It cost $150 million to renovate City Hall, but there still wasn’t enough money to install solar panels.
That may be changing.
Mayor de Blasio floated the prospect of installing the energy savers on the city’s seat of government during a Bronx press conference touting new solar panels on 24 city schools Monday.
“We are going to look at that. We are going to look at all city buildings and see where it makes sense to install them,” he said. “There will be some cases where it also is important to do so symbolically. So that’s definitely an option.”
The 202-year-old building is the oldest city hall in the country.
Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg first planned to install 158 solar panels on the building in 2010 but changed course as renovation costs increased to $150 million.
Solar panels on City Hall’s roof would generate 27,708 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, or enough to power about half the lights there, officials said at the time.
Scrapping the plan saved the city about $1 million.
De Blasio wants to add solar panels to about 550 public and private buildings by 2025, said spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick.