New York City's Mayor Bloomberg gave the keynote address yesterday at the National Clean Energy Summit yesterday,  announcing a proposal to develop wind power and other alternative energy sources for the Big Apple.

Bloomberg's plan focused on off-shore wind farms, along with a few wind turbines on top of the city's bridges and skyscrapers. He also mentioned other sources of renewable energy for the city, including tidal, nuclear, solar and geothermal power.

During his speech, Bloomberg focused on the fifth anniversary of the major power outage that affected not only New York City but also 50 million people in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. He commented on the fact that, though some improvements have been made, the American electrical grid remains problematic at best. Bloomberg implied that the grid cannot handle an expansion of renewable energy in its current state, despite the necessity of such a move.

Bloomberg also outlined goals that he and other New York City administrators have set for the city: by 2017, city agencies are expected to reduce their own consumption by 30 percent. That number translates into an estimated 220-megawatt reduction in New York City's energy needs during peak power demand.

But while Bloomberg advocates conservation and energy efficiency, he made it clear that further action was necessary: "Conservation alone isn't enough," he said "We also need to dramatically step up the production of clean energy for our growing city and economy."

Under Mayor Bloomberg's leadership, New York City has made progress in developing renewable power. There's now a municipal rebate for solar power, and residents of New York City can sell their solar power to other power customers. In the next year, the mayor expects to double the amount of solar power produced in the city. Even schools and government buildings will be getting panels.

In conjunction with Bloomberg's call for renewable power, the New York City Economic Development Corporation has released a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) on behalf of the city as a whole. The RFEI asks for innovative ideas that can help New York City develop sources of renewable energy. Bloomberg described the type of projects he hopes to see:

Such projects might, for example, be designed to draw power from the tides of the Hudson and East Rivers - something we're already doing on a pilot basis. They might call for dramatically increasing rooftop solar power production, which we've estimated could meet nearly 20 percent of the City's need for electricity. They could tap into geothermal energy. In fact, some private home and building owners have already drilled their own 'heat wells.' Or perhaps companies will want to put windfarms atop our bridges and skyscrapers, or use the enormous potential of powerful off-shore winds miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, where turbines could generate roughly twice the energy that land-based windfarms can. Windfarms located far off our shores, some evidence shows, could meet 10 percent of our city's electricity needs within a decade.

Photo — David Shankbone