Rolling blackout fears spark calls for action.

The future is looking pretty dark for New York City and Long Island, according to a recent study by New York Building Congress that predicts a looming energy crisis.

Within the next four years, the first effects of an energy crunch will begin to be felt, according to the report, which states that, by 2025, New York City will need between 6,000 and 7,000 megawatts of new electricity resources.

Such high demand--without an increase in the number of power plants pumping out juice--could mean major problems for the city's building owners and tenants, as energy prices start to spiral and the city becomes engulfed by brownouts and blackouts.

"The Building Congress looked at the development patterns in New York City between now and 2025," said Gil C. Quiniones, senior vice president of energy and telecom, for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, as well as a member of the New York City Energy Task Force (NYCETF), kicking off a recent energy panel sponsored by ConsumerPowerline, the for-profit energy consumer advocacy organization.

"It concluded that, for us to be able to sustain and to support the growth not only in buildings, but in population and in housing here in New York City, we're going to need somewhere around 6,000 plus megawatts in New York City--meaning that we need that to be able to support the development and the growth that is projected to occur during that time frame."

The study reinforces a 2004 warning by the NYCETF that the city would need 2,600 megawatts of new electricity by 2008 in order to keep up with a growing demand for electricity in the city. With more development on the horizon, specifically at the World Trade Center site, the West Side and a development boom in Long Island City and downtown Brooklyn, this growth shows no signs of abating. According to Con Edison, demand for electricity is projected to grow 1.5 to 2 percent a year.

However, not everyone believes the city is headed for rolling blackouts. Ken Klapp, spokesperson for the New York Independent System Operator, thinks those predictions are extreme, explaining that the installed capacity--that's the total generation available to the area--is often not taken into consideration.

"To plan the system reliably, you want to have more capacity available than the actual demand, for obvious reasons," he said. "The electric systems plan extra capacity above and beyond what the peak load is going to be, or what they think it's going to be."

According to Klapp, the number of megawatts available to the state is 18% above what is actually needed. Capacity for the summer of 2006 stands at 39,288 MW, while the projected forecast is actually 33,295 MW. For Manhattan and Long Island City, the estimates are pitched even higher to meet anticipated demand.

While he does not anticipate dire straits for the city, Klapp conceded that current projections do point towards some concerns in meeting the reserve requirement, rather than the actual requirement, in New York City around 2008.

But Jerry Kremer, chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electric Alliance, a group created three years ago to deal with the energy shortfall, thinks the problem is much more severe. "It's not an invented crisis. It's for real," he said.

Kremer claims that by 2007, the city will start to see brownouts. Electric companies will be forced to figure out where to distribute power and where not to distribute it. He expects that by 2010, the city will see a move from brownouts to blackouts.

He also sees prices for electricity going up, adding, "When power companies have to start to scramble to find sources, it costs more and it's passed on to property owners," he said.

There are several projects already underway that will bring some 1000 extra mega watts to the market. The New York Power Authority put its new 500 MW facility at the Charles Poletti Power Project in Astoria, Queens, into operation last December and SCS Astoria Energy is in the midst of constructing another power plant in Astoria.

On Long lsland, the Power Authority voted to bring in 345 MW of electricity from a pumped-storage hydroelectric facility in Massachusetts and has plans for a second cable system to source supplies from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

However, even these projects come online, other plants are being retired and power companies have been hindered in developing new, large scale power plants by the 2002 expiration of New York State's Article X, a law that streamlined the power plant siting process.

In its absence, the process to get approval for new power plants takes much longer. So far, there's a deadlock in state legislature over the bill. With an estimate of three to five years-to build a new plant, even if the state were to make a decision to reinstate Article X this year, Southeastern New York wouldn't see any new plants until after 2010. By then, the earliest affects of the energy crisis might already be visible.

"The fact that there's no resolution has created insecurity in power plant developers," said Michael Gordon, president and founder of ConsumerPowerline. "If we don't know what the rules are going forward, it's hard to develop a plant."

"Looking at potential reliability issues in 2008, you'd like to have the most efficient process intact to do that," said Klapp, citing the need to reinstall Article X as the biggest issue of the energy crisis.

The NYISO is currently conducting a major study to evaluate the situation and seek solutions to an anticipated energy shortage, including ways of, lowering the stress on the grid.

Already, the NYISO has special programs to encourage building owners to install their own diesel-fueled generators for use during super-peak periods. For every megawatt the building owner generates for himself, they get paid the current energy price.

There's also some $228 million beyond traditional NYSERDA funding available for investment into different facilities to provide more reliable generation and transmission.

And Gordon also believes that expanding the steam energy market could have a positive impact. High natural gas prices have led to a slew of owners turning off cogenerators, which create both electricity and steam. An added bonus of cogeneration, according to Kremer, is the ability of utility companies to buy the excess power.

However, what building owners can generate for themselves a "drop in the ocean" compared to the city's needs.

Said Kremer, "Steam requires capital investment and the message right now, to any kind of power industry, is that, [because of Article X] New York is off limits.

"In the mind of those in Albany, there is no crisis because it's not happening today. But they should be worrying about the future."