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New York’s Attentive Energy is now on pause, meaning more pollution, stalled plans, and a tighter margin for error.
As soon as Donald Trump was declared the winner of November’s presidential election, climate advocates vowed to continue making progress at the state and local level. But some local projects may still depend too much on federal policy to move forward.
The president-elect’s influence has already put a highly anticipated plan to convert New York City’s biggest power plant into a renewable energy hub on shaky ground. Central to the conversion is a 1,400-megawatt offshore wind farm called Attentive Energy developed by TotalEnergies. Trump, a longtime critic of the industry, has made vague threats to “end” offshore wind “on day one.” While that overstates his capabilities, his administration will, at the very least, have the power to slow the processing of permits.
The regulatory uncertainty was enough to convince Patrick Pouyanne, the CEO of TotalEnergies, to put Attentive Energy on pause, he said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London, according to Bloomberg — though he left open the possibility of reviving it “in four years.”
That’s bad news for the Ravenswood Generating Station in Long Island City, Queens. Ravenswood consists of three steam turbines built in the 1960s that run mostly on natural gas, though sometimes also on oil, plus a natural gas combined cycle unit built in 2004. Together, they emitted nearly 1.3 million metric tons of CO2 in 2023, or about 8% of the city’s carbon emissions from electricity production, while representing more than 20% of the city’s local generating capacity. Ravenswood is also situated across the street from the largest public housing project in the country, and has spewed pollution into the area colloquially referred to as “asthma alley” for decades.
Rise Light and Power, the company that owns the plant, has said it will redress those harms to the community by transforming the site into “Renewable Ravenswood.” The aspiration includes retiring the three 1960s-era generators and replacing them with offshore wind, battery energy storage, and additional renewable energy delivered from upstate New York via a new transmission line. Long term, the company says it will repurpose the plant’s cooling infrastructure to provide clean heating and cooling to buildings in the neighborhood.
Members of the community and local political leaders celebrated the proposal and showed up at rallies and public hearings to support it. Rise Light and Power also incorporated clean energy job training into the plan and earned the support of the union workers who operate the plant. The environmental group Earthjustice recently cited Renewable Ravenswood in a state filing as a shining example of “a more community-centered approach to energy planning.”
The website for Renewable Ravenswood declares that the plan “starts with offshore wind,” and says that “Attentive Energy One is the first step.” When Attentive Energy submitted its initial bid for a power contract with the state last year, Rise Light and Power CEO Clint Plummer told the local outlet City Limitsthat the wind farm “essentially unlocks ‘Renewable Ravenswood.’”
Now, it's unclear when the promised air quality benefits and jobs will materialize.
When I hopped on the phone with Plummer, the Ravenswood CEO, last week, he downplayed the implications of the pause.
“I don’t think it changes that much,” he told me, stressing that “project delays don't impact our commitment to the vision” and that “it’s simply part of the process of developing these large scale energy infrastructure projects.” Plummer said the company could continue to make progress on permitting, engineering, and other related work on the site and in the community in the meantime. Since New York state has significantly more control over onshore renewables and transmission, he said, it may be possible to move more quickly on those.
The pause on Attentive Energy may have come with or without Trump — the project, which is a joint venture between Rise Light and Power, TotalEnergies, and Corio, had already withdrawn its revised bid for a contract to sell power into New York’s energy market in October. When I asked Attentive for clarification, however, representatives didn’t respond.
The wind farm pause is the third big setback to the company’s replacement plans in as many years.
The first effort to bring clean energy to Ravenswood was a 316-megawatt battery project the New York Public Service Commission approved in 2019. It was slated to be completed by April 2021, but by January of that year, the company had not yet secured an offtake agreement with Con Edison, the local utility, and so asked for a three-year extension. The development still has not broken ground. “Our project, and most like it that have been proposed in New York City, are awaiting the State’s expected battery procurement next year,” a spokesperson told me when I asked for a status update. “We expect that projects that received State incentives through that program will likely be able to proceed to construction quickly.”
