A few months ago I wrote about stories I didn’t end up publishing in 2025. But I didn’t include the story of the philosophy professor and the batteries.

I will spare you all the details, but what should have been a fairly straightforward feature expanded to a half-year saga. By the time the second draft was released back to my control, the list of places where this particular story still made sense and was accepting freelance pitches dwindled to zero.

But I’m turning it into a story here, because its very much the exact thing I set out to write when I launched this newsletter in a very different era: a local story with wider implications about everyone's energy future. I'll be back with a roundup of the climate stories I'm obsessed with next week, but I hope you enjoy it.

While you're here, I'd love to get a quick check of what readers like you are most enjoying about this newsletter:

Jeff Seidman teaches philosophy, but for years now, one of his biggest questions has not been determining meaning of life, but what to do about climate change. 

He’s spent more than a decade reading about potential solutions, especially digging into renewables and electricity. Sometimes it felt like he had gained lot of “useless knowledge”, given his day job as a college professor. But that changed when a developer proposed a battery energy storage system (BESS) in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, where Seidman lives and works at Vassar College. 

BESS projects are banks of large batteries able to charge and discharge electricity on a short-term basis, sometimes built in-combination with other energy developments, like solar fields, but almost always connected to the wider electricity system. They are increasingly important to the grid in Texas and California, where they soak up excess mid-day solar energy, then release it at dusk or shortly after when electricity demand goes up, reducing the need for gas or coal power.

Seidman had already come to the conclusion that BESS were needed up and down the Hudson Valley to decarbonize the area’s electricity. “Other parts of New York have hydropower and nuclear and some wind,” but the valley is more reliant on gas fired peaker plants.

So when Poughkeepsie placed a temporary ban on BESS projects, in response to both nearby residents’ opposition to the proposed project and concerns from the nearby fire districts, he realized he knew enough to help explain the value of batteries to his hometown. “Because I had this ‘useless knowledge’, I could jump in,” he says. 

Now the town of nearly 50,000 is the first in Dutchess County, if not New York, to end its moratorium, narrowly passing a new local battery zoning law in a party-line vote at the beginning of September 2025.

The end to Poughkeepsie’s moratorium is counter to a trend of increasing opposition to BESS projects in New York State — and indeed, across America. While the debate in Poughkeepsie over the benefits and risks of BESS projects is similar to elsewhere, the loudest proponents for energy storage didn’t come from the battery developers themselves, but from residents, using independent experts to make their case.

When the moratorium was first proposed, Seidman organized about a dozen fellow Poughkeepsie residents to comment in support of BESS development at the town board. But Seidman believes he made a crucial error in the first meeting: he talked about batteries primarily as a climate benefit. Talking about BESS as primarily a climate benefit coded it as a “Dem-environmentalist” issue, he said, polarizing Republicans on the board. 

But even in a politically split town, Poughkeepsie’s moratorium was easily renewed twice. 

Town Supervisor Rebecca Edwards, a Democrat, said she was glad the moratorium was in place. “It gave us time to study what the safety issues might be, what these things were, why people were proposing them, and to talk with the fire districts.”

Batteries are a far more unknown quantity than solar or wind, and the fears are based on more legitimate concerns, Seidman says. So he believes convincing even pro-climate decisionmakers requires a more educational format.

In June 2025, he tried his theory in practice. With the help of Edwards, Seidman organized a presentation about BESS for the Dutchess County Supervisors & Mayors Association, a regular meeting to discuss county-wide issues. Various town leaders from Dutchess County were in attendance, plus Poughkeepsie’s fire chiefs, and some of its planning staff and town board members. 

Seidman and a representative of New York’s Energy Research and Development Authority  presented on batteries’ benefits to the grid and state permitting requirements. But it was Paul Rogers, a retired New York firefighter and hazmat specialist, who got most of the questions after talking about safety updates in battery technology and state-specific fire codes. Attendees wanted to know how Rogers’ consulting group, ESRG, dealt with battery installations further downstate and how fires might affect nearby buildings and infrastructure. 

Arlington Fire District Chief Adam Kangas told me he left the June presentation “a lot more comfortable than I did going into it.” His district covers the site of the original Poughkeepsie BESS proposal, though Kangas took over after the previous chief retired earlier in 2025. While Kangas is neutral on batteries in general, he says came away “pretty impressed” with improved safety standards, including monitoring and fire containment systems.

Rogers’ presentation also inspired East Fishkill Town Supervisor Nick D'Alessandro to try to update a BESS zoning law his town passed in 2024. “I’m glad to see the technology improve so much,” he says, but what was most “eye-opening” was BESS’ potential to slow already-high electricity costs in the Hudson Valley.

“I want to try to make sure I hedge for my residents and then of course, for the new business that might come to my community – that the power isn't so expensive that they're going to look elsewhere,” D'Alessandro told me. 

