Proposal would transform Long Island City’s Ravenswood power plant into clean energy hub

New York City’s largest gas-fired power plant, a nearly six-decade-old Queens station on the East River that pumps pollutants from its colossal candy cane smoke stacks, could be transformed into a clean energy hub, the facility’s owner said.

The plan to retire and reimagine the cavernous Ravenswood electricity generating station, which opened in Long Island City in 1963 and can power half the city, would take years and require regulatory sign-off.

But it would mark a major step in cleaning up western Queens’ so-called asthma alley. The plant briefly ran on coal after its opening, but now largely operates on natural gas.

Rise Light & Power, owned by the New York company LS Power Group, said that it plans to turn the Ravenswood plant into a centralized hub directing wind and solar energy into the New York power grid.

The project would replace the station’s 1960s-era generators with batteries storing energy from transmission lines running upstate and to the ocean, and dismantle the plant’s smokestacks, including its largest, nicknamed Big Allis because it was built by the manufacturer Allis-Chalmers.

The energy behemoth rises from a 27-acre plot between the Queensboro Bridge and the Roosevelt Island Bridge, and around the corner from Queensbridge Houses, the nation’s largest public housing complex.

The plan to remake the power facility hinges on local, state and federal regulatory approval, said Clint Plummer, chief executive of Rise Light & Power. He said the project, if authorized, could be completed by around the end of the decade.

“We believe that this has the potential to be not just transformative for this community, but also a stellar example of what other power generating facilities can do from a technical and a business perspective,” Plummer said Wednesday.

“Our hope with this is to encourage facilities around the city, the state and the country to follow suit,” added Plummer, who spent more than a decade in the offshore wind industry before coming to LS Power.

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, New York State set goals of generating 70% of its electricity through renewable energy by 2030 and reaching a zero-emission electricity sector by 2040.

Gov. Hochul has continued to chase the green energy goals. A spokesman for the governor, Leo Rosales, said in a statement on Wednesday that the administration “welcomes the opportunity to review any proposal that looks to help support New York’s aggressive climate goals.”

And the blueprint received backing from a group of powerful politicians representing Queens including Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria), according to a Rise Light & Power news release.

Maloney, whose district includes the facility, had campaigned to plug Ravenswood’s emissions. In a statement, she said: “I applaud Rise Light & Power for taking steps to transition Big Allis and Ravenswood to a clean energy hub.”

“The residents of my district have suffered through decades of pollution,” Maloney said in the statement. “I look forward to seeing a Renewable Ravenswood being a monument to Long Island City’s future as a clean energy provider.”