Kizzy Charles-Guzman, Executive Director, Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice: Buenos dias. My name is Kizzy Charles-Guzman and I'm the executive director… [Applause.] Yes, of the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. I am thrilled to be here today just a few days before Earth Day because my office gets stuff done and it gets it done early. I want to thank my team, which has worked tirelessly and around the clock to create, refine, and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the initiatives in this plan. Thank you for your grace and your skill and your expertise. I am so proud to work with each of you every day to address the urgent climate issues that our beloved city faces. I'm also happy to be here on the roof of the Frank Macchiarola Educational Complex, which is the largest New York City school solar affordable [inaudible] project. And I do love to do events at our public schools.
These are the places where we can best show you this mayor's commitment to our environment, our health, and our communities, and also the places where the next generation of New Yorkers will now learn about climate issues and where we will launch green job training programs. Attending a Brooklyn high school where so many of my classmates had asthma, we all knew that concern about our air and being distracted from learning because of our environment was part of our everyday lives. So I'm proud that this plant also includes new air quality monitoring, work to preserve and maintain our existing trees and plant new trees, work to focus on getting polluting trucks off the streets. These actions will lead to better health for all New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the solar installations here deliver immediate benefits to this community, lower operating costs for the school, better air quality for those inside and nearby, and less carbon to warm our planet.
By next month, our public schools expect to have 76 completed solar installations that produce about 80 percent of the city's total megawatts from solar. That's getting stuff done. Now the students at this school and residents in Sheep's Head Bay houses may have inhalers like my classmates did. But now thanks to these panels, they are also learning in a healthier building and are being exposed to green renewable energy. Not in a far off future, but today.
My team developed this planning collaboration with many stakeholders. [Applause.] Thank you. A climate cabinet consisting of the commissioners of 22 city agencies, brilliant dedicated staff across 35 agencies and offices, an advisory board of 29 New York leaders appointed by the mayor, as well as the New York City Council Speaker Adrianne Adams and the chair of the City Council Committee on Environmental Protection, Jim Gennaro, who's here for us. Glad to have us here today. Thank you all for your labor these past months. We also heard from 240 representatives from sectors like labor, transportation, energy, housing, parks, finance, education, and infrastructure. And importantly, we heard from everyday New Yorkers through NYC Speaks. So thank you, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, for your unwavering commitment to hear directly from our neighbors as we develop policy in New York City. And last but not least, the man who truly understands the role that quality of life, health, and justice plays and must play in climate work. Please welcome, Mayor Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Good job. And in my level of brevity, I think it's important to hear from the people who really made this happen. It's not really about hearing from me. My job is to be the conduit to listening to these ideas and making sure we actually implement and execute. That is at the heart of what we are attempting to do here. And when sometimes you go to a construction site when they start a project and you look and watch across the site all of these different pieces all over the place and say, how do you watch this manifest itself and turn into an actual building, turn into an actual finished product? And that is how it feels sometimes when we have a conversation about our initiative in dealing with improving our environment. I say we have two mothers. One gave birth to us, the other sustained us, and we have been loving to the mother that gave birth to us, but we have been abusive to the mother that sustains us.
And it is time for us to refocus our attention on that level of love and nurturing that mother earth needs. And we can't be dishonest about our pursuit. We have to be consistent. If it's about tackling climate change, we have to lean into our discomforts as well as our comforts. It's comfortable to talk about building emissions. All of us enjoy that. It's comfortable to talk about vehicles and using electric vehicles. That is confident, but it's a discomfort when we talk about those other sources, food being one of them. 22 percent of the issues comes from vehicles. 20 percent come from how we process food. That's why we announced this weekend, our real for the first time acknowledgement with our partners in London of how we need to examine how do we use our purchasing power and how do we use foods in our system.
But today is extremely significant. And imagine as these pieces start to come together, you heard me oftentimes use the analogy of many rivers feed the sea of something. And that's the same here. There are many rivers that we don't need to dam, but we need to allow to flow to address the climate issue we are facing. One of them is what we're seeing here, this beautiful exhibit and all those who are responsible for making it happen. We just really need to commend them for their vision and their ability to execute a plan. And what we must learn to do often is to get out of our own way. If you have a plan like this, we don't need SCA, we don't need others telling us it can't be done. We need to figure out how do we get it done. Get stuff done does not mean being philosophical and theoretical on finding reasons why we must do old things the old way.
It must mean we have to go with people who are not there before. That's what this is about. This is the largest project and it is amazing as you walk around this project. Now envision of future where we are not getting our chips to do this project from overseas, but we are connecting to what the president is doing around the initiative that's about to unfold in Syracuse while jobs of creating the chips will be right here in our country where the children who live in this community will be part of the installation, the building of the solar panels. They go into the school here to leave with certifications on how to build out an initiative and a project like this and every school building in our city and on the rooftops of NYCHA. So places where you're having real issues around asthma, you are able to create the technology that's going to prevent it from occurring.
