On a breezy Monday morning on a quiet corner of Queens, 11 leafy new neighbors arrived on a truck, fresh from a nursery in Kansas City.

Elm, red maple and cherry trees — some with pink blossoms — would be planted next to the sidewalks across a few blocks of Cambria Heights, a suburban-style neighborhood of homes with grassy front lawns. 

As workers hoisted a tree out of a bag surrounding its roots, a woman with a phone to her ear leaving a nearby house called out to ask what kind of tree the workers were planting: an elm that would grow to be up to 70 feet tall over the next three to four decades.

“Adding to the family!” she exclaimed, grinning, before getting into a car.

Cambria Heights is among the neighborhoods with the highest risks of extreme heat, where temperatures are hotter than the city’s average and where some blocks lack any trees. 

Monday’s tree-planting session came as part of a strategy in its second year that prioritizes putting new trees in the neighborhoods most vulnerable to extreme heat, rather than in response to ad hoc 311 requests, as had been done in years past. 

And planting those trees took on a particular significance as the Mamdani administration on Tuesday released a plan to expand the tree canopy to cover 30% of the city by 2040.

“To reach this 30% goal, it’s going to take work from every actor in the entire city,” said Jessica Einhorn, chief of forestry programs at the Department of Parks and Recreation. “This program planting trees, especially in the high [heat vulnerable] neighborhoods, is really critical towards that equity angle.”

In those riskier areas, the tree canopy — or the area of the city currently covered by trees and their leaves — currently stands at 19%, compared to about 26% in others, city Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung told the City Council in March. (Overall, tree canopy covers just over 23% of the boroughs according to the last count in 2021. That was after a net increase of 1.2% since 2017.)

Trees across the city serve more than an aesthetic purpose — they add to the health and resiliency of a neighborhood. Areas with a robust tree canopy and vegetation have shown to be slightly to significantly cooler compared to places where green space is scarce and pavement is plentiful. Trees also help to purify air and can reduce water runoff to mitigate flooding. 

And their value as heat-regulators will only increase in the near future.

By the 2040s — the due date for the 30% canopy goal — New York City’s temperatures could be between nearly 3 and 6 degrees hotter due to the effects of climate change, according to the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Heat is dangerous: it contributes to the deaths of over 500 New Yorkers on average each year, with Black New Yorkers twice as likely to die compared to whites.

The city already experiences the urban heat island effect, meaning it’s hotter because of the density, pavement and tall buildings than elsewhere. But some areas are significantly greener and cooler than others, while other neighborhoods are more vulnerable to heat based on a combination of physical factors — like existing trees — and social considerations, like residents’ income and access to air conditioning.

The Parks Department’s tree-planting strategy, announced in 2024, does away with the system where anyone can call 311 to ask for a new tree — except for the loophole New Yorkers can make a $1,800 donation to do so, as previously reported by THE CITY.

The new system instead divides the city into more than 400 zones, planting trees in every viable place within a zone while removing stumps and dying trees. 

Each community board district will have a zone serviced every three years, and Parks plans to hit all zones every nine years. (Here’s a tentative schedule of tree-planting locations.) The most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods are on track to be completed by the end of 2027, Yeung said.

Money Grows Trees

Mamdani’s plan is the first time the city has set a target date for the goal of a 30% canopy. But critically, the money to pay for it has not been committed.

“Many of the actions in the plan rely on existing program budgets and aim to ensure that we are spending smarter,” City Hall spokesperson Jessica Woolford said in a statement. “We are creatively leveraging funds from government and private sources to advance our shared goals.”

City Hall did not offer its own estimate for the cost. But according to a 2022 estimate from a local environmental advocacy group, it would cost about $500 million to plant a million trees and achieve its canopy goal.

“The plan is great, but what comes after is the most critical part,” said Shravanthi Kanekal, a resiliency planner at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “It’s going to signal a whole lot to see how much they dedicate funding to the plan.”

Though as a candidate, Mamdani promised to dedicate 1% of the budget to the Department of Parks and Recreation, his preliminary budget this year proposed spending just half of that — cutting nearly $34 million from the department’s budget in the current fiscal year.

“I’m really glad to see the city set a goal of 2040, and I think what we’ve been looking to is how to further accelerate achieving that goal,” said Tami Lin-Moges, director of the cities program at the Nature Conservancy. “But obviously that really relies on increased investments. … Investing in parks and the urban forest is an investment in livability in New York City.”

Greening the city so almost a third of it has tree canopy will require money, manpower and shoring up interest from New Yorkers, said Simon Skinner, chief of programs and operations at the New York Restoration Project.

He pointed to the successful initiative to plant a million trees that the Bloomberg administration launched in 2007. It took eight years, short of the decade expected. 

“It shows it’s possible,” Skinner said. “Everyone was pulling in the same direction because it was such a big initiative coming from City Hall.”

Skinner said several agencies coordinated to prioritize the goal as private landowners got involved, and the government and its partners educated kids and adults on tree planting and stewardship. 

In Cambria Heights on Monday, interactions with neighbors showed some of the challenges the city may face as it reaches for the goal; not everyone was happy about the newly rooted neighbors.

Derrick Simmons, a long-time resident of a nearby block, stopped by to talk to the Parks workers about the problems he’s had with trees.

“The trees have fallen on different people’s cars. They broke up the sidewalks,” he said. “I know they said that this is supposed to make the neighborhood more beautiful, and I get that. But of course we got 26 trees. We don’t need any more trees.”

A bit later, another neighbor walked by and said the tree roots were messing with his home’s sewer pipes: “I live on the next block. We got tree-lined streets. It sucks!” 

Navé Strauss, Parks’ director of tree planting, said, “Our mandate is to plant every available location.”

Einhorn said Simmons and his neighbor’s complaints indicated there was a lot that could be done to “increase the connection between people and their trees.” 

“We do as much as we can to care for the trees, but really it’s those blocks where like a property owner or a neighbor will come out and water the tree or maybe plant flowers around that the data shows that those trees are better off than the others,” she said. 

To reach the 30% canopy goal, trees will need to be planted on privately owned property, not just in public parks and on streets, Einhorn said — “and more than anything else is preserving our existing tree canopy.”

That maintenance — pruning, watering, cleaning tree beds and removing invasive vines — is important for trees to thrive and for the canopy to expand. All of those tasks require people to do them, which costs money.

