Letters

I am dismayed that the Hamptons Bays community is resisting the proposed North Road battery energy storage facility.

Battery storage is the cornerstone of a smarter, cleaner and more resilient power grid, and it is an essential tool in fighting the climate crisis. As a young adult, climate change is threatening my future. To attack it, we must employ new technologies — including battery storage.

To argue that a BESS facility may cause environmental concerns disregards the outsized environmental and climate harms of fossil fuels: greenhouse gas emissions, gas leaks, oil spills and fires. One fire at a BESS in East Hampton does not negate the case for others to be built.

Battery energy storage systems are currently installed in 39 states and many countries abroad. They are an essential part of bringing zero-emission offshore wind energy into our grid, storing it when it’s plentiful and demand is low, and releasing it when demand is high.

A zero emissions grid by 2040 is an ambitious but doable goal mandated by New York’s 2019 Climate Law. Local resistance in Hampton Bays will only delay our transition further, as we continue to pay the price for increased exposure to climate disasters, polluted air, higher energy bills, a dirty interstate energy supply chain, and fewer revenue-boosting local infrastructure projects.

Blocking the proposed BESS facility in Hamptons Bays would not be a step forward for the people of Suffolk County but one back. As a young adult who will inherit the cost of climate ignorance in the decades to come, I urge the people of Hampton Bays to listen to the facts and allow this project to follow through.

Kai Abbott

Sag Harbor