That is what we are moving towards in our initiative under the leadership of the individuals who have been committed like Kizzy and Rit and others who are part of this project. This is an exciting moment. It goes from visualizing to actualizing. It goes into the place of making sure we can not only talk about or get stuff done but get sustainability done. And I think that was your quote, wasn't it? So to all our partners, we are happy to be here today with this amazing project and the team will go to into the details of this. And we're not going to forget those administrations that came before ours. Hats off to Mayor Bloomberg, former Mayor Bloomberg, who had a real vision and put us on this course, from building the countless number of trees to watching the investment and then to Mayor de Blasio for not abandoning the pursuit but staying on course with the pursuit of former administrations and this administration, continuing and hopefully the administrations should come will not dismantle our plan to move forward, but to continue to do that.
Our city has already taken major steps to become a sustainable, resilient, and equitable city. And that's been inclusive throughout this entire city. Breaking ground of the Lower East Side Resiliency Project, that was a continuation of previous administrations. Passing Local Law 97, the continuation of previous administrations and installing solar panels on rooftops and city buildings like the high school right here in Sheepshead Bay. And today we are powering up this amazing solar energy system for the first time ever. You have to be excited about what we are accomplishing. This solar rooftop installation is the largest in our city that has been built to date. Over 700 kilowatts and it will produce power to supply 60 percent of the school's total annual electricity needs, 60 percent. So while children are preparing for the future, they'll be doing it with power from the renewable energy sources of the future. And so give a shout out to the students who are here, who are part of this initiative. Thank you for participating in this awesome task.
We also want the students to know we are taking our climate plan to the next level with our new PlaNYC Getting Sustainability Done. This is the GSD PlaNYC, a comprehensive city-wide strategy to increase resiliency in protecting our infrastructure and save lives. And one rooted in practical, actionable steps that will help all New Yorkers. Plan GSD is about making sure our seniors can afford an air conditioner and the monthly utility bills that are attached to it. We often look around the heating course, but we ignore the fact that the number of people who die due to heat related issues each year, we are including that in this plan. It's about making sure all New Yorkers have opportunity to drive an electric vehicle. What's the purpose of having an electric vehicle if you can't find an electric battery charging location? Everyone must be able to do it.
It can't be just for the affluent. It must be for every New Yorker to participate in it. It's about equity and environmental justice, reducing air pollution, and preventing flooding no matter where you live. We've seen what climate chaos can do to our city. We've all lived through it. From Hurricane Sandy to Tropical Storm Ida, we know that lives are at stake. We lost fellow New Yorkers, our brothers and sisters due to a storm. They died while in their basement apartments and many were fearful because of potential drowning because of the heavy rainfall. This new Plan GSD will jumpstart the era of transformative change in economic growth. We're going to reshape our relationship with energy, how we generate it, how we use it, how we store it, and how we pay for it. We're putting New York City at the center of the Green Energy startup.
Now these green jobs are available for our young people, like our Black Power Initiative, just as involved young people who've found themselves on the wrong side of the law are now being trained for green jobs. It's an amazing initiative with over $50 million in investment and we are bringing on employees of the future, investing in innovation and in invention so that today's climate solutions becomes tomorrow's economic powerhouse. New York City should lead the way on the inventions and employment. It should be done here. And supporting the energy tech of the future include wind power, biogas facilities, and solar power. We're expanding our electric vehicle charging network across the five boroughs so that every New Yorker can have the opportunity to have an electric vehicle. And we're passing a new zoning amendment called City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality that will make it easier for everyone to build green, reduce carbon emissions from our transportation network and building stock, and create green jobs for the next generation. We put climate infrastructure like this solar panel around us today on every viable city-owned building.
That's the goal. Cut our city's food emission by 33 percent by 2030. Ramp up our transformation to a zero waste economy, reduce air pollution, increase the availability of healthy locally grown food, and most importantly, protect New Yorkers from coastal threats. All of these items are exciting, but if we only continue to allow them to be a vision. Visionaries implement and we have a team of people behind us that clearly understand, match with the vision. It can't stay in just a plan. It must be executed and impact the lives of people every day.
We can do it in a practical way. That is our goal and that is what we're going to accomplish. And so to the entire team behind me and to a deputy mayor that really understands what this means to the future of our city, I want to personally say thank you. And some have been here through, again, previous administrations. You have been steadfast, you have been focused, you have been disciplined. And if you watch this roof that was sitting here, draining the energy from the sun, now become an actual tool that's used to put energy in our classrooms and energy in our students to be proud to say they were part of a project of this making and undertaking. Thank you very much.
Charles-Guzman: Thank you so much Mayor Adams. You know, we heard in our engagement that New York City needs to invest in decarbonizing our economy and inspire the private sector by leading by example. So I'm pleased to introduce our next speaker who cares deeply about that as she leads the city's operating agencies to deliver climate work and open new pathways for a green economy. Please welcome Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi.
Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, Operations: Thank you very much. And because the sun is providing so much energy for this school, I'm leaving my glasses on. I'm Meera Joshi, and I have the honor of being the deputy mayor for operations, and I'm excited to be here this morning. I oversee the agencies that keep our city running and moving and really critical, these are the agencies that can make a huge impact in lowering emissions when they make changes to their operations. They're in fact the city's infrastructure that creates foundational opportunity for incredible progress towards our climate goals. It's our everyday structures and our everyday services. It's our roads, 7,000 miles of them. Our bridges, almost 800 of them. It's the billion gallons of water we drink and the over 1 billion gallons of water we flush every day. It's the 30,000 acres of parkland, it's the 12 tons of trash that today we send to landfill. But that doesn't mean that's what tomorrow looks like.
So there's incredible opportunity in the city's basic foundation to make an incredible change in New York and for us and for our future. So, I want to highlight just a few aspects of the plan and we'll have other speakers come up and highlight other ones. But I want to focus on a few of them, the green jobs and green economy. So today's plan is not just about creating the engines that will make for a better climate, but the people who will run those engines and how do those jobs become careers. Our green economy is growing, it's bringing jobs to our city. 1.7 million green jobs have been added to New York State since 2019. The state is investing 500 million in offshore wind infrastructure and industry development.
Today, 61,000 people are employed in energy efficiency industries across the five boroughs. New York City private sector will spend about $20 to $30 billion in retrofitting buildings by 2030, estimated to expand the green economy to over 230,000 jobs for New Yorkers by 2030. And 63 percent of New York State green jobs require enhanced skills, so we need to be investing in our people in New York City so they can do the work for the planet. We'll foster future climate leaders. Today, we're gathered on one of the largest solar installations at a New York City school. New York City is building cleaner and greener schools of the future. All new schools built in New York City will be built electric.
And we've allocated billions of dollars to accelerate electrification of our existing schools. Students will be able to breathe cleaner air as they learn about climate change and as well as life skills that lead to jobs and lead to careers. Through our solar career and technical education program, it's active today in 14 high schools citywide, and it integrates the concepts of clean energy and solar industry, solar installation industry with courses on construction, engineering, and electrical trades. We'll be doubling on our commitment to integrate climate education for all grade levels, although the amount of times kids walk out of school for a climate action day, I'm not sure, I think they know a lot about it. Maybe we need to teach them something different though, and it'll be on green jobs training and placement for our high schoolers.
We're also going to address our circular economy since all on a road to become a self-sufficient city. A truly self-sufficient city means yesterday's pavements becomes today's street. So, we'll continue to invest in DOT's nationwide-leading asphalt recycling plant. The food scraps that you set out on your curbside on Wednesday can transform into renewable biogas to heat homes by Friday through the nation's largest composting program that is in the midst of being launched. Fallen branches and trees in New York City parks become pristine wood to build out new park benches in a matter of weeks through parks' woody debris program.
A circular economy makes economic sense. It also decreases our reliance on fossil fuels and emission intensive activity. Production of recycled asphalt avoids two million miles of annual truck trips to carry milled asphalt to a landfill. And turning our food and yard waste into energy assets and nutrient rich soil keeps a third of our waste stream out of the landfill. And that's money saved as well as emissions reduced. But to become a true circular economy, we need to look upstream, the point of production, and make sure the items that New Yorkers buy or rely on are made with recycling in mind from the start. The Waste Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act at the state level would do this. It would make manufacturers responsible for reducing waste and increasing the recyclability of their paper and packaging products, lowering the cost for New York City, and ensuring that more products don't have a second life and don't end up in a landfill.
Today, the city — which means taxpayers, which means all of us — pay for manufacturers' irresponsibility in this area. The cost of unrecyclable material are passed on to us through our tax dollars and the amount that it costs our Sanitation Department to deal with it. But with the passage — which I know will happen with all of your support that are sitting here today — of the Waste Reduction Act, we can make those manufacturers either make a change or pay us for the cost difference. Then that would end up being hundreds of millions of dollars coming back to New York City every year. So call your state legislator, advocate for the passage of the Waste Reduction Act.
We also want to be, and I know we will be, the first east side, east coast city to pilot zero and low emission zones. That's something that's being done in Europe and we need to replicate it here in the United States. Today, we're announcing that New York City will be the east coast's first city to pilot a low emissions freight zone to focus on overburden neighborhoods with the highest concentration of truck traffic. The city will study mechanisms, incentives, and other methods to catalyze a shift away from polluting vehicles and commits to piloting the zone by 2027.
As mentioned earlier, we can't encourage people to buy EV cars if there's no way to charge them, so we're also making the bold commitment to have every New Yorker within 2.5 miles of an EV charger by 2035 and ensure that those EV charging hubs represent the density of the community and the demand of the community that they're placed in. We're making moves to electrify our city fleet and our EV infrastructure in the city with the goal to roll out 1,000 curbside stations planned by 2025 and 10,000 by 2030. We're also announcing the reactivation of New York City's Marine Highway to move freight off the road and onto water by 2025.