“Obviously it’s sexy and nice to plant a bunch of new trees, but we have to also look after what we already have,” Skinner said. “They have an outsized effect on things like reducing heat and absorbing pollution.”

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Behind the gate of a waterfront restaurant, a rusted ferry wobbles on the waves of the East River. It’s become a familiar eyesore for residents of Long Island City, Queens since it was first moored to the Anable Basin in 2012 and has floated there since, a forgotten lump of metal — until now. 

The abandoned ferry, named Prudence, is getting a second life as an artificial reef. Each Saturday morning this spring, residents in masks and safety goggles leap from stable ground onto the ferry to remove any hazardous materials and make it fit for sea creatures to move in.

“This whole thing is going to just be covered in sea anemones and sponges and mussels and there’ll be fish everywhere,” said Harris Moore, 36, the local scuba diver behind the mission to sink the Prudence Ferry.

“Boats — they don’t last forever,” he said. “Better to sink it properly in a place where it’ll do good than have it just go down with toxic craziness.” 

A Second Life 

Volunteers have joined Moore since February to peel off old paint, cut wires and remove residual oils to prepare the ferry for its second life as a refuge for underwater critters. It will build upon the 16th artificial reef site, “Sixteen Fathom Reef,” part of New York’s fleet of reefs already sunk offshore, from Rockaway Beach to Mattituck.

“It’s a lot of paint chipping,” said Long Island City resident Formosa Huang, 25, who brought several friends to volunteer with her on a recent Saturday. 

“A lot of sea animals like anemones are going to attach themselves to the boat,” she said. “If there’s paint that is going to come off easily, they might attach, fly off and then just drift.”

Years ago, the Long Island City-based company Plaxall purchased the ferry to turn it into a floating beer garden that never materialized. After noticing the ferry languishing in the basin, Moore, a Long Island City resident, reached out to Bill Cadden, the retired marine engineer who founded Long Island Artificial Reef Society, a nonprofit that creates artificial reefs out of mostly boat vessels. 

“They just wanted to get it off their hands,” Cadden said about Plaxall. “Companies do not want to incur the expenses of prepping the boats for artificial reefs.” 

He plans to sink the ferry in June by strategically cutting holes at the sinking site. The ferry will then flood with water and go under, Moore explained.

Cadden’s past projects include sinking materials from the Tappan Zee Bridge and creating a reef as a memorial, he told THE CITY. He visited the ferry with Chris LaPorta, the reef coordinator from the state Department of Conservation. 

The department runs New York’s artificial reef program, which considers whether plain concrete, rock or steel objects could be artificial reefs.

According to LaPorta, New Yorkers have been making artificial reefs for about a century, when fishermen in the 1920s began dumping butter tubs half-filled with concrete to enhance the ocean floor’s scarce marine habitat. The state’s official program began in 1962 and expanded under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2018, himself a fisherman who doubled the artificial reef sites to approximately 6,800 acres. 

Volunteer labor makes sinking the Prudence possible. As part of his nonprofit, Cadden frees companies like Plaxall from the responsibility of the vessel and provides for the state program.

“We don’t really have the funding to go out and buy material,” LaPorta said.

Many of the volunteers THE CITY spoke to said they did not know much about what it takes to prepare a vessel for reefing, but they were drawn to a project with a quirky nature.

“I like the idea of creating habitat when it’s declining,” said Long Island City resident Tina He, 33. “I read that the average American spends something like five hours on their phone every day, and I think people can find a lot more joy helping each other and working on shared projects together.” 

It can be dirty work. On a sunny Saturday in April, volunteers crawled into the ferry’s tight spaces, disassembling its mucky toilet, sawing through thick wires and slowly picking at paint-covered surfaces as the boat rocked on the water. 

Kyle O’ Connor, 28, who works as a video producer, told THE CITY he enjoyed the work’s “teamwork aspect.” 

“It’s just such a cool setting, being able to be out on the water and see the city,” he said. “I feel like a lot of my job is sitting at a desk. I think it would be nice if everyone had a few more hours a week doing some kind of community-oriented manual labor.” 

Creating Complex Habitat 

For nearly a decade, the MTA prepped and sunk more than 2,500 rail cars in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a subway reefing program that ended in 2010. But not just any old piece of equipment can become a reef, according to Cadden.

“For a vessel to be donated and reefed, it needs to be made out of steel,” which is durable and unlikely to break into pieces that will resurface on the beach or become tangled in fishermen’s nets, Cadden said.

And he cannot just sink the vessels anywhere, which would be considered ocean dumping. Instead, state and federal agencies like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delineate reef sites that require permits. 

These permits must be renewed to sink additional reefs and monitored to “show it’s not just a lump of concrete, or a chunk of steel sitting down there doing nothing, but producing the results that we said it was going to produce,” Cadden told THE CITY. (Divers and anglers can also sign up as volunteers who observe and document the reefs’ marine life.) 

“After the materials are prepared and deployed, it doesn’t take very long,” LaPorta said. “As soon as fish find it — literally, they could be on it within a day — the growth begins.” 

“What used to be an old vessel, in a matter of up to a year and then beyond, becomes completely colonized by anything from sponges, barnacles, hydroids and anemones,” he told THE CITY. 

While the ferry may have little monetary value for humans, sea creatures can now benefit.

The Prudence’s current condition hits the sweet spot: useless to humans since it no longer runs, but with a structure stable enough for towing and sinking at the reef site. 

“It’s basically only worth is what you could get for the scrap metal,” Moore said. 

“It’s coming back in leaps and bounds,” Cadden, who is also a diver, said about marine life served by artificial reefs. “The last one I’ve been around, back rays are coming back into the area because the water is that much cleaner.”

“We have schools of menhaden and bluefish that we haven’t had in decades. You have whales right off the beach,” he told THE CITY. 

“It’s not going to look like a Caribbean reef, but it’s prettier than you would imagine,” Moore added. 

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Trump administration officials took a victory lap Tuesday in Brooklyn to celebrate a natural gas pipeline that would serve customers in New York City and Long Island. But Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose environmental agency greenlit a key permit for the pipeline after three previous rejections, was a no-show at the event.

The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) natural gas pipeline, developed by the Oklahoma-based Williams Companies, would run from Pennsylvania to just off the coast of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, with about 17 miles buried in New York waters. The pipeline, which could be in service by the end of 2027, would connect to a larger network that begins in Texas.

