Background: Thermal Energy Networks (TENs)

Last year, the State legislature passed a law requiring each of the seven largest electricity and gas utilities to design and construct between one and five pilot thermal energy networks, or TENs. TENs are extremely efficient systems that connect many buildings and sources and sinks of thermal energy (like wastewater, or heat from the subway, or excess heat from the refrigerators in a grocery store), capturing that otherwise wasted energy and delivering it to homes and businesses that need it. This super-efficient system to provide heating and cooling among users requires NO FOSSIL FUELS and can reduce electricity use by 80% or more. AMAZING.

The Law requiring utilities to build pilot TENs

The 2022 law, called the Utility Thermal Energy Networks and Jobs Act (UTENSA), was supported by climate groups, utilities, and unions. It’s a great law that will jumpstart the widespread use of this excellent technology and reduce the need for fossil gas and electricity. It also requires that each utility build at least one TEN pilot in a “Disadvantaged Community,” (DAC). The area around the North Brooklyn Pipeline and the LNG facility is a DAC: A pilot should be built in a community so profoundly harmed by National Grid’s expansion of expensive fracked gas infrastructure for decades. These residents deserve to have the health, affordability, safety, and comfort benefits of thermal energy networks.

National Grid’s unacceptable proposal

The utilities had to submit their proposals for pilots by January 9, 2023. Most of the utilities proposed reasonable, sometimes exciting, projects. Not so National Grid in Brooklyn. They proposed a very small pilot project for a NYCHA complex adjacent to Starrett City in Brooklyn that would only do half the job of heating and cooling buildings.

The pilot would harvest heat from only two sources, both nearby businesses in strip malls, and would provide only heat, not cooling, because, the company says, there are “considerable upgrades required to add cooling to these specific buildings.”Residents would have to continue to use expensive, inefficient window air conditioners. This absurd proposal eliminates fully half the value of TEN technology —cheap, efficient cooling—and shifts the cost of air conditioning to residents. And as summers get longer and hotter every year, the lives of these NYCHA residents will be at ever greater risk. The utility should have considered various projects and rejected any that, like this one, don’t meet the requirements for an effective, year-round TEN. The Public Service Commission must reject National Grid’s Brooklyn proposal and, we believe, penalize the company for submitting a proposal that fails to meet the most basic requirements for a pilot.

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