Con Ed telling Midwest Queens residents to stand the heat.

Con Edison

Con Edison is asking customers in certain neighborhoods in Queens to conserve energy while company crews repair equipment. Con Edison has also reduced voltage by 8 percent in the area as a precaution to protect equipment and maintain service as crews make repairs.

The area is bounded by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and 51st Avenue on the north, the Jackie Robinson Parkway on the south, Queens Boulevard on the east, and the Brooklyn borough line on the west.

The area includes 116,300 customers in the neighborhoods of Glendale, Forest Hills, Forest Hills Gardens, and Middle Village. Con Edison has asked customers in the area not to use energy-intensive appliances such as washers, dryers, microwaves and, if not needed for health or medical reasons, air conditioners, until the equipment problems are resolved.

Customers can report outages and check service restoration status at  
www.conEd.com/reportoutage, or with our mobile app for iOS or Android devices, or by calling 1-800-75-CONED (1-800-752-6633). When calling, customers should report whether their neighbors also have lost power. Customers who report outages will receive updates with their estimated restoration times as they become available.

Customers can follow Con Edison on Twitter or like us on Facebook for general outage updates, safety tips and storm preparation information.

The equipment problems in these neighborhoods have no effect on the rest of the Con Edison system.

Con Edison will provide updates to affected customers directly and through the media as the situation warrants. The company is in communication with New York City Emergency Management.


 Excuse me, but can't other "certain neighborhoods" conserve some energy too?

 

 

 

Mandates imposed on building owners to reduce emissions

From Capital New York:

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that he will impose mandates on the commercial real estate sector to achieve dramatic greenhouse gas emissions among the city's building stock — by far the city's biggest contributor to global warming.

In an announcement tied to Earth Day, the mayor's office said the requirements, along with city programs and incentives, would help kickstart the mayor's goal of cutting building emissions dramatically over the next 35 years.

The mandates are a significant development for the city's real estate world. When de Blasio announced a plan two years ago to cut building emissions, he threatened mandates if private developers did not act quickly enough. After more than a year of meetings with a technical working group, the group submitted a report recommending the mandates.

The city estimates the measures will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by 2.7 million metric tons — the equivalent of taking more than 560,000 cars off the road. The mandates are also expected to save building owners approximately $900 million in energy costs each year and create an estimated 1,300 direct construction-related jobs, the mayor's office said.

We've always known that it's BUILDINGS and not CARS that produce the most pollution, which makes the city's focus on putting bike lanes everywhere to green the planet such a joke. I finally agree with de Blasio about something. Too bad he's probably going to be indicted soon.

Small number of building use a whole lot of energy

From AM-NY:

Two percent of the city's buildings use 45% of the city's energy, according to a new report by Climate Works For All.

The organization, part of The Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN) and focused on combating climate change while creating jobs, used data that is publicly available through the city's energy consumption reporting requirements, enacted as part of the Greener, Greater Buildings (GGBP) laws.

ALIGN claims that among the worst offenders are luxury residential buildings that, through outsize amenities, end up consuming much more energy than the majority of other residential buildings in the city.

On Tuesday, members of the group, along with representatives from New York Communities for Change and other associations, held a rally at the corner of West 57th street and Sixth Avenue, on so-called "billionaire's row."

Between leading chants through a megaphone, Josh Kellermann, a senior analyst for ALIGN, said that the organization wants to work with the City Council to expand the energy regulations governing city buildings.

Existing GGBP laws, which apply to buildings of over 50,000 feet, do not go far enough and rely too heavily on participation in voluntary programs, according to the organization. Currently, buildings receive energy audits but are not necessarily required to follow recommendations.

Lights out!

From Capital New York:

Councilman Donovan Richards wants the city to turn out the lights.

In legislation that will be introduced today, Richards will seek to limit the number of lights kept on in commercial buildings at night. The bill has a series of exceptions for security reasons, seasonal displays and occupancy.