Thanks to funds that we got through raise grant opportunities in the federal government, we are activating six waterfront sites across the city with enhanced docking infrastructure to create maritime freight and a distribution network. We're also mobilizing more last mile freight door connections through more cargo bikes on our streets and lower emissions. And just to give you an example of what an effect that has, if we reach our goal of enhancing our cargo bike fleet, it's the equivalent of adding 250,000 trees to New York City. So these numbers are nothing to play with. We're working with our state on a common sense approach to congestion pricing, incentivizing public transit, walking and biking, providing essential revenue to fund regional transit, and accelerating low and zero emission vehicle use, and improving our air quality in environmental justice communities.
And for those New Yorkers who must drive, as I mentioned, we're going to make sure the infrastructure is there for all of you. For some of our highest mileage road users such as our taxis, for-hire vehicles, the city will launch a Green Rides initiative so that companies like Uber and Lyft must be zero emissions by 2030. So again, I want to reiterate the thanks that Kizzy started out with to all the people that make this possible, it is behind action is a lot of hardworking, thoughtful public servants, advocates, electeds, and community members who understand that together, we can make a huge difference. Today symbolizes the start of it and I can't wait to see the future. Thank you very much.
Charles-Guzman: Thank you so much, deputy mayor. So many critical actions in this plan. But to really explain how this plan is different and focused on implementation, I want to introduce my partner in this endeavor, someone who is so passionate about the city getting its fair share and ensuring that all projects are climate projects, the chief climate officer and commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, Rohit Aggarwala.
Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala, Department of Environmental Protection and Chief Climate Officer: Thank you Kizzy, and thank you, Mr. Mayor and deputy mayor. As the mayor said, so much has changed in the world of climate action in the 16 years since the city first released its first sustainability plan, PlaNYC. Then, the city was creating the idea, putting forward the idea that a place like New York City should take climate seriously and could take climate seriously, and that good climate action could improve our quality of life. Today, we're far beyond that. Climate change is a reality that we don't have to read about in scientific reports, we read about it in weather reports on a daily basis.
And so, as the mayor said and as the deputy mayor said, this plan focuses on implementation. What do we need to do to move forward on ideas like the ones the deputy mayor outlined, some of which other cities have done, some of which we've been working on here in New York for a long time? Give a couple of examples of how this plan does that. First, we are creating or improving the institutions that we need to get the job done. So this plan includes the creation, which I am grateful to Comptroller Brad Lander for his leadership on the idea of a new entity called Public Solar that will help low income, particularly low income but in fact a wide range of New York homeowners more effectively electrify and put solar on their roofs.
And one of our biggest opportunities in this city is not just the big roofs like this one, but the 700,000 single family homes we have. And we've got to get those electrified, we've got to get those solarized. There's so much money on the table from Washington particularly that we need to fill the gap and help those New Yorkers access those opportunities. We're going to be standing up a buyout program. New York City has not done this yet, but we have to create an institution that will actually make it possible for New York City to provide an alternative for homeowners where we the city cannot effectively protect them from flooding and make it possible so that we can channel again the amazing amounts of federal and state money that are available to procure some of that land and turn it into other protected uses. Thank you.
We've worked on coastal resilience in New York City for the 11 years since Hurricane Sandy. But the time has really come to institutionalize that. We do not yet have a single city agency with the regulatory and capital construction capability that it will take to drive the decades of coastal resilience work that New York City will need to do to protect itself. And so, this plan includes the announcement that my agency, the Department of Environmental Protection, will be creating a new Bureau of Coastal Resilience. [Applause.] Thank you. If anyone's interested, I'm assured that the job description for the new deputy commissioner role was posted an hour or so ago so please send your applications, we're a great place to work. But we've got a lot of work to do and we will have more announcements over the coming weeks and months about how we envision that effort to evolve.
And building on what the mayor said and what we announced on Monday with this new carbon emissions inventory that's so important to this plan, that drives our focus, because if we understand where our emissions come from, we can prioritize our actions. And the new inventory that's in this plan, as the mayor points out, for the first time takes into account the emissions related to the food that we import, the goods, the clothing, the textiles, all the other things that come from out of the city that we as New Yorkers have a lot of influence over. And so as the mayor said, we're not only going to be thinking about the food we eat, but also where our food comes from and hope to work with farmers in the watershed on their transition to more sustainable farming.
We also, if we're going to implement, we have to get the funding right. And there are two really important components to that. One is getting all of the dollars that are out there. As Kizzy pointed out, I'm particularly passionate about making sure that New York City gets its fair share. We have applied, over the course of just the first year of this administration, for more than $1.5 billion in federal funding that's available. Some of that comes directly from the federal government, some of it comes through the state. Unfortunately, sometimes, state rules restrict New York City unfairly from getting what we deserve on the merits and what our share of the state's population and disadvantaged communities deserve. This plan includes a number of areas where we are going to push as hard as we can to make sure that the wonderful opportunities in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act and the New York State Environmental Bond Act all serve New York City as well as New Yorkers deserve them too. [Applause.] Thank you. We will also — and this is explained further in this plan, but Mayor Adams announced it in his State of the City speech back in January — we are going to start implementing through the Office of Management and Budget a new approach towards getting the money right, which is called climate budgeting. This is about as wonky as it gets, but anybody who understands city government understands that the budget shapes so much. And there is that old line about, "Show me your budget and I'll show you your values."
