New York City is making a commitment to growing solar as a way to keep peak prices lower and to provide emergency backup power.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has set new targets for both energy storage and solar capacity in the city, of 100MWh of energy storage by 2020 and 1GW of solar capacity by 2030.

New York City will issue permits for more than 3,000 solar panel installations this year, bringing the citywide total to over 8,000 in 2016, up from 1,819 installations at the end of the start of the de Blasio administration in late 2013. The city is on track to hit its 2025 target of 100MW of solar power on public buildings and 250MW on private buildings, it said.

New York City has committed to an 80% reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Solar capacity has nearly quadrupled to 96MW on de Blasio’s watch, he said, from 25MW at the end of 2013. “This rapid progress has inspired us to expand that goal to 1,000MW of solar power citywide, which has the potential to power more than 250,000 homes,” said de Blasio.

Daniel Zarrilli, New York City’s senior director for climate policy, said: “We are pleased to build on this success now by expanding our commitment to powering the city with solar energy, and recognising the role that energy storage will play in our future.”

Matthew Ketschke, vice president of distributed resource integration at utility Con Edison, commented: “We are actively working with government agencies and the solar industry to encourage more solar development. To this point, our New York City customers have completed more than 6,500 solar projects, producing about 80MW of clean renewable power. We’re the fifth-largest solar developer nationwide, and we’ve reduced our carbon footprint 48% since 2005, equal to taking half a million vehicles off the road.”

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