NY Lays Out ‘Green New Deal’

California has long been the hotbed of sustainability initiatives that the rest of the nation watched to see where the movement was headed. Hence, the saying, “As goes California, so goes the country.”

New York recently staked a claim as the spearhead of sustainability, thanks to a so-called Green New Deal laid out by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his state of the state address, according to ASHRAE Government Affairs Update. Key proposals in the plan would:

• mandate 100 percent clean, carbon-free electricity by 2040
• create a Climate Action Council tasked with helping develop a 100 percent carbon neutral economy-wide effort
• offer $1.5 billion in competitive large-scale renewable energy awards across upstate New York
• move New York's statewide building stock to carbon neutrality as part of the state's 2025 energy initiative
• divest the state's $40 billion in fossil fuel investments
• enlist the NY Green Bank, established in 2017, to develop a public-private partnership to effectuate NY Green Bank's third-party capital raise and national expansion.

The governor’s program also would direct a new Carbon-to-Value Innovation Agenda, alongside $15 million of NYSERDA funding, to invest in new technologies that can help avoid the worst consequences of climate change, such as capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transform it into products, known as carbon-to-value. The program also would establish an incubator and accelerator for these technologies and create a framework for a low-carbon procurement standard to spur a market for low-emissions products.

Dan Hounsell is editor-in-chief of Facility Maintenance Decisions, and Facilitiesnet.com.

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