Well, this administration is committed to ensuring that over the next two years, we ensure that every aspect of the city's budget takes climate into account. The Office of Management and Budget, one of the most powerful agencies there are. We all live in fear of them, all my fellow commissioners, as we know. Will now engage agencies on the carbon impacts and the consistency of their budget requests with the city's overarching climate goals and with PlaNYC and our overarching sustainability initiative. This is massive because over time, this will ensure that the $100 billion that we spend every year in the operating budget and the 100 plus billion in our capital plan, go towards the right climate goals. We also have to get the rules right. And as the mayor and deputy mayor mentioned, we're working under the leadership of city planning chair Dan Garodnick on Zero Carbon Zoning, which is a comprehensive effort to ensure that the city's zoning rules encourage all the kinds of things that building owners, both existing buildings and new construction need to do, to capture all the opportunities to green and make resilient their buildings.
We're going to improve the laws related to idling. One of the things my agency oversees, which we have a chronic problem with trucks that idle around the city. We're looking in this plan to work with the City Council to increase those fines and to streamline the way we enforce that and to work with the private sector as the deputy mayor pointed out, on transitioning those fleets to electric power so they don't ever have to idle again. And as the mayor pointed out, we continue our emphasis on implementing Local Law 97, which is one of the most important initiatives, not only for this city, but for the entire country and around the world. The world is looking to New York City to get the implementation of Local Law 97 right. And we are committed to enforcing that law, to writing those rules right, but also to ensuring that we are working with building owners, both big owners and small owners, middle class co-ops in Queens and skyscrapers to make sure that we achieve the promise of Local Law 97.
Which was not just about sticks, it was not just about fines, but it was about achieving climate mobilization. That is a great opportunity not only for the impact on climate, but as the deputy mayor pointed out, for the great green jobs that it will create. And above all else, throughout this plan as you read it online, because that's the greener option then printing out a copy. But as you read it online, you'll see throughout this plan examples where New York City is and is committing to lead by example in our city operations. When it comes to our city's fleet, when it comes to city owned buildings like this one, when it comes to the way we do business, we are going to demonstrate that we are putting our money where our mouths are, that we are living our values. And I want to thank again, actually, as the mayor said, Kizzy, for her great leadership, the team at MOCEJ, for Meera and her team, who's been a great leader, my fellow commissioners, our partner at the City Council, Jim Gennaro, and the comptroller. And above all else, the leadership of Mayor Adams. Thank you.
Charles-Guzman: Thank you. Thank you so much, Rit. We are so painfully aware that clean energy projects are critical to our survival, and this is why we are putting our money where our mouth is. So I would like to introduce our partner, someone who cares deeply about the climate crisis, to talk to us about why these projects are really just so important. Welcome Comptroller Brad Lander.
Comptroller Brad Lander: Yeah, here with you. Thank you so much, Kizzy. What a beautiful day and a beautiful setting this is. Mayor, it's wonderful to be with you and your team with Deputy Mayor Joshi and Chief Climate Officer Aggarwala. Great to be out here with the students as well. Kayla and Vanessa, thank you for welcoming us to your school and this amazing rooftop. Let's hear it for them.
Charles-Guzman: Yes.
Comptroller Lander: This is why we're doing it, folks. The generation that is coming depends on what we're doing today. Look, the era of the climate crisis isn't just coming. It's already here. We have seen in Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Ida what it looks like to lose New Yorkers lives to the climate crisis. And those events have cost us already billions of dollars. You only had to look at Fort Lauderdale last week to know more storms like that are coming. And you only had to be outside in 90 degree weather in April in New York City last week to understand that we will face extreme heat events like they had last year in Europe and in the Northwest, and that the work that the mayor talked about to make sure that our communities are prepared to survive will determine whether New Yorkers live or die in the days, months, and years ahead.
And that's why it is so critical that we take the collective actions necessary to reduce our emissions to zero, to make our communities resilient to rising season temperatures and to build an economy and the good green jobs and the access to them in all of our communities that will make it possible for New York City and all New Yorkers to thrive in the era of the climate crisis. Well, on emissions from energy, which is what I want to focus on, I want to talk about the bad news and the good news. The bad news is this, as of today, 89 percent of the electricity that New Yorkers use comes from burning fossil fuels. And that's actually worse than it was a year ago today as a result of the closure of Indian Point. 89 percent of our electricity from burning fossil fuels. But here's the good news. We have the resources necessary to convert to an entirely clean and renewable energy future.
You can feel the wind up here, and we're not far from the offshore wind that is going to power a lot of it. And boy, you can see that all we got to do is point pieces of glass at the sun and we can power the clean energy future that New York needs. That's why it's thrilling to be here on this rooftop with the largest rooftop array on a public school in New York City. But most of our buildings are not public schools. Most of our buildings are residential, and the vast majority of them, 700,000 of them, as Rohit said, are one to four family homes. So if we are actually going to scale up the abundant energy available on New York's rooftops, then we need a solution that makes it possible for homeowners to install solar on their homes. I went through this myself a few years ago and am delighted with the rooftop solar array that's on my house.
