Free Tool
Home Carbon Footprint Calculator
Enter your electricity usage to see your home's annual CO₂ footprint — and discover exactly how much carbon you offset through Meltek demand response.
New York's electric grid — the numbers
New York's grid runs on significant nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar power — roughly twice as clean per kWh as the national average.
EPA eGRID 2022 — NYIS region. Con Edison's NYC service area (NYCW subregion) is 0.4477 lbs/kWh.
The gas-fired peaker plants that fire up during demand events emit up to 3× the CO₂ of the average grid. Demand response directly displaces these.
A typical Meltek participant avoids about 32 kWh of peak power across a summer — the most carbon-intensive electricity in the system.
Why demand response has an outsized climate impact
Not all electricity is equal when it comes to carbon. Most of the time, New York's grid is powered by low-carbon nuclear, hydro, and increasingly wind and solar.
But during peak demand — those hot summer afternoons when everyone cranks their AC — these clean sources aren't enough. Grid operators must fire up peaker plants: old, inefficient gas turbines that typically sit idle. These plants emit 2–3× more CO₂ per kWh than the grid average, and they're among the most polluting facilities in the region.
When you reduce electricity use during a demand response event, you're directly displacing output from these peaker plants — not from clean baseline generation. That's why demand response has a climate impact far out of proportion to the kilowatt-hours involved.
Many of these peaker plants are located in low-income communities in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens — neighborhoods that bear a disproportionate share of air pollution from these facilities. Demand response isn't just good for the climate; it's an environmental justice issue.
Data sources
- • EPA eGRID 2022 — Subregion NYCW and NYIS emission factors
- • EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator (2024)
- • ConEd Demand Side Integration Program public reports
- • NYISO 2024 Comprehensive Reliability Plan
- • NRDC Peaker Plant report (2022) — emission rate analysis for NY peakers
Calculations are estimates. Actual emissions depend on real-time grid conditions. For official footprint accounting, use EPA's GHG Equivalencies Calculator.