To reach 70% renewable energy supply within the Hudson Valley by 2030, we need effective approaches to build public support for sites and align siting decisions with the utilities’ planning for grid investments.  Tools and approaches have been tested and show promise:  

• Scenic Hudson’s How to Solar Now toolkit can be used throughout the region for analyzing potential sites;

• Ulster County’s “70 x 30” project shows how municipalities can be supported in using that tool and identifying renewable energy sites, a model that can be adapted in other counties or sub-regional areas

• Utilities are beginning to develop new approaches for integrating solar and battery storage with energy efficiency and smart controls, in order to integrate the intermittent renewable power into their distribution systems without prohibitive cost.  The US Department of Energy’s Connected Communities program has funded demonstration projects around the country.   Hudson Valley and New York utilities need to make concrete plans and begin piloting approaches that can be scaled. 

WHAT IF:

In the remainder of 2024, two or three additional counties take an interest in 70 x 30  projects…..  and identify sites in the first quarter of 2025?

While Central Hudson develops a method for assessing where and how they can accelerate grid investments where there is active demand to build, and is able to make it work with a few sites in Ulster County?

And other utilities take notice.  County executive leadership does too.   A symposium is held in the spring of 2025, “Utilities of the Future: How We Get There.”  Opportunities are identified, and utilities begin to adapt.  As additional communities identify their renewable energy sites, momentum builds to make this work…

Is this our pathway to building out renewable energy across the Hudson Valley to achieve 70% of supply from nearby sources by 2030?  

BUILDINGS

If New York aims to have 1 – 2 million buildings electrified and renewably powered by 2030, what is the Hudson Valley’s share?  Our population is around 2 million of the state’s 19, around 10%.  What would it take to decarbonize 100,000 – 200,000 buildings – let’s say 150,000 – in the next seven years?  

Clearly, all years are not created equally.   Right now, groundwork is being laid to scale up the market in a coherent, inclusive way, through the creation of outreach, financing and work force development programs.  The Clean Energy Hubs are tasked with assisting the roughly 35% of our population that resides in disadvantaged communities, people with low incomes and renters; they are actively testing ways to meet people where they are.  Meanwhile, plenty of people with financial resources and curiosity are switching to solar, heat pumps and electric vehicles, proof of concept and a growing market.

WHAT IF: 

The Clean Energy Hubs’ network is expanded, and actively supported by mission-aligned organizations that would amplify  their message with education and outreach programs including a media channel for case studies, green home tours and group purchase discounts, with creativity sparking more creativity? What if the message, “We can do this” moved through many many touch points in the community, so that information, success stories and friendly financing could be accessed at the bank, the gym, the library and more?

What if the banks carrying energy loans through the federal Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Fund launched a high-profile marketing campaign with extremelly low-interest loans for retrofits?

And could an initial experiment or two to demonstrate neighborhood-scale decarbonization be funded in 2025 and built by 2028, with other developers following after the economics are figured out?   Suppose state and private funding be leveraged to incorporate district scale renewables and resilience into campuses, institutions like hospitals and libraries, and Downtown Revitalization projects in the late 2020s so that, at least, many more neighborhoods have access to some supply of resilient power and these technologies are seen in many population centers.   

Is this the combination of developments that moves us into exponential growth of building and neighborhood electrification to decarbonize 150,000 buildings by 2030?     

TRANSPORTATION

Electrifying the complex, high-tech system of transportation is an enormous undertaking, especially for large and specialized vehicles.  The conditions needed for success are not in place consistently.  One obvious example is adequate charging infrastructure, even for passenger EVs;  for transit and school buses and trucks these needs are or pronounced, but they can be addressed at the level of entire fleets, once a second condition is established:  comfort with the technology and business case, and political will to move forward.

Electric passenger cars are a growing slice of the marketplace, thanks in part to the coordinated outreach activities of community organizations and the improved marketing by dealers. Electrification of additional segments of the market – such as buses, trucks, and specialized vehicles – needs more problem-solving attention.  

