New York City has announced that its Department of Environmental Protection is preparing to solicit plans for the city’s first major wind-energy project, the installation of turbines atop the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.
According to a report in The New York Times, city planners also are working on zoning changes, now under review by the City Planning Commission, to allow turbines up to 55 feet high on the rooftops of buildings taller than 100 feet, and even taller turbines on commercial and industrial sites along the waterfront.
A major offshore wind power installation also is moving forward for the a site 13 miles off the coast of the Rockaways in Queens. The Bloomberg administration is supporting an application filed last September by a coalition led by the New York Power Authority to lease a swath of the ocean floor for a wind farm consisting of least 70 wind turbines that could each soar 430 feet above the water.
The proposal for the offshore wind farm, which is scheduled for a public hearing before the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management next month, would start at 350 megawatts but have the potential to double its capacity — eventually generating enough electricity to power a half-million homes in New York City and Long Island.
New York State, which has set a goal of deriving 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2015, now ranks 12th among the states in wind power installations, with 1,400 megawatts, or enough to meet 2 percent of the state’s electricity demand, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