“Building NESE Pipeline, delivering natural gas right here to Floyd Bennett Field, is a pure, momentous, gigantic win for New York and for America,” said the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and former candidate for governor Lee Zeldin. “The capacity of being able to deliver natural gas to up to 2.3 million more families is something for all of us to be able to celebrate.”

Zeldin was joined by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of the Department of Energy Chris Wright. (Also in attendance was Hochul’s current Republican challenger in the gubernatorial election, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.)

Though Hochul was invited to the event, she spent Tuesday in Troy, touring a new housing project, and at Syracuse University for the unveiling of former President Joe Biden’s official portrait. A spokesperson for Hochul declined to comment, instead referring to a statement she released when the state Department of Environmental Conservation granted the pipeline’s permit.

The pipeline received a water quality permit from New York in November, after the state had denied the permit for the same project three times before — in 2018, 2019 and 2020 — all when Andrew Cuomo was governor.

Though the project appeared dead in the water, it was revived as part of a deal Hochul reportedly struck with the Trump administration in order to save the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind project, which the federal government had sought to shut down mid-construction. (Hochul had denied there was a deal, only that she was open to new projects.)

President Donald Trump has consistently backed more oil and gas projects and worked to impede renewable energy development, including offshore wind. New York had been counting on developing offshore wind projects to meet its energy needs without carbon emissions, but has been stymied by Trump’s policies and broader economic forces.

Hochul has embraced relying on fossil fuels for longer than what the state’s climate law has called for, given the federal government’s hostility to renewables and the necessity of meeting demand for energy. (She’s also attempting to change the state’s climate law itself as Albany negotiates the budget.)

“We are facing war against clean energy from Washington Republicans,” she said in a statement released when her Department of Environmental Conservation granted the pipeline’s permit. She said DEC “reviewed impartially” the project application.

On Tuesday, the Washington Republicans who appeared at the “ceremonial groundbreaking” event seemed to be in alignment with Hochul about why the pipeline — which was also opposed by several environmental groups and elected officials — was important.

Zeldin, a former elected official from Long Island who in 2022 unsuccessfully challenged Hochul for governor, said the pipeline was “extra personal” for him, as he “saw firsthand the need for increased natural gas supplies to downstate New York.”

He spoke of New Yorkers that left the state because of affordability concerns — a point Hochul has raised in the context of the climate law — and pointed to the pipeline as evidence that “maybe we can turn the tide.”

Burgum and Wright extolled the economic and potential cost-savings benefits of the pipeline (although National Grid customers will be on the hook for the pipeline’s costs).

Wright thanked “the many local politicians here in New York State and New York City who fought to better energize the citizens of New York, of Long Island and of broader New York State.”

“We’re gonna add to this. NESE is an awesome, absolutely awesome, step forward,” Wright added. “The energy subtraction, fear-mongering policies of the Biden administration are over.”

Alex Schott, spokesperson for the Williams Companies, wrote in an email, “We’re grateful for Gov. Hochul’s ongoing support for the NESE project, and we’re excited to be back to building in New York.”

Outside the event, about a dozen protestors associated with the Stop the Williams NESE Pipeline Coalition held signs and chanted, “No dirty pipelines! Renewable jobs!”

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Peering at New York City’s landscape more than 400 years in the past — when the marshes, ponds and streams crisscrossed our string of islands — can help planners and policymakers better understand the city’s flooding future.

Researchers at the New York Botanical Garden looked at where water used to be, where there’s water now and where — thanks to climate change — water will be in the coming years. Those places are called Blue Zones.

The five boroughs contain more than 500 of them, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the first comprehensive analysis of its kind. The Blue Zones cover more than one-fifth of New York’s land.

“Everybody was startled, including us, that it’s more than 20% of the city,” said Eric Sanderson, vice president of urban conservation at the New York Botanical Garden and an author of the paper. “That combination, you can’t really argue with it — places that were wet, are wet and will be wet in the future.”

Lucinda Royte, lead author of the paper and manager of urban conservation, data tools and outreach at the New York Botanical Garden, said the Blue Zones indicate where it’s most pressing to address flood risks and increase resiliency. 

“It can be a pretty good guide about where we’ll see flooding in the future as a result of coastal flooding from storm surge and sea level rise, and inland flooding from rainfall events,” Royte said. “It can help us plan a little bit better about where we need to make some infrastructural changes in the city before a flooding crisis happens.”

About 1.2 million people (about 12% of the city’s population) and 11% of buildings are in Blue Zones. With the report, the Botanical Garden launched a digital tool that shows block-by-block information about historical ecology, current flood vulnerability and future flood risks.

Both LaGuardia Airport and JFK Airport are located in Blue Zones, on former salt marshes and marine ecosystems that were filled in. About a third of public housing developments, home to some of the poorest New Yorkers, are in Blue Zones, too.

Royte herself lives in a Blue Zone: Gowanus, Brooklyn, which was historically a salt marsh with Gowanus Creek flowing through. The concept of Blue Zones hit home for her when Hurricane Ida brought floodwaters to her neighborhood.

“My entire block was underwater,” she said. “I saw ponds and streams and wetlands return.”

Notably, the paper notes that some of the Blue Zones will become uninhabitable in the future, which points to the urgent need to build more housing, transit and other services elsewhere in the city — a conclusion other studies have made.

‘Water Doesn’t Care’

Blue Zones raise a red flag about the scale of the flood problem New York City faces, and will face, thanks to climate change, which promises to bring higher seas, more intense storms and more rainfall in the coming years. 

“It shows how large scale this is and it lets you look at the city as a landscape,” Royte said. “We currently view the city through its political boundaries. We care about neighborhoods and zip codes, but water doesn’t care about those boundaries.”

Of the Blue Zones, nearly two-thirds of the land area is at risk of coastal flooding from storm surge and sea level rise. About 5% of the Blue Zone land is at risk of flooding from rainfall, and 36% could see both coastal and rainfall flooding.

Much of the land in the Blue Zones is public, with government entities owning about two-thirds and the Department of Parks and Recreation specifically overseeing half of that.

“It’s so obvious that investing in parks will save lives and livelihoods,” said Amy Chester, director of Rebuild By Design, who reviewed the Blue Zones paper. Her organization last year released an analysis showing a majority of city parks will be at risk of flooding.

