SUNY can be the climate champion New York needs
SUNY is advising the state on its energy plan, training New York’s green economy workforce, and researching clean energy technology innovations – and SUNY is also putting this training and research into practice at its own campuses. With over 100 million square feet of buildings that need to be heated and cooled, each building is a chance to put energy innovation into practice. And SUNY campuses are uniquely able to leverage the most energy-efficient approach for decarbonizing buildings: thermal energy networks, which also provide the scale and certainty of long-term projects needed to support clean energy careers for union workers.
As New York looks to make progress as quickly as possible on its climate goals, SUNY provides the perfect opportunity. The largest comprehensive university system in the country, SUNY spans 64 campuses and serves communities in every corner of the state. It can be both a short-term and long-term climate champion for New York – and it’s been developing a roadmap to do just that.
In her Executive Budget proposal, Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans to invest $1 billion to address the climate crisis and create a healthier, more affordable New York. At several SUNY campuses, there are clear plans ready to turn that investment into good jobs and the clean energy of the future, if the Legislature and Governor work together to focus that investment on these projects in this year’s budget.
For example, $55 million would allow the University at Albany Downtown campus to decarbonize its heating and cooling with a thermal energy network. SUNY Purchase, with an investment of $50 million, can begin to engineer and construct an emissions-free heating and cooling thermal energy network on their campus.
An investment of $68 million would allow the University at Buffalo to leverage other funds recently announced from the Bond Act, and to scale up an emissions-free heating and cooling network on the South campus, replacing the burning of natural gas with clean, efficient geothermal energy. They’d also begin work on a thermal energy network for the North campus that would leverage the existing campus-wide chilled water loop and new heat pump clusters, which would also use innovative strategies to recover waste heat from the Empire AI initiative and other sources across campus.
Every investment into SUNY’s sustainability efforts is a meaningful investment in directly lowering our statewide emissions. More than a third of all emissions in New York come from buildings, and since 40% of state-owned buildings are SUNY buildings, there is an opportunity to dramatically reduce our emissions by continuing to invest in sustainability improvements at SUNY. After all, with 1.3 million registered students, decarbonizing SUNY will be like transitioning a large city to clean heat and cooling.
Unlike SUNY’s existing fossil-fuel-powered systems, thermal energy networks can both heat and cool buildings. They are also up to six times more efficient than electrifying buildings with resistance heat or single-building air-source heat pumps. As a result, they place less stress on the electric grid, reducing the need for campuses or New York’s utilities to make expensive investments in grid infrastructure upgrades.
These thermal energy networks will use project labor agreements that will deliver New York’s workforce local, middle-class jobs and a clear pathway to union careers in the state’s growing emissions-free economy.
Let’s take SUNY’s climate leadership further. Let’s lower New York’s state’s climate emissions, create union career paths for family-sustaining clean energy jobs, and catalyze the growth of the thermal energy sector of New York’s emissions-free economy by investing in shovel-ready thermal energy network projects at SUNY’s campuses.
Allison Considine, Building Decarbonization Coalition and Greg Lancette, President NYS Pipe Trades Association
