“The City That Never Sleeps” Just Found another Reason to Stay Up and Celebrate

With global warming on everyone’s mind, the world –wide initiative to reduce carbon emissions is truly a hot topic. New York, known for being one of the more polluted areas, is taking new measures to help restore a bit more green into our country. On July 8th, Governor Cuomo announced solar growth of more than 300% from 2011 to 2014 in New York State.” To help you understand how impressive this statistic is, New York’s solar growth rate is twice the rate of U.S. solar growth overall, and thus this is great progress for the Big Apple. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to curb New York State’s carbon emissions could make achieving 20% solar energy by 2025 a whole lot more realistic. Think of it this way: that’s as we took three million cars off the road, putting NY more than halfway to the renewable energy benchmark set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to meet the goals of the Clean Power Plan. “The Empire State is rapidly becoming a leader in cleaner energy technology, and that means greener and more sustainable communities for all New Yorkers,” says Cuomo. With the NY-Sun Initiative in place, solar energy in New York can become a reality state-wide. With a decline in solar eclectic component prices and a growth in the number of installer businesses in tandem with the NY-Sun Initiative, things are definitely looking up for NY. These efforts could not have been made without the community—New York’s booming solar industry thrives off individual and community interest in cleaner, more resilient and affordable energy. Not only are we fighting to end to climate change, but we are uniting the state. Additionally, there has been more of an awareness of the importance of solar energy ever since the introduction of the topic in schools. Two years ago, Governor Cuomo announced the K-Solar Program (which was underneath the NY-Sun Initiative) to help public school districts throughout the state lower their energy costs with clean, local power. To date, over 40 school districts have participated in this, representing over 200 schools. These kinds of collaborative efforts help draw more attention to these environmental values, especially at a state-level. In fact, solar capacity has quintupled in every region, with Long Island taking the lead in have the most installations than any other region. In all, New York‘s environmental efforts place the state as a front runner in solar energy and will hopefully motivate others to experience similar results. Read more about New York’s environmentally-savvy installations. Elli Sloan, Intern