Ravenswood Generating Station is New York City’s largest power generating facility, producing up to 25% of the city’s electricity at peak times. Through an initiative called Renewable Ravenswood, Rise Light & Power is planning to convert Ravenswood into a clean renewable energy hub by permanently replacing all of its 1960’s vintage fossil fuel generators. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help New York State reach the target mandated by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act to run on 100% renewable energy by 2040.
HST partnered with Rise and Attentive Energy to embed deep community engagement into the Renewable Ravenswood process, not only informing the community about the proposed energy transition from fossil fuel to offshore wind, but also ensuring that the benefits of the project accrue to those who bear a disproportionate burden from environmental injustices. Our team supported Rise to develop an engagement strategy and a mapping dataset with relevant environmental justice indicators, create a toolkit that explains the project, and organize community information tables, focus groups, and large fairs to engage residents and solicit their feedback about the project. Given the proximity of the Ravenswood site to several New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residences at Queensbridge, Ravenswood, and Astoria Houses, as well as across the river in Roosevelt Island, HST focused our outreach to ensure that public housing residents were centered in the project’s community engagement strategy.
Rise’s Renewable Ravenswood proposal is currently awaiting approval from state agencies. Once approvals are secured, Attentive Energy will complete design and begin construction of the offshore wind facilities. Rise is committed to making sure that the existing workforce (including the union members on site), along with the rest of the community, has access to clean energy training to help power the future.