The Parks Department — whose proposed budget falls short of what Mayor Zohran Mamdani had promised — acknowledged its role in flood management.

“By working together and integrating the latest data and best practices into our planning process, we can create a stronger, more equitable park system that protects both people and nature for generations to come,” Parks spokesperson Judd Faulkner said in a statement.

In a statement, DEP spokesperson Doug Auer called the Blue Zones analysis “a useful tool in our collaborative stormwater planning efforts,” and pointed to work the agency is doing with other agencies to “identify where public lands can serve double duty for stormwater management and help restore natural urban drainage corridors.”

Many of the initiatives to make neighborhoods more resilient to flooding — including permanently moving people away from risks, adding storm drains and building rain gardens — are in the works, prompted by disastrous flooding after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy and 2021’s Hurricane Ida.

“We found, coincidentally, when you look at places that flooded during Hurricane Sandy or Hurricane Ida, they line up pretty closely with historical hydrology,” Royte said.

The storm surge of Sandy flooded areas that had been beaches and tidal marshes, while Ida’s deluge flooded places that had been ancient ponds, wetlands and streams. 

Residents of Hollis, Queens, dealt with devastating flooding during Ida as well as during many other rainstorms, and learned their lowlying neighborhood was built atop a former pond.

The Hole, a neighborhood on the border of Queens and Brooklyn that sits below sea level, has continuously taken on water that can remain days after it rains. The city is now offering possible buyouts to residents there.

In The Bronx, the city is also working to unearth Tibbetts Brook in order to bring the subterranean waterway above ground, as it was over a century ago. That way, the brook can once again channel water, preventing it from hitting the sewer system and surrounding areas.

But Sanderson said more must be done: “I don’t think there’s any choice but to scale up. The climate is going to force our hand, and we’re already seeing that,” he said.

“You can use planning and ecosystems to help return some of that water to the sky and some to the ground and not assume all has to go through the wastewater treatment plants.”

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Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday came out with specific measures she’ll propose to state lawmakers in a bid to weaken the state’s climate law as part of the budget process.

New York is behind on implementing the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, which requires the state to drive down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and shift away from fossil fuels, touching on nearly every sector of the economy.

In an op-ed published Friday, Hochul proposed changing the law on three counts: requiring already-overdue regulations to drive down greenhouse gas emissions to be issued at 2030’s end, revising the mandates that limit how much carbon the state can spew and switching how the state counts its emissions.

Hochul emphasized she supports the climate law’s intentions, but was moving forward with affordability in mind.

“While I am still committed to working toward our targets, with all the stress our residents are under, New Yorkers expect their elected officials to prioritize affordability,” she wrote. “The fact is, we will be dealing with a White House outright hostile toward renewable energy for at least another three years, making it impossible for us to meet our targets without imposing higher costs on homeowners, renters, and businesses.”

Hochul’s op-ed follows comments she’s been making for years suggesting the state legislature needs to take another look at the climate law. Earlier this month, she pointed to a memo with cost estimates released by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to underscore additional expenses households could incur under the climate law.

It remains to be seen how, or whether, state lawmakers will give Hochul what she is looking for and amend the climate law as part of the budget, which is due by April 1. In New York State, the  often policy decisions and laws are negotiated and settled during the budget-making process as opposed to through separate bill-making.

Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not reply to requests for comment on Hochul’s proposals.

A spokesperson for Sen. Pete Harckham (D-Hudson Valley), chair of the State Senate’s environmental conservation committee, declined to comment on negotiations but pointed to a recent op-ed he penned with Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), chair of the powerful finance committee, and Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), chair of the energy committee.

“A conversation about anything other than deploying renewable power faster is a diversion from the challenging but essential work of driving down New Yorkers’ bills,” the lawmakers wrote. “There is no doubt that we are behind on our climate targets — but when you’re behind, real leaders don’t quit, they work harder.”

Krueger in a statement said she hadn’t seen “an actual written proposal” from Hochul beyond her op-ed.

“Rather than blowing up yet another budget negotiation with huge last-minute demands, let’s have a constructive conversation about the ways we can move forward together,” she said.

In an interview, Parker said he disagreed with the idea of changing the climate goals.

“There’s other ways to create affordability in the state without moving back the climate goals. I’m looking forward to the conversation with the governor, but I fundamentally have a different position on what the possibilities are and the way forward,” he said.

Minority Leader Sen. Rob Ortt (R-Niagara) criticized Hochul’s move and instead called for a full repeal: “She’s not proposing meaningful changes to Albany’s unaffordable energy policies, but meaningless delays that will do nothing to help lower New Yorker’s utility costs today or in the near term.”

Emissions Challenges

Under the current climate law, New York State must source 70% of its electricity from renewables like solar and wind by 2030, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 (and 85% by 2050).  

Hochul proposed changing the emissions limits and setting a new 2040 benchmark in her op-ed, but didn’t go into details.

The governor in 2023 unsuccessfully attempted to change the formula for how the state measures its emissions as part of the law. The change she sought — and is seeking again — would’ve made it appear as though the state was closer to achieving the climate law’s emissions reductions goals.

Those changes would be in line with how almost all other states count their emissions.

Heather Mulligan, president of the Business Council of New York, in a statement called Hochul’s proposals “reasonable and necessary corrections to avoid onerous and costly mandates based on impractical emission-reduction targets.”

Hochul also wanted to push back when rules for how to reduce emissions were due to be created — though her administration is already behind in issuing them. Environmental groups sued the state to release those regulations, and a state court judge in January directed the state to do so. 

The state is appealing the ruling. Hochul said Monday that implementing regulations as the judge directed would drive up costs for New Yorkers.

Caroline Chen, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s director of environmental justice and a co-counsel in the case, on Tuesday expressed confusion as to why Hochul was angling to make changes through the budget process. She emphasized the lawsuit aimed to get the state to “commit to bringing down emissions while protecting affordability and equity.”

The mandates of the climate law have become harder to achieve since New York’s legislature passed it in 2019. The pandemic gave rise to supply chain constraints and inflation, which drove up the costs of clean energy development. On top of that, President Donald Trump’s hostility towards renewable energy, notably with offshore wind, further stymied the state’s progress in building cleaner forms of energy.

