At the New York Power Authority (NYPA), we firmly believe that when you know more about energy consumption, you can take real and meaningful steps to reduce it. Last year, NYPA embarked on an ambitious project to create comprehensive, crowdsourced, energy efficiency plans for Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers. Municipal buildings in these cities alone generated a combined 11,700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. By working with each city and its constituents, NYPA has completed the Five Cities Energy Plans to help these cities re-think the way they consume energy and become more efficient.

Key Findings:

• Vehicles in the five cities traveled almost 6 billion miles — enough to make over 12,440 round trip visits to the moon.
• The amount of greenhouse gases emitted per year by the cities (11.7M metric tons) could power more than 1 million homes for a year.
• Municipal building energy costs were $29.3M – the equivalent of buying 854 Chevy Volt electric cars.

Proposed Next Steps:

• Albany: Utilize public transportation or walk/bike to work. Half of Albany’s population lives within a quarter of a mile of a bus stop, but only 13% use mass transit for commuting.
• Buffalo: Replace lights at home with compact fluorescent lightbulbs. The average US home has over 50 light bulbs. By changing one bulb, homeowners can save between $30-$80 in electricity costs over the lifetime of the bulb.
• Rochester: Invest in alternative fuel vehicles. Over one third of all fuel use in the city is natural gas and over 25% of electricity in municipal buildings is generated from renewable resources.
• Syracuse: Streetlights account for 48% of municipal electricity usage in the city. Investing in LED streetlights can save a great amount of money and use less energy.
• Yonkers: Solar photovoltaic systems serve many great benefits and can save a large amount of money, while harvesting energy from the sun. School buildings are the largest end-user in Yonkers, representing over half of municipal energy usage.

The Energy Efficiency plans for Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers are only the beginning of what these cities will be able to accomplish to increase their sustainability and resiliency.

Gil C. Quiniones (@GQEnergy) is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Power Authority. Quiniones has served as Senior Vice President of Energy and Telecommunications for the New York City Economic Development Corporation during the Bloomberg Administration, and worked for Con Edison for 16 years.