Debra West

In all, 16,000 apartments and condominiums are in the works in more than a dozen towns, along with spaces for restaurants and shops.

But the boom unfolding in Westchester County is under threat — not from any not-in-my-backyard opposition or a slumping real estate market.

Instead, it is coming from something unexpected: a lack of natural gas.

Con Edison, the region’s main utility, says its existing network of pipelines cannot satisfy an increasing demand for the fuel.

As a result, the utility has taken the extreme step of imposing a moratorium on new gas hookups in a large swath of Westchester, including for residential buildings planned in Yonkers, White Plains and New Rochelle. The only other places in the country with similar restrictions are in Massachusetts, gas industry officials said.

“It’s just a question of how people are going to be able to heat their homes and cook their food with the energy that’s available right now,” said Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Ed.

There is an ample supply of natural gas in the United States, but opposition to building or expanding interstate pipelines has caused delivery challenges in the Northeast, according to industry officials. Two counties in western Massachusetts have had a moratorium on new gas hookups since 2014.

In Westchester, Con Ed’s moratorium, which is primarily concentrated in the southern section of the county, has set off anger and panic among developers and elected leaders who say it has left dozens of projects in limbo, creating uncertainty about housing, jobs and the area’s economic future.

“I’m still traumatized by the last decade when we had a head of steam and it all fell apart due to the economy,” said Noam Bramson, the mayor of New Rochelle, where dozens of projects are under construction or planned. “There are windows of opportunity when you can accomplish something and windows can close quickly.”

In Yonkers, a developer has offered the city $16 million to buy a municipal parking lot and turn it into a complex with housing, shopping and a hotel. But the deal has yet to close and the city’s mayor, Mike Spano, is concerned that without access to gas the developer may pull out.

The developer, Michael Mitnick, declined to comment on the project’s fate, but said other options, like green heating technology, can be less reliable and more expensive.

“You do not want to get too fancy or too creative with major building systems,” he said.

But Con Ed’s decision has also been met with deep skepticism — many elected leaders and residents question whether the utility is creating a crisis to make it easier to win approval from the Cuomo administration for new pipelines. State regulators with the power to force Con Ed to lift the moratorium are reviewing the situation.

“This would be a good game of chicken, especially when the target is lower Westchester,” Spano said. “If you want to get the governor’s attention, this is the way to do it.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo lives in Mount Kisco, a town included in Con Edison’s moratorium, and wants the state to move away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy, like wind. He has banned fracking, a process to extract gas from shale rock, and two years ago his administration rejected a major interstate pipeline project, saying its construction would endanger wetlands.

That rejection, Con Ed officials said, cast a chill over the gas industry and has made it difficult for the utility to entice any pipeline developers willing to build in Westchester. State officials also turned down a proposal by Con Ed to help finance a new pipeline, utility officials said.

“The market changed,” Clendenin said. “Investors were no longer willing to take the risk.”

But Cuomo’s office said Con Ed was seeking to make excuses for its failure to anticipate market changes in Westchester.

“The current issues these localities are facing are a result of poor planning by the utilities,” said Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for the governor. “Con Edison never even proposed new infrastructure or alternative solutions that would have adequately met increased demand for certain products prior to announcing its moratorium.”

In response to the moratorium, the state recently announced a package of incentives, including grants, for developers and residents in Westchester seeking clean-energy systems.

Considered a cheaper and less polluting alternative to heating oil, natural gas consumption nationwide increased 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, said Lori Traweek, chief operations officer for the American Gas Association. But efforts to transport more gas to the Northeast from other parts of the country, especially from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, have been blocked over safety and environmental worries.

“Is it better or worse to have a pipeline?” Traweek said. “Without it, you are taking away consumers’ affordable choice, potentially increasing emissions and reducing reliability. That doesn’t seem like a good energy policy.”

In New York, the state Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities, is investigating Con Ed’s claims about the natural gas situation in Westchester and plans to issue its findings in July. It could overturn the moratorium, require Con Ed to find an additional gas supply or allow the moratorium to stand.