Hochul has long been sensitive to anything that could hit New Yorkers’ wallets, including measures that could help the state reach the climate law’s targets. She has embraced an “all of the above” energy strategy that includes fossil fuels for longer than the law foresaw.

Recent events have significantly influenced the prices of fossil fuels, which show up on utility bills and drive up prices of consumer goods. This winter’s cold weather made gas and electricity bills climb, and the war in Iran has spiked the costs of oil, gasoline, diesel and other fuels.

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Data centers demand power. They guzzle water. They may hike energy bills.

In Memphis, for example, a gas-powered data center for artificial intelligence increased local air pollution, gulped about 150 homes’ worth of water in a month and could consume as much electricity as 200,000 homes in a year. In the mid-Atlantic region, data center development significantly drove up utility bills.

New York hasn’t experienced a data center boom yet, but lawmakers are looking to get ahead of a potential proliferation — with affordability at top of mind.

Data centers house machines that process and store digital information. These centers can run crypto-currency mining, AI and other computing activities — and are particularly power-hungry. 

The centers could further tax New York’s strained power grid and hit New Yorkers’ wallets. 

States like Texas and Virginia have led the way in data center expansion, with New York lagging behind. There are less than 20 large data centers around the state, according to various trackers. But New York could see major growth.

The New York State Independent System Operator (NYISO) estimates electricity demand could increase by nearly 70% by 2030, thanks to the expansion of electric heat and other electric systems in buildings, as well as large projects like data centers. Dozens of other projects have collectively requested to pull thousands of megawatts of power from the state’s grid. 

“It’s a concern because we’re not adding commensurate supply to meet that forecasted demand,” said Kevin Lanahan, vice president of external affairs at NYISO, which operates the grid. 

About 30 projects that could become possible data centers requested connections to the grid between 2020 and the end of 2025, according to an analysis by THE CITY of data from NYISO. The average size for each of those projects is nearly 300 megawatts.

For comparison, Empire Wind, the in-progress offshore wind project that has the potential to power half a million New York City homes, has a capacity of 810 megawatts.

The expansion of centers without adequate upgrades to the grid and enough energy supply could jeopardize the reliability of power. But the cost of investing to accommodate data centers could end up being passed to consumers. That’s because utilities companies like Con Edison are allowed to make a return on investments into the system that delivers the energy, which shows up as rate hikes on customer bills. 

Gas generates the majority of the city’s electricity, so as gas becomes more expensive due to increased demand, electricity bills can climb too. (While your energy bills have likely spiked this winter, data centers aren’t to blame just yet.)

Getting Ahead of the Grid 

Gov. Kathy Hochul has floated proposals to protect ratepayers from the cost of future data centers. She wants to require data centers to provide their own power so they’re not taxing the grid, or to pay a premium to make sure regular customers don’t pay more. (On the federal level, lawmakers have introduced legislation that aims to do the same thing.)

Hochul also directed the state Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities, to examine how projects with large demands for energy connect to the grid and pay for expansion.

New York lawmakers proposed a bill that would impose a moratorium on some new data centers — those over 20 megawatts — for three years, during which time the state could create regulations to address the centers.

Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), who sponsors the bill, said the moratorium would allow New York to prepare for the energy-gobbling facilities.

“It’s time to hit the pause button, give ourselves some breathing room to adopt strong policies on data centers and avoid getting caught in a bubble that will burst and leave New York utility customers footing a huge bill,” Krueger said in a statement.

More than 100 environmental and community organizations, coordinated by Food and Water Watch, signed on to a letter penned earlier this month urging for the moratorium. 

Alex Beauchamp, northeast region director at Food and Water Watch, said a moratorium would allow New York the time to approach the “thorny policy problems” posed by data centers.

“Tech is seeking to go fast, and our regulators don’t go that fast so, at a bare minimum, we’re hoping to pause to figure this out,” he said. 

But the Digital Chamber’s Digital Power Network, a coalition representing Bitcoin miners, has lobbied to oppose the moratorium, arguing the state would miss out on building important infrastructure and that data center growth could actually prove beneficial to the grid.

“If the moratorium were to pass, New York would be forfeiting one of its most critical grid assets along with the benefits associated with the industry,” said Sonya Murphy, senior policy associate at the network, in a statement. 

Hochul hasn’t said whether she supports the moratorium idea. 

New Power Generation

Most of the proposed data centers — or possible data centers, as NYISO’s data doesn’t always indicate the details of each project — are not in New York City, but upstate. Still, upstate growth of data centers and other energy-guzzling projects could affect residents of the five boroughs because the power systems are interconnected, said Lanahan, of NYISO.

“Much of the generation that New Yorkers are consuming is coming from upstate,” he said. “If there’s increased consumption and stress on the system in Westchester County or north, that can impact the price and the reliability for city residents.”

There’s one possible data center close to New York City, at the location of the former Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester County — though that plan is not set in stone, said Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs and communications at Holtec International.

O’Brien said the company inquired whether there’s enough power available for operating a data center there as part of a concept to reuse a decommissioned site, but would need to do more work and find a partner to actually move forward.

That’s the only project that has been floated in Con Ed’s territory so far, and the utility company — which serves gas and electric customers in New York City and Westchester — said it’s preparing.

“Our existing rules and processes have mechanisms in place to appropriately balance the impacts of bringing new customers onto the grid,” said Jamie McShane, a Con Ed spokesperson. “We are working with our regulator, the NYISO and other stakeholders to evaluate the impacts of large energy users on the grid, while ensuring other customers are protected from unreasonable costs.”

Vivek Shastry, a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said data centers are becoming more efficient and offer possible benefits. For instance, the excess heat data centers give off can be used to heat nearby buildings and homes.

“There has been a voluntary shift from a lot of companies: for example, Microsoft and Anthropic came out and said that they want to be a good neighbor and want to pay their fair share of the costs,” Shastry said. “But at the same time, it’s really up to the public service commissions and the utilities to determine how much of those costs and how to allocate the relevant pieces of those costs to the data centers.”

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani is continuing a part of his predecessor’s budgeting legacy: using New Yorkers’ water bills as a piggy bank for the city budget.

The Mamdani administration is following a pattern set under former Mayor Eric Adams by calling for the collection of $313 million in charges imposed on the Water Board to lease the city’s water and sewer system. Those fees get passed along to property owners as part of the rates they pay for water they use.

