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Right now, the state is relying on the private market to deliver on those goals by offering long-term payments for new renewable projects through NYSERDA. Two bills that have moved forward recently in the Legislature would enable investor-owned utilities and the New York Power Authority to develop and own such projects, alarming the private renewable developers and power plant owners.

The Public Service Commission last week also reopened the issue of utility ownership of renewables, seeking comments from interested parties on the hotly contested topic.

Critics urging swifter action note that the amount of renewable energy supplying New York has increased only fractionally in recent years. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America and other DSA chapters have made a top priority a bill to allow NYPA broad authority to build renewables and sell power to residential customers.

Recently elected socialist lawmakers have made the bill, dubbed the Build Public Renewables Act, a key plank in this year's elections.

“We’re actually much closer than we’ve ever been before,” said Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), a socialist who has aggressively advocated for the bill. “It ensures that the state can actually have a role in building out the promises that we make and not simply hoping the private sector will be able to fulfill them on their own.” 

The state got about 27 percent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2020, with the bulk of it coming from NYPA-owned hydropower plants. That’s a slight increase from 25 percent renewables in 2014.

State officials have repeatedly said, despite past failures to meet renewable targets, that New York is on track to meet the 2030 mandate for 70 percent renewables enshrined in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019. The achievement of a zero emissions electricity grid in 2040 is more uncertain, given the need for highly dispatchable, long duration generators.

Existing renewables combined with awarded contracts for onshore renewables and offshore wind will meet 63 percent of the forecast electricity demand in 2030, according to NYSERDA. That includes two transmission lines from Canada and upstate New York to New York City recently approved by regulators.

The Build Public Renewables Act would give NYPA the authority to build or own renewable projects and also create a “right of first offer and first refusal” for NYPA to purchase or build new renewable projects in coordination with the Office of Renewable Energy Siting, which permits new renewables. Other provisions include enabling NYPA to sell electricity to residential customers, mandating they decarbonize by 2025, creating a new energy efficiency program and reshaping the board to limit the influence of gubernatorial appointees.

The measure, A.B. 1466, was passed out of Assembly Corporations and Authorities Committee led by Assemblymember Amy Paulin (D-Westchester) and is now in the Ways and Means Committee.

It hasn’t been placed on an agenda, though, and it’s not clear if it will move any further. Sen. Kevin Parker, chair of the Energy Committee who carries the bill in the Senate and has faced criticism for not moving the measure in the past, said he supports going to a vote this session but did not move it out of his committee at its last meeting.

“We’re doing everything under the sun to get it there and get it to pass,” said Stylianos Karolidis, a NYC-DSA organizer last week. “We have an opportunity in New York state to lead the nation in building renewables.” '

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