The company also submitted a bid to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority in May of 2021 to build a transmission line called the Catskills Renewable Connector that would be capable of delivering 1,200 megawatts of renewable energy from upstate solar and wind farms to the Ravenswood site, meeting up to 15% of the city’s electricity needs. But the agency passed over the proposal in favor of two other transmission lines — Clean Path New York, which would bring renewable power to the city from Western New York, and the Champlain Hudson Power Express, which would deliver hydropower from Canada. (While construction on the latter project is well underway, Clean Path was cancelled the day before Thanksgiving.)
“We weren't selected then, but we’ve continued to mature and advance that project,” Plummer told me, regarding the Catskills line. “All these projects take a very long period of time to realize.”
The only aspect of Renewable Ravenswood that’s still alive and kicking, at least publicly, is the Queensborough Renewable Express, a set of high-voltage power lines that would connect the site to any future offshore wind farms in New York Harbor. The company is currently awaiting approval on a key permit for the line from the New York Public Service Commission. But while much of the project is located within the jurisdiction of New York, part of it will also need federal approvals.
Plummer may not be too concerned about the wind farm’s delay, but a freeze on offshore wind development for the next four years would further stretch New York’s already strained climate goals.
New York law requires the state to get 70% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% from zero-emissions sources by 2040. The most recent progress report on those goals, compiled by the New York Power Authority, found that the state had enough renewable energy operating and contracted so far to supply about 44% of expected demand in 2030.
A separate state analysis showed that offshore wind would play a key role in reaching the target, with an expected 6 gigawatts of offshore wind generation getting New York about 15% of the way there. But so far, the state has finalized contracts for only about 1.7 gigawatts. Though New York has several additional contracts pending awards, none of those potential projects has yet submitted construction plans to the federal Bureau of Ocean Management. If that office freezes its offshore wind work for the next four years, it’s possible none of them will be able to start construction until the 2030s at the earliest.
“Four years may not be significant for project development time frames,” Daniel Zarrilli, the former chief climate policy advisor for the city of New York, told me. “But the state has these 2030 and 2040 goals, and so many pieces of what makes up the ability to hit those goals are under stress. So it’s certainly not good news.”
New Yorkers aren’t the only ones who will be affected by the pause. Attentive Energy was also working on two additional offshore wind projects that would send power to New Jersey. The developer had already secured a contract to sell power into that state from a 1.3-gigawatt project called Attentive Energy Two. In July, it submitted a bid to New Jersey’s fourth offshore wind solicitation for an additional, unnamed 1.3-gigawatt project. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is expected to reach a decision on that solicitation this month.
I reached out to TotalEnergies to ask whether all three projects were paused or just the New York one, but the company said it would not comment on Pouyanne’s speech. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities also did not respond as to whether Attentive had pulled either its awarded contract or bid.
It’s true that developing these projects takes a long time, and that anyone excited about Renewable Ravenswood should not have expected any new clean power to come into the site until the end of this decade, anyway. But further delays could have real consequences. “Any of these projects faltering is just going to keep New York City reliant on an aging and dirty fossil fleet,” said Zarrilli. The city is in a hole, he said, after the Indian Point nuclear plant closed and made it even more reliant on natural gas for electricity.
On my call with Plummer, he emphasized several times that the city has “the thinnest reserve margins we’ve had in decades” — in other words, it doesn’t have much wiggle room to meet increases in electricity demand. Rise Light and Power has already shut down 17 small gas “peaker” plants that were previously part of Ravenswood to make room for new renewable energy infrastructure. The city will be in better shape in 2026, assuming the Champlain Hudson Power Express finishes on time, according to the New York grid operator NYISO. But by the early 2030s, when additional peaker plants are expected to be shut down due to pollution regulations, New York could be back on thin ice.
By then, the steam turbines at Ravenswood will be nearly 70 years old. Unless significant additional generation comes online by then, Rise Light and Power could be forced to re-invest in those gas generators rather than retire them. “It’d be terrible if they were forced to make that choice in the future,” said Zarrilli.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.