A Clear Vision: The NYC Clean Heat Plan

This was produced as part of the Community Data Health Initiative, generously funded from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Introduction

In 2007 the Bloomberg administration outlined a sweeping commitment to the environment in a long-term plan called PlaNYC, which charted a broad set of government and private actions. NYC Clean Heat, one of PlaNYC’s marquee initiatives, began with the visuals – by using data and maps to starkly illustrate the real-life harm and consequences from air pollution on New Yorkers. Yet, even before a host of city agencies used data to visualize poor air quality and its local sources on a map of New York City, Andy Darrell, the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) New York regional director at the time and one of the architects of Clean Heat, looked out his office window in the Flatiron District.

In 2007, Darrell was working at this office with Isabel Silverman, a legal intern, when she noticed large puffs of black smoke coming from the tops of buildings in Manhattan. Noting how noxious the smoke looked, Silverman asked Darrell what the smoke was. “I looked out the window and I actually didn’t know the answer to that. I'm a New Yorker, and I've lived here much of my life, and the black smoke on the top of buildings – it's kind of like pigeons. It's just there. It's part of the landscape of the city,” said Darrell.

Darrell then tasked Silverman to do some research to figure out the cause of black smoke. She determined it was from heating oil used by the boilers in aging NYC buildings – particularly No. 6 and No. 4 heating oil, heavy crude oils that emit high levels of soot, particle pollution, and nickel when burned. No. 6 and No. 4 heating oil, aka “bunker fuel”, are commonly used to heat industrial buildings and for large marine vessel propulsion.

Darrell and a team of scientists at EDF undertook some preliminary research and brought the issue to the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability (OLTPS), the group charged with writing PlanNYC at that time, leading them to include improving air quality as a major part of PlaNYC.

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