City lawmakers and environmental advocates roundly criticized the move, known as the “rental payment” from the board to the city government, which came to light during a City Council budget hearing Thursday. 

Councilmember James Gennaro (D-Queens), chairperson of the council’s environmental protection and waterfronts committee, called the rental payment a “scourge” and said it “really has got to go.”

The cost of covering the rental payment drives up water bills for New Yorkers — and because some of what customers pay gets routed to the city instead of the city’s environmental agency, it pulls funds away from investments into the water system itself, or from initiatives to make the city more resilient to flooding.

“You think when you write out your checks, my constituents, that you’re paying for water and sewer,” Gennaro said. “Guess what? That’s not that case. A lot of it, hundreds of millions of dollars, are going to fund other operations of the city. That is like the most regressive tax I can think of.”

Critics have described the water-rental payment as a backdoor, or hidden, property tax.

City Hall did not respond to a request for comment.

The choice to continue the rental payment comes as officials try to find solutions for a very crunched budget. The city is facing a $5.4 billion budget gap that Mamdani has threatened to close by raising property taxes by 9.5% across the board — unless Gov. Kathy Hochul agrees to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.

Much of the Department of Environmental Protection’s revenue comes from water and sewer bills — but the water-rental payment doesn’t go to the agency and is instead diverted into the city’s general fund. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio largely stopped asking for the payment in 2016. The city charged the Water Board — a group of mayoral appointees who set water and sewer rates — a rental payment only twice between then and 2024, when Adams revived the charge.

Under Adams, the Office of Budget and Management included over $1.3 billion worth of rental payments to be paid by the Water Board to the city between Fiscal Year 2024 and Fiscal Year 2028.

In 2024, the Water Board approved the biggest water rate hike in 15 years: an 8.5% increase. The rental payment that year was one of the largest drivers of the hike. The following year, the Water Board signed off on a 3.7% bump.

The Water Board will decide on the next water and sewer rate hike in the spring, following a series of public hearings.

Daniel Zarrilli, a member of the Water Board, said he would prefer the city not request the rental payment. But if the city requests it: “I strongly encourage the city to invest it into stormwater and coastal resiliency needs,” he said.

The Department of Environmental Protection in 2024 estimated it would cost $30 billion over three decades to significantly improve resiliency in areas of the city most vulnerable to flooding from heavy rains. In that time, New York City may receive as much 14% more rain each year because of climate change, according to estimates by the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

Alia Soomro, deputy director for New York City policy at the New York League of Conservation Voters, argued the rental payment diverted funds away from DEP’s resiliency work.

“This is a very poor policy decision, especially given the urgency of the climate crisis,” she said. “Capital funding for water infrastructure is urgently needed to address critical stormwater flooding, support coastal resiliency and improve water quality, etcetera.”

DEP’s ability to take in money is also compromised to another extent this year, as Mamdani’s administration won’t move forward with the lien sale while it reviews alternatives ways of collecting on unpaid property tax and water bills. 

DEP Commissioner Lisa Garcia emphasized the pause on the lien sale was temporary and the department could move forward in the meantime.

“We have other mechanisms to work with people to pay their bills,” she said.

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As the snow melts in New York, the temperature is not the only thing on the rise. Prepare for sticker shock on your utility bills, which are likely to be particularly high after a brutally cold winter. 

“Natural gas has more seasonal fluctuation, and we tend to use more in the winter,” said Sanya Carley, faculty director of Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s been profoundly cold so people are using a lot more.”

Not only are people using more, it’s more pricey — the price of energy has spiked as customers needed more to heat their homes in frigid weather. Gas is a global commodity whose price rises and falls with demand. 

National Grid’s natural gas customers set a usage record on Feb. 7.

“Extremely cold temperatures like New Yorkers have experienced this winter force heating systems to run longer and work harder to maintain their thermostat setting, which leads to overall increased energy usage and impacts costs to customers,” said Alexander Starr, a National Grid spokesperson, in a statement. 

Electric bills, too, are likely to be higher than normal. That’s because gas generates the majority of the city’s electricity — so higher prices for gas also push electric bills up. The price of natural gas has just about doubled in price since a year ago.

Con Ed said January and February saw unusually high demand for energy.

“The sustained low temperatures led people to use much more heat than usual, resulting in some of the highest gas demand in our company’s history,” said company spokesperson Jamie McShane. “Con Edison doesn’t control or profit from these supply costs. When the wholesale cost of natural gas or electricity rises, we pay more, too, and we pass that cost directly to customers without any markup.”

It’s important to note that utility companies charge customers what they pay for the price of fuels. On your utility bill, you’ll see that as the supply charge. 

“When generators pay more for fuel, wholesale prices rise, and those increases flow through to consumers,” stated a recent report by the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the grid. “Other forces — such as insurance costs, system investments, and infrastructure upgrades needed to meet growing demand — also contribute to rising electricity prices.”

Utility companies are allowed to make a profit on investments into the system that delivers the energy. On your utility bill, that’s the delivery charge.

The state Public Service Commission in January approved rate hikes for Con Ed, amounting to an average increase of about $4 per month for electric customers and about $5 to $19 per month for gas customers in New York City over three years.

While energy prices are on the rise nationally, they’ve grown at a faster rate in New York City according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Energy prices rose 6.1% in the New York metropolitan area between December 2024 and December 2025, compared to just 2.3% nationwide. 

In a recent report, city Comptroller Mark Levine pointed to energy prices — particularly electricity prices — as a major driver of local inflation.

Note that natural gas is different from gasoline or diesel — and experts say worldwide events, such as recent attacks on Iran, won’t affect the price of natural gas.

The fluctuations of gas prices are “based on the weather and almost nothing else,” said Ira Joseph, senior research associate Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. 

Efficiency is Key

Your utility bills also depend on what your home is like, its heating system and how much energy your household uses. Since those factors interact with one another and vary from building to building, it’s tough to compare bills to other people living in similar apartments, even next door or across the street.

“It’s enormously important what system you’re using, how efficient that equipment is and how energy efficient the house that you’re in is, which determines how much fuel you’ll be using,” said Chris Halfnight, CEO of the Urban Green Council.

If your landlord pays for heat, it won’t show up on your utility bill. 

In the vast majority of New York City residential buildings, boilers running on natural gas (or in some cases, oil) provide steam heating, Halfnight said.

