New York

The Somerset County Operating Plant, the state’s last coal generator, will become the site of a new energy-data hub, and its closure has raised possibilities around local utility-scale renewable investment.

The operator of the last two coal-fired power plants in the state is proposing that they be turned into data centers that will employ 30-40 people in jobs paying $40,000-$60,000.

In upstate New York, community advocates of various stripes are pressing for public transparency around the cleanup and redevelopment of the defunct Huntley Generating Station, which must proceed “in a way that both protects and includes the public whose members will have little choice but to live with the results.” Huntley, emblematic of an increasingly uncompetitive U.S. coal-fired electricity-generation fleet, closed two years ago this month.

Pushing back against new federal policies aimed at propping up the old U.S. energy economy, local governments are crafting their own electricity-generation strategies, note the authors: “2018 is shaping up to be a year when neighborhoods, towns and cities take control over their own energy destinies, working to promote a just transition to clean energy for all, regardless of income, race or zip code

In Grand Island, N.Y., planners are proceeding with an initiative to build a 20-megawatt solar park across the Niagara River from the defunct coal-fired Huntley Power Generating Station. “To have this type of change where we can have all this electricity, all this power and not put anyone’s life at risk or threaten anyone’s health is kind of an amazing thing,” the town supervisor said.

PUSH Buffalo, a community group focused on urban development, is promoting career development in the growing clean energy economy “as the world moves to more efficient, renewable, distributed energy sources.”

The president of an upstate New York teachers’ association explains how the town of Tonawanda united educational interests, government leaders, labor, and other activists “to close the revenue gap” after NRG closed the Huntley Power Generating Station.