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The Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive Hosts NYC Cli­mate Tech­nol­o­gy Showcase

Nov 19, 2024 11:07 am

On Mon­day, Novem­ber 18, 2024, the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island (TGI), New York City Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NYCEDC), and Brook­lyn Navy Yard Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (BNY­DC) held a Cli­mate Tech­nol­o­gy Show­case. Togeth­er, the three mis­sion-aligned pub­lic enti­ties with sites along the New York Har­bor, and con­nect­ed by NYC Fer­ry, are com­mit­ted to mak­ing New York City the glob­al cap­i­tal of cli­mate inno­va­tion through pilot­ing pro­grams, leas­es, work­force devel­op­ment invest­ments, and reg­u­la­to­ry wayfind­ing. The Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive (HCC) is pledg­ing to dou­ble the num­ber of pilots con­duct­ed across the col­lab­o­ra­tive and struc­ture the pro­gram so that com­pa­nies ben­e­fit from both cam­pus-spe­cif­ic expe­ri­ences and col­lab­o­ra­tive-wide net­works, and fund­ing opportunities.

The NYC Cli­mate Tech­nol­o­gy Show­case high­lights the col­lec­tive impact of pilot­ing across the HCC while also pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies to grow and scale their busi­ness­es in New York City and increase expo­sure to prospec­tive cus­tomers, both gov­ern­men­tal and in the pri­vate sec­tor. Over 40 star­tups par­tic­i­pat­ed, and the event fea­tured demon­stra­tions of inno­v­a­tive cli­mate tech­nol­o­gy from six dif­fer­ent companies.

“New York City’s ded­i­ca­tion to grow­ing the green econ­o­my is stronger than ever and the role of cities as engines of inno­va­tion has nev­er been more impor­tant than in the urgent work to com­bat cli­mate change,” said First Deputy May­or Maria Tor­res-Springer. ​“The city’s com­mit­ment and cre­ativ­i­ty are exem­pli­fied by the Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive, a part­ner­ship between the Brook­lyn Navy Yard Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Trust for Gov­er­nors Island, and the New York City Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion that deploys city-con­trolled cam­pus­es in the defin­ing fight of our time and helps build a vibrant cli­mate tech ecosys­tem in the city of New York.”

“Today’s show­case, high­light­ing more than 40 part­ners from across the Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive, demon­strates what’s pos­si­ble when inno­va­tors are giv­en the space and resources need­ed to grow,” said Clare New­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island. ​“Through the city’s ecosys­tem of pilot­ing sites, includ­ing Gov­er­nors Island, we’ve been able to accel­er­ate real-world test­ing, help­ing to pro­pel these com­pa­nies into their next stages of devel­op­ment and giv­ing New York­ers a front-row seat to the tools to fight cli­mate change.”

“The Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive is a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion of three mas­sive for­mer mil­i­tary bases that are being trans­formed to fight cli­mate change, the glob­al threat of our time,” said NYCEDC Pres­i­dent & CEO Andrew Kim­ball. ​“Today’s show­case high­lights some of the amaz­ing entre­pre­neurs and tech­nol­o­gy already being pilot­ed at our three sites to unlock eco­nom­ic growth, cre­ate jobs, and pave the way for a green­er, more resilient future.”

“Since the launch of the Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive ear­li­er this year, we’ve made tremen­dous progress towards our com­mit­ment of mak­ing New York City the epi­cen­ter of cli­mate tech R&D, and pro­duc­tion,” said Lind­say Greene, Pres­i­dent and CEO, Brook­lyn Navy Yard Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. ​“From fur­ther­ing EV solu­tions in urban envi­ron­ments to test­ing marine-based car­bon cap­ture in one of the busiest har­bors in the world, we’ve suc­cess­ful­ly lever­aged our water­front assets to iden­ti­fy and advance the solu­tions we will need to com­bat cli­mate change. We look for­ward to dou­bling down on this crit­i­cal work next year.”

“The HCC will be an engine of eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty for New York­ers that inte­grates edu­ca­tion, train­ing and career place­ment for 2100 New York­ers and will help posi­tion the city’s diverse tal­ent for green col­lar jobs that are crit­i­cal to grow­ing the green econ­o­my,” said Abby Jo Sigal, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Tal­ent and Work­force Devel­op­ment. ​“The city’s green econ­o­my will cre­ate 400,000 jobs, includ­ing 12,000 appren­tice­ships by 2040, and the crit­i­cal role that the HCC will play in con­nect­ing local tal­ent to these oppor­tu­ni­ties will make our econ­o­my more inclu­sive, resilient, and green.”