“The PSC is committed to ensuring reliable, safe and affordable energy for New Yorkers, and considers all proposals from utilities to meet that need on the merits,” said James Denn, a commission spokesman.

The tension in Westchester touches on a wider debate about climate change, fossil fuels, renewable energy and environmental policy.

National Grid — a utility that supplies natural gas to 1.8 million customers in Brooklyn and parts of Queens, as well as on Long Island and Staten Island — is seeking the state’s approval to build a 24-mile pipeline from New Jersey through lower New York Bay.

“We cannot continue to sign up customers for new service if we don’t have the supply to back it up,” said John Bruckner, a top executive at National Grid.

In Westchester, developers rushed to submit applications for gas hookups before the moratorium went into effect on March 15. About 900 applications were submitted and Con Ed will notify applicants in the coming weeks if their requests have been approved.

Joe Apicella, managing director of MacQuesten Development, was one of the applicants. His company plans to build a 28-story residential tower in New Rochelle that will also include a new city hall and firehouse.

“To shut the spigot off entirely without a well-thought-out plan is just irresponsible,” Apicella said. “It’s a monopoly. You can’t go to company B.”

Dr. Courtney M. Williams, who lives in Peekskill and is a founder of Safe Energy Rights Group, an environmental group, said the moratorium should lead to a broader discussion about climate change and greener energy policies.

“Any investment in pipeline infrastructure is locking us into a fossil fuel future,” Williams said. “These companies have invested millions in antiquated infrastructure. The writing is on the wall. It is really clear that we need to invest in renewable energy.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="fdddf1be-4e3e-4d9c-8c91-de2f70c4433f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/nyregion/con-ed-natural-gas.html">The New York Times</a>.

No pipelines, no service: Con Ed cuts off new gas hookups

YONKERS, N.Y. — Across the suburbs north of New York City, clusters of luxury towers are rising around commuter rail stations, designed to lure young workers seeking easy access to Manhattan.

<h1>GREENWICH, Conn. — When he was campaigning for governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont talked frequently about creating a tech-friendly business culture.</h1>

What he did not mention as often was that he had a secret weapon — his wife, Annie Huntress Lamont, a leading venture capitalist whose deep Silicon Valley connections could help the financially struggling state become a bigger high-tech player.

Annie Lamont, a founder and managing partner of a firm that has raised billions of dollars in venture funds for health care and financial technology startups, has sat on dozens of boards and been involved in the sale of 75 companies. It is a business that thrives on relationships, and she has a long list of friends.

“For me, the best thing I can do is be an advocate for the state, working with people and trying to bring businesses here,” Lamont, 62, said.

That would be a boost for a state that has ranked at or near the bottom in economic growth in the country over the past decade, where lucrative insurance and financial industry jobs have been replaced with lower-paying service industry positions and where public sector employment is 10,000 jobs shy of pre-recession levels.

Ned Lamont, a Democrat whose inauguration is Wednesday, said that new jobs were his top priority and that startups were key to his plan.

“This used to be the startup capital of the world,” Lamont said, noting that Sikorsky helicopters, Pratt &amp; Whitney engines and the Frisbee were all created in Connecticut. “We lost a little bit of our entrepreneurial edge in this last generation. Annie and I have both been in that startup world, so maybe we could get a little of that juice back.”

Annie Lamont’s goal is to promote new businesses by setting up angel communities — a kind of investment club that pools its resources and provides capital to entrepreneurs.

“Boston and New York have thriving angel communities,” she said. “If you can advocate and provide some money to people who are interested in doing startups and also provide the mentorship, there’s a lot of talent in the state.'’

Still, some have expressed doubts that startups can change the trajectory of a state whose economic output is about the same as it was in 2005.

“The Lamonts are talking about innovation, but if, say, we get startup companies here and they grow at a rate of 60 percent a year, that’s too slow,” said Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut.

“In terms of scale, what you really want to do is get a Pratt &amp; Whitney to put a facility with 1,500 jobs here,” Carstensen added. “What Connecticut really needs is big hits.”

