citybiz
Summary
New York City has a new mayor focused on affordability, and with that comes a genuine opportunity to reset the conversation around energy policy for the business community employing his constituents. Mayor Mamdani has inherited a city where commercial and industrial energy costs are among the highest in the nation—and climbing. For the businesses that employ New Yorkers, occupy our buildings, and drive our economy, energy expenses are burdensome.
New York City has thousands of buildings with significant heating and cooling loads, including hospitals, hotels, universities, multifamily residential buildings, and industrial facilities. Combined heat and power (CHP) systems can be one of the most efficient and cost-effective on-site cleaner energy options for properties with enough heating and cooling loads. CHP systems generate electricity that can offset supply, distribution, and transmission costs for customers, while simultaneously capturing waste heat for space heating, domestic hot water, or absorption cooling, achieving thermal efficiency rates of 70-80% compared to 45-50% for grid power and separate heating.
Yet CHP often gets treated as an afterthought in clean energy policy discussions, overshadowed by solar and wind. That’s a mistake. CHP reduces strain on the electrical grid and provides emissions reductions today.
What the city can do: Create a CHP-specific incentive program that recognizes the efficiency and resilience benefits of these systems, especially for buildings with high thermal loads where electrification alone may be impractical in the near term. Streamline the permitting process for CHP installations, particularly for replacement systems in buildings with legacy equipment. And work to change CHP systems’ treatment in LL97 compliance calculations to better reflect offsetting the grid and steam delivery system as emissions and operational benefits.
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