The City of New York’s climate outcomes can mean climate incomes—and jobs and contracts—for industrial businesses. In this fourth and final blog in the series, learn about resources from SBS and NYSERDA to help your business get ready for government contracts, particularly if you are an MWBE.
Green Infrastructure investments by the city will require technology production, program development, project management, and other products and services from businesses. But of course, there are several requirements that businesses must follow to be eligible—including insurance minimums, bonding and capital requirements, technical capacities, employee certifications, and more. If your business doesn’t yet have all or any of these, the NYC Department of Small Business Services can help you get there.
SBS-sponsored Business Solutions Centers around the five boroughs—complemented by Industrial Business Service Providers in each industrial business zone—offer a variety of business services. These include courses, legal assistance, financing, tax incentives, recruitment services, training, and government navigation services, including assistance in responding to public RFPs and Minority or Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) support.
The M/WBE services themselves come with formal certification, capacity-building, capital access for working capital or bonding, and technical assistance for contracting. SBS’s Customized Training Grants, meanwhile, provide $30-40,000 reimbursement grants for staff training in a variety of areas that a business may need.
For its part, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) offers a variety of programs, expertise, and resources for New York businesses to make informed energy decisions and investments. Those include:
- Energy Studies, services, and upgrades for buildings like NY-SUN incentives for solar photovoltaic installations
- Climate-Tech Startup support, including the For Climate Tech venture and scale accelerator
- More than $100 million in Clean Energy Workforce Training
- Transport Vehicle rebates and electric vehicle infrastructure, such as the Drive Clean Rebate
- Larger scale wind and solar investments, including a supply chain for offshore wind
- Environmental research and analysis, such as FlexTech cost-sharing for energy related technical analysis of buildings.
Con-Ed, National Grid, and other utilities also have programs in cold climate air source heat-pumps and geothermal in-building that help suppliers
To learn more about industrial business services, please see the MaiiC Business Resources page.
The content in this blog post is based on presentations by Ophelia Gabrino of the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and Emily Dean of NYS Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for “NYC SBS’ M/WBE Green Infrastructure & Energy Efficiency Open House” held on April 15th, 2021”