In many buildings with electric heat, tenants themselves pay — and electricity costs more than gas.

“Switching from a boiler running on gas or oil, since the price of electricity is so much higher compared to the price of gas or oil, you may not see the savings,” said Francis Rodriguez, director of weatherization at the Association for Energy Affordability. “If you are switching from an electric heater to an electric heat pump, you’ll see savings for sure.”

What you pay on your bill comes down in part to your heating system’s efficiency and how well sealed your apartment is. The more efficient a system — and the better sealed a place is — means the heating equipment works better to maintain comfortable temperatures inside. 

Halfnight noted that tenants can control certain aspects of how energy efficient their apartment is: by installing LED lights, for instance, or doing air sealing — especially for air-conditioning units left in windows during the winter.

Behind on Bills

Higher utility bills from the winter may further squeeze the wallets of many New Yorkers.

“In the current environment of prices rising so significantly, I think a much greater proportion of the population will have a harder time paying their energy bills and may resort to unsafe behavior to cope,” Carley said, referring to people who may, for instance, use their ovens as a heating source — a dangerous choice that can lead to fires or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Already, thousands are struggling to pay bills. Over 160,000 National Grid customers are more than 60 days behind on their bills through January, to the collective tune of $161.6 million, according to data from the company. More than 403,000 Con Ed customers are more than 60 days behind on their bills, totalling $858.7 million.

Both National Grid and Con Ed offer assistance programs and payment plans for customers who need help. 

New York State Energy Research and Development compiled additional programs that can help save money on energy bills, and eligible New Yorkers can apply for the federal Home Energy Assistance Program. The nonprofit Public Utility Law Project also offers resources, including a telephone hotline for utility customers at 877-669-2572.

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New York has been falling behind on its legally-mandated climate goals. And now Gov. Kathy Hochul is indicating she’s again moving to revise the law.

The governor is now pointing to the costs that could be in store for New Yorkers, if the law — which requires the state to drive down planet-warming emissions and shift away from fossil fuels — doesn’t change.

New York City households running on natural gas could face $2,300 in additional annual costs by 2031, according to a brief memo the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released Thursday. 

The memo’s release, with that eye-popping number for escalating household bills, followed comments made last week by the governor’s budget director suggesting the law would need to be changed to protect New Yorkers from “thousands of dollars in new costs.” The memo, quickly seized upon by business groups who claim the law is expensive and impractical, was Hochul’s attempt to set the stage for negotiations towards revising the climate law.

But others, including some environmental advocates, questioned the memo’s “misleading” conclusions.

They took issue with the $2,300 headline number as the report itself notes that would decline to $1,548 with some measure of affordability rebates, or down to $864 if New York City households begin running more efficient boilers. 

The memo also notes that households could save $804 a year by switching from fossil fuels to electric and making their homes more energy efficient.

The memo did not include the underlying analysis or data and incorporates assumptions about a program that doesn’t yet exist.

The mandates of the climate law have become harder to achieve since New York’s legislature passed it in 2019. The pandemic gave rise to supply chain constraints and inflation, which drove up the costs of clean energy development. President Donald Trump’s hostility towards renewable energy, notably offshore wind, further stymied the state’s progress.

The memo called deploying clean energy “infeasible” at the pace required to achieve the climate law’s targets, and said it would be “difficult to envision” how the state could quickly spend the $28 billion in revenue a program could generate.

The law requires New York State to source 70% of its electricity from renewables like solar and wind by 2030, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 (and 85% by 2050). New York is behind on both counts.

“For us to meet the goals on the timeframe that was set by the legislature, there’s going to be enormous costs to families,” Hochul said Monday after an unrelated press conference.

Hochul has long been sensitive to anything that could hit New Yorkers’ wallets, including measures that could help the state reach the climate law’s targets. She has embraced an “all of the above” energy strategy that includes fossil fuels for longer than the law foresaw.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates and others say the memo’s cost projections are misleading, and point out that a prolonged reliance on fossil fuels like gas and oil — which, when burned, emit greenhouse gases — drive energy prices up.

“It’s not the climate law, it’s the gas!” a group of environmental advocates chanted at a rally in City Hall Park on Monday.

Cap and Invent?

The climate law specifies the state must come up with regulations to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. The memo references a cap-and-invest program, which would raise money for climate-related projects by charging some entities that emit a significant amount of gas for the emissions they spew, with a declining cap to drive down carbon over time. 

The program could also include rebates to low-income utility customers to offset any hike in bills that might come as a result.

Hochul herself proposed the cap-and-invest program in 2023. Two years later she largely abandoned the idea and her administration blew past a deadline in the climate law mandating the creation of regulations to slash emissions.

That means the cap-and-invest program does not yet exist, despite its inclusion in the cost memo. The state has full control of designing a cap-and-invest program — or other regulations — to drive down emissions and consider household costs.

Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, pointed out that the estimates are based on several assumptions about the structure of a cap-and-invest program and the state’s future energy mix.

“The devil is in the unseen details. Trying to seriously critique this [memo] is like shadow boxing,” Gerrard wrote in an email.

Charles Komanoff, an economist and policy analyst whose work has focused on transportation and carbon pricing, called the memo “misleading.” He said a cap-and-invest program would increase fossil fuel prices — akin to congestion pricing imposing a toll on drivers — but should use that revenue to benefit New Yorkers.

“It would be as if we charged all those motorists to drive into the Manhattan congestion zone — which is a good thing because there are so many externalities associated with that — but then did nothing with the revenues and flushed them down the drain,” Komanoff said, rather than having the congestion pricing revenue go back into the MTA to upgrade the transit system. 

Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of Environmental Advocates New York, said the memo was “misleading” and a “scare tactic.”

The memo showed a cap-and-invest program “devoid of all the guardrails and cost protections, no price ceilings, no consumer protections or other kinds of material cost controls,” she said. “If you say that everybody’s going to drive a car, but everybody has to drive a top-end Rolls-Royce, that’s the scenario that they have priced out.”

Sounding an Alarm?

Environmental advocates have pushed New York State to create and implement the climate law’s emission-cutting regulations — but to do so in a way that considers costs to New Yorkers.

Some green groups a year ago sued the state Department of Environmental Conservation to release regulations to bring down carbon emissions, as required by the climate law. 

