Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Air Quality

Green Subways: An Answer Blowing in the Wind?

3:15 PM EST on November 13, 2007

234946793_dd350240bb.jpgAs part of its "Steal This Idea" series, Good magazine has a suggestion for a way to move toward a more sustainable New York: offering subway riders the chance to pay a little extra for a wind-powered ride.

Each year, the New York subway system uses 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, making it the city's single largest consumer of electricity. What if the subway's MetroCard machines offered the option of paying a small premium to purchase the rider's share of electricity from non-polluting wind power instead of traditional hydroelectric, nuclear, and fossil-fuel sources?

For its residential customers, ConEdison-the city's only electricity company-charges an additional 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour to use wind energy. The average subway ride uses 1.2 kilowatt-hours of power (based on 1.5 billion 2006 rides), which means the wind power surcharge would amount to 3 extra cents a ride-a 1.5 percent increase from the normal $2 charge.

With a 1.5 percent surcharge, a seven-day unlimited pass would cost $24.36 (up from $24), and a 30-day unlimited pass would cost $77.14 (up from $76). Say the surcharge was 5 percent-those prices would only increase to $25.20 and $79.80. A 5-percent per ride surcharge with a slim 10-percent participant rate could inject as much as $15 million into the wind-power market annually.

Sounds intriguing. But as recent efforts to establish wind farms upstate, off Long Island and in the Nantucket Sound have shown, a combination of high cost, environmental concerns, and plain old NIMBYism has bedeviled the development of wind energy in New York and elsewhere.

Photo: Nick Atkins Photography via Flickr 

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Why We Care About Some Transportation Tragedies More Than Others

Why do we respond to major transportation disasters with so much urgency — and why don't we count our collective car crash epidemic among them?

March 28, 2024

The Toll of History: MTA Board Approves $15 Congestion Pricing Fee

New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing tolls are one historic step closer to reality after Wednesday's 11-1 MTA board vote. Next step: all those pesky lawsuits.

March 28, 2024

Take Thursday’s Headlines Home, Country Roads

Heat Map reports on why rural Americans are resisting electric vehicles, and why it might not matter much for the climate.

March 28, 2024
See all posts