Is New York Becoming Sun-Powered City?

The Atlantic’s CityLab is the latest publication to tout the solar energy boom that has been building in New York City. But is the hype merited? There are still some strong headwinds blowing, as a Peekskill co-op recently discovered.

But first, as CityLab reports, the good news: in 2016, the number of residential projects across the five boroughs rose to more than 5,300 from 186 in 2011– the majority located in Staten Island and Queens. Currently, there are 3,215 solar installation projects – both residential and non-residential – throughout the city. Since the beginning of 2014, the amount of solar power installed across the city has tripled.

The conventional explanation has been a combination of rising consumer awareness, declining technology costs, and expanding incentives and tax breaks. Oh, and the fact that New York City energy costs are the highest in the continental United States.

Another factor, according to CityLab, is the work over the past decade by the City University of New York’s sustainability initiatives, known officially as Sustainable CUNY. “One of the first things we did in 2006 was to identify the barriers to solar in the city, as well as the possible solutions,” says Tria Case, CUNY’s director of sustainability. “We found that the different agencies charged with permitting solar – including the Department of Buildings, the FDNY, and Con Edison – were not necessarily communicating with each other."

As those barriers were removed and as tax breaks and other incentives grew, solar began to take off. But some incentives have expired and others are set to decline in coming years. Even with incentives, as the limited-equity Peekskill Art Lofts co-op recently discovered, the upfront costs of solar are still beyond the budget of many co-op and condo boards.

Despite these cold economic realities, the bottom line remains the same. “Solar really helps everyone,” Case says. “The more solar on rooftops, the less the grid is constrained – and people are starting to understand that now.”