“New York City is where the world’s bright­est minds come to test and exe­cute their best ideas on the biggest stage,” said New York City Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Matthew Fras­er. ​“Today’s event demon­strates this admin­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to col­lab­o­rate across sec­tors, indus­tries, and bor­ders to build a glob­al hub for urban inno­va­tion. Our efforts to stream­line and accel­er­ate the pilot­ing process for emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, through ini­tia­tives such as the NYC Smart City Test­bed Pro­gram, allow us to bet­ter eval­u­ate and poten­tial­ly scale solu­tions to our most press­ing chal­lenges — a win for tech com­pa­nies, city gov­ern­ment, and, most impor­tant­ly, 8.3 mil­lion New York­ers. I thank the mem­bers of the Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive for their part­ner­ship in this impor­tant work.”

The Adams Admin­is­tra­tion has com­mit­ted to mak­ing New York City a glob­al hub of urban inno­va­tion – one of the 40 ini­tia­tives laid out in the ​“New” New York Action Plan. Fol­low­ing this com­mit­ment, the NYCEDC part­nered with the Cor­nell Tech’s Jacobs Urban Tech Hub to release Pilot:New York City as a road map to accel­er­ate urban inno­va­tion in New York City. The for­ma­tion of the HCC builds on May­or Adams’ efforts to devel­op a ​“Har­bor of the Future,” a mul­ti­fac­eted ini­tia­tive, and the ​“Green Econ­o­my Action Plan” — both announced by May­or Adams in his 2024 State of the City address to reimag­ine New York City’s water­front and fuel 21^st-cen­tu­ry growth and innovation.

As the core of New York City’s bur­geon­ing cli­mate inno­va­tion ecosys­tem, the HCC will invest over $725 mil­lion to advance New York’s green econ­o­my in NYCEDC’s Sun­set Park Dis­trict, the Brook­lyn Navy Yard, and on Gov­er­nors Island. The invest­ments sup­port cli­mate inno­va­tors through pilot­ing, ten­ant­i­ng, reg­u­la­to­ry coor­di­na­tion, work­force devel­op­ment, knowledge/​data shar­ing, fundrais­ing, and facil­i­tat­ing access to City agen­cies. The HCC, launched from the Adams’ Admin­is­tra­tion Green Econ­o­my Action Plan, unlocks six mil­lion square feet of space, will sup­port the cre­ation of 5,000 jobs, edu­cate and train 2,100 stu­dents, and gen­er­ate $55 bil­lion of eco­nom­ic impact.

Through­out the last year, the HCC has gath­ered crit­i­cal insights into the col­lec­tive impact of pilot­ing across our dif­fer­ent cam­pus­es. Between 2023 – 2024, 19 green econ­o­my founders and cli­mate tech com­pa­nies com­plet­ed or had an active pilot at one or more of the HCC pilot sites, includ­ing TGI’s Cli­mate Solu­tions Chal­lenge, NYCEDC’s Pilots at BAT pro­gram, and BNY­D­C’s Yard Labs.

Insights from the last year show that cli­mate tech­nolo­gies come from all over the world with com­pa­nies cut­ting across a range of green econ­o­my indus­tries, includ­ing resilience infra­struc­ture, build­ings, trans­porta­tion, and ener­gy. Com­pa­nies come to New York City to pilot at var­i­ous devel­op­ment stages but tend to be in the deploy­ment stage. Through pilot­ing their tech­nolo­gies along the East Riv­er water­front, the indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment of all three HCC sites, com­pa­nies have been able to:

• Col­lect data that helps com­pa­nies iter­ate and improve their product;
• Demon­strate com­mer­cial viability;
• Raise expo­sure of their cli­mate tech­nolo­gies to both the investors and the public;
• Gain entry into the New York City mar­ket and tai­lor ser­vices to New York;
• Secure indus­try cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, dur­ing the pilot phase or plan to get their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion upon com­plet­ing their pilot;
• Expand their foot­print in New York City, includ­ing mak­ing new con­nec­tions with city agen­cies, expand­ing to new office, lab or fac­to­ry space, and cre­at­ing new investor con­nec­tions; and
• Onboard­ed new interns, trainees, full or part time staff, cre­at­ing an aver­age of four new jobs per pilot project.

“This pilot serves as a proof-of-con­cept demon­stra­tion and has accel­er­at­ed our growth in NYC, LA, and Detroit. This project has helped us gen­er­ate rev­enue, col­lect real-world data, part­ner with more than 20 cus­tomers to help move their goods, and raise $100k in grant fund­ing to bring our 100% elec­tric freight mobil­i­ty solu­tions to oth­er cities across the US,” said Emis­sion­less Founder Max Yer­gan.

