Why New York Leads the U.S. in BESS Moratoriums

Battery energy storage was supposed to be the easy part of the clean energy transition. Unlike transmission lines that cross state lines or nuclear plants that require federal licensing, a BESS project is relatively compact, scalable, and increasingly cost-effective. Yet across the United States, local governments are pumping the brakes — and no state has hit that brake harder than New York.

According to Carina Energy's BESS Moratorium Monitor, at least 150 local governments across 17 states have enacted moratoriums, bans, or restrictive ordinances targeting battery energy storage systems. New York accounts for 97 of them — nearly two-thirds of the national total. That's not a statistical anomaly; it's a signal worth paying attention to.

The Scope of the Problem — and Why It's Bigger Than One State

Seventeen states with active restrictions on BESS development represent a meaningful geographic spread, but the numbers thin out quickly outside New York. California has the next-highest count with four active restrictions. Iowa and Washington each have three. Eight more states — Indiana, Michigan, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Texas, and Wisconsin — have one or two active moratoriums each.

The concentration of opposition in New York suggests something specific is happening there, not just a generalized national backlash. Understanding that specificity matters enormously for developers, investors, and policymakers trying to figure out where this trend goes next.

What's also notable is that moratoriums aren't uniform in intent. Some are outright bans, while others are temporary pauses — typically six months — designed to give local governments time to draft regulations before projects break ground. That distinction matters because a temporary moratorium with a clear regulatory endpoint is a very different obstacle than a permanent ban driven by entrenched opposition.

New York's Unique Position

Thirty-seven of New York's 62 counties currently have at least one active BESS moratorium. Westchester County leads with nine, Chautauqua County follows with eight, and Erie County has six. These aren't rural backwaters resistant to modernity — Westchester is one of the wealthiest, most educated counties in the country and sits directly adjacent to New York City.

The human stakes are visible in specific project outcomes. In Chautauqua County, the Town of Hanover's Town Board unanimously rejected Northland Power's proposed 250MW/1,000MWh BESS retrofit — all five members voted against it. The board then compounded that rejection by imposing a six-month moratorium on any new energy storage facility approvals. In a neighboring jurisdiction, local officials from the Town of Hurley wrote to the Town of Ulster requesting a six-month pause on Terra-Gen's 250MW/1,000MWh BESS project, citing "serious concerns." These are gigawatt-hour-class projects — significant grid assets — being stalled or rejected at the town board level.

At that scale, losing even a handful of projects to local opposition isn't a minor inconvenience; it's a material setback for New York's grid decarbonization timeline.

The irony is sharp. New York has some of the most aggressive clean energy targets in the country, including the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act's mandate for 70% renewable electricity by 2030. Storage is essential infrastructure for hitting those targets. Yet the local governments within the state are increasingly acting as the biggest barrier to deployment.

Fire Safety and Community Concerns — Real Risks, Amplified Fears

The fuel driving much of this opposition is fire safety, and it's not entirely irrational. New York experienced two BESS fire incidents within weeks of each other at different installations in 2023. In late 2025, a fire broke out at Convergent Energy Power's Church Street Battery Storage Facility in Warwick, New York. Each incident, regardless of scale or outcome, generates local news coverage that shapes how residents perceive all future projects.

California has its own recent history to contend with. The 2025 fire at Arevon Energy's California Flats solar-plus-storage project was significant, but the fire at Vistra Energy's Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility became the defining incident — triggering multiple legislative updates in the state and drawing national attention.

Community concern centers on a specific fear: that a BESS fire releases toxic chemicals into the air. Lithium-ion thermal runaway events can produce hydrogen fluoride and other hazardous compounds, so the concern isn't invented. In 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin addressed these fears directly at a New York press conference, where the agency released what it described as the first comprehensive federal guidance covering the entire BESS project lifecycle — from siting through emergency response.

The EPA's own data offers some reassurance: "Since 2020, BESS failure incidents have decreased, but some recent fires have gained attention in the media." That gap — between declining incident rates and rising public anxiety — is where the policy problem lives. Perception, not statistics, is driving the moratoriums. The EPA cited the Moss Landing response as a model: a coordinated effort between company personnel and the North County Fire Department that kept the fire contained to one building. But that nuance rarely survives the local news cycle.

Navigating the Regulatory Landscape

Here's the detail that most coverage of BESS moratoriums misses: seven states have already passed laws giving developers a path to bypass local restrictions under specific conditions. The mechanism typically requires projects to meet a minimum size threshold and submit to state-level review rather than local approval.

New York's threshold is 25MW and under — meaning larger projects can invoke state authority to sidestep local moratoriums. California and Michigan both set the threshold at 50MW/200MWh. Illinois and Massachusetts have no minimum size requirement. Oregon and Washington haven't specified thresholds yet.

For developers, this creates an interesting strategic calculus. A 250MW project in New York can theoretically access the state-level bypass pathway — the same scale as both the Northland Power and Terra-Gen projects that were blocked locally. Whether that pathway proves practically effective, or whether it simply moves the political fight to the state level, remains to be seen.

The broader insight here is that state preemption laws for energy infrastructure are becoming a necessary policy tool, not an optional one. States that fail to establish clear preemption frameworks will increasingly find local opposition functioning as a de facto veto over clean energy policy made at the state level.

What Comes Next

The trajectory of BESS moratoriums will depend on three things converging: better fire safety standards and track records, stronger federal and state regulatory guidance that communities can trust, and a more deliberate approach from developers to community engagement before permits are filed.

The EPA's new guidance is a meaningful step, but guidance alone doesn't rebuild trust with a town board that just watched a BESS facility burn on the local news. What actually moves local opinion over time is a clean operational record — years of facilities running without incident, close enough to home that residents can see it.

For investors and developers tracking where capital can actually move, the 17-state picture matters less than the project-by-project permitting reality. A project in Westchester County faces a fundamentally different risk profile than one in Illinois. Building that county-level granularity into site selection — before significant capital is committed — is no longer optional due diligence; it's table stakes.

New York's clean energy ambitions and its local governments are currently pulling in opposite directions. Something will have to give. Given the grid storage capacity the state needs to hit its 2030 targets, the pressure will only build — and developers who can work constructively within that tension will be the ones who actually get projects built.

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[INTERNAL LINK: BESS Moratorium Monitor]

[INTERNAL LINK: New York Clean Energy Targets]

[INTERNAL LINK: Fire Safety in Energy Storage]