Energy Justice in the South Bronx
We’ve Never Had a Say in Our Own Energy. That Must Change.
For generations, the South Bronx has kept New York City's
lights on, while we’ve breathed the pollution in return.
We're building a way for our neighborhood to control its own energy,
lower our bills, create local jobs, and make sure the benefits stay right here.
Help us shape what community-run energy looks like.
Where does our energy come from?
Every day, we rely on electricity to power almost everything: lights, elevators, refrigerators, air conditioners, schools, businesses, hospitals, and public transportation.
We can make that electricity in different ways.
How Does Energy Get to Us?
That electricity reaches us through a massive shared system called ‘the grid.’ This is a network of power plants, wires, substations, and other equipment that provides electricity.
Everyone draws electricity from it. And we can put electricity back into it too.
When New York Needs More Energy, The South Bronx Chokes
When the city's demand spikes on hot summer days, with every air conditioner running at once, the grid needs extra power fast. The city turns to “peaker plants,” called that because they only fire at peak times.
Four gas-burning turbines sit on our waterfront: two at Hell Gate, two at Harlem River Yards. They’re all owned by the New York Power Authority (NYPA).
The Authority, working with state and city officials, fast-tracked them here in 2001. They capped their capacity at just under the level that would have triggered a full environmental review.
The community opposed this. We were already overburdened with pollution, and had (still have) some of the worst air quality in the country.
The state and the Power Authority built them anyway.
They were supposed to run for three years. More than two decades later, they're still here.
Fossil fuel turbines on the South Bronx waterfront
The City Benefits and We Suffer
When these peaker plants run, we breathe it. Con Edison passes the cost of running them onto us through our bills and the profits go to the utility companies, not to us.
A Century of Decisions Made About Us, Without Us
This is what happens when a community doesn’t control its own energy.
The question of where electricity comes from, who profits from it, and what it costs to your health and your wallet.
These are political questions. In the South Bronx, the answers have long been decided by someone else.
There’s A Better Way to Keep the Lights On
A Virtual Power Plant, or VPP, uses software to link together distributed energy resources like solar panels and batteries across a neighborhood so they work as one.
You can think of it as a clean energy source made out of an entire neighborhood instead of a single polluting power plant.
There are 3 Ways to Build a Virtual Power Plant
A VPP can be built in three ways, or through combinations of all three:
Generate it
Make the power. Solar panels on our roofs and in our community gardens turn sunlight into clean energy.
Store it
Save it for later. Batteries hold that power and release it on the hottest days and during blackouts, when we need it most.
Manage it
Use less at the right moments. Smart thermostats and other appliances ease back slightly when demand is high so we need less power overall.
How a Virtual Power Plant Works
Imagine it's a hot summer afternoon. Every air conditioner in the city is running. The grid needs more energy.
Right now, the answer is to fire up the peaker plants on our waterfront.
With a VPP, solar panels on rooftops have been generating electricity since the morning. This energy has been stored by batteries. When demand spikes, the batteries release this stored power into the grid. At the same time, smart thermostats across hundreds of apartments ease back slightly to reduce energy demand.
The neighborhood is drawing less power from the grid and generating more of its own.
Together, these three things can make up for some of the energy that a peaker plant would otherwise need to provide, reducing how often it needs to run.
This means the energy that a VPP provides can be cleaner and cheaper.
Run by The People of the South Bronx
Most VPPs are owned by private companies. They sign up households, pool their energy, sell it to the grid, and keep the profit.
The residents who make it possible get a few dollars off their bill while the company keeps their energy data.
It doesn't have to work that way.
The same technology can be run by the people who live here.
The savings stay with residents. The revenue is reinvested in the neighborhood, and the community decides what to do with it.
What This Could Mean for Us
Here's what community-owned energy could mean for the neighborhood, whether you rent, own, or live in public housing:
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The savings that stay with residents instead of going back to the utility companies.
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VPPs provide work and training in the clean energy sector, that goes to people who live here
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We keep power storied in our batteries together, which keeps the lights on here when the grid goes down
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Reduced reliance on the peaker plants means less air pollution that we breathe. Retiring these plans means a step toward getting our waterfront back
A solar panel at Maria Sola Green Space shows a glimpse of our community’s energy future.
Our Waterfront Could Power Us
Despite being surrounded by water on three sides, for a century we’ve had no public waterfront access in the South Bronx.
What's there instead is polluting infrastructure, including two peaker plants, a Con Edison substation, heating oil storage, and constant truck traffic from waste transfer stations and last-mile warehouses like Fresh Direct.
We’ve been imagining what’s possible for our waterfront for over a decade. We’re exploring how a Virtual Power Plant could be part of that vision.
This is part of a bigger vision. Our Mott Haven–Port Morris Waterfront Plan is a blueprint for a public, healthy, climate-resilient shoreline.
The New York Post Building
In between the two NYPA peaker sites on the Port Morris waterfront sits a large, vacant site.
This is the former New York Post printing plant which has sat vacant since 2020.
Its rooftop could hold community-owned solar and its grounds could house battery storage.
The building itself could become a green jobs hub, manufacturing equipment for the energy transition and creating local work.
Early analysis shows the rooftop alone could generate more than twice the solar power of the Sunset Park Solar installation in Brooklyn.
This is Yours to Shape
While our partners at MIT are providing the expertise in Virtual Power Plants, residents like you will make the decisions.
What concerns do you have? What would you want to see from a community-run energy system?
Our neighborhood has carried the costs of New York City's energy system for generations.
Together we must have a say in what comes next.
This Has Been Done Before: Cooperative Virtual Power Plant Case Studies
Sunset Solar Park, Brooklyn
The city's first community-owned solar project. Participants save ~20% on their ConEd bills.
Chelsea, Massachusetts
A neighborhood-led ‘virtual microgrid’ connecting buildings through a shared community platform.
