Actor and anti-fracking activist Mark Ruffalo and former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, now CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, headlined the Alliance for Clean Energy New York’s (ACE NY) annual Fall Conference Wednesday. Here are some highlights of what we heard.

Taking Action

In her keynote address, McCarthy said the climate battle being waged in the country is “a fight for our lives” and the future of the planet. She said people concerned with the environment need to raise their voices together to demand action.

The good news, McCarthy said, is that solutions exist to deal with climate issues, and one of the biggest answers to the problem is clean energy. She said the conversation around clean energy needs to continue and expand because initiatives are taking off at a greater pace at the state and local level because of the economic, health and quality of life benefits they provide.

McCarthy said she is particularly excited by the opportunities for the development of offshore wind on the East Coast, and a next step in the green energy revolution is to have federal leadership that will act on a national level.

“We need to turbo-charge the transition to clean energy nationwide,” McCarthy said. “And while there’s no substitute for federal leadership, there is no way that any of us are going to wait for Washington to wake up.”

With the current political climate, McCarthy said now is not the time to be “morose” or to sit and wait for things to happen regarding clean energy. She said there needs to be a “doubling-down effort” on building local and grassroots momentum across the country to “tip the scales” away from fossil fuels.

McCarthy said what has made New York a leader on climate initiatives was the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Preservation Act (CLCPA) in July 2019. The CLCPA requires that 70% of electricity come from renewable resources by 2030 and that electricity generation be 100% carbon-free by 2040. Clean energy targets include deploying at least 9 GW of offshore wind energy by 2035, doubling distributed solar generation to 6 GW by 2025, deploying 3 GW of energy storage by 2030 and raising energy efficiency savings to 185 trillion BTU by 2025. (See Cuomo Sets New York’s Green Goals for 2020.)

The time for action and implementation of the CLCPA is now, putting it to work to transform the transportation sector and the power sector and modernize the electric grid, McCarthy said, adding that action on clean energy means many well paying jobs will be created.

“Progress is happening here, and if you can do it and show the way, then progress will happen all across the nation,” McCarthy said. “And it won’t matter if it’s red or purple or blue. Every state will want a piece of the action.”

Hulk Talk Green New York

Ruffalo, the award-winning actor and a resident of New York, said he’s been a longtime advocate for clean energy and addressing climate change as he spoke in a short video presented at the conference. He said ACE NY has been hard at work for years, helping the state adopt one of the most aggressive climate acts in the country.

The actor said ACE NY has embarked on an “ambitious” study of the transmission system to make sure it can handle all the renewable energy set to come online. He said the organization has played a leading role in making a clean energy future possible in the state and helping to reach the renewable energy generation goals laid out in the CLCPA.

New York has the chance to be “the greenest state in the nation,” Ruffalo said.

“Trust me, I know a little bit about going green — dad joke,” Ruffalo said, referencing his role as the Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise of superhero movies.

Building the Offshore Wind Industry in NY

In a discussion on building New York’s offshore wind industry, Nathanael Greene, senior renewable energy advocate for NRDC, called for “rigorous pre- and post-construction monitoring” to protect wildlife and fish habitats, which he said the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is not requiring.

“The data from good monitoring will tell us what needs to be protected and if the companies’ mitigation measures are working. Ultimately, it makes protections more cost effective,” he said. “But we can’t do pre-construction monitoring and develop baselines after the fact. We need developers to step up and include detailed monitoring plans in their [construction and operations plans] until BOEM starts requiring them.”

Greene also criticized FERC’s buyer-side mitigation requirements, saying they are undermining New York’s clean energy efforts. “And now some want to expand buyer-side management so that it’s statewide, which would make a bad policy terrible,” he said. “It’s time we took seriously the alternatives to the capacity market and take steps necessary so that New York voters, our elected and appointed officials determine our resource adequacy, not the fossil fuel agenda of ideologues at FERC. The makeup of FERC may change following the election, but until the feds catch up with New York’s climate leadership, we may have no choice but to take charge of our own power mix planning.”

Adrienne Downey, principal engineer for offshore wind for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said New York’s pledge to build 9 GW of OSW, as well as the targets by neighboring states, have gotten the attention of Asian and European investors.

“We are seeding an incredible opportunity here. Right now, [for] the earliest projects, the lion’s share of jobs are clearly in the construction and installation phase [and] in the operations and maintenance phase, which is 25 years.

“We want to expand that to see manufacturing start to happen. So, what we would anticipate is we’ll start to see the components that are probably the most logistically flexible … so we might see towers [and] foundations. We’re anxious to start seeing deeper manufacturing come as we advance our target deeper toward 9 GW to things like blades. The holy grail would be full turbine assembly.”

Dominik Schwegmann, head of offshore development for RWE Renewables Americas, said manufacturing will only come to the U.S. “if the offtake for these components is there; if the market has the size; if the project pipeline … is predictable and reliable for the manufacturers to say, ‘Yes, I [will] invest [a] couple hundred million dollars and do investments in the training of the workforce. … The [U.S.] market has enough … potential to justify that, just as in Europe.”

Joe Martens, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, noted that the U.S. hasn’t completed the permitting for any commercial-scale OSW yet.

“I think that once there is a clear signal from Washington, then I think we will see some significant investment in other components that right now are not manufactured in the U.S. come to the U.S. And that will be an exciting moment.”

YIMBYs

ACE NY named Win With Wind, a group of private citizens on the South Fork of Long Island, winner of its 2020 Clean Energy Advocate award.

Martens said the group, which seeks to generate grassroots support for and combat misinformation against offshore wind, is “motivated by their simple and sincere desire to see their communities in the forefront of clean energy leadership.”

“There is no place more vulnerable to climate change than Long Island,” he added. “Rising sea levels and ocean acidification, in particular, are a direct and immediate threat.”

Cate Rogers, a member of the group’s steering committee, accepted the award. Rogers said she and another activist, Judith Hope, started the group in 2018 to counter disinformation on the South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine project that Ørsted will build wind 35 miles off Montauk.

After organizing the group, Rogers said, she learned “that an overwhelming majority of people in our community supported the project and the transition to renewable energy. They just needed to be given the facts, have some questions answered and understand that we have shovel-ready solutions at hand. … But without a place to gather, a group with which to connect, they could remain the silent majority and, even worse, fall victim to misinformation and scare tactics and take up the mantra we often hear: ‘I support renewable energy, but not this project.’”

After the award presentation, ACE heard from Betta Broad, director of New Yorkers for Clean Power, which supports electrification and renewable generation. Broad said the group’s goal is “creating more YIMBYs — that’s ‘Yes, in my backyard.’”