored in the presence of buildings can reduce wind speeds and introduce turbulence. It can just be more expensive and challenging to install turbines in such a complex space, and they're also safety and sound related concerns. And so here, we're just taking initial shot at trying to figure out if we were to fully utilize the resources in the city, how much energy could that provide. If we could go to the next slide. But first, I just want to give you some context to what some past experiences have been. There are some really interesting and promising examples of wind turbines in urban environments being successful. There's a fairly large turbine up in Toronto that they installed along Lake Ontario. They've been operating for almost two decades now and has apparently been a pretty good success. However, it should be noted that there are a good number of examples from around the world from London to Houston, Texas of turbines in the urban environment that really have not quite met expectations have not generated as much electricity as was anticipated operated for as long as had been hoped. And so that's useful to just have in mind, bringing things a little closer to home, there've been at least a half dozen wind turbine projects in New York City over the past decade and a half. One, some a prominent example was the Brooklyn Navy yard they installed a series of one kilowatt turbines on their rooftop back in 2008. Unfortunately, those turbines are not able to access wind speeds that were as high as had been hoped. So, those ended up just producing around 2% of the expected generation, and they have not been maintained. There's another project in Long Island City, where they installed a series of turbines on the rooftop of a luxury residential building. I don't know how those have actually performed but we do know that it was pretty expensive to install them using a crane reinforcing the roof. And so even if they were to perform to expectations, the electricity would be incredibly expensive to the point of not being able to access wind speeds as much as possible. And then finally, and more encouragingly, there was a commercial scale turbine installed at a recycling facility in Brooklyn along the East River, it's a 100 kilowatt turbine, and that was installed at a recycling facility. It's operated fairly well, it hasn't fully met expectations but it is continuing to successfully generate electricity for the recycling facility providing around 2% of their annual demand. So it's not yet paid off the initial investment, it is a sign of what could be possible, and suggests that maybe this is something worth looking into at a large scale. If we could go to the next slide please. Thanks. So just giving a sort of an overview of the procedure we use to arrive at some of our estimates here, trying to do a assessment of large jurisdiction. It can be a little tricky just because so much of wind projects is really very site specific. But this is something that other jurisdictions have looked at as well. Here's an example of the procedure followed for a study in the Netherlands. And we've generally followed very similar steps in our work as well. So the first major step was to just collect the best available data we have about the buildings around New York City and try to identify which of those buildings could be candidates based off of general zoning considerations. And then second, we brought together the best available wind data that we could have, mostly from a federal data resource that was provided at a somewhat high resolution around the city, not as detailed as maybe we'd like but it's a good start. And finally, we brought together specifications from leading wind turbine manufacturers that indicate how different turbines might perform under a variety of wind speeds. And we brought all this together to look at each of the candidate locations estimate what would be the distribution of wind speeds at those locations, and figure out how a turbine might perform under those conditions. And then we also did a pretty similar process for ground mounted locations. Those would allow for potentially much larger turbine installations along the waterfront in commercial and manufacturing sites, but you need a fair amount of open space within individual lots. So that is a little restrictive in terms of where they could be installed. We could go to the next slide please. One slide of results here, because the upshot is unfortunately, there isn't a huge potential for wind here in New York City, starting with roof mounted turbines. There are around a million buildings throughout all of New York City, and out of that wider stock we identified around 7500 tall buildings are over 100 feet tall, that could be candidates for roof mounted wind. If all of those locations were fully utilized, we installed turbines, the maximum number of turbines we could on each roof, we estimate that they could generate electricity that would match around 0.4% of the current city's annual electricity demand. And just as a side note, we have a map here showing how the average wind speeds might vary by location and the actual height of the roof where the turbines could be installed. But this does come with a caveat. We collected some data for a weather station on a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, and that suggests that the wind resource is much less reliable than some of the top down federally provided data would lead us to believe that the wind speeds on average were much lower at that location than we had calculated from other data. And if we apply that reduction in wind resource across all the buildings, it would suggest that we could only provide around a 10th of the generation that we had previously calculated, actually most of those tall buildings would be better off just installing solar panels instead. We're switching gears to shorter buildings that are located near the waterfront they're around additional 1500 buildings that could be candidates for wind. But for the shorter buildings, they probably would not be able to access high enough wind speeds to really justify installing a turbine. That wouldn't make