Repowering Long Island

I belong to an advocacy group called LIMBA, and we have regular meetings at the ungodly hour of 8:30AM on Friday mornings at the Hilton Garden Inn near MacArthur Airport.  Every time I attend a meeting, I learn something here.  We have a wide range of speakers that come to talk on subjects that deal mostly with the infrastructure issues that face Long Island, like Energy, Transportation, and Housing.  Today we had Prof. Matthew Cordaro, of Long Island University come to give us an update on repowering Long Island by renovating the older single cycle power plants that currently exist here.  Prof. Cordaro's Center for Managment Analysis at LIU has produced a report that details the dramatic environmental benefits from going to combined cycle plants.  The emissions are reduced tremendously, the fuel efficiency is increased, and the generating capacity of the plants are substantially boosted.  Seems like a no-brainer here, but we're talking about big ticket items here, and until the question of who will own the generating assets of Long Island's electrical system is resolved, repowering probably isn't getting off the dime.

The upcoming subjects and speakers for LIMBA meetings are available at LIMBA's website, www.limba.net.  One of the more exciting subjects will be a presentation by Broadwater Energy, on their plan for a floating LNG Regasification plant in the middle of Long Island Sound.  This one's gonna be better than Fight Night at the Garden!

Dr. Cordaro's Report can be dowloaded here