Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces New Competitive Solicitation Calling for 2,000 Megawatts or More of New Large-Scale Renewable Energy Projects

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the release of New York's sixth competitive solicitation calling for 2,000 megawatts or more of new large-scale renewable energy projects. The projects will have the capacity to power at least 600,000 New York homes and maintain the predictable pace of state-contracted opportunities for private renewable energy developers. Once selected, the development of these projects is expected to spur nearly $3 billion in clean energy investments and create over 2,000 family-sustaining jobs in the green economy. Bringing more clean energy onto the grid accelerates progress toward achieving New York's goal to obtain 70 percent of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good morning. What a spectacular, beautiful day here in New York. First of all, I do want to thank Casey for using his talents that he attained in many career positions, but also as a leader at the EPA to help all of us at the state level, make sure we're doing the right thing. So, Casey Katims, I want to thank you for being the Executive Director of our Alliance here. So, let's give him a round of applause.

Alan Steel, people are in your building. It's extraordinary. We've been through here from the entire pandemic. And I have to tell you what you did in terms of providing a space, a safe place, a place we could do vaccinations, we were repaired to handle as many people as necessary here. So, you got us through that, but also the stress of all the bookings that had come and gone and now I feel like we are back, and it is evidenced by the noise in the next rooms and all the activity and the energy. But there's one more thing I'm really looking to do is to help land a very nice presidential convention here in a couple of years. So, I'm out there. And the Mayor and I were just down in Washington about a week ago, showing them what we're made out of. And we definitely had more fun in our room than they did in the others. Just an observation, a little bias here.

Lee Perlman, thank you for being the Chair of the Convention Center Operating Corporation. Yes, good things are happening, and you've always been sort of the epicenter of Climate Week, and we're grateful for what you do here as well.

And to have a governor, a governor that I am in sync with philosophically on so many key issues. We realize that working together on our entire region can really rise to a new level. And I'm grateful that Phil Murphy has joined us here once again, to show the collaboration among our states, and that's what our residents want to know about. So, let's give a round of applause to Governor Phil Murphy.

Well, yes, you know, what's going on this week? It's Climate Week, it's UN General Assembly, Clinton Global Initiative, Fashion Week just wrapped up. And if anybody doubts that we're fully supercharged, try to drive across Midtown. And it feels good. It feels good. I did not like the fact that I couldn't zip across Manhattan in almost no time a year and a half ago. So, this is a good feeling. It feels like we're back. And I love, love, love to see that New York is back. And of course the Javits Center. I mean, to get through the expansion during the pandemic, the 1.2 million square feet, that's extraordinary. And it is a magnet for conventions, meetings, gatherings all over the world. So, really proud of what we're doing here as well.

And also, we're real excited about having Climate Week. I literally was here, I think I was on the job about three weeks, and I stood out there and took a tour to see what we're going to be talking about the completion of today. And I just thought I'm in awe of what was going on during this pandemic, but also how you just kept it all going. That we did not lose sight of our climate objectives, even though Mother Nature had us focused on other issues for a solid two years. We never gave up our focus there. So, I'm going to have an update on that shortly, but just want to talk about to all of you, why protecting the environment is so important to me personally. Why I'm such an environmental activist myself, and you can look it up on Wikipedia. You know how old I am. I was there when the first Environmental Justice Day started. We didn't call it that then, but Earth Day - it was called Earth Day. And I was in school, and I helped start the first ecology club because I wanted to do what I could with my young talents. But also, I come from an area where when you people talk about clean air, clean water and sort of, hypothetical terms, what does it really feel like when you don't have it?

That's the world I lived in. I lived in a world that did not have clean air and clean water as a birth right. It was something that when you grow up in an Upstate manufacturing steel town, the focus was always on the jobs. I mean, 20,000 people made steel. My grandpa made steel. My dad made steel. You worked in those factories because it was a good-paying job, which you could lift your family up out of the middle class - into the middle class. So, that's the world I came from. Thank God a lot has changed. It's absolutely beautiful in these communities. Sites that have once been steel plants now have onshore wind turbines. I mean, right out my old window. It's spectacular. But it was also a long-time home of our nation's worst polluters. And as I said, I mentioned my parents' trailer park was right there. I went back to visit again just recently. I always go back to the neighborhood, but there was this ominous feeling, there was always this orange smoke that enveloped the skies. I didn't know the skies were supposed to be blue. They were literally orange from the toxins being released in the air. From the smokestack that dotted the landscape.

