Climate Change: Resilience and Energy in the Niterói and Rio de Janeiro Regions

Watch Dr. Cohen's lecture here. 

Climate change has exacerbated environmental conditions that pose a threat to human settlements: a warming planet has made the ocean warmer, increased evaporation, and added moisture to storm systems, which in turn has increased the frequency and intensity of storms, something that is only expected to worsen as climate change increases. As glaciers melt, they add to the volume of water in the world’s oceans, resulting in sea level rise. Even without extreme weather events, rising sea levels can cause flooding.

As our global population has grown, more and more people are living in the pathway of destruction, whether it be from flooding and storm surge along our shorelines or from wildfires, drought, and extreme heat inland. Urban areas, while being essential for efficient use of land and distribution of resources, also are subject to extreme levels of devastation from severe weather and natural disasters due to high concentrations of people and infrastructure.

Another risk of extreme weather is that it can make it difficult to deploy emergency services and resources to reach those in need, as flooding and landslides may cause gridlock, downed trees and powerlines may cause homes to be unreachable, communication lines may become disrupted, and hospitals may become damaged, further delaying essential care. Given that our lifestyles are so energy-dependent and reliant on shared energy, water, sewage, and sanitation services, interruption of these resources and services can be massively disruptive, recovery from which is often both expensive and time-intensive.

This lecture details the climate change challenges faced by New York City and the city’s efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, using the extreme weather event of Hurricane Sandy as a case study and key turning point in the city’s strategy.

New York City is vulnerable to flooding from extreme weather and sea level rise, with over 520 miles of coastline. Heavy storms also pose risks to the wastewater system, sometimes resulting in overflows of sewage treatment areas. Heat in New York City, particularly in Manhattan, is at times hotter than its surrounding area due to the “Urban Heat Island Effect,” leading not only to health risks to its inhabitants but also to increased demand on the electricity grid.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States: in New York City, 43 people died, and entire communities were destroyed. The hurricane left most of the city without electricity for days or weeks, shut down some subway lines for months, and resulted in an estimated $19 billion of damages in NYC alone. This superstorm demonstrated the weaknesses in many of our critical systems and infrastructure to major weather events and was the impetus for many of the adaptation interventions used in the city today.

The development of the city’s first sustainability plan, PlaNYC 2030, was led by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg with the goal of building broad-based consensus behind environmental sustainability politics. A key element of this plan was that it tied environmental sustainability to economic development. Through the input of over 20 city agencies, the plan consisted of 10 goals and 127 initiatives to address issues of land use, parks, affordable housing, transportation, air and water quality, energy supply and demand, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

However, climate adaptation was not heavily emphasized in PlaNYC, leading to the next iteration of the plan released in June 2013: “A Stronger, More Resilient New York.” This plan contained recommendations both for rebuilding the communities impacted by Sandy and increasing the resilience of infrastructure and buildings. The plan contained over 250 initiatives aimed at further protecting the coastline—the first defense against storms and rising sea levels—as well as strengthening buildings and all the vital systems that support the life of the city, including the energy grid, transportation systems, parks, telecommunications networks, healthcare system, and water and food supplies.

In 2015, then-Mayor de Blasio linked sustainability to his top goal of reducing income inequality and changed the name of PlaNYC to OneNYC, which added a focus on social equity and more explicitly addressed climate resiliency. The vision of OneNYC is an NYC with an inclusive, equitable economy that allows all New Yorkers to live with dignity and security.

Most recently in 2023, Mayor Eric Adams released the next iteration of the plan, “PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done,” which highlights efforts the city is taking to protect New Yorkers from climate threats, improve quality of life, and build the green economy. This plan prioritizes the on-the-ground execution and implementation of promises made to New Yorkers in previous plans to reimagine communities and create a more equitable, healthy, and resilient future. A key aspect of this plan is that it identifies opportunities to leverage available state and federal funding sources to deliver both near-term benefits and achieve long-term climate goals.

Billions of dollars have already been spent in NYC to adapt to climate change, primarily focused on withstanding flood events by restoring beaches, bulkheads, and jetties, reconstructing and strengthening boardwalks, raising single-family homes in flood zones, protecting electric generation systems against flooding, relocating building utility rooms out of basements in developments located near the shoreline, constructing more permeable surfaces in parks, road medians, and other public spaces, planning additional green infrastructure, and changing zoning and building codes to reduce damage from flooding.

New York City has also implemented policies and initiatives to mitigate climate change, such as enacting Local Law 97 (which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings), increasing bike lanes and supporting the CitiBike bicycle sharing system, constructing electric vehicle charging stations, increasing the use of solar arrays on buildings, and increasing the use of energy efficiency measures such as insulated windows and sensor-driven lighting systems.

These mitigation and adaptation strategies are aimed at transitioning NYC to an environmentally sustainable city. An environmentally sustainable city is defined as a city that uses resources as efficiently as possible, uses renewable resources as much as possible, recycles as much as possible, and has the least possible impact on the natural environment. Sustainable cities are where citizens can find decent work and businesses can thrive, where there is social mobility and equity, and where there is a minimized ecological footprint and adequate preparations for changing environmental conditions.

All of this requires the organizational capacity to collect and recycle waste, generate renewable energy, and maintain energy efficiency. Both private-sector initiative and public-sector direction, incentivization, and responsibility are needed to produce green solutions to sewage treatment, waste management, water filtration, air pollution control, toxic waste regulation and treatment, mass and personal transit, and infrastructure revitalization. Support at the community level, too, is required for the successful implementation of local sustainability policy.

With a growing global population and increased energy use, energy demand has increased substantially. To power a sustainable city, we need energy that is cheaper, more reliable, decentralized, less polluting, and less dangerous than fossil fuels. Infrastructure investment is needed in both power generation (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower), power distribution (e.g., smartgrids, microgrids, and high-voltage long-distance distribution lines), and power storage (i.e., battery technology).

Strategies for transitioning to an environmentally sustainable economy that can be gleaned from New York City’s approach is to connect economic growth to environmental sustainability. Policies should present environmental sustainability as central to economic modernization, take a positive approach that focuses on incentives rather than punishments, and focus on environmental and non-environmental sustainability metrics that are rigorously measured and continuously improved. A key aspect of advocating for and communicating about environmental sustainability is to emphasize common ground and shared values to build consensus. It is important to leverage public-private partnerships, as private organizations offer capital and the capacity for innovation and the public sector provides government leadership and regulatory authority. To build resiliency, it is critical to replace aging and decaying infrastructure and update zoning and building codes to accurately capture climate risks. Employing strategic thinking when siting solar arrays, utility rooms, grid infrastructure, and energy generation systems is key to minimize damages and limit energy disruption during extreme weather events.

While the transition to environmental sustainability is underway, building resiliency is more important than ever. Resiliency can be accomplished through public-private partnerships, strategic government planning and forward-thinking leadership, community engagement, investment in public infrastructure, and innovative new technologies.