| County | Projects count | Total project spending | Total incentives | Total out-of-pocket spending | Total bill savings | Total energy savings (kW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Erie | 6,534 | $46,435,577 | $14,212,326 | $32,223,251 | $2,304,157 | 2,036,992 |
| Niagara | 1,487 | $10,124,268 | $3,035,614 | $7,088,654 | $625,764 | 561,205 |
| Cattaraugus | 82 | $751,134 | $181,951 | $569,183 | $67,431 | 60,817 |
| Chautauqua | 236 | $2,024,400 | $485,055 | $1,539,345 | $122,442 | 244,897 |
| Allegany | 62 | $598,898 | $166,236 | $432,662 | $29,062 | 50,503 |
Findings
Assisted
Assisted Home Performance is a ratepayer-funded, residential energy efficiency program run by NYSERDA. It targerts moderate income households, defined as households with annual incomes between 60% and 80% of their area’s median income.
There are approximately 69,000 of these households across the five counties of Western New York.
They are highly concentrated in Erie and Niagara counties.
Big picture
- Between 2010 and 2022, NYSERDA disbursed $18,081,182 on 8,401 energy efficiency projects across Western New York.
- These incentives catalyzed a further $41,853,095 in out-of-pocket spending by program beneficiaries.
- We estimate that 12.1% of eligible households across Western New York benefited from the program between 2010 and 2022. 1
- These projects produced an estimated $3.1M in bill savings and 2.9M kWh in energy savings in their first year.
1 This may be an underestimate of the program’s penetration, because we are assuming that each project benefits a single household. However, a project could benefit small residential buildings with up to 4 households.
Projects over time
In 2011, contractors completed 1,203 projects across Western New York, the highest in any single year during our study period.
Projects appear to be on a downward trajectory since 2021, averaging around 700 projects a year and reaching a low of 396 in 2022. It’s not clear why program activity declined, at from examining the data.
Spending by county
How did NYSERDA distribute this $18M across the 5 counties?
95% of the incentive spending went to Erie and Niagara counties, with 4 out of 5 of those dollars going to Erie county.
What accounts for concentration of spending in the north of the region? Does it simply reflect where moderate income households live?
Let’s take a look:
- Erie county, which has 67.2% of the eligible population, received 78.6% of the incentive spending.
- Niagara county, with 15.6% of the eligible population, received 16.8% of the incentive spending.
- Chautauqua, Allegany, and Cattaraugus, with 17.2% of the eligible population, received 4.6% of the spending.
While the majority of moderate income residents of Western New York do in fact live in Erie and Niagara counties—82% of households, to be precise—this does not fully explain the spending concentration.
It appears that the three rural counties in southern portion of New York State received a less-than-proportional share of the incentive spending between 2010 and 2022.
To understand why, let’s look at program penetration, the percent of eligible households that benefited from the program:
While we estimate that 14% of eligible moderate income households in Erie and Niagara counties participated in the Assisted program during the study period, program penetration was much lower in Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, and Allegany.
In other words, the program is reaching a smaller percentage of moderate income households in the southern counties, despite the fact that the households make up a greater share of the population of many zip codes:
Benefits by county
Despite the lower program penetration, the households that Assisted did reach in the southern counties enjoyed more than double the energy savings in the first year after the energy efficiency work was performed, on average:
Why did that happen? Rural homes often consume more energy than urban ones, and so may be benefit more from energy efficiency measures. But another part of the story may be that households in these areas spent more on their projects:
The average total project cost in Erie and Niagara—including both NYSERDA’s incentives and household out-of-pocket costs—stands at $7K. In the southern counties, the average total project cost ranged between $8.5K and $9.5K.
This is not primarily due to higher average incentive payments, however, but to high out-of-pocket costs. Projects in the southern counties spent 3 dollars out-of-pocket for every 1 dollar NYSERDA chipped in incentives. In Erie and Niagara, the ratio is close to 2-to-1.
Interestingly, however, the 2x better energy savings didn’t translate into 2x more bill savings:
It’s not immediately clear why this is the case.
Spending by race
How did NYSERDA distribute this $18M in demographic terms?
Let’s start by examining the racial makeup of moderate income households across Western New York:
If the racial makeup of program beneficiaries looks similar, we can conclude that the money was spent equitably—if we assume that the energy efficiency need is roughly equal across racial groups.
This is a big assumption, and unfortunately we lack the data to verify if it is true. (If that assumption doesn’t hold, in other words, then the chart doesn’t provide a basis for judging the equity of how the money was spent.)
And we need to make a second assumption before we can crunch the numbers: NYSERDA doesn’t tell us the race of the household behind each Assisted project, only the zip code that household lived in. This allow us to calculated how many spending went to each zip code. We assume that households in a given zip code are all equally likely to receive funds from Assisted, regardless of race. In other words, we must assume that within a given zip code, a moderate income white household is just as likely to have done an Assisted project as a moderate income black household.
With those two caveats in mind, let’s look at the estimated racial makeup of program beneficiaries in Western New York:
White households made up 85.5% of the moderate income population, and we estimate they made up 84% of households that did Assisted programs. The percentages are similar across racial groups: Black households made up 8.7% of the eligible population and 10% of program beneficiaries, asian households made up 2% and 2%, and so on.
While not definitive, this finding suggests that Assisted incentives were spent in a broadly equitable way in Western New York.
Empower
NYSERDA’s Empower program subsidizes energy efficiency interventions for low-income New Yorkers, defined as households whose annual income is under 60% AMI.
There are approximately 253,000 of these households across Western New York.
They are most concentrated in Buffalo, where low income households often make up 60% of a zip code, and the southern counties, where they make up 40-50% of the population, on average.
Unlike Assisted, Empower covers a project’s total cost,2 providing free energy retrofits to eligible households. In other words, incentives equal the total project cost, and there is no out-of-pocket spending.
2 Empower doesn’t cover all energy efficiency measures, however. Spray foam, for example, is not typically covered.
Big picture
- Between 20183 and 2023, NYSERDA disbursed $53,653,748 for the completion of 8,793 residential energy efficiency projects in Western New York.
- We estimate that 3.47% of eligible households in the region benefited from the program between 2018 and 2023. 4
- These projects produced an estimated $3.3M in first-year bill savings, and 3,8M kW in first-year energy savings across Western New York.
3 NYSERDA did not provide any data for Empower before 2018, possibly because the program had not launched yet.
4 This is likely underestimate, given our assumption that each project benefits a single household. In reality, Empower projects can be done in buildings with one to four units.
Projects over time
The annual number of completed projects per year was fairly consistent in our study period, averaging around 1,500 projects a year. The dip to a low of 1,169 projects completed in 2020 was likely caused by the Covid pandemic.
It’s also worth noting the difference in scale between Empower, with an average of 1,465 projects a year, and Assisted, with an average of 642 projects.
This difference could be due to Empower’s more generous subsidies, which may encourage household participation and reduce the resistance of landlords to out-of-pocket expenses.
Spending by county
How did NYSERDA distribute Empower funds across the 5 counties?
- Erie county, which has 66.5% of the eligible population, received 63.3% of the incentive spending.
- Niagara county, with 15.1% of the eligible population, received 14.3% of the incentive spending.
- Chautauqua, Allegany, and Cattaraugus, with 18.4% of the eligible population, received 22.4% of the spending.
The pattern here is the opposite of Assisted: the southern counties received a slightly larger-than-proportional share of the incentive spending, while Erie and Niagara, where the majority of low-income households live, received a slightly less-than-proportional share.
Program penetration sheds a light on this finding:
Compared to Assisted, which had much higher program penetration in Erie and Niagara counties, Empower’s rates are much more similar across counties. The one exception is Allegany county, where an estimated 5.43% of eligible households have participated.
On top of that, program participants in southern counties received $600-1,100 more than in Erie county, on average, which helps explain why these these counties received a slightly larger-than-proportional share of the funding. Given that Empower covers 100% of eligible energy efficiency measures, this per capita funding difference may reflect the higher expensive in energy efficiency retrofits in rural areas.
Benefits by county
As in the case of Assisted, participating households in Southern counties received greater first-year energy savings than those in Niagara and Erie, though the difference is not as stark.
This different in energy savings, could be partly due to the higher per-capital project costs in these counties, though the savings gap was larger than the cost gap.
The disparity in energy savings also translated to a disparity in bill savings, with Southern counties saving more than Northern ones. However, as with Assisted, the bill savings gap was smaller than the energy savings gap.
Interestingly, bill savings didn’t line up perfectly with energy savings. Allegany had virtually the same first-year bill savings as Cattaraugus, but lower energy savings. In the other direction, Erie had slightly higher first-year energy savings than Niagara, but lower bill savings.5
5 These shaky relationships could be due to differences in electricity and gas prices across counties, or impefections in NYSERDA’s energy and bill savings estimation methodology.
Spending by race
Next, we examine how NYSERDA distributed Empower’s $53.6M in demographic terms, first by looking at the racial composition of low income households in Western New York:
Once again, if the racial makeup of program beneficiaries looks similar, we can conclude that the money was spent equitably—if we assume that the energy efficiency need is roughly equal across racial groups.