And Lake Erie, one of the largest freshwater lakes on this planet, is where we used to swim. Not sure it was the smartest thing we did. We didn't know any better, but my mom would take us down to the beach and we'd see the steel plant in the background. And at night - you didn't want to be there at night because the sky was glowing with this, what looked like molten lava being dumped into Lake Erie, and we'd go back again and swim the next day. No comment on that. But people didn't know any better or they didn't care, or there was a disconnect and not a sense that this is wrong. These assaults that were on Mother Nature had been going on for decades, and it was just part of the industrial revolution and people accepted that as a price.

And again, it was never questioned. So, my story is not unique. You know, we still have people today living in these situations. And I'm focused on this, laser-focused. If you live in a community where it has dirty air, dirty water, you develop asthma as a result of your surroundings, or if your homes and livelihoods are becoming vulnerable to the extreme weather, and this is something we didn't even talk about back then. I was from Buffalo. We were always expecting bad weather. But today, communities that never had even entertained the thought of having to deal with a hurricane are now having to build resiliency because these a hundred year events are now happening with greater frequency.

And that is when, again, I was fairly new in the job. I had to deal with, not one, but the effect of two hurricanes, literally this time last year. So, all these calls to environmental justice mean we acknowledge it and we lean hard into it. We no longer keep those blinders on. And I refuse to accept anyone who has a different opinion because there is an urgency. There is an urgency that we all must feel in our hearts.

So, what else are we going to do? We're also recognizing the fact that it's almost the 10th anniversary of Sandy. Our cleanup and our work continues there, building resiliency, but I would say this, we are truly the first generation that has felt the impact of climate change, and we're the last generation to be able to do anything about it.

That's the sense of urgency that the people in this room and elsewhere are gathered to talk about. So we commit. We make commitments. We have a lot of commitments here in New York. You'll hear about commitments in New Jersey. This is powerful. You have to have leadership that says, no, I'm going to write that wrong. And yes, there may be consequences. Yes. There may be a price tag, but my God, you know, how much more warning do we need that the time to act was not just today, but it was also yesterday.

So, we have to make up for lost time. So we have the most ambitious renewable energy and emission goals in the country. 70 percent of renewables by 2030. Electricity - 70 percent of electricity will be from renewables by 2030. 80 percent, 85 percent emission reductions by 2050. I'm not afraid of saying that we have the bold agenda that actually meets that. And everyone who's ever worked with me knows that I'm also going to say I want to shave time off those goals, no matter what. You tell me it's going to take a couple of years to put in cameras in a subway. I'm going to say, no, I think we can do that in about 18 months. So, whatever it is, I'm going to push it even sooner.

So, what are we also focused on? Last year, I announced $4.2 billion, now this is a large amount of money, but that's for our Clean Water, Clean Air, Green Jobs, and Environmental Bond Act. I need to have everybody who cares about human life on this planet and lives in the State of New York to mobilize to make sure the vote gets out in support of this bond act. I need everyone in this room to have a sustained effort so we don't look back and say, we missed the opportunity because we didn't get enough people to care in time for this important ballot initiative on November 8th. And if it happens and the voters see the wisdom of this, and we hope they will, it can be a game-changing investment in our infrastructure for our clean energy future.

We also made the largest investment in the Environmental Protection Fund, $500 million investment also in offshore wind. That is extraordinary. And what we're doing is creating the supply chain. You know what I get so excited about? We talk about the industrial base of Upstate New York, where I came from, a lot of shuttered factories for a long time, until we had reuses. One thing we're doing at the Hudson River. Hudson River, Henry Hudson, remember that name? 1600s. He brought commerce up to a place like Albany. Years later - 100, 200 years later, we opened up the Erie Canal. Now we're using the Hudson as the vehicle to bring down component parts for offshore wind turbines that are manufactured in the port of Albany coming down the river and going off the coast of Long Island to build this new future.

That's what we're talking about. But I also want to make sure that as a state, we're leading as well. I'm not going to tell the private sector what to do if we're not prepared to make those same decisions internally. We are going to transition to 100 percent renewable energy in all State operations by the year 2030. I'm making that commitment right now. We're going to get that done in our State agencies. State agencies will have net zero investment portfolios by 2040. And this will be over $40 billion in investment.

Last, I mentioned that last week, I was here to talk about Climate Week and I stood here and said, we're going big. My philosophy is go big or go home. And I'm never going home. We're always going to go big. And that's why we announced two renewable, two enormous renewable energy transmission projects. They're truly transformative, bringing 1.7 gigabytes of Upstate power, wind, and solar from the Hudson Valley, as well as the Champlain Hudson Line bringing wonderful, wonderful power from Canada down to power the homes here in New York City and that's going to bring in 18 million megawatt hours of renewable energy from Canada, as I said.