Other Poughkeepsie board members at the meeting didn’t have the same takeaways. In both an interview and an emailed statement, Republican Board Member Bill Reuter pointed out the best practice for dealing with a battery fire remains containing it and letting it burn out on its own, potentially exposing firefighters and residents to toxic chemicals.

At the September zoning vote, a majority of people who showed up to speak opposed BESS, echoed those concerns, as well as wondered if the town would be on the hook financially for environmental or health damages in a worst case scenario. At times, speakers’ voices cracked with emotion, referencing personal or familial experiences with firefighting horror stories or health issues from chemical exposure (including one mention of 9/11 responders). “This whole thing scares the daylight out of me,” one woman said.

Supporters, including members of the town’s climate smart task force, and a former planning board member, referenced the improved safety systems, but mostly tried to make a positive case that building batteries avoiding chronic air pollution from the nearby peaker plant running during the hottest days, protection against substation blackouts and avoiding rising electricity bills.

The board members who voted against weren’t convinced Poughkeepsie residents would see a direct benefit.

“Why would we put this in the town of Poughkeepsie?” board member Anne Burger said during the hearing.

At top of opponents’ mind was the January 2025 fire at Moss Landing in California. An older battery system, about 15 times larger than the Poughkeepsie project, caught on fire in a dramatic blaze that drove evacuations of nearby residents. Some reported ill health effects in the days afterwards.

Battery design has changed dramatically in just the six years since Moss Landing was built, but the images and impacts on nearby residents meant the fire was an inflection point for battery storage across the US, setting off an increase in opposition just as a wave of new battery installations were being planned across the US.

In New York, opposition has clustered along the Hudson Valley and in Long Island. Being close to New York City, but not in it, makes these areas attractive for BESS siting given the mix of electricity grid interconnection, availability and space. 

In Poughkeepsie, and elsewhere in the Hudson Valley, opponents of BESS used it as an election issue, but not consistently across party lines. 

In a statement provided to me and published as a letter to the editor in a local news organization, Republican board member Bill Reuter said the Democratic majority had “lost their way” by not listening to residents’ concerns about batteries, and encouraged Poughkeepsie residents to “fight back” by “making their voices heard at the ballot box.” 

“People are scared. They are depending on us to make them not scared,” Reuter said during the public hearing, telling his fellow board members "we’re not here to push an agenda from the governor.” 

Across the Hudson, a much larger BESS project in the town of Ulster has the support of the majority-Republican board, while the opposition comes from local Democrats, including two towns nearby the proposed project. In the Ulster County legislature, however, the positioning was switched, with Republicans opposed and Democrats in favor. 

Across the U.S., opposition to BESS hasn’t been tied to a specific political party. While Poughkeepsie has reliably voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the last few elections, 2023 was the first time in 20 years the town elected a Democratic majority.   

At least two Democratic board members who had previously voted to renew the moratorium cited the June Dutchess County presentation, especially information from Rogers, for their vote in favor of the zoning law. One of the “most helpful” moments of the moratorium, Edwards said ahead of the vote, was having the town’s three fire chiefs listen “to what the ESRG folks had to say and have a long conversation afterwards.”

Edwards told me Poughkeepsie has done its due diligence. “If the fire chiefs think it's safe, I'm not sure what else to do to persuade people. The risks here frankly are much much lower than the risk of things like natural gas lines,” she says, mentioning a 2024 explosion in nearby Hopewell Junction.  

The whole point of the zoning code change, she adds, was to protect the town. Poughkeepsie now requires a safety and emergency operations plan, approved by the fire chiefs, from any battery project owner, as well as a decommissioning plan and for developers to pay for any specialized firefighting equipment.

Supporters and opponents in Poughkeepsie do agree on one point: in order for the Hudson Valley to reap the full benefits of avoiding peaker plant pollution and lower electricity bills, one BESS system in one town is not enough. While opponents question why Poughkeepsie should take a risk, supporters say Poughkeepsie can be an example on how to responsibly encourage all types of BESS projects, especially ones paired with solar.

“No one's going to do it unless someone steps up and starts,” Seidman says. “Someone needs to lead.” 

But the path to more BESS projects in the region goes through each town board. While New York has encouraged battery systems, aiming for _{6GW of storage installed by 2030}, local communities can impose moratoria or change their own zoning laws to effectively cut out BESS. 

With that in mind, Seidman has pushed to bring his battery presentation more broadly. Marbletown Supervisor Rich Parete, who leads a similar mayors and supervisors group in Ulster County, invited Seidman, as well as another advocate in Ulster, to organize a meeting for county leaders, fire chiefs and local reporters. Parete doesn’t expect his own small town to get a proposal, but liked the idea of explaining BESS in an educational way.

Whether because of Seidman's efforts or not, BESS turned out to not be as successful as a election issue in Poughkeepsie. Edwards won her re-election and the only board member to narrowly lose an election was an opponent of the zoning law. And while the BESS project that launched the Poughkeepsie moratorium is no longer (the developer was unable to come to an agreement with the local utility, and withdrew the project) the location remains an attractive place to site a battery system.