As with Assisted, NYSERDA doesn’t provide us with the race of program participants, only the financial details of each project, and the zip code where the project took place.
If we make the same assumption that we did for Assisted—namely, that within a given zip code, a low-income white household is as likely to participate in Empower as a low-income household of any other race—we can estimate the racial makeup of the program’s beneficiaries in Western New York:
- White households make up 77.2% of low-income population, and 72.7% of Empower households.
- Black households make up 13.9% of low income population, and 18.8% of Empower households.
- The percentages of other races were nearly identical.
Despite our assumptions, the positive 4 point difference between Black household eligibily and participation provides strong evidence that program funds were disbursed equitably.
NY-Sun: Residential
NY-Sun is NYSERDA’s up-front incentive for distributed solar, including rooftop and community installations. 6
6 Note that NY-Sun is not the most significant subsidy available for rooftop solar, there are also federal and state tax credits. See Switchbox’s recent report.
This part of the analysis focuses on residential rooftop solar in Western New York. Any household that installs rooftop solar with a qualified contractor is eligible.
Big picture
- Between 2008 and 2023, NYSERDA disbursed $20,360,432 on 4,491 solar panel installation projects across Western New York.
- These incentives catalyzed a further $110,362,193 in out-of-pocket spending by program beneficiaries.
- We estimate that 0.79% of all eligible households across Western New York benefited from the program between 2008 and 2023.
- Taken together, these panels added 36 MW of solar capacity to the region.
Projects over time
In contrast with Assisted and Empower, NY-Sun residential installations have increased over time.
Since 2020, just under 300 projects have been completed per year. This follows an explosion of projects during a 5-year period between 2015 and 2019, which saw roughly double as many installations. Before this period, installations climbed from a dozen region-wide in 2008 to approximately 150 in 2014.
It’s not clear what caused this spike, though it may have to do with the drying up for NY-Sun funds post-2020.
For comparison, Assisted has average 600 projects a year in recent years, while Empower has averaged 1400.
Spending by county
How did NYSERDA distribute this $20M across Western New York?
As we might expect, projects and funds are allocated in rough proportion to population: 62% of incentive spending went to Erie county, 19% to Niagara, and 19% went to the Southern counties.
Program coverage is decently consistent across Western New York, ranging from 0.72% to 0.87% of total households in each county.
Benefits by county
Average incentives per project are considerably higher in the southern counties, averaging $5,500, 33% higher than the average in Erie, and 12% higher than Niagara.
While Erie County received the greatest aggregate subsidies due to its population size, the county’s beneficiaries tend to get the least grant amount per household.
This is at least partly due to the larger size of residential solar installation in the, which in turn likely correlates with more available roof space in rural areas.
Spending by race
To assess the racial equity of NY-Sun spending in Western New York, let’s start by examining the racial makeup of all households—not just LMI households—in the region:
Once again, NYSERDA doesn’t disclose the race of program beneficiaries, only the the technical and economic details of each installations, along with its zipc code.
Let’s make our usual assumption—that a White household is equally likely to receive a NY-Sun incentive as a household of any other race—noting that the assumption is less likely to hold in this case, given that the likelihood of installing solar correlates with income, and income correlates with the race.7
7 Making this assumption will likely cause us to understimate the percentage of minority-race housholds with solar, because we may, for instance, misattribute a solar project to a Black household that actually went to White household in that zip code.
Nevertheless, our imperfect estimate of the racial makeup of the NY-Sun residential program beneficiaries reveals a clear racial disparity in outcomes:
While Black households represent 9.5% of the regional population, we estimate that only 4% of residential solar projects have install by Black households. While white households represent 82% of the population, we estimate they have received 90.5% of projects. Our estimates show less disparity for the other racial groups, although these figures are less likely to be accurate do the small size of these populations.
NY-Sun: Small Commercial
NY-Sun also contains a program focused on small commercial buildings.
Big picture
- Between 2008 and 2023, NYSERDA disbursed $37,923,056 on small commercial solar installations, almost double the amount spent on residential projects.
- As a result, 559 were completed, about a tenth as many as the 4,491 residential projects that were completed in the same timeframe.
- These projects added 38 MW of capacity to Western New York, compared with the 36 MW from the residential program.
- Each project received an average of $67K, compared with $4.5K for residential solar.
- This makes sense to an extent, as these were much larger projects, with an average capacity of 68.6 kW, compared with 8.2 kW for residential solar.
- However, small commercial projects received an average of $1000 per kW, whereas residential projects received an average of $550 per kW.
