Borough President Eric Adams would work to dramatically expand New York City’s wind power industrial sector into existing city ports if elected mayor, according to a new plan that the candidate revealed Wednesday morning.
The mayoral hopeful and former state senator said he would advocate for the creation of wind turbine manufacturing inside existing industrial waterfront hubs, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Red Hook Container Terminal, in order to decrease the state’s reliance on fossil fuels.
“Now we face a new green economy with new challenges and new opportunities, and New York must lead once again,” Adams said at an April 7 press conference in Sunset Park. “That’s why it’s crucial that our city is well positioned to become the hub of the wind power ind of the Eastern Seaboard.”
The plan, which Adams announced outside the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, comes months after New York State awarded Norwegian energy company Equinor a bid to turn the Brooklyn port into a wind turbine manufacturing hub.
The manufacturing plant, which will stretch across the vacant terminal’s 73 acres, will be used to assemble and stage wind turbines the height of the Chrysler building before shipping them to Equinor’s three wind farms, located off of Long Island. The three wind farms are slated to generate a total of 3.3 gigawatts for the New York state — enough to power more than 1.8 million homes for a year.
Adams lauded the planned South Brooklyn Marine Terminal assembly plant, and said he would work with the Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade the infrastructure at existing ports and prepare them for similar wind energy manufacturing projects.
“We need to get ahead of this and not start building out once the proposals are here,” he said. “We need to lead the way.”
To identify other ways to expand green energy manufacturing, Adams said he would start a “wind power development team” at City Hall that would work with industry experts and city agencies to expand the city’s manufacturing capacity. He would also loop graduates of the city’s public colleges by investing $1 million in training programs for wind power manufacturing jobs and creating a walk-in job training center in Sunset Park — right by the planned South Brooklyn Marine Terminal facility, he explained.
“These are well paying jobs,” said Adams. “A wind turbine service technician is one of the fastest growing jobs in the United States.”
The Sunset Park assembly plant will create 1,200 manufacturing once it opens in 2025, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in January.
Other mayoral candidates have also put forward green energy and climate proposals. Comptroller Scott Stringer has proposed turning Rikers Island a renewable energy hub; former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia has suggested restoring the coastline’s wetlands to protect waterfront communities; Yang has supported an ambitious plan to harness the East River for energy; and Wiley and Morales have called for using green infrastructure and construction inside the city’s public housing stock, among other plans.
