[“Ninety years ago, FDR [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt]
established the New York Power Authority to create power for the
people. Today we reclaim that power, by the passage of The Build
Public Renewables Act ]
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A PUBLIC POWER VICTORY IN NEW YORK STATE  
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Trade Unions for Energy Democracy
June 6, 2023
The Bullet
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_ “Ninety years ago, FDR [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt]
established the New York Power Authority to create power for the
people. Today we reclaim that power, by the passage of The Build
Public Renewables Act _

,

 

On May 2, New York became the first US state to pass a major Green New
Deal policy following four years of organizing by the Public Power NY
coalition [[link removed]] and allies. The Build Public
Renewables Act (BPRA), now New York State law, empowers and directs
the state’s public power provider – the New York Power Authority
(NYPA) – to plan, build, and operate renewable energy projects
across New York State. Organizers are now focusing on growing the
movement for Public Power from coast to coast.

Public Power NY was launched in 2019 by the Ecosocialist Working Group
[[link removed]] of the NY City’s Democratic Socialists
of America (DSA). Initially against a rate hike request from the
private utility ConEd, organizers consolidated the argument that New
York required a strong public alternative to private utilities.
Fortunately, New York already had an existing public utility that
could be empowered: the New York Power Authority.

“Ninety years ago, FDR [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt]
established the New York Power Authority to create power for the
people. Over the decades, FDR’s vision for NYPA has been diminished.
Today we reclaim that power, ensuring NYPA serves us, and that
renewable energy is a public good,” reads the Public Power NY
statement
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on BPRA’s approval in the NY State budget.

NYPA: The Return of A New Deal Public Utility

Established during the Great Depression to counter private
utilities’ abuses (namely price-gouging), the New York Power
Authority (NYPA) is the largest state public utility in the United
States and provides the most affordable energy in NY State. Despite
this, NYPA had been barred from building and owning new utility-scale
renewable generation projects as the result of powerful lobbying by
profit-seeking private energy companies.

Public Power NY organizers argued that NYPA could build renewable
energy projects cheaper, faster, and more efficiently than any private
sector counterpart. As a public utility, NYPA can borrow money at very
low interest to fund projects because of its high bond rating. This is
just one of the important advantages it holds over so-called
“investor-owned utilities” like ConEd.

Importantly, there are no hard limits
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on how much the NYPA can receive from federal support for renewables
(the Inflation Reduction Act allows public power providers to take
advantage of expanded initiatives for wind and solar development
previously only available to private developers with massive tax
liability). Organizers are hopeful that the BPRA win will act as an
example of how to implement the IRA in favour of public power
providers’ roll-out of clean energy.

The BPRA’s Mandates

NYPA is now directed by law to build the solar and wind infrastructure
necessary to comply with New York State’s Climate Act of 2019, which
legally obliges NYS to reach 70 per cent renewable generation by 2030.
Wind and solar power currently generate just 4 per cent of the
State’s power. Under the BPRA, NYPA is mandated to generate all of
its electricity from clean energy by 2030. BPRA’s mandate lasts
until 2035.

All NYPA projects are publicly owned, and any contracting is to aid
its rapid scaling-up, subject to identical BPRA ownership and labour
standards. The BPRA guarantees $25-million in annual funding for an
Office of Just Transition, with the objective of developing worker
retraining in the renewables sector.

Read the complete bill and the full description of the Build Public
Renewable Act’s mandates here
[[link removed]]. View a helpful abridged
version of the mandates in this thread
[[link removed]] by NYC
DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group.

Labour’s Role and Support

The BPRA could not have passed without the support of unions. From the
beginning, trade unions were involved in the Public Power NY campaign,
and the campaign was endorsed by unions representing over one million
workers in New York. Endorsing unions included: 1199SEIU United
Healthcare Workers, New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), United
University Professions: (UUP), the Professional Staff Congress at the
City University of New York (PSC-CUNY), and United Auto Workers Region
9A (UAW 9A).

The AFL-CIO and the Public Power NY campaign worked with trade union
affiliates to incorporate robust worker protection language into the
BPRA, including prevailing wage and project labour agreement [PLA]
provisions, diversity in hiring, a labour transition memorandum of
understanding, buy-American provisions, and $25-million in annual
funding for an Office of Just Transition. The BPRA is expected
[[link removed]] to
create 51,000 prevailing wage union jobs and $90-billion in economic
activity.

New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) President Andrew Pallotta
stated that “Empowering NYPA to build and sell low-cost renewable
energy puts our state on the right path to ensuring all New Yorkers
have access to affordable power. We’re proud to support this bill
and will continue to be a strong labour voice on this issue.”
Similarly, James Davis, President of PSC-CUNY said, “The
Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, the American Federation of
Teachers local representing 30,000 faculty and staff at CUNY, fully
supports the Build Public Renewables Act. New York State United
Teachers, representing 600,000 education and health workers in NYS,
unanimously endorsed the BPRA… [it] will help NY State reach its
climate goals and advance affordable energy costs.”

At a Public Hearing on the BPRA, Patrick Guidice from the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 1049
expressed, “I found that the language in the latest version of the
[Build Public Renewable Act] bill was exceptional labour language…
I’ve never seen anything like it before in any legislation that’s
ever been put forward. This gives me a little bit of caution, with all
due respect, because it’s such an exceptional language. Can it
actually pass? And if it doesn’t pass, we can’t get stuck with the
short end of the stick here. So we’re concerned about that because
it’s by far been the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to
protections for labour unions.”

When New York State Governor Hochul attempted to put forward a “BPRA
Lite” that stripped the bill of its labour protections, the Public
Power coalition’s response was to continue fighting for the bill’s
original language – until it was won.

As Patrick Robbins shares in the interview with TUED below, “We
started expanding our outreach and really thinking about unions as
representatives of working people, not just in the workplace. These
are people who live in communities, and they have environmental
justice concerns as much as anyone else. The environmental justice
concerns were a huge reason why 1199 SEIU ended up issuing a memo of
support as well. We saw UUP [United University Professions], we saw
UWUA [The Utility Workers Union of America]; there was a snowball
effect of union support, and we could not have passed the bill without
it.” •

Recommended Reading

* Article
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“After a four-year campaign, New York says yes to publicly owned
renewables,” by Akielly Hu for Grist
* National DSA Statement
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“DSA Chapters Win Biggest Green New Deal Victory in US History”
* Article
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“How to Win a Green New Deal in Your State” by Ashley Dawson for
The Nation
* Video [[link removed]] “BPRA: A Win
in the Fight for a Green New Deal” by DSA
* Article
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“New York Gets a State-Level Green New Deal” by Lauren Leffer in
Gizmodo
* Article
[[link removed]]:
“Green New Deal Advocates Just Won Big in New York. Here’s How
They Did It.” by Kate Aronoff for The New Republic

Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED [[link removed]])
is a global, multi-sector initiative to advance democratic direction
and control of energy in a way that promotes solutions to the climate
crisis, energy poverty, the degradation of both land and people, and
responds to the attacks on workers’ rights and protections.

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