Jobs and the Economy 

The TGE facility will be privately financed.  Thus, it will not compete with public funding priorities.  Rather, it will be an economic engine – both locally, through expenditures for construction, operation and maintenance, and regionally, through energy cost savings.  This project will therefore translate into jobs and increased economic activity in New York.  Counting both direct and induced employment and investment, the TGE Facility will be responsible for the creation of more than 1,000 local short-term jobs and 100 local permanent jobs.  On the basis of New York State’s energy studies, the cost savings TGE provides can generate up to 1,600 permanent new jobs.  Construction of the facility will generate at least $430 million of economic activity.  Its energy cost savings and local expenditures are expected to induce up to $135 million per year in long term economic activity.  At the same time, the facility will not create traffic congestion and will not strain public physical and social infrastructure. 

Land Use and Planning 

The site is in an M-3 zone, the district designated by the City of New York for power plants to be built as of right.  The Department of City Planning proposed in June 2003 to convert this industrial zone to parkland.  In response, TGE formulated a concept for an underground design, with a park topping the site. Whether built above or below ground, the TGE plant will become an anchor facility for a new and revitalized north Brooklyn waterfront.  TGE’s facility would rehabilitate an active industrial site located in a drab, pedestrian-unfriendly industrial area.  The existing business, a fuel oil terminal, will relocate and consolidate its operations at other Brooklyn terminals.  By locating on a contaminated site, it preserves and maximizes less contaminated redevelopment sites for other purposes, while designing its own facility with an eye toward a transformed waterfront, explicitly contemplating ample public access along the waterfront.  Even though the site operates today within an industrial context, the TGE facility is being designed to harmonize with future development plans for the area.  

The Two Design Options:  Above and Below Ground 

If the aboveground design option challenges commonly held notions of the way urban power plants integrate with the community and the environment, the underground design option turns such notions on its head.   A typical power plant is marked by a “refinery” look, or a generic, bland industrial appearnace.  TGE's aboveground design creates discrete, innovative architectural components; adds human activity along the perimeter through occupied and unoccupied interior spaces (offices, galleries, meeting rooms, and display spaces); and helps transform the streetscape with landscaping.   TGE's underground design takes up only an acre of land and the surface, and dedicates the remainder to waterfront parkland, which can become part of a future waterfront access network.

Brownfield Cleanup 

The proposed project site is heavily contaminated with both petroleum and coal tar wastes.  Both soil and groundwater are severely polluted.  TGE has entered into a Voluntary Cleanup Agreement with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in order to remediate the site.  Facility construction and site remediation are proposed as a single package:  neither will occur without the other.  The Facility will not use taxpayer or ratepayer funds for environmental cleanup and will avoid the usual protracted litigation typically associated with contaminated sites that have gone through successive ownership through the years.  

Air Quality 

The facility is required to, and will, incorporate the most stringent possible controls for a variety of pollutants.  Air pollutant concentrations due to the facility will be negligible.  The facility will comply with all standards that protect public health.  Beyond that, the TGE facility will always be in competition with other energy suppliers.  Because of its outstanding efficiency, it is expected to be the power source of choice most of the time.  (The rest of the time, the facility will not run and will produce no air emissions.)  As a result, regional emissions of smog-producing nitrogen oxides and acid rain-forming sulfur oxides will be reduced by seven times as much as the TGE facility will produce.  Emission decreases will translate to localized benefits, as well:  less air pollutant deposition from power plants into Greenpoint-Williamsburg with the facility than there exists today.  Thus, the project will help the goal of cleaner air both globally and locally.

Water Use and Water Quality 

The aboveground design would use air cooling, while the underground design would use an innovative water reclamation:  a diversion of treated sewer plant effluent, just before it is discharged to the East River, heat exchange, and a return to the East River discharge location.   Either method of cooling eliminates the need to draw cooling water from marine or fresh rivers, wells or upstate reservoirs.  Beyond that, TGE’s proposal aboveground option includes using a presently wasted water resource and putting it to productive use.  TGE, having worked with Metropolitan Transportation Authority staff, plans to reuse non-potable water that is presently pumped to preserve dry conditions in several Brooklyn subway stations.  This flow will provide for all of TGE’s process water needs.  If the new facility produces steam for the existing Con Edison system, it will also reduce New York City’s upstate reservoir withdrawals because the present steam system uses reservoir water. 

Energy Reliability 

The TGE Facility will enhance the energy system in a variety of ways.  By adding a generating facility inside New York City, it will help to ensure that adequate in-City capacity exists, particularly during periods of inclement weather, unusually high demand, or outages, when reliance on out-of-city resources must be limited.  By placing the generator at the heart of system demand, congestion is relieved, voltage on the system is better supported, and overall reliability is improved.  With its black start capability, TGE can also re-energize the electric system more quickly if a catastrophic outage occurs.  The facility will also provide for a new and “hardened” switchyard in Brooklyn.  This switchyard, unlike traditional outdoor switchyards that are eyesores and consume acres of land, will utilize gas-insulated technology, allowing the facility to be small enough to be fully enclosed in an architectural landmark building.  By financing reinforcements to the natural gas system in Brooklyn, the proposal will also enhance natural gas reliability, both for power plants that use natural gas and for the residences, businesses and institutions that rely on it.  If an agreement is reached with Con Edison for steam supply, the New York City steam system will benefit from this reliable new supply of steam. 

Conclusion 

Above or below ground, the TGE Facility is an excellent example of tailoring a project to meet local and regional public interest priorities.  It turns what is typically perceived as an undesirable project into an environmentally positive asset and investment anchor for a waterfront badly in need of private funding.