New York’s major utilities and its energy development entity have been cleared to administer $5 billion for energy efficiency and building electrification through 2030.
The state Public Service Commission authorized the spending at its May 15 meeting (Case 14-M-0094).
The $1 billion in annual funding will be administered over the next five years by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and nine utilities. It will be recovered through ratepayer surcharges.
The PSC said this latest effort will complement the New Efficiency: New York and Clean Energy Fund programs. It expects the resulting changes to achieve the equivalent of 615 trillion Btu in lifetime energy savings.
The PSC’s official announcement painted this in direct contrast to the Trump administration’s elimination of energy-efficiency initiatives.
The announcement also emphasized the benefits that low- to moderate-income New Yorkers would receive from the initiative.
However, advocates for LMI New Yorkers called out the PSC for earmarking only 30% of the funding for LMI households, rather than 50%, as some activists had urged.
“While the PSC is clearly committed to energy efficiency as a pathway to reduce costs and pollution, we feel the commission has missed the mark by not revising the LMI budgets that were set in 2023 to address today’s affordability crisis,” Eric Walker of WE ACT for Environmental Justice said in a joint statement several groups issued a day after the PSC order.
But they also found much to like in the order, saying it will better align the state’s energy efficiency/building electrification efforts with its broader climate policies, such as by ending most funding for gas-burning equipment, authorizing more spending on pre-weatherization measures and working to increase participation in the New York City area, where it has been lagging.
The point of contention was that only 30% of the funding is committed to the 40% of New York households that are classified as LMI and are least able to afford New York’s high utility costs.
“WE ACT and our allies will continue to fight for families who have the most to gain from the EE/BE programs because there’s lots of work to be done,” Walker said.
The utilities covered by the order are Central Hudson Gas & Electric; Consolidated Edison and its subsidiary Orange & Rockland Utilities; National Fuel Gas; Avangrid’s NYSEG and Rochester Gas & Electric; and National Grid’s KEDLI, KEDNY and Niagara Mohawk businesses.
The nine utilities’ latest monthly collection reports show a combined 1.15 million residential customers more than 60 days in arrears on a total of $1.78 billion in charges. This is near the pandemic-era highs seen in 2021 and comes despite hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies to pay down some of the arrears.
Additionally, more than 100,000 nonresidential customers were in arrears to the tune of more than $600 million as of April.
PSC Chair Rory Christian said during the meeting that as he was researching this order, he came upon a 1980 state energy master plan touting conservation and efficiency, and found the problems described 45 years eerily similar to those today.
Efficiency reaps dividends on two levels, he said: The individual consumer whose home is made more efficient spends less to heat and power it, and these more-efficient homes or businesses collectively reduce the need for costly upgrades that all ratepayers must bear to increase utility infrastructure capacity.
“Each person’s contribution helps lessen and avoid the strain on the electric system,” Christian said, “allowing us to avoid or eliminate certain investments. That’s a big deal.”