Every home in New York City can receive its power source from renewables, coming down from the hydroelectric power from Canada, as well as our wind and solar farms. And so, I'm excited about this. We also have enough largescale solar projects to power 620,000 homes. That's great. We also expanded our NY-Sun Program with an additional four gigawatts of distributed power. I know this is just numbers, but I want to know how many houses are affected, and this is going to power over 700,000 homes. So you add up all these numbers, add them all up, we're making a huge difference, profound difference. And so, we're also capable of powering 4 million homes. So, all this together, 4 million homes as of last year, since we made those announcements and went big, we will now be able to power 4 million New York homes with renewable energy use by 2030. That's amazing. And that's just what we did in the last.

So, let's talk about what's on the horizon. Last summer, we launched our third solicitation for offshore wind. I'm telling you, the future's offshore wind. Two gigawatts for projects, enough to power 1.5 million homes. And today, those of you paying attention, you want to jump on this one? We're announcing our six competitive solicitations, calling for 2,000 megawatts or more of large scale renewable projects. And that's enough for another 600,000 additional homes across the state. Anybody wants to bid, get out of the room right now and get first in line, because I'm announcing it right here, right now. So this is going to be another massive job creator. I didn't say this before, but this is what gets me fired up as well as we transition from those old smokestack jobs to the clean energy revolution with many of the same workers. If you're smart about this, you can use their talents, their skills, and transition them into the jobs that are going to lead our economy for the next two generations.

So, this is going to spur over $3 billion worth of clean energy investments, powering many more homes. So, now again, we're talking about, once I add up what we're planning we did last year, we're planning, we just proposed, we're now going to be able to have 7.5 million households in New York State committed to having this renewable energy source. And we also were here last year, we talked about what's going on out the window. This is very exciting, Al and I walked through, we examined the innovation, the brilliance behind having solar panels, it's the largest solar panel, is it around the world? Should I say the world, close enough? All alright. We're in New Yorkers. We could brag a little bit, all right, certainly the largest solar array in New York, in New York City. And it's the largest one in any event. Anyone thought of this? I mean, it's just, it's amazing. So take a look at that. These panels will produce a million kilowatt hours of solar power in the first year of operation, that's enough to charge 40 million cell phones. 40 million cell phones. Now I have another, as an aside. Why doesn't the cell phone hold a charge longer? Like, I go to Dr. Stanley Wittingham, who's the godfather of the lithium-ion battery, Nobel Prize winner, Binghamton. Can you just figure out how to have the cell phones hold a charge longer? I mean, how about a day? How about a week? So I'm just putting that challenge out there. Everybody wants to meet that challenge. I'll announce the winner next year. Just get it done.

So this, this is extraordinary. That'll offset 750,000 pounds of carbon a year as well. That's amazing. And also, it's going to have 3.35 megawatts of battery storage. So thank you, Alan, for your commitment to this. This is what you've accomplished. We are announcing the completion of over 1,400 panels today, and also to Lee Perlman in the entire board for what you've done. So, I know I threw a lot of numbers at you, a lot of this and that, but the bottom line is, we are all in. New York State is all in with our other climate leaders. And these are the stakes. You've heard, particularly since the end of the last session of the Supreme Court how important state governments are, how important the vision of their leaders are, and what a difference that can make for people. So we cannot do this alone, and I'm proud to be a co-chair of the U.S. Climate Alliance, and working closely with a state like New Jersey, because this is a regional strategy, a regional approach, because any pollution generated in the State of New York or New Jersey is going to find its way to the other one. We're that close. We're part of the same family.

So, we believe in working on this together because climate change, the effects of climate change have no borders. They don't stop at our borders. And that's why we're going to continue focusing on eliminating this existential threat. So I want to thank our Senators, our President, President Biden, for what he's done in Washington, leaning hard into this, passing significant legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, there's a large environmental component to that to help reduce our greenhouse emissions. Senator Schumer, Majority Leader, Kirsten Gillibrand, our entire delegation. I always want to make sure they get credit as well. They get credit as well, because I served in Congress. I know what it's like when you don't have those relationships and that partnership. And speaking of partnership, there is no greater partnership than we have with the State of New Jersey right now. And it comes down to the individuals, the commitment, the commitment to do what's right for the people of our region because we are in this together. And with that, let me introduce an amazing individual, strong leader for our region and for our friends in New Jersey, that is the Governor himself. And we were just talking about some of our football teams. We actually shouldn't we get into that or no, that's a little too controversial? He did say the Buffalo Bills are doing really well. Can I at least say that? Okay. He admitted that. So, I hope that doesn't get you in trouble. I know he said he loves his teams that play in New Jersey. Loves them. We all love all of our teams, but what a year for the Bills.