Comptroller Report Affirms City Properties are Golden Opportunity for Public Renewables as NYC Experiences Summer of Climate Change Hell

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, July 23, 2026

Comptroller Report Affirms City Properties are Golden Opportunity for Public Renewables as NYC Experiences Summer of Climate Change Hell

New York, New York – New York City Comptroller Mark Levine said that the City is underutilizing public assets like municipal rooftops, parking lots, fleet depots, wastewater facilities, and other public properties for renewable energy infrastructure like solar and battery storage, which is desperately needed as the climate crisis worsens.

In a new report, the Comptroller warned that renewable energy is not being developed fast enough and proposes building distributed energy resources on City properties as a solution to not only meet the energy gap, but also lower unaffordable energy bills. A draft report from New York’s grid operator last month said that with the current slow buildout of renewables under the Kathy Hochul administration, the state will only reach 40 percent by 2030 and could face blackouts in the future.

Alex Patterson, Campaign Coordinator for Public Power NY, said: “As we experience heatwaves, wildfire smoke, flooding and all manner of climate change hell in New York City this summer, the Comptroller’s report affirms what we’ve been saying for years: public spaces are a golden opportunity for public renewables. Our communities need affordable and clean energy, and we can build that energy today across all five boroughs on City properties.”

The New York budget approved this year includes $100 million for public renewables, a bright spot amidst Hochul’s devastating rollbacks to New York’s climate law. New Yorkers are calling on the state to build at least 15 gigawatts of renewable projects by 2030.

After a powerful, four year-long campaign, New Yorkers won the most transformational climate and green jobs bill in the nation in May 2023 with the passage of Build Public Renewables Act, which authorizes New York Power Authority to build and own renewable energy projects.

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Note to the editor:

About Public Power NY

As chronicled in the new book “Organize or Burn.” Public Power NY is a movement fighting to ensure New York effectively carries out the Build Public Renewables Act by building 15 Gigawatts of public renewables by 2030. Hailed as the first statewide Green New Deal law, BPRA was written by PPNY and passed in 2023 thanks to four years of organizing by a multiracial, multi-generational movement of climate and advocacy organizations, labor unions representing millions of New Yorkers and tens of thousands of New Yorkers who have taken action from upstate, downstate, and everywhere in between. With federal climate action off the table, BPRA has enabled NY to not just play defense against Trump, but lead the way the way FDR created NYPA to do.