NineDot Energy, a community-scale clean energy project developer, and Starbucks have entered into an energy credit subscription agreement to support New York City’s clean energy transition.
“As part of our promise to give more than we take from the planet, Starbucks is proud to be a subscriber with NineDot Energy to help move New York’s clean energy transition forward,” said Michael Kobori, Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer. “We’re excited to be a leading community battery storage subscriber in New York City in support of community-scale battery storage, which benefits some of the people most impacted by climate change by accelerating the retirement of fossil fuel power stations that run during peak energy demand.”
NineDot’s initial battery storage site in the Pelham Gardens, adjacent to the Northeast Bronx, a fully approved, community-scale battery storage system in New York City, is operational and generating energy credits. The site provides power and resilience to the local power grid at times of peak demand.
Currently, NineDot has approximately 30 projects under construction across the city, with some being evaluated and designed.
“We are thrilled to have Starbucks as an anchor subscriber,” said David Arfin, NineDot Energy CEO and Co-Founder. “We know that fighting climate change requires collaboration between energy providers like NineDot and energy consumers like Starbucks. NineDot has a strong pipeline of battery energy storage projects that can support Starbucks throughout the New York City area.”
NineDot is working to achieve its goal of developing 400 MW of battery storage capacity by the end of 2026 while meeting the stringent safety requirements for any municipality in the U.S. as specified by the New York City Fire Department.
NineDot energy storage sites operate under the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) Value Stack program, which was established by the New York Public Service Commission to help develop clean energy sites for local electric networks.
The sites receive credits for responding to the electric utility’s calls to export power during high-stress periods, while NineDot virtually allocates VDER credits as discounts to remote subscribers’ utility bills.
A typical NineDot battery site is sized at 5 MW and designed to power 5,000 New York City homes for four hours on a peak summer day. In 2022, a NineDot site would have reduced local greenhouse gas emissions by 420 tons of CO2e using the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) emissions methodology.
NineDot Energy is supported by an investment firm Carlyle and has received project debt financing of $110 million from CIT, SMBC, and NY Green Bank.
New York City battery storage sites support the New York Governor’s target of 6,000 MW of energy storage capacity by 2030 and become a net zero carbon state by 2040.
