Justin Wood, director of Policy at NYLPI, and Sarah Blas, executive director of Staten Island Therapeutic Garden, published an op-ed in SI Live which lays out the issues of New York choosing to maintain some state’s most harmful oil and gas power plants and not updating commercial buildings to renewable energy.

“Because New York is not bringing new renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and battery storage, online fast enough, the state will now consider delaying the retirement of the most inefficient and polluting oil and gas power plants.

Not only are these plants terrible for developing minds and our overall health — they’re also bad for our wallets. A coalition of environmental justice groups found that ConEd paid over $422 million in 2019 alone to the owners of these infrequently used peaker plants just to keep them online and ready to fire up — a cost passed on to ratepayers that could have been better spent building cheaper clean energy options for our city.”