sense, our calculation suggests. And then finally, turning to the possibility for larger ground mounted turbines are looking at turbines that are 100 to 200 kilowatts is sizable but not quite a full wind farm industrial scale. We identified some 68 lots around the city that we think could have enough space to accommodate one or more of these larger turbines. And if all these sites were fully utilized, we think that they could provide around 0.1% of the city's annual electricity demand. But it seems that most of those sites, especially the larger sites would be better off installing solar just in terms of total energy generated per location. So, again, it could make a contribution, but maybe there are other ways to utilize those those particular sites. So again, the general conclusion here is that while there may be individual locations individual buildings where urban wind could be a valuable addition where it could make sense on the whole the general potential is limited. So it seems that at this time, it's not an area that the city should give much priority to in terms of pursuing renewable generation. But it's been interesting looking at this and hopefully this helps to just understand the general landscape of what's possible going forward. So glad to take any questions now. Thanks so much. Thanks Hayden so there is one comment thus far in the chat and it is, has there been research into seeing if there are any buildings in New York City that could potentially be converted to a zero energy building. Yeah, I'm not quite sure about that. I assume this means could you install enough solar and wind on a building to match the actual energy demand at that location. I did run some calculations recently about how much of an individual building a turbine, or could a turbine match the particular buildings generation. Let me rephrase I could a turbine match the building's electricity demand. I don't think that there were locations where that generation was fully equaling the particular building demand, I don't know if that might be achievable with solar and storage installed. I think it could probably be somewhat challenging just because of the high energy density of New York City buildings versus the density of renewable generation. But that could be an interesting thing to look at. But at a city wide level, I think that it would be much more challenging prospect. I hope I answered the question. And we'll just pause. Yes, thank you, Calvin responded. Okay, thanks. And we'll see if there are more questions, and certainly feel free to come off mute. If you'd like to ask rather than type out your comment. I'm not seeing any additional. So that's the end of our prepared presentations on research. We were ahead of schedule so I maybe would like to open it up I think all three presenters are still online. Oh, we did get a question. Give me one moment. Okay. I think we have a question. I don't know if the city is supporting a cap on wrecks to offset emissions. When buildings are seeking to comply with the law. And how is the city supporting the utility thermal energy network and jobs act. Is there a way to encourage slash build geothermal micro grids in neighborhoods. You know, those questions weren't part of our particular scope here and we also haven't really looked at the economics of installing wind in the city, just because there's so many unknowns there. The majority of the cost to be actually installing it on a building or on the waterfront and that could get very expensive. But that would be very hard to try to estimate from a high level. So we'll ask Claudia though if she could come off mute and maybe address that two part question. Sure, and thank you so much for your questions and for sticking with us tonight. So the first question is about local on 97 and Rex. So when we talk about Rex for local on 97 compliance, the caveat is that they must come from renewable energy generated within New York City specifically. So that was written into the law in order to ensure that buildings aren't paying like a wind farm in Ohio to help meet their compliance because we want to make sure that we're directly reducing pollution from fossil plants in the city. So that was local law rulemaking process that released draft rules about a month ago so I can try and find a link to share in the chat for more information about local on 97. When it comes to the utility thermal energy network and jobs act that was a really exciting step by the state to think about how can we shift gas utilities from instead of being a gas providing service to being a heating providing service by using geothermal, basically uses geothermal heat pumps that leverage the constant temperature of the ground to provide super efficient heating and cooling for buildings. And when you create district district systems, those can be even more efficient than building level systems because you're leveraging different thermal nodes and different buildings on the same neighborhood. So the city is exploring the potential for this type of technology. We are conducting a feasibility study to look at building district geothermal networks to support electrification of city buildings so that study is underway and will hopefully give us some more information about whether they would be technically feasible on city buildings and that can sort of serve as a pilot to better inform opportunities for private buildings as well. And I can put in the chat a link to the city's geothermal feasibility screening tool, which provides some high level data for specific city blocks so you can look at the block to see whether at a, you know, feasibility screening level obviously everything has to be site specific so you'd need a much more information than just the tool can provide, but you can see whether there's preliminary feasibility for geothermal in your area. Hope that answered your question. I think it did and there's a few more comments that came in so we'll jump next to Richard wonders comment. What about the potential of solar generation canopies on parking lots of malls big box stores and supermarkets. Claudia, would you like to take that one or should