In October, a state court judge ruled New York was violating the climate law and directed it to release the regulations. The state is appealing that ruling.

“The lawsuit doesn’t call for cap-and-invest,” said Caroline Chen, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s director of environmental justice and a co-counsel in the case. “The lawsuit called for regulations that work, and the law requires affordability to be part of the consideration. The DEC has the power to design a program that works.”

Hochul has not publicly proposed any concrete changes to the climate law, though she has been open about seeking to change it — and she would need buy-in from state lawmakers to do so. She recently began conversations with lawmakers to do just that, POLITICO reported.

“What I’m trying to do is just sound the alarm right now. I want people to know, what is the impact of the continuation of this law,” Hochul told reporters Monday. “If people understood the effects of this, I think the legislature would be very willing to have these conversations about how to make adjustments.”

During budget negotiations in 2023, Hochul unsuccessfully attempted to change the formula used to count emissions in New York to bring it inline with 48 other states. The change would’ve brought the state closer to the climate law’s emissions goals, meaning action to cut emissions wouldn’t have to be as drastic or quick. Other changes could potentially reduce costs related to the law, according to NYSERDA.

Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not reply to requests for comment, though Stewart-Cousins mentioned last week said lawmakers aren’t in conversation about changing the law.

Sen. Liz Krueger, who chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said rolling back the climate law won’t bring prices down.

“What I’ve told the governor is that I and many of my colleagues are eager to work with her to actually deliver on the promise of CLCPA, but we have no interest in surrendering when we’ve hardly even begun to fight,” she said in a statement.

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An offshore wind project that would bring renewable power to over half a million New York City homes could be dead in the water.

Work on Empire Wind, an in-progress project developed by the company Equinor, has been on hold since the Trump administration “paused” the leases for it — and four other projects, including Sunrise Wind in New York — just days before Christmas.

Because of that pause, no work in federal waters can happen right now. And Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables America, said the project would likely face cancellation if construction could not resume by Friday.

That’s because a special vessel used for lifting very heavy equipment can only be at the project site, about 15 miles off the coast of Long Island, until February. Then it won’t be available for another year. If that timeline is thrown off, “cascading delays” would jeopardize the project.

“It’s critical that those activities are able to continue for vessel availability that we have and specifically being able to install the offshore substation, which is a very critical piece of equipment,” Morris said. “Our time of being able to do that is very limited.”

Equinor took to court to request a preliminary injunction, but the federal judge who heard the case Wednesday did not make a ruling. The judge will issue an order on Thursday. Meanwhile, hundreds of workers remain in limbo, waiting to start jobs at sea.

One of those workers is electrician Sally McKleinfeld, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, McKleinfeld underwent special training to be able to work on Empire Wind, but can’t get a deployment date because of the work stoppage.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” she said. “Our job is risky on a good day. There’s environmental risk and our particular trade is very dangerous. When you couple that with the danger of being at sea, it’s an exceptional little pool of people who are excited — not just excited but thrilled — to do this … I’m willing to walk away from my kids, go on a boat and make the future happen.”

The job would require McKleinfeld, 48, to live on a ship for three weeks, away from her husband and two children. But without a date, the family can’t prepare for her absence.

John Blanchfield, a rigger and member of the Dock Builders Union Local 1565, was scheduled to go back out to sea on Monday to continue working on Empire Wind. He’d lived on a ship for several weeks at a time between last summer and the end of the year to assist with lifting the equipment and he loved the work, enough to center the rest of his career around offshore wind.

“The uncertainty for the future is there now. Am I gonna continue in the offshore program?” he said. “When you have this opportunity in front of you and it’s taken away for no reason, it’s quite disturbing.”

At home in New Jersey without pay, the 47-year-old has turned down other job offers, anticipating he’d go back to sea. 

“Now I’m sitting here like, should I have said yes?” Blanchfield said.

He was supposed to be mobilized to the heavy-lifting vessel that’s only available to Equinor until February — and he still hopes it happens. He enjoyed being out on the water, witnessing scenes that he said inspired “awe.”

“It’s hard to describe: the 300-foot monopiles get lifted into the air like it’s nothing,” Blanchfield said, referring to the massive tubes that serve as the turbine’s foundation. “The sheer scope of it becomes incredibly breathtaking.”

Flat Air

Empire Wind is not the only New York offshore wind project affected by the Trump administration’s stop-work order: Sunrise Wind, developed by Orsted, was also caught in the crosshairs. Three additional projects serving other East Coast states were paused, too. 

The Department of the Interior had cited unspecified national security risks in its order.

Both Orsted and Equinor — as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James — took to court earlier this month to challenge the lease suspensions. On Monday, Danish developer Orsted won a preliminary injunction for a project it’s working on to serve Connecticut and Rhode Island, allowing construction to continue — though the time frame for the Sunrise Wind court case remains unclear.

“New Yorkers deserve clean, reliable energy, good-paying jobs, and a government that follows the law,” James said in a statement. “These projects were carefully reviewed and already under construction when the federal government pulled the plug without explanation. This reckless decision puts workers, families, and our climate goals at risk.”

Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind are projected to generate enough power for about a million homes when they are in operation, targeted for 2027. The power from the wind projects is especially important for New York City, as the electricity grid could face reliability challenges in the coming years.

Sunrise Wind is almost halfway to completion. Each day the project is delayed costs $1 million, and the full cancellation of the project could result in losses of over $8 billion, according to a court filing.

Empire Wind is 60% complete, and Equinor has spent more than $4 billion on the project, the company disclosed in a court filing. 

Equinor is also developing the city-owned South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, a port in Sunset Park that would support Empire Wind’s operations and maintenance. The terminal, at 90% completion, is also where the power from the wind project out in the ocean connects to the New York City grid.

Equinor said that if the Empire Wind does not move forward, the terminal’s future is in the air — though the company has been looking for other users to lease the space for activities not related to wind.

McKleinfeld, the electrician, has been working on site at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. But as the project wraps up, she’s looking forward to working on the wind farm itself. 

She has a silver keychain etched with a wind turbine that she holds on to as a sign of hope that she can live out the adventure she’s trained for.

“Once the turbines are erected, I would love to be the one up in the nacelle, the head of the wind turbine behind the propellers,” McKleinfeld said. “To me, that is so cool. You’re on top of the world and you’re doing what you’re trained to do.”

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