Utility company National Grid wants to expand its efforts to heat customers’ homes and businesses with gas produced by digesting human and food waste, and it wants customers to pay for it as part of a proposed rate increase.
National Grid says its proposal to use gas produced from organic matter and sewage as fuel for its customers – already being tested at the city’s Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant – is part of an environmentally friendly initiative that would avoid carbon dioxide emissions and replace gas produced by fracking.
But some environmentalists oppose National Grid’s plan, pointing out that the company’s existing project, the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant in Greenpoint, where much of the methane comes from, has frequent breakdowns. It ended up burning up in the air Instead of being sent to gas customers.
The state Public Utilities Commission would need to approve the proposal, or an amendment to it, before National Grid could move forward with building more waste-to-energy plants and increase customer bills to cover the costs.
If regulatory approval is granted, National Grid could charge New York City customers about $13.2 million in capital cost subsidies (Long Island customers would pay about $9.9 million). The company expects the four systems to be up and running by mid-2027.
The Newtown Creek plant acts like a stomach, digesting sewage and a smoothie of food waste that the Sanitation Department collects from orange bins on street corners, brown bins in public schools, and households. The digestion process produces biogas, which is then used to make food. Helping power the factoryThe surplus gas will be piped to the homes and businesses of National Grid customers.
When the equipment that refines biogas into high-quality form and injects it into the electricity grid is shut down for maintenance, malfunctions or testing, the excess gas is “flared,” releasing carbon dioxide instead of being used to heat homes. From April 2023 to March 2024, the system was offline for roughly the same amount of time that it was online. According to the records.
“Why are we bringing more industrial pollution into these communities?” said Megan Barton, a senior attorney at Earthjustice who also represents WE ACT for Environmental Justice in the National Grid rate litigation.
She said the proposed project would be a “double whammy to ratepayers” because of the financial costs to customers and the greenhouse gas emissions impacts of the new facility, and the company hasn’t proven it can properly operate the projects it already has underway.
In an email to THE CITY, National Grid spokesperson Karen Young said converting organic waste into usable gas could play a “critical role” in meeting the state’s climate goals.
“The Newtown Creek facility is an innovative new project that is already having a significant impact on reducing emissions from our network,” she wrote. “As with many pilot projects, we faced some challenges when we first began operations.”
Meanwhile, the mayor Budget cuts Closed Dozens of community composting and collection sites Transform food waste into nutrient-rich soil. As cities ramp up their curbside collection programs for organic household waste, wastewater treatment plants will play a larger role in processing that waste.
Newtown Creek saw an 80% reduction in flaring frequency during the first four months of 2024 compared with the same period in 2022, before National Grid’s project came online, according to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
“We are pleased to see a significant decrease in flaring compared to last year, but we are working hard to reduce those numbers even further,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in an email.
Will it work?
Under the proposal, National Grid wants to install gas-to-grid systems at two municipal wastewater treatment plants, one in South Ozone Park, Queens, and one in Nassau County. The company also proposes installing interconnection systems at two yet-to-be-built wastewater treatment plants in Staten Island and Suffolk County.