I I'm happy to start. So yeah that's definitely something that we're excited about exploring it's really rare to find lots of open space in New York City so when we can take advantage of things like parking lots that's definitely an exciting opportunity. I think the fees for solar do cost more than ground mounted solar because you have to have the steel to elevate them. So that's a consideration but it could be a great way to take advantage of that space and also potentially support electric vehicle charging in the parking lot as well. So for city lots, that's definitely something that we are looking into and how how the city could advance that on parking lots for municipal fleets, and then for the private sector, we don't have direct control over that but we want to make sure that we have solar within the five boroughs to the extent that we can to help us meet some of our ambitious targets so that includes, for example, advocating for an extension of the property tax abatement to make solar more financeable within New York City or streamlining the permitting process to make it easier for people to build solar in New York City. Zach, feel free to add on to that. No, that was great. I don't have anything to add. Do you mind taking the carbon trading question to I think that's the last question. Great question. What about carbon trading for buildings to do more than enough work to lower their carbon emissions to fall within the emissions limit instead of Rex. So I, I want to get back to you on that with some links to more information. I am not a building's expert, but my understanding is that that was considered as part of the local law and there was a study done on what that could look like carbon trading could look like for New York City. And there were some environmental justice concerns that that could end up meaning that if you have, for example, a real estate owner with a portfolio of buildings that they may choose not to invest in or buildings in environmental justice neighborhoods and instead invest elsewhere in their portfolio and that you could end up with sort of pollution hotspots in places where you have low income communities. So I think that's the biggest concern when it comes to carbon trading for buildings, but I also understand that that some folks are focused on, you know, the lowest hanging fruit and doing the types of upgrades that could be the cheapest and reducing emissions overall. I think when we're talking about emissions reductions, it's often easy to slip into the sort of city wide net zero, which is also important, you know, we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the atmosphere doesn't necessarily care if those emissions are coming from the Bronx or from Manhattan, but neighborhoods and communities often do care because those emissions are associated with co pollutants that can directly impact health. So I think that's the biggest concern when it comes to carbon trading, but I don't know whether local on 97 rulemaking process had officially made a decision on that so I can try to share more information in the chat. Great. And I guess I'll pause once more to see if there are any additional comments. Hopefully we were clear with both our presentations and our responses. And if there aren't additional questions we can wrap up. So I think Claudia is looking for the link, so she can send it before we close off while while we wait to close up I just want to give a quick preview for tomorrow night so we'll be doing a second session. It's time tomorrow, and we'll be covering three topics as well those topics are mostly going to be focused on electrification of both buildings and of our transportation systems, and then a third topic around how those new electrification loads could affect our grids readiness. So I encourage all to sign up and join us again tomorrow night. Very similar structure and format. And I see a question here, will there be slides available. We certainly will share on these slides. And I think Claudia you're going to give a quick pitch for the survey as well correct. Yes. So we can definitely send the slides around as a PDF to everybody who registered for this event and we're also going to be putting them on our website. I can put our website in the chat it's nyc.gov slash power up so pretty easy to remember. Zach mentioned our technical session tomorrow so hope to see you then as well and then the survey we have open through December 21. So two weeks from tomorrow. We have some ranking questions and then some open answer questions so really, really looking forward to hearing your feedback and your ideas. The next step is to really translate a lot of these research findings into specific actions that city government is going to commit to taking in the near term to make sure we're on track for our long term energy transition goals. So if you have specific ideas that you want to make sure we are thinking about please feel free to put those in the survey responses. We'll be working on incorporating public feedback and really refining those city commitments over the next few months and then the goal is to publish the report by next Earth Day 2023. I did not yet put the geothermal link geothermal. Sorry, I should have had these like at the ready. But I'm googling it now and we'll send it to you. It's the Department of Design and Construction geothermal tool here it is. And the other link I will put in is the community energy map. I think it's tiny url.com slash nyc energy map. And that can show you not just the geothermal potential for your block, but also solar potential other clean energy technologies and then overlays it with different resiliency and environmental justice metrics. And then really prioritizing deploying these clean energy resources in neighborhoods where they would have the most community benefits. So that's a fun tool to play around on as well. So I think with that, we can wrap up hope to see you at the technical session tomorrow hope to see your responses to the survey, and really appreciate you sticking with us on this Thursday evening. Not Thursday, Tuesday. What day is it? Thanks everyone. Have a great night.