But I have to tell you, the expense and the headaches, we will not scale up at the level needed with the system we currently have. And that's why I am so delighted that the mayor has included in this plan that we'll be partnering on Public Solar NYC, a model that my office has proposed. In which we will use the resources for a pilot round that Rohit spoke about that come from Washington. The Biden Administration has created the opportunity through the Inflation Reduction Act. And we plan to apply to its greenhouse gas reduction fund for the resources to make it possible for 3000 homeowners to install rooftop solar in many cases at no cost whatsoever to them because the city will come and do it. And that will make it possible for low and moderate income homeowners to get rooftop solar. That'll make it possible for us through contracting to create good green jobs and to work with folks like Green City Force and Solar One. And make sure that public housing residents and residents of environmental justice communities have access to quality green jobs, installing that solar.
And it will make it possible after proof of concept in that pilot round, to scale it up to the scale of the abundant rooftop energy that exists in New York City. We are really excited to be partnering on Public Solar NYC. There's so many other things in this plan that I'm excited about. As Chief Financial Officer and at least a competitor for Chief Municipal Nerd… [laughter.] Climate Budgeting, obviously, is very appealing to me, and we're grateful to see the climate budgeting in there. As a neighbor of Red Hook, I'm delighted to see this focus on the first low emissions zone in New York City. So neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Red Hook, I don't know if you've been, but there's like six different Last Mile facilities with trucks going in and out. How can we say we're taking leadership on climate if we don't protect public housing residents and low income folks in communities like that from emissions? So that is an exciting model. And as somebody who spent a lot of time out after Superstorm Sandy in the neighborhoods that were hardest hit, I'm really happy to see that we are taking resilience seriously.
That buyout program, which is not easy to start piloting, is getting created, and that we are serious about what's necessary to help communities be resilient in the era of rising seas and temperatures. Finally, earlier this month, we partnered with the administration and with three of the city's five pension funds on the most ambitious net-zero implementation plan of any public pension funds in the country, $180 billion.
That is saying to our asset managers like BlackRock, that is saying to our banks like Chase and Citibank and Wells Fargo, that's saying to our portfolio companies, whether they're utilities or manufacturers or real estate owners, "We need together to get to net-zero." And that plan to decarbonize the investments in the global economy and this plan to take ambitious steps towards sustainability in every way, have the possibility to position New York City as the leader we must be to make sure that all New Yorkers can survive and thrive in the era of the climate crisis. Mr. Mayor, thank you to you and your team for all the good work today.
Charles-Guzman: Thank you so much, Comptroller Lander. I love hearing these stories because we cannot get sustainability done without stories. And so I want to take a quick moment to thank the principals of the complex that we're here today, The Green Team at the schools, the students, the teachers of the schools that are really sharing ultimately stories, right? This is how we are going to build the next generation of ambitious climate projects. And speaking of stories, there are many of them highlighted in our plans. So I look forward to you guys reading it, and my friend Tonya Gayle has been working on one thing that we heard over and over in our sustainability advisory board engagement and from the mayor, which is the need for good paying jobs for our neighbors. She is the executive director of Green City Force, which trains young people from low income housing communities to participate in a green economy, and she's a storyteller. She's a visionary leader, an instigator, a true climate activist. Her work is actually about New Yorkers' relationship with their physical environment, which is a theme that is central to PlaNYC. Please welcome my friend, Tonya Gayle.
Tonya Gale, Executive Director, Green City Force: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Tonya Gayle, executive director of Green City Force and a member of the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Advisory Board. I'm happy to be here today to celebrate the release of the Adams administration PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done, New York City's strategic climate plan. The board is a blend of public, nonprofit, and private sector representation, which has led to inputs from all aspects of New York City in order to inform the way forward for a just, healthy and resilient New York. Green City Force has been focused on leveraging the talent, insights, and lived experience of public housing and low income New Yorkers since 2009. We train young leaders to power a green and inclusive economy through service.
Our program participants drive climate and sustainability transformation in some of the hardest hit environmental justice neighborhoods while building workforce skills. We work in public housing developments and focus on green service for food, water, waste, energy behavior change, and neighborhood transformation strategically with local, city, state, national, and global goals for climate and equity. PlaNYC sees the value of expanding green jobs for young New Yorkers, like the ones I work with.
It has initiatives that prepare public school students for careers in the green economy. It has new talent development programs, and it uses climate research and workforce hubs to grow jobs. The young people I work with transform their physical environment and at the same time, are transformed by it. PlaNYC encourages the growth of new Green City Force. Thank you to Mayor Adams, deputy mayor, Climate Chief Officer Rohit, and of course Kizzy for your equity focused leadership. Thank you.
Question: Mayor, one of the things you talked about is how important it's to take something that's a plan and make it reality. When Mayor Bloomberg talked about PlaNYC in 2007, he said that "An essential component of it was congestion pricing," which 15 years later does not exist. So what assurances do you have for New Yorkers that what you're announcing today won't be talked about on a rooftop 15 years from now as something that does not exist?