Ned Lamont, 65, started a cable television company in the 1980s, but he is better known for his political campaigns. In 2006, he beat three-term incumbent Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for Senate, but lost to Lieberman, who ran as an independent, in the general election. He sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, but lost to Dannel P. Malloy, the outgoing governor.

Lamont, whose great-grandfather was a business partner of J.P. Morgan, spent $38 million of his own money on his campaigns, including $12 million to win the governor’s race in November.

Now he inherits a state striving to reverse its financial fortunes.

General Electric dealt the state a particularly harsh blow when it announced in 2016 that it was moving its headquarters to Boston in search of a deeper pool of high-tech workers. When Lamont learned the news, he called a Yale classmate and neighbor in Greenwich, Indra Nooyi, who was chief executive of PepsiCo.

“We were talking about losing companies because we can’t get the tech talent here, and she goes, ‘Talk to my friend. He runs Infosys,'” Lamont said.

Ravi Kumar, president of Infosys, the India-based information technology giant, was considering an American expansion. Lamont recruited state officials and corporate leaders to sell him on Connecticut.

In December, Infosys opened offices in Hartford with 700 employees and a promise to add 1,000 more jobs in exchange for $12 million in state tax incentives.

“In terms of network, Ned has people in every walk of life,” Annie Lamont said, ticking off his establishment ties from his days at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College and Yale, as well as from his involvement with the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Annie Lamont’s network extends to newer corporate powerhouses.

During the campaign, one of Lamont’s closest friends from her college days at Stanford University came for an event.

The friend, Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Google and its parent, Alphabet, spoke at District New Haven, a business incubator.

“The value of public-private partnerships is great,” Porat told the crowd. “If we want to actually infuse and get some flight velocity in here, there are real opportunities to work closely together.”

Built in a former bus depot, District New Haven is a coworking space that houses two venture capital firms, law and accounting practices that provide advice to entrepreneurs, a soon-to-open school for software engineering, and a gym.

Angela Lee, an adjunct professor and chief innovation officer at Columbia Business School, was more skeptical about startups as, noting that investors often lose money.

“The fact that she can involve government and investment is great,” Lee said, referring to Annie Lamont, “but you also need to involve schools.”

In New York City, where Amazon says it plans to hire as many as 25,000 workers and Google announced that it would double its work force, highly regarded universities were part of the lure.

Connecticut could also leverage its public and private colleges, Carstensen said.

“We need to pull together the institutes of higher education to work collaboratively to support aerospace, biomedical development and information technologies,'’ he said. “Those are three areas where Connecticut can be competitive.”

Even before Ned Lamont takes office, Annie Lamont has been busy polishing Connecticut’s reputation, talking the state up to anyone who will listen. During a meeting with a businessman who was considering leaving Manhattan for a bigger home, Annie Lamont suggested Connecticut. He later sent her an email saying he had started house hunting in the state.

“I’m selling Connecticut, one house at a time,” she joked.

Though she grew up in Wisconsin, Connecticut is where she met her husband the week she arrived, married him a year later — in a ceremony in 1983 catered by the not-yet-famous Martha Stewart — raised her family and established her career. The Lamonts, who live in Greenwich, have three adult children.

Her husband teases her about news reports that frequently refer to her as the family breadwinner.

“There are so many ways to define success,” Annie Lamont said. “But Ned is probably more successful than 99 percent of America, and so I think we both contributed financially and in every other way.”

“She’s pretty good,"he said, exaggerating her success. “I started up two companies. She started up 102 companies.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="7c568dab-6b68-418d-aa6a-feb4c2bb919f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/nyregion/ned-annie-lamont-ct.html">The New York Times</a>.

Incoming Connecticut Governor's Jobs Plan Begins at Home

“For me, the best thing I can do is be an advocate for the state, working with people and trying to bring businesses here,” Lamont, 62, said.

Incoming Connecticut governor's jobs plan begins at home

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Debra West

Articles written by the author

No pipelines, no service: Con Ed cuts off new gas hookups

Incoming Connecticut governor's jobs plan begins at home