New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer in the past week have called for major
One resiliency expert urges the two to collaborate.
"I would hope that they work together and not compete," said Alan Rubin, a managing director for public policy firm Mercury LLC. "I think both have excellent ideas, and they represent what I think the world is coming to."
Rubin, nicknamed the "hurricane czar," helped design and underwrite the catastrophe fund in South Florida in 1992, when he worked for Lehman Brothers' investment banking division. Hurricane Andrew that year caused more than $30 billion worth of damage statewide.
According to Rubin, wind resistance is paramount for protecting the city, home to 520 miles of coastline and an aging infrastructure.
"If you have a green building and you don't have windows that can stand a 120 miles-per-hour wind, you'll have a green building on the ground," he said. "Green is wonderful and it should be, but you also need to build to withstand the kind of catastrophic events we saw in Hurricane Sandy."
De Blasio, speaking at John F. Kennedy Educational Campus in the Bronx on Monday, announced 24 installations in solar power at city schools. Kennedy has a rooftop solar installation that de Blasio said could serve as an innovative and cost-effective model.
The mayor said the city would fund all but $5 million of the $28 million cost. New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority, under Gov. Andrew Cuomo's NY-Sun initiative, would cover the balance, according to de Blasio.
Last week, de Blasio said the city would commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over 2005 levels by 2050, citing major cost savings and job creation. De Blasio pegged cost savings across the public and private sectors of more than $1.4 billion per year by 2025, leading to $8.5 billion in cumulative energy cost savings over 10 years.
Stringer, meanwhile, called for mainstreaming "green bonds" into general obligation offerings as part of the city's next major capital plan, in early 2015. According to Stringer, this would involve collaboration with the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget and other city agencies.
Stringer acknowledged the need to collaborate. "Since there is no uniform definition of what constitutes a green project, the city will need to develop its own criteria," he said. "We will build on definitions currently used in the marketplace while considering the city's capital needs."
Stringer press secretary Eric Sumberg said late Tuesday that Stringer’s office is communicating regularly with OMB. “We’ve been developing this proposal for several months, and that includes regular discussions with OMB,” he said. “There is and has been communication. We’ve put the program out there, for general investor comments as well.”
New York involvement, said Rubin, would accelerate the green bond movement, which started in 2008 when the World Bank offered a fixed-income product aimed at climate change in developing countries. Green bonds broke into the U.S. municipal bond market in July 2013 when Massachusetts sold $100 million of fixed-rate, new-money bonds.
"It's gaining a huge amount of approval: catastrophe bonds, green bonds, call them what you want," said Rubin. "It's gone from $50 million to about $3 billion almost overnight.
Issuers say the move effectively expands their investor base.
"Now, New York City can talk to the enviros who are billionaires and not only want to invest, but do so in a way that protects their investment," said Rubin.
This September, California conducted its inaugural green bond sale and Massachusetts its second. Additionally, the New York State Environmental Facilities Corp. in June packaged $213 million in drinking water and wastewater projects as green bonds, and one month later, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority sold $350 million of green bonds.
According to Stringer, the city needs to sell green bonds with enough size and frequency to motivate investors to understand and evaluate program criteria and management.
For example, he said, the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority may have a higher proportion of green projects, depending upon final criteria, and could package much of its $1.5 billion per year in new debt as green bonds.
In neighboring Connecticut, the state's Siting Council, which approves electricity generating facilities, was scheduled Tuesday to hold its final hearing on Bridgeport's effort to put 9,000 solar panels and a fuel cell in an old landfill. Mayor Bill Finch expects the Green Energy Park project, on which United Illuminating is running point, to earn the city $7 million over its 20-year lease.
Capital city Hartford also recently launched a solar-on-a-landfill project.
