Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday announced new federal “guidelines” for battery-energy storage facilities that encourage but do not mandate local control in siting the controversial facilities.
Speaking at a Hauppauge firehouse whose chief expressed “strong concerns and opposition” to a plant there, Zeldin offered support for battery opponents’ concerns, but stopped short of a an order that would have put the facilities’ under federal government control.
Asked by Newsday why the guidelines weren’t federal mandates, Zeldin said, “The siting, the zoning for these facilities, that’s not something that gets any better by micromanaging from some agency in Washington DC.”
Zeldin, a former Long Island legislator and U.S. congressman from Shirley, said the EPA was instead “here to help. We’re putting out the guidelines based on our experiences, we’re offering the technical expertise that we have if, God forbid, there is a lithium-ion fire. The next time there is a lithium-ion fire our agency is ready to be there to answer the call.”
His comments disappointed some who strongly oppose the battery facilities being proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Long Island Power Authority across the region. Nor did Zeldin’s guidelines come close to matching the level of opposition voiced by the event’s other speakers, including the Hauppauge fire chief, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and state Sen. Mario Mattera (R-St. James).
“Nothing was accomplished today,” said Fran Lunati, a Holtsville resident who has led community members in opposition to battery plants in Islip and Brookhaven. Zeldin “didn’t say anything we didn’t already know,” she said, adding the state will “never hand” over control of siting the facilities locally.
The new EPA guidelines, Zeldin said, say developers should “comply with state and local siting, zoning, marking and permitting requirements to ensure site suitability.” They should also consider the “design of BESS units, battery chemistry, manufacture and quality assurance,” and “consult the most recent safety standards.” New York State released updated fire-code standards this month.
Blakeman, a vocal opponent of battery “warehouses” and offshore wind farms, insisted siting of the plants already is a “regional issue … It’s the whole Long Island together who don’t want these battery warehouses in their communities.”
Hauppauge Fire Commissioner Scott Monroe, expressing “strong concerns and opposition” to a 79-megawatt battery on Rabro Drive in Hauppauge, cited recent fires at such facilities, the proposed KCE plant’s proximity to homes, a church and a school, and the safety risks of attempting to control potential fires.
“It’s unreasonable to expect our volunteer firefighters who have families and jobs to handle a disaster of this magnitude,” he said, pointing to fires that can burn for days. He called on Zeldin to “lend the power of his office to try to stop the madness that is being forced on the Hauppauge community.”
In a statement to Newsday after the event, Brian Hayes, chief executive of Key Capture Energy, the developer of the LIPA-contracted Hauppauge plant, said the company builds and operates battery plants to “the highest safety standards,” adding, “This project, along with all future projects, will be in full compliance with rigorous national and international safety testing as well as New York’s recently updated fire code.” KCE plans at least six other facilities on Long Island.
Battery energy storage plants are a key part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan for a carbon-free energy grid over the next two decades, but her plan, initially developed under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, is facing deep challenges.
President Donald Trump’s opposition to wind farms has hobbled the plan to retire older fossil-fuel plants; solar-power installations were dealt a blow when Congress passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill that removes vital solar credits for home-solar installations by year end.
Loss of subsidies for electric vehicles, heat pumps and other clean-energy sources recently forced the state to rethink its earlier plans to retire old gas plants by 2040, and the state is now reconsidering at least one new gas pipeline for the downstate region.
Zeldin himself has been a point person for Trump’s efforts to dismantle carbon-reduction goals
This summer he proposed repealing all greenhouse-gas emissions standards for the power sector and doing away with amendments to the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that “directly result in coal-fired power plants having to shut down,” the EPA announced.
Zeldin’s EPA charged the regulations have “imposed massive costs on coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants, raising the cost of living for American families, imperiling the reliability of our electric grid, and limiting American energy prosperity.”
In communications before the event, the EPA indicated the new battery guidelines would fill the “safety gap left by partisan fast-tracking” of the facilities by leveraging EPA’s own “unmatched lithium-battery expertise to deliver America’s first federal BESS safety guidance to better protect clean air, land, and water nationwide.”
Hochul’s office on Monday took aim at the former Long Island congressman.
“Lee Zeldin’s job is to protect the environment, but he has been doing anything but that,” Hochul spokesman Ken Lovett said in a statement. “His continued assault on clean energy and his push for rollbacks on environmental protections will hurt everyone in his home state of New York and across the country and fly in the face of the federal government’s claim of wanting U.S. energy independence.”
Lovett said Zeldin’s plan “risks leaving New York’s economy behind and forcing New Yorkers to pay.”
LIPA in a statement said “safety is always our highest priority,” including for battery plants which are “critical to ensure electric grid reliability …”
Most Long Island towns have moratoriums on battery storage plants, following fires at three facilities in the state in 2023, including one in East Hampton that burned for more than 30 hours. Pointing to a massive fire at one of the nation’s largest plants in Monterey, California, earlier this year, opponents say they should not be sited in residential neighborhoods, schools or close to vital highways.
Christina Kramer, a Long Beach resident who heads up the activist group Protect Our Coast Long Island, NY. and attended Zeldin’s event, said best solution to siting of the plants may be a law that prevents battery plants from being sited five to 10 miles from homes and business districts.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” while limiting subsidies for solar, wind and other green energy, carved out a reprieve for battery facilities. Under the law, large-scale battery facilities must be completed by 2033 in order to receive a lucrative federal tax credit — considerably longer than limits put on other green-energy projects — through there are new limits on foreign content in the batteries.
Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.