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The AQI is dropping in New York City and Boston ... again.
One thing New Yorkers could always reliably lord over urban Californians was our air. No, our city isn’t perfect — we manage our trash by piling it on the curb and have this pesky thing called “winter” — but at least in recent years our metro area beat San Francisco, Sacramento, and smoggy Los Angeles when it came to the particulates we inhale.
It brings me no joy to report, then, that this spring, tides have turned. Or at least the winds have. East Coasters have evidently inhaled more smoke than most Californians in 2023 due to a quiet start to the wildfire season out West and an explosive start to the one upwind of us in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and now Nova Scotia.
Here’s what the historic AQI has looked like in New York since late April (the yellow spikes mark smoky days):
The historic air quality graph for New York City in spring 2023.IQAir
And here’s what it’s looked like in Boston:
The historic air quality graph for Boston in spring 2023.IQAir
By comparison, here is San Francisco:
The historic air quality graph for San Francisco in spring 2023.IQAir
And Sacramento (note the AQI scale here has changed on the left to out of 50):
The historic air quality graph for Sacramento in spring 2023.IQAir
Though the air quality in Los Angeles has been significantly worse than the AQI in New York or Boston this spring, the yellow “moderate” AQI columns below overlap with a period of heavy urban pollution, rather than wildfire smoke. The yellow columns on the East Coast AQI charts, by contrast, match periods when wildfire smoke blew in from Canada.
The historic air quality graph for L.A. in spring 2023.IQAir
New Yorkers might be surprised to hear they’ve experienced more smoked-tinted sunrises and sunsets this year than Californians, but it checks out: There have been no major (more than 1,000 acres) fires in California yet in 2023. While that might seem unusual, it isn’t; what is unusual are the years like 2021, when the season started in early spring. But 2023 is so far looking to be an average year for California wildfires, which means large burns and regional smoke pollution aren’t expected in the Golden State until late summer and early fall (of course, an El Niño could throw all of this into question).
Meanwhile, in Canada, it is fire season — and it’s been an especially bad one. Almost 5 million acres have already burned, with Alberta on track to have its worst fire year ever. Though smoke from the Canadian fires has blown into a number of northern U.S. states, including Washington and Montana, the jet stream generally carries air east, with some particulate matter making it as far as Boston and New York. (Winds have likewise prevented Canadian wildfire smoke from making it as far southwest as California, hence the unexpected smoke disparity). Over the weekend, a new fire also started in Nova Scotia, causing some 16,000 evacuations around Halifax; the wind has blown much of that smoke southwest, with residents of Connecticut and Massachusetts reporting on Tuesday that they could smell and even taste the smoke.
\u201cSMOKE PLUME...\nFrom Nova Scotia #wildfires creating hazy skies over Boston... sky is much bluer over Worcester. Forecast details coming up at noon on #WCVB\u201d— Cindy Fitzgibbon (@Cindy Fitzgibbon) 1685461877
\u201cAfternoon update... smoke plume continues to move west. There will be about a 4 hour period of reduced air quality. You may smell smoke as this passes through and some fire departments have fielded calls from people wondering what it is. #fox61\u201d— Ryan Breton (@Ryan Breton) 1685460842
The smoke from Canada is also, of course, causing the air quality across the East Coast to plunge. This is not in and of itself a rare occurrence: In 2021, smoke from fires in California likewise caused New York City to experience its worst AQI in 15 years.
East Coast residents may nevertheless feel — incorrectly — that they’re isolated from the dangers of wildfires. In truth, roughly three-quarters of smoke-related asthma cases and deaths occur east of the Rocky Mountains, one study found, due to both population density and wind patterns. Another pre-print study by Stanford researchers that was recently referenced by David Wallace-Wells in The New York Times found similarly that 60 percent of the smoke impact from U.S. wildfires occurs in a different state than the one where the fire is actually burning. Separately, a University of Washington study found that people were 1% more likely to die from “nontraumatic” causes like a heart attack or stroke on a day when they were exposed to wildfire smoke — and 2% more likely the day after.
New Yorkers live in the superior coastal city, but we shouldn’t get too smug about our air. Thinking we’re somehow immune to the West’s smoke problems is patently false
and getting falser. Besides, why should Angelenos get to have all the fun? It’s only fair that we get to obsess over our PurpleAir score, too.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.