“Both pilots have accel­er­at­ed our prod­uct devel­op­ment to val­i­date how our sys­tem can be installed in build­ings and how it can be iter­at­ed to meet real-world con­straints. Fol­low­ing our pilot at Gov­er­nors Island, we received mul­ti­ple inquiries from cus­tomers inter­est­ed in com­mer­cial­ly test­ing our sys­tem at their facil­i­ties. These pilot oppor­tu­ni­ties like­ly brought down our go-to-mar­ket time­line from 24 months to at least six months,” said LÆRO Design Stu­dio Founder & CEO Noe­mi Flo­rea.

“Matcha’s pilot at the Brook­lyn Army Ter­mi­nal was an accel­er­ant to our entry into New York. The pilot helped Matcha demon­strate the reli­a­bil­i­ty of its EV charg­ing soft­ware, gain approval from NYSER­DA, and gen­er­ate press,” said Matcha Co-founder and CEO Chris Klue­sen­er.

“Beyond real sav­ings data cap­tured, the pilot helped us fig­ure out ways to improve our soft­ware in a real pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment. For exam­ple, when the pilot site had a black­out event dur­ing a pow­er surge in the grid, 7 of 25 of our smart plugs could not recon­nect to Wi-Fi. We have since devel­oped a more robust IoT pro­to­col to over­come this sit­u­a­tion. With these issues iden­ti­fied and resolved at a small scale, we then gain the con­fi­dence and abil­i­ty to install at a larg­er scale (>50 out­lets per account). This is why the pilot is very impor­tant to us — to val­i­date our con­cept with real data and find loop­holes in our prod­uct to improve,” said Revert Tech­nolo­gies Co-founder and CEO Ryan Li.

“This pilot with DOT and NYCEDC has giv­en us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to refine our prod­uct and ser­vice offer­ing for NYC’s deliv­ery work­ers, ensur­ing that it is built with their spe­cif­ic needs in mind. DOT and NYCEDC cleared the way for us to be able to build safe charg­ing infra­struc­ture for NYC’s streets, and we look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work togeth­er,” said Swobbee US Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Stephan von Wolff.

“Our pilot at TGI has been instru­men­tal in our com­pa­ny’s suc­cess, gen­er­at­ing crit­i­cal data to iter­ate and improve our prod­uct inter­nal­ly, while show­ing exter­nal­ly that our prod­uct works and what its ben­e­fits are to secure new cus­tomers, investors, com­mu­ni­ty part­ners, and tal­ent. Our new pilot at BNY has allowed us to scale up our car­bon diox­ide removal and stor­age process sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude, with us now deliv­er­ing on the off­sets we’ve sold, and demon­strat­ing that our process is safe and effec­tive at a mean­ing­ful scale,” said Vycarb Founder & CEO Gar­rett Boudinot.

The May­or Adams Administration’s Har­bor of the Future ini­tia­tive includes emerg­ing inno­va­tion cen­ters at the Hunts Point Pro­duce Mar­ket, Gov­er­nors Island, the Brook­lyn Navy Yard, the Sci­ence Park and Research Cam­pus in Kips Bay, and the North Shore of Stat­en Island. Most recent­ly, May­or Adams announced that the city will invest $100 mil­lion to cre­ate the ​“Cli­mate Inno­va­tion Hub” at the Brook­lyn Army Ter­mi­nal as a part of the city’s Green Econ­o­my Action Plan that will posi­tion New York­ers to ben­e­fit from near­ly 400,000 ​“green-col­lar” jobs by 2040. This new hub will serve as a home for clean tech inno­va­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­port green tech­nol­o­gy star­tups — includ­ing sup­port­ing the Pilots at BAT program.

About The Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive
As out­lined in the Green Econ­o­my Action Plan, released by May­or Eric Adams in Feb­ru­ary of 2024, the plan’s vision is to estab­lish New York City as the glob­al cap­i­tal of cli­mate inno­va­tion through pilot­ing pro­grams, leas­es for office and lab space, work­force devel­op­ment invest­ments, and reg­u­la­to­ry wayfind­ing. At the heart of New York City’s bur­geon­ing cli­mate inno­va­tion ecosys­tem, The Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive will invest over $725 mil­lion to advance New York’s green econ­o­my in NYCEDC’s Sun­set Park dis­trict, the Brook­lyn Navy Yard, and on Gov­er­nors Island. By unlock­ing six mil­lion square feet of space, the Har­bor Cli­mate Col­lab­o­ra­tive will sup­port the cre­ation of 5,000 per­ma­nent jobs, edu­cate and train 2,100 stu­dents, and gen­er­ate $55 bil­lion in eco­nom­ic impact.