Every year NYLCV and NYLCVEF celebrate the environmental progress we’ve helped create in New York City and across the State with our annual gala. This year we surpassed our fundraising goal for a total of nearly $1.2 million, which will be used to support the work we do over the next year. Over 700 people including legislators, environmental champions, and industry leaders joined us to celebrate.
Our NYLCV honoree was the Offshore Wind Energy partnership of Ørsted and Eversource.
Ørsted is a renewable energy company and the global leader in offshore wind, and Eversource is a leading US energy company, delivering cleaner energy and high efficiency to 5 million customers. The team’s South Fork Wind Project, New York’s first offshore wind farm, is over the permitting finish line and under construction. The project is kickstarting New York’s offshore wind industry and will power approximately 70,000 New York homes with clean offshore wind energy when it begins operations in 2023. Its second New York project, Sunrise Wind, an approximately 924 MW offshore wind farm – the largest in New York – with the potential capacity to power nearly 600,000 homes is planned to be operational by 2025.
Our Education Fund honoree was Joe Martens. Joe joined the Alliance for Clean Energy NY in 2017 as Director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, a coalition of developers, environmental and labor organizations and community groups dedicated to the responsible
development of offshore wind off of New York’s coastline. Thanks to him, New York adopted the most aggressive offshore wind standard in the country. Prior to joining ACE NY he worked at the Open Space Institute, and served as Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation from March 2011 to July 2015 where he was instrumental in adopting the nation’s first ban on the use of high volume hydraulic fracturing.
Our keynote speaker was Polly Trottenberg, Deputy Secretary at the US Department of Transportation where she provides leadership and strategic vision as the Department’s Chief Operating Officer. She served from 2014 to 2020 as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner, and also served in the Obama Administration as the Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary for Policy at USDOT. Previously, Trottenberg spent 12 years in the US Senate.
Finally, our special guest speaker was Amanda Lefton, Director for BOEM. Prior to her current role, Amanda Lefton served as the First Assistant Secretary for Energy and Environment for the Governor of New York where she led the State’s climate and environmental initiatives and managed a portfolio of twelve agencies and authorities. Previously, Amanda was the Deputy Policy Director for The Nature Conservancy in New York, and also worked for the State Senate.
Thank you to all who attended and continue to support NYLCV and NYLCVEF!
By Caroline Hahn