But Richards, chairman of the Council's environmental protection committee, said the millions of lights kept on in the city that never sleeps are wasting energy and exacerbating a global emissions crisis.

"The primary focus of the Lights Out Bill is energy conservation," Richards said in an email to Capital. "With a focus on unnecessary lighting, particularly in non-residential, retail and other similarly used buildings, this is an integral part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions city-wide."

That effort—an 80 percent reduction in city emissions by 2050—will require deep cuts in the city's buildings emissions, which account for up to 80 percent of New York's carbon profile.

New streetlights are headache-inducing

From WPIX:

It’s a bold plan: Replace all 250,000 city streetlamps by 2017 to reduce New York’s carbon footprint.

The $75 million plan, lead by the Department of Transporation, is already underway. For those who live in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, the new lights have already been installed. But residents say that when the sun goes down, it doesn’t quite feel like nighttime anymore, thanks to the new LED lights.

In fact, the lights are so bright, they are casting shadows and glare onto the houses themselves.

“Walking around at night, I have to wear sunglasses, otherwise the glare is blinding,” resident Jolanta Benal said.

Benal said her street looks like a movie set when the sun goes down and that she is losing sleep at night.

“In our bedroom, the light is ghastly , glaring, bright and invasive,” Benal said.

Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist and frequent PIX11 Morning News contributor, said Benal’s troubles are real. Her trouble sleeping is directly connected to the amount of light hitting her bedroom.

The DOT told PIX11 News that “given the fixtures are different from previous fixtures, we are looking into ways to mitigate community concerns.”

Man with a plan?

From GlobeSt:

Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that New York City plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over 2005 levels by 2050. The plan—called One City, Built to Last: Transforming New York City’s Buildings for a Low-Carbon Future—includes the intention to retrofit public and private buildings to dramatically reduce the city’s contributions to climate change while spurring cost savings and creating new jobs.

This effort makes New York the largest city to commit to the 80% reduction by 2050 and charts a long-term path for investment in renewable sources of energy and a total transition from fossil fuels. Nearly three quarters of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy used to heat, cool, and power buildings, making building retrofits a central component of any plan to dramatically reduce emissions, according to the Mayor’s office.

Every city-owned building with any significant energy use—approximately 3,000 buildings—will be retrofitted within the next ten years, by 2025, with interim goals along the way. The city also will spur private building owners to invest in efficiency upgrades, setting interim targets and incentives and implementing mandates that trigger if interim reduction targets are not met.

Most new buildings are not energy efficient

From Crains:

Earlier this year, the city's Department of Buildings began auditing thousands of architectural plans for new and renovated office and residential buildings. The results have been staggering: nine of every 10 have failed to meet the energy code, a set of standards that have been on the books for more than 30 years but are only now being enforced in earnest.

In some cases, the Department of Buildings has even stopped nonconforming projects in their tracks.

"We're very serious about this, and are trying to educate the industry on what is required," said Gina Bocra, chief sustainability officer at the Department of Buildings, which set up a permanent audit unit about eight months ago. "Buildings are the largest source of energy consumption in our city, and how we conserve energy is key to making progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."

As laudable as the motivation might be, some people are fretting about the potential costs of compliance in terms of time and money. Looming additions to the building code over the next year only fan the concerns.

Several changes already are under consideration, including a potential requirement for developers to purchase pricey sensors that regulate building systems depending on how many people are present, and another that might require rooms to be more airtight.

The new scrutiny might take some in the development community by surprise. The first energy code was set in place in the 1970s. Subsequently, the city passed its own version but rarely enforced it.

But make no mistake: Flouting the energy code now carries serious risks for developers. The department is drawing up new fines and regulations that will apply specifically to the code.

In a handful of cases, building inspectors have issued stop-work orders at construction sites. And in at least one instance, a random tip called into the department resulted in a developer being investigated and fined for building a structure that was not up to sustainability standards, even though the property had already been occupied.

