This is the second piece of my ‘global energy transition’ series (You can read the first one here) and with it being Climate Week NYC this week, I thought it was the perfect time to zoom in a bit and explore electrification so far in The Big Apple.
Climate Week NYC started out in 2009 as a supplementary event to the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York to provide discussion and debate prior to COP later that year.
It has now become an annual week-long takeover of New York City, with over 1,000 events providing a ‘global platform for advancing climate and economic progress at scale’ (I liked how the event’s website hadn’t made ‘climate’ and ‘economic’ progress mutually exclusive!)
Climate Week NYC brings together leaders and communities from business, government, finance and civil society to drive change towards a low-carbon and futureproof economy.
A core subject of the event is the energy transition, and how it can unlock new sources of growth and investment globally.
As Katie White (the UK’s Minister for Climate) mentioned in her LinkedIn announcement that she will be attending, one of the world’s most iconic buildings which stands in the city (hint, it’s very tall) is powered by 100% renewable electricity. But how much else in the city is powered by renewable electricity?
Read on to find out…
Buildings account for 70% of NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions so decarbonisation is key
Amy McEwen Policy and Public Affairs Analyst for Mitsubishi Electric
Full steam ahead for district heating
Although figures vary for the share that electricity has of final energy consumption in NYC, energy consumption for large buildings benchmarked by Local Law 84 (LL84) typically includes 59% electricity.
However, the top energy use for these buildings is space heating, and 70% of large buildings are heated by steam systems, which rely on gas boilers.
In fact, when we think of how NYC is heated, images of steam billowing around the city might come to mind – this is Con Edison’s centralised steam system, which currently only serves Manhattan through a district heating system consisting of 105 miles of pipework underneath the island’s streets. It uses gas boilers to power its six plants and provide over 1,500 buildings with high-pressure steam for heating, cooling, hot water and sterilisation.
While the rest of NYC mostly relies on individual, on-site boilers in its buildings, this heat network has the advantage of operating more efficiently to provide heat to lots of buildings simultaneously, and in theory, would more easily be able to transition to cleaner, low-carbon technology like large heat pumps.
Con Edison do recognise the need for sustainability via electrfication in a world increasingly vulnerable to climate change, but they are keen on keeping the network’s medium of steam, which would pose both technology and regulatory challenges if they were to transition to using heat pumps in their system.
Regulatory drivers to decarbonisation in NYC such as Local Law 97, where buildings over 25,000 square feet are set carbon caps to meet by 2030, are pushing Con Edison to think of innovative ways to decarbonise their steam network.
Deploying technologies like high-efficiency industrial heat pumps to pre-heat the water used to create steam in their plants could dramatically reduce the amount of fuel needed to make steam (though the heat pumps in question would have to be capable of operating at very high temperatures in order to create the pressurised district-grade steam required for the network).
However, the energy company need approval and permittance from regulators to make capital investments on low-carbon technology, particularly as it is very new to their market.
Whether Con Edison pick up steam with their plans to decarbonise New York City’s centuries-old district heating system or not, we will no doubt have some updates on this progress in the lead up to 2030.
But what about the rest of the city?
Powering up buildings… but at what cost?
Buildings account for nearly 70% of NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), so decarbonising the building stock is paramount in order for NYC to meet its target of reducing GHGs by 80% below 2005 levels by 2050.
The City’s long-term Energy Plan, PowerUp NYC, states that a ‘widespread electrification of space and water heating loads with heat pumps is regarded to be a central pillar in reducing building greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions’, noting that this would not only mitigate carbon emission by reducing fossil fuel demand, but also improve the comfort and health of residents.
Early this year, Mayor Mamdani announced a new investment of $38.4 million into New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) ‘Clean Heat for All’ initiative, which aims to install packaged window heat pumps in over 20,000 apartments in the city by 2030.
Beyond just apartments, and similarly to the UK’s Future Homes and Buildings Standards, NYC’s Local Law 154 (LL154) bans fossil fuel combustion (including space heating and water) in most new buildings, both residential and commercial from 2027 (this also includes domestic cooking ranges).
These initiatives are paving the way for an increasingly electrified city, although the challenge is to make sure that all buildings can make the shift, which isn’t easy when a vast amount of them were built pre-WWII, especially multifamily stock.
In many of these older buildings, existing energy infrastructure (built to run on steam or gas) doesn’t easily interface with heat pumps, and old building materials, including poor insulation and asbestos, make retrofit not only a cost concern but a health and safety one too.
The cost of retrofitting a typical gas-powered single-family home with an Air Source Heat Pump could range between $17,400 and $31,700, and in a larger multifamily building, this range could go from $19,400 to $42,900 per unit.
While retrofit schemes are accelerating heat pump uptake in NYC, current federal and state programs do not provide adequate funding to close the gap between counterfactual and heat pump upfront costs.
So, what lessons can everyone outside New York take from next week’s event?
While Climate Week NYC will be discussing barriers and solutions to climate issues, perhaps one of the first things that should be looked at, is how the electrification of buildings can and should be a platform for advancing energy equity, not a reason we move further from it.
Amy McEwen is a Policy and Public Affairs Analyst for Mitsubishi Electric