Mayor Adams: This rooftop. This rooftop right here is clearly a reflection of looking at a vision and going from being visualized to actualized. This is an amazing feat and it took the combination of DOE, of the environment protection, of visionaries coming together, our nonprofits. And so I think that when you see a job like this, it materializes.
Really, I cannot say enough about Mayor Bloomberg's desire to say let us put us on a course and a pathway, and you start with that blueprint and then you learn from it. The previous administration under Mayor de Blasio, they learned a lot of things. We're learning from it. The next administration is going to learn from it. This is a long-term process. And even when we look at congestion pricing, it started when I was in the State Senate, we have to take into account what Congressman Torres was stating that this could negatively impact boroughs like the Bronx.
So we factored that in when we started to advocate for let's get it done, let's land the plane, but we can't land the plane with totally ignoring some of those concerns. So these major shifts in policies like congestion pricing got to be done right. But there are things we can do now like this solar job and some of the plans that are being rolled out now that we can implement now. They are low hanging fruit before we get to the top of the tree to accomplish what we want to accomplish. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, hold on.
Commissioner Aggarwala: I'd also just like to point out, frankly speaking on behalf of the 2007 plan, congestion pricing is basically the only thing that didn't happen. Whether you look at the green building rules that were enacted first under Mayor Bloomberg and then Local Law 97, that's a continuing evolution that's taken place that's creating value. As the mayor pointed out, the solar evolution, significant changes in the city's fleet.
You look at what's happened in our taxi fleet, which is still more than half hybrid, despite the fact that we couldn't pass the rule according to the Supreme Court. Whenever the city commits to doing it, we get that stuff done. Thank you.
Question: So, I'm curious if you can speak of how you'll ensure that these initiatives get done and get done efficiently given staffing vacancies and budget cuts at the city level.
Mayor Adams: Well, listen, we are dealing with real challenges around our budget and we can't underestimate what's fueling it. That's often being missed. Here you have an administration that's successfully navigated us out of Covid, navigated us out of the downturn in Wall Street.
You removed $4.2 billion from the asylum seeker issue, you have an administration that has successfully stabilized the city. And I think people underestimate the fact that those who analyzed how you budget raised our bond rated. They saw how this administration is running the city and they stated, we have confidence in this administration and they raised our bond rate to a AA.
And so with these challenges, we must say to ourselves, what can we do with the man power and women power that we have? How do we set real goals in place that we could accomplish even with the restraints that are in front of us? So the goal in running the city of this level of complexity is not do things because of, but in spite of, so in spite of the fact that we have to do pegs, in spite of the facts that we are inundated with a national financial crisis, in spite of all of that, we are still focused on executing these plans that we think are important and we're going to do that.
We made that over and over again. We are going to accomplish what we laid out that are obtainable and we have factored in all those things that you are stating about the economic challenges, the manpower challenge, that's a, no, matter of fact, it's not a national problem, that's a global problem. Factoring all that in, we still have to move this city and country forward and we're going to do that. And we're confident we are.
Question: Local Law 97, that's probably one of the biggest challenges. I know this has been asked before, but there's so many pre-war buildings which need so much help and not all of them are Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue buildings. I mean, how are you going to address that? There are people who are middle class who can't afford more charges, building charges to make this happen. How are you going to address that?
Commissioner Aggarwala: So first of all, as I pointed out, a lot of what we are doing is the continuing implementation of Local Law 97. Some of it, as you point out, is around mandates. It is requiring building owners, whether they are middle income homeowners or big developers to take seriously their responsibility to reduce their carbon emissions.
Owning property means you have responsibilities. At the same time, and what this plan is very clear about in signaling our intention and we'll have a lot more to say over the coming weeks in fact from the Department of Buildings, is we are going to be writing these rules in a way that understands that it will take a broad mobilization, that these things do not happen immediately. And I will point out for the vast majority of buildings that are covered, they do not actually have to worry about fines or even do work until 2030.
So what we are going to be prioritizing is how do we work with that large number of buildings to focus on
the mobilization that is necessary for 2030. Number one, we already have the New York City Accelerator and we will have more to say about how that will expand. That is an effort by the city. It's a help desk basically, where building owners and managers can reach out to the city, provide a basic amount of information, and they get back counseling on what kinds of strategies would make sense for them, what kinds of funding is available to them from the city, state, and federal level as well as from the utilities, because ConEd and National Grid play a big role in this.
We are also committing to looking at additional ways to help buildings do this. Again, we'll have more to say on that coming forward, but we've heard loud and clear that we have to have a combination of carrots and sticks. That this can't just be about beating people over the head. It has to have that combination, but it doesn't mean we are any less serious about achieving the goals that Local Law 97 prioritizes.
Mayor Adams: And before we do that, and part of when I am moving around the city and I speak to one to four family homeowners and I said, "Are you aware of Local Law 97?" They say, "What is that?" Because we communicate in this vacuum, everyone does not wake up in the morning and say, hey, let me read about Local Law 97, because people are dealing with their own trauma, their own crises. They're trying to figure out, we're saying, “How do you make sure your home is environmentally friendly?” They said, “I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to still have my home.”