Gas pipeline hearing tonight

From Metro:

The first of two Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Public Hearings over a proposed Rockaway gas pipeline will be taking place at the Knights of Columbus Rockaway Council 267 at 333 Beach 90th Street starting at 7 p.m.

The pipeline, to be built by Williams Transco and National Grid, is being hit with much of the same criticism as the Spectra Pipeline planned for lower Manhattan.

Both pipelines would bring shale gas — produced by fracking — to the city. Opponents are complaining that the review period has not been long enough and that environmental and safety concerns are not being adequately considered.

This pipeline would be embedded in the ocean floor, run under the sandy bank of Riis Park Beach, cross below the Rockaway Inlet and continue up Flatbush avenue to a Metering and Regulation facility. The facility would be built in two of the old abandoned airplane hangars at Floyd Bennet Field.

Will white rooves prevent blackouts?

From DNA Info:

An environmental group is looking to help Astoria go green — by coating its rooftops in white.

The White Roof Project is bringing its initiative to Queens for the first time next month. The nonprofit covers sunlight-absorbing black tar roofs with white solar-reflective coating to keep buildings cooler, cut energy costs and relieve stress on the power grid.

Their first Astoria roof-coating will take place next month and is being funded by the U.S. Power Generating Company, which operates a power facility in the neighborhood.

White Roof Project is working with Queens Community Board 1 and Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. to find a local nonprofit or affordable housing group that would benefit from the rooftop makeover, which can cut a building's energy costs by up to 40 percent.

The white coating not only saves individual tenants money, but aids the whole city by reducing stress on the energy grid, lessening the likelihood of blackouts and so-called brown outs.

Astoria was home to a massive blackout in 2006, when much of Western Queens lost power for a staggering nine hot summer days.

Bayside High School gets new crappers

From the Times Ledger:

New porcelain thrones have been sitting well with administrators at Bayside High School, where a new city initiative has helped save energy one flush at a time.

The school installed 102 new toilets to serve its more than 3,200 students in August and has saved roughly 3 gallons per flush ever since, according to school engineer Richard Fricione. In these new toilets, a straight path allows the water to drain directly out of the bowl instead of following its predecessors’ more twisty tubes.

“We have been monitoring our water usage all year and have seen it gone down quite a bit,” Fricione said of the new 1.2-gallon toilets, which replaced older equipment that used 4.5 gallons per flush.

The city tapped Bayside as well as Hillcrest HS in Jamaica to participate in its pilot program that aims to conserve water with new low-flow toilets, according to the city Department of Environmental Protection. By the program’s completion in five years, a DEP spokesman said 500 city schools will have received 40,000 new energy-saving toilets with the goal of draining their water usage by 70 percent, saving roughly 4 million gallons per day.

The $31 million city initiative also preps for something greater, when the Delaware Aqueduct is temporarily shut down in 2020 for repairs. The aqueduct has supplied the city with more than half of its public water and its closure will demand that administrators find alternative sources while it is repaired, the DEP said.

End of the line for energy scammer?

From the NY Post:

Underhanded sales practices like signing up customers without telling them and preying on non-English speakers could bar a Florida electricity seller from doing business in New York, state officials said today.

Liberty Power Corp.’s door-to-door sales force promises to lower Con Ed electricity bills by claiming Liberty gets better deals from generating companies.

But Liberty’s salespeople have repeatedly lied to customers by misrepresenting themselves as Con Ed or city employees, the Public Service Commission said.

In one case, a Liberty saleswoman pretended to be a city employee investigating Con Ed overcharges, and asked a customer to sign a “consent form” that was really a contract.

Even though the man didn’t sign the form, Liberty took over his electric bill anyhow, the state says.

In another case cited by the commission, a Con Ed customer complained that even though she had never signed a contract, “all three accounts at her three-family home had been switched to Liberty Power without her consent.”

Public Service Commission probers say Liberty has also presented English-language contracts to non-English speaking customers without offering a translation, a violation of state rules.

