ALBANY, N.Y. — Renewables and storage remain central to New York’s energy vision, even as the path to realizing that vision becomes harder or merely different.

Some discussions April 15 at the New York Energy Summit veered toward the “harder,” as panelists offered assessments and strategies for the obstacles facing the state’s continuing efforts toward decarbonization.

These can be intentional obstacles created by a federal government focused on fossil fuels or inevitable collateral results of New York’s dense regulatory landscape. But the effects are similar: Most types of renewable energy development are moving far more slowly than hoped despite strong support.

“The past 16 months have been lively! There have been some changes made!” Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, said as she introduced a panel on utility-scale wind and solar.

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“Depending on how you count, there’s been anywhere between 16 and 20 adverse actions that have been taken against renewables” by the second Trump administration, agreed Zack Hutchins, director of public relations for Boralex.

Onshore wind and solar are central to New York’s near-term planning for renewable generation but still constitute only a small percentage of the total energy portfolio. The state’s high aspirations for offshore wind are paused until a more supportive administration returns to Washington. New nuclear is being planned but may be a decadelong prospect.

The growing need for power and the advanced age of existing generation are such that new gas-fired generation is being considered.

So the renewables community wants to keep skin in the game.

Walter Crenshaw, senior director of operations at AES, said his company is rushing to safe-harbor its projects as it navigates whipsaw policy changes and pursues market share.

“This time period also overlaps with this tremendous growth and demand that we’re all trying to satisfy. And so we have this kind of dual effect, which has been really hard on the industry,” he said.

There are ways to reduce adversity, Hutchins said: “One of the big things that we’re concentrating [on] at Boralex is trying to eliminate or reduce our federal interaction as much as possible.” This includes not triggering environmental reviews because those appear to be a quagmire.

The renewables industry has a steadfast supporter in the New York government, he added.

“The state reaction and the way that the state has stood up to help support contracted projects, mature projects — one of the shining lights of the past 16 months is just the step up in the level of collaboration,” Hutchins said.

The state’s long-running effort to streamline its regulatory structure is appreciated, Crenshaw said. “New York has done a good job with aggregating land-use permitting through ORES [the Office of Renewable Energy Siting], which I usually hold up as a model to our Virginia policy people and others in PJM and then in the Southeast.

“Having the very clear guidelines on land-use permitting in New York has been huge. It’s a lot of things, but we know what we need to do.”

That is the intent, said Georges Sassine, senior vice president for large-scale resources at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. He likened all the bottlenecks that once existed to “death by 1,000 paper cuts” and said they are being eliminated systematically. Individually, they are small, but collectively their removal will make a big difference.

As NYSERDA, ORES and other agencies have been streamlining the development process, NYISO has been streamlining the interconnection process. Wells asked the panel about the effect of NYISO queue reforms.

“We’re being forced to make these decisions about what is really viable much earlier than we did in the past,” Crenshaw said.

“It’s moved us towards larger projects as well,” Hutchins said, “because interconnection costs, they don’t scale. You can have a $14 million interconnection on a 60-MW facility, and same on a 200-MW facility. That’s been one of the big changes with Boralex’s approach.”

One recurring problem is labor, Wells said. Workers are trained to build renewables, and then the construction pipeline thins out, so they make a lateral move to another industry. Then the renewables pipeline perks up again, so more workers need to be trained.

In 2026, there are 1,500 MW of renewable capacity being built onshore, and 1,000 more is scheduled to start this year. Combined with the offshore wind construction, this is the most ever, she said.

“It’s a good problem to have, but it’s a challenging problem,” Sassine said. “How do you prioritize all of these different projects? And unfortunately, we’re not in a place where we can prioritize; we have to build all of them.”

And yet not all will be built.

Sassine acknowledged the simmering problem with large-scale renewables proposals that have seen significant cost increases and are not able to proceed to construction under the inflexible terms of their subsidy contracts with the state. (See related story, Another Mass Cancellation of Renewable Contracts Brewing in N.Y.)

“If your cost structure is dramatically changing and the projects are uneconomic, you’re being forced to face a tough business decision on whether you want to cancel these contracts with us or even cancel the projects altogether,” he said. “So these are very difficult decisions. We want you to build, but also, at the same time, we want to be protecting ratepayers.”

Distributed Resources

Small-scale solar has taken off in New York, a contrast to inherently slower-moving utility-scale solar development.

“I know that’s old news, but it’s important to remember the highs as we now clearly face a number of headwinds,” Gabrielle Stebbins, senior director of distributed energy resources at the Center for Sustainable Energy, said as she introduced a panel discussion on distributed solar.

Oliver Sandreuter, director of business development at Lodestar Energy, said the industry must rush to protect what it has now, through safe harboring, but also act to protect its future.

“It’s a critical period of time to go on offense from a policy, regulatory standpoint, as we think about what comes next,” he said. “A lot of that is, thankfully, state-driven conversation, and we are fortunate to be here in New York that has been, as mentioned, a critical leader in DG [distributed generation] deployment. We are, I think, one of, if not the only, state that can claim we are ahead of schedule and under budget with our DG goals.”

Kristina Persaud, senior principal at Advanced Energy United, said the solar industry needs to present itself as the solution at a time of pressing need for new electrons on the grid and mounting concerns overpaying for those electrons.

“We need to think about the speed to market, and we need to think about grid optimization, and solar checks all those boxes,” she said. “It’s the most cost-effective new generation. The speed to market compared to other things, it’s unbelievable.”

Jeff Lee, business development director at Nautilus Solar, said changes are coming. “I think our industry has a very bright future for the next few years with the implementation of safe harboring and so on,” he said, but after that, “it’s a brave new world.”

“New York has been a top 10 market for solar over the past several years,” said Peter Muzsi, vice president of business development at Core Development Group. “I think we will continue to evolve. There still will be solar, even after the” investment tax credit ends.

But there is and will continue to be local opposition to solar, some panelists said.

Moratoria are proliferating steadily, Lee said, as is disinformation.

“One partner of ours mentioned they had an honest question about how solar panels that are not even moving, just sitting there on fixed tilt, are going to attract UFOs,” he said. “These are not isolated incidents … and I see everyone nodding their heads here on the panel.”

“I’ve heard some very bizarre things, that solar panels reflect heat back at the sun and amplify the sun, and that’s what caused global warming,” Persaud replied. “Education is huge here. It helps with NIMBYism, community engagement, some of that pushback.”

Lee wondered if a semi-organized, pseudo-official truth effort might help tamp down some of these misconceptions or limit their impact. But Stebbins tamped down that idea.

“Unfortunately, a lot of times, once folks have bought into the concerns or the disinformation, you end up talking yourself into a backwards pretzel. Because by saying that is not true, you’re providing more petrol to the fire.”