- And while these incentives catalyzed a further $81M in out-of-pocket spending by program beneficiaries, every $1 NYSERDA put into small commercial solar yielded $2.2 in private investment, compared to $5.5 for residential projects.
- The discrepancy is due to the higher $/kW subsidy rate that small commercial received. It’s worth noting that the residential program achieved nearly the small solar deployment across the region—36 MW vs 38 MW—for nearly half the cost.
Projects over time
In recent years, 20-35 small commerical installations have been completed annually, approximately 10x fewer than residential projects. In terms of capacity, each of these projects is approximately 10x bigger than the average residential project.
Installations spiked between 2010 and 2013. The number of project completed annually during this period was roughly 3x higher than the 2014-2023 period.
Interestingly, this spike occurred right before a similar explosion in residential projects, which occured between 2014 and 2020.
Spending by county
How did NYSERDA distribute this $37M across Western New York?
Compared to NY-Sun residential, spending was more concentrated in Erie County, which received 78.9% of incentive spending (versus 62% in the residential program). Niagara received 12% (versus 19% in residential), and the Southern counties received 8.9% (vs 19%).
Benefits by county
In the residential program, the Southern counties received $1-1.5K more incentives per project.
For small commercial, Erie and Chautauqua have much larger average incentives sizes. This is perhaps due to the presence of larger commercial rooftop spaces in these counties.
The average capacity per project mirrors the average project incentive chart closely, with one exception: while Erie’s average incentive is close to Niagara’s, at around $70K, the average project capacity is 27% smaller.
NY-Sun: Large Commercial
NY-Sun also contains a program focused on large commercial projects, many of are community solar projects built in fields.
Big picture
- Between 2008 and 2023, NYSERDA disbursed $65,802,249 on large commercial solar installations, almost 2x the amount spent on small commercial projects, and 4x residential.
- As a result, 64 projects were completed, about a tenth of the 559 small commercial projects completed during this same timeframe, and a hundredth of the 4,491 residential projects.
- These projects added 240 MW of capacity to Western New York, 8.5x more than the small commercial or residential programs, respectively.
- Each project received an average of $1.028M, compared with $67K per small commercial and $4.5K per residential solar project.
- The larger subsidy makes sense, as these were much larger projects, with an average capacity of 3760 kW (3.7 MW) each, compared with 68.6 kW per small commercial and 8.2 kW per residential project.
- However, large commercial projects received an average of $273 per kW, half as much as residential solar ($550 per kW) and a quarter as much as small commercial ($1000 kW). Large commercial projects were by far the most cost effective.
- These incentives catalyzed a further $283M in out-of-pocket spending by program beneficiaries.
- Every $1 NYSERDA put into large commercial yielded $4.3 in private investment, compared to $2.2 for small commercial and $5.5 for residential.
Projects over time
Due to the size of the projects, less than 10 are typically completed annually. However, the pace has been steadily picking up since 2016.
Spending by county
How did NYSERDA distribute this $65M across Western New York?
Spending is much more equal across counties, compared to the small commercial and residential programs.
This is largely due to the fact that the other two programs focus on rooftop solar, and are thus concentrated in urban counties, where most of buildings are located. Large commercial projects are mostly sited in fields, and there’s plenty of empty space in more rural counties.
In fact, for the first time, a county other than Erie got the most spending.
Benefits by county
While Chautauqua and Erie ranked first and second in spending, they rank last in terms of average incentive per project.
Niagara and Allegany, which had the least overall investment, got the highest average incentives per project.
As with small commercial, the average project capacity tracks closely with the average incentive, as we’d expect.
Appendix
Assumptions
- For residential programs:
- One project is equivalent to one household. The caveat of this assumption is that we might undercount actual beneficiary households, as one project might also entail multi-family buildings, in which case we will have indirect beneficiaries such as tenants and other occupants of the premise.
- The racial distribution of the program’s beneficiary is assumed to mirror the racial makeup of the population, with imputation done at ZCTA-level. What this means is that if White households account for 20% of a ZCTA population, we assume that 20% of fundings allocated to that ZCTA would go to White households.
Data & Methods
Reuse
Citation
BibTeX citation:
@online{spencer2024,
author = {Spencer, Alison and Jivnani, Kiran and Nghiem, Minh and
Velez, Juan-Pablo},
title = {NYSERDA Spending in {Buffalo}},
date = {2024-08-28},
langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Spencer, Alison, Kiran Jivnani, Minh Nghiem, and Juan-Pablo Velez. 2024.
“NYSERDA Spending in Buffalo.” Switchbox. August 28, 2024.