And so what we must do as an administration is not to talk over people, but to make it easy for them to understand what resources are available, what you are required to do, and how this impacts you every day. And I think that's how it's been a failure. We sometimes believe that everyone is speaking the same language that we are speaking because we are in government or we are covering government or we are coming up with grand ideas.
We must communicate with New Yorkers in a user-friendly way. And that is what this administration is going to do, make this information accessible as we are doing it so many other ways, such as what we're doing with childcare. New Yorkers are overwhelmed. They're overwhelmed. And so it's easy to sit in the chambers, the sterilized environments of our congressional chambers, our state chambers, our city councilor chambers of City Hall, and come up with all of these grand ideas that we're not communicating to an everyday New Yorker.
I'm a working class mayor and I need to communicate to people in a working class way. I'm still figuring out Local Law 97 and I'm the mayor. So imagine what the mailman is trying to figure out or the messenger is trying to figure out. Let's communicate with people where they are. And that's what this administration is energized in doing.
Question: Actually, I have two questions. First, this Public Solar pilot you guys hope will touch up to 3,000 small residential buildings. What are your thoughts on how long it will take for the rest of the 700,000 residential buildings given the gravity of the crisis? And then secondly, Rit, can you talk a bit about the buyback program, it's contours, how much money you'd like to see invested in that and where you might like to target which neighborhoods?
Comptroller Lander: So a lot of the questions have reflected the challenges that barriers present, and there are a lot of them. That's the reality of the climate crisis. We need massive change and the barriers are at a lot of levels. For one to four family homeowners to install rooftop solar right now, there are a lot of barriers. This kind of gets to what the mayor was saying.
It's great for you if you can do it, but right now you're going to need to come out of pocket with some of your savings. And then you're also going to have to apply for all the tax credits, navigate with the Buildings Department. It's a very complicated process and that's unfortunately why it's been quite slow, single family, one to four family rooftop solar installation uptake is slow. So the question we asked is what would it look like to really accelerate it?
And the model we have here is if we could use public resources and say to that one to four family homeowner, especially a low modern income homeowner, the city will come essentially and work with partners to get the solar installed. And you don't have to come out of pocket and you don't have to be the one to navigate all the bureaucratic hurdles. And then we'll share the energy benefits with you. You can think of it as paying a lease for the roof.
So the homeowner starts to benefit from the energy credits, from the energy without having to come out of pocket financially and be a mini developer. But we need proof of concept that that will work. We think it looks really good. We're excited about the model, but we can't scale it up to all 700,000 homes without making sure it works first. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, will give us the resources to pilot the program.
I think based on what I've seen that it's going to be really successful and that some of those one to four family homeowners who don't necessarily know the other things we're talking about, will be really excited that they start getting some money off their energy bills every month. They'll be excited that those kids from Green City Force come and get jobs installing solar on their roofs. Now, then we will have the challenge of scaling it and we've got some thoughts on what the resources would look like to do that. That's part of the public solar concept. But first, we want proof of concept from this pilot program. And then I really do think it's something that we could scale up dramatically.
Commissioner Aggarwala: Just one last thing to add to what Comptroller Lander said. So much of the challenge is not about the money, right? It is about that product market fit, where, how do you explain it? How do you get the communication, as the mayor said, so that you can attract people? And if we can get this right, the 3,000 is what we know we could do with the resources that we are pretty confident we can get from the federal government. But once you start that ball rolling, you can raise other money, whether it's public or private.
And so I think our first job is to make sure we can market well. To your question about buyouts. We are not focused yet on any specific neighborhood. There's a lot of work going on around the city including at DEP and at the Mayor's Office of Climate Environmental Justice to identify the risk of different parts of the city and what we need to do to protect different parts of the city. That will inform where we actually do buyouts.
What we came to appreciate in learning from some of the other successful buyout programs around the country is that there's a lot of infrastructure. Before you decide, here's where I want to make offers, you have to set up an infrastructure to counsel people to make sure that they aren't doing it in a vacuum, that they can find their alternatives when they make that decision.
And so that's what we're going to start, is how do we build that institution that can enable us to do this? There are some legal challenges because of course it takes the city. We have to go through ULURP whenever New York City government buys property, and we have to think about how we either address that or work through it or work around it. And then the most obvious promising place is that the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act that New York State voters approved last year includes $250 million for buyouts. New York City is 44 percent of the state's population and 59 percent of the state's disadvantaged community. By my math, that means we should get at least $125 million from the state. If we don't, I would consider that highly inequitable.
Comptroller Lander: Can I add one thing here? Let me just add one thing here in response to Dana, because I do feel like one thing that Hurricane Ida did is changed our thinking about what vulnerability to the climate crisis looks like. And an extreme heat wave would do that as well in a different way. So I think these questions about how we pay attention to what's vulnerable, what we can protect and make resilient, but also how we think about where we can't. I know many of you have talked to those Ida homeowners on some of those blocks that flood over and over and over again. So there's this really important work to figure out how to have those conversations thoughtfully, be mindful of what climate risk looks like and standup programs that are responsive to it.
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