WHAT IF:

Climate Smart and Clean Energy Community groups continue supporting consumers’ choice of electric with Ride and Drives, dealer relationship building and filling charging gaps, but directed primary attention to building commitment and understanding among school districts, municipal fleet managers, county transit agencies and others who will manage the transition for these institutional customers.   Suppose these activities help 1/3 of school districts and municipal fleet managers to plan for electrification by 2026, the next 1/3 by 2028 and the rest by 2034.  Could regional collaboration lead to access to federal funds for charging and grid upgrades to support this electrification so that 1/3 of our transit and school bus fleets are electric by 2030 and the rest by 2035

Micro-transit is planned, tested and popularized with support from New York’s Clean Mobility funding program and private businesses, some of which go on to develop bike fleets for rent or pedi-cab services.   What if community organizations promoting more walking and biking engage their communities, as the Regional Connector project has done with widespread bike ride events and bike repair classes?  Might the downtowns of small cities such as Kingston, Beacon and Hudson become initial hubs where cycling and walking are the norm, and eventually serve as models for other communities?      

Are these the activities that – if scaled up and continued persistently – will put us on track to electrifying the major components of the transportation system through 2030 and beyond? 

MATERIALS MANAGEMENT

The materials management system is fragmented, under-resourced,  often reactive to market conditions and limited in its ability to build participation.  Breaking out of a constraining system and designing new approaches is necessary to make circularity the new norm.  This is best done through collaboration on a meaningful scale – arguably the Hudson Valley bio-region and its downstream sister, New York City.   A regional Circular Economy Strategic Plan is needed, and will be developed in 2025 with support from Sustainable Hudson Valley.   County, state and private organizations representing necessary services and markets will be encouraged to participate.  One major type of material at a time will be considered as a resource rather than a waste, beginning with strategic, high-volume materials including construction and demolition waste, textiles, and organics. 

WHAT IF: 

Key stakeholders came together and created a Circular Economy Strategic Plan for the Hudson Valley in 2025, securing commitments of a majority of county recycling and recovery organizations to participate.

• Infrastructure needs were identified in 2025 and fundraising seriously commenced in 2026, with the goal of having upgraded physical infrastructure at participating Resource Recovery Agencies online in the 2028 – 2030 range and a system for decentralized collection infrastructure for priority materials streams such as textiles and organics developed in 2026 and implemented by 2030.

• Special catalytic projects were identified in the Plan and launched in the 2025 – 28 range, including one or more Reuse Innovation Centers to capture construction and demolition waste and a Sustainable Fashion Collaborative to promote greatly increased textile recovery, reuse and recycling.

LAND, WATER, AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY

Across the many aspects of land, water, agriculture and forestry that must be addressed in light of climate change, the connecting themes include expanded planning capacity, political will, and cross-issue coordination.  A common principle connecting watershed planning, thriving and regenerative farms, healthy forests, and land conservation is renewed commitment to compact development, which exists in some communities but must be much more widespread, especially in communities near highways and transit hubs where development pressures are greatest  Hudson Valley organizations devoted to land protection, agriculture, forestry and water resources should develop a new strategic alliance in 2024-25 to re-inspire political will and technical capacity at the local level for focused development that protects open space, water resources, farms and forests.  The core work of this alliance should include education and training of citizen advocates as well as elected officials and municipal staffs, and catalytic projects such as: 

• Helping clusters of suburban and semi-rural towns to develop climate-informed comprehensive plans;

• Development of a methodology for climate-informed watershed planning, and support for rolling it out starting with a motivated watershed community;

• Development of resources to help farm enterprises use soil health enhancements to improve yields and add new revenue streams while sequestering carbon; 

• Support for renewable energy site identification focusing on already-disturbed lands by using a tool like HowToSolarNow and supporting cohorts of municipalities in developing sites identified this way;

• Proactive identification of appropriate sites for district geothermal systems, microgrids, energy storage systems, and other renewable energy infrastructure;

• Documentation and replication of agri-voltaics demonstration projects at a wide variety of scales, beginning with a program to promote energy self-sufficiency on farms themselves; 

• Support for projects implementing the Hudson Valley Affordable Housing and Conservation Strategy;

• Monitoring initial demonstration projects in carbon removal on working lands, and working to identify robust voluntary carbon markets to develop revenue streams