Liberty’s “misleading” and “deceptive” sales practices have resulted in more than 200 complaints since 2011, the PSC says.

The commission demanded last year that the company change its ways — but it said today the complaints are still rolling in, and that Liberty’s oversight of its sales force is “inadequate.”

It gave Liberty one week to tell the commission why it shouldn’t be barred from seeking new customers, and two weeks to tell the commission why it should not be booted from New York entirely.

Consumers may get whacked by regulatory decision

From the Times Ledger:

The state is demanding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission turn back a recent decision regarding how market rates for one of Astoria’s power plants are calculated on the grounds that the ruling could increase electricity bills across the state by up to $500 million.

“FERC is modifying the rule in a way that will artificially force [Astoria Energy II] to increase its offer price for capacity to a point where it will not be accepted,” the state Public Service Commission said in a press release.

The PSC’s request for a hearing was in response to FERC overturning last month a 2010 decision by the New York Independent System Operator. The latter agency determined that the costs of operating Astoria Energy II, a 550-megawatt plant, at 17-10 Steinway St. in Astoria’s Con Edison complex, were smaller than the predicted revenues the plant was projected to earn from the electrical market.

Astoria Energy II’s local competitors — US Power Generating’s Astoria Generating and TransCanada’s TC Ravenswood — had issued complaints against the ISO’s decision and FERC decided to have the ISO redetermine Astoria Energy II’s operating costs with changes to the test the PSC said would set up Astoria Energy II’s cost to be higher than the market rates.

The PSC estimated this could increase electricity bills for consumers both in New York City and upstate by $500 million in 2013.

All on board for new power plant

From DNA Info:

Residents and officials usually oppose bids by power plants in this Queens neighborhood, which they say has suffered from pollution and high asthma rates for years.

But this time they have thrown their support behind NRG's move to replace its generators to cut peak emissions by 98 percent.

Smart Power NY, a coalition of elected officials and community leaders, formed in April to promote the NRG's bid for a deal to sell power to the grid, which is necessary to obtain financing for the $1.5 billion project.

The group is trying to garner as much support from state and federal officials as possible ahead of May 30 deadline, organizers said at a meeting in Astoria Wednesday night.

The Princeton, N.J.-based company wants to replace 31 decades-old generators, which are currently using primarily oil, with four new units, which would use mostly natural gas.

The switch would allow the company to increase energy production from 600 Megawatts to 1040 Megawatts, increasing generation efficiency by 56 percent while reducing on-site peak day emissions by 98 percent, according to NRG.

Company officials also said the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tons each year, the equivalent of removing 185,000 cars from New York City’s streets.

Cleaner energy coming to Queens

From the NY Post:

State utility regulators today OK’d the installation of a giant new power plant in Queens.

NRG Energy Inc. will build the generator on the site of its existing plant, which is within the 600-acre Con Ed property on the northern edge of Astoria.

NRG will shut down its existing generators on the site, which were installed in 1969 and put out 600 megawatts of power.

In their place, the company will install a new generator capable of churning out 1,040 megawatts.

The extra power will be enough for 320,000 new homes, NRG says.

Although the new $1.4 billion plant will be much bigger, every year it will put out just 12 percent of the pollution of the existing plant, NRG says.

The first phase of the new plant will come on line in 2013, and the entire project will be finished by 2015.

On top of this, you can start to kiss your incandescent bulbs goodbye.

River power coming

From the Daily News:

A hydroelectric power project slated for the East River could soon juice the city with a megawatt of electricity if it gets a final thumbs-up from the feds.

After more than 10 years developing a plan to tap into renewable energy by installing turbines off the Queens shoreline, Verdant Power filed for a pilot commercial license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Dec. 29.

If the license is granted, the floor of the East River between Roosevelt Island and Queens could be lined with up to 30 underwater turbines by the end of 2011, said Trey Taylor, president of Verdant.

The company will then make an effort to sell its electricity to Con Edison or the New York Power Authority, and connect to the city's distribution grid.