Power Play: A Q & A With Mike Richter

Michael Richter is one of the most decorated goaltenders in the history of U.S. ice hockey. He won the Stanley Cup title in 1994 with the New York Rangers, a World Cup gold in 1996 and an Olympics silver medal in 2002, and was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008.

Since retiring, he has had a second act as an environmentalist: He is a founding partner at Environmental Capital Partners, a fund promoting resource efficiency, and he launched Healthy Planet Partners, which finances renewable energy projects and retrofits for commercial facilities. He also serves on the boards of environmental groups including Riverkeeper and the Adirondack Nature Conservancy. Richter spoke with City & State’s Jon Lentz about water quality, the state’s Green Bank and whether he still has time to play hockey.

City & State: How did you get interested in environmental issues?

Michael Richter: I think I’ve had it as long as I could remember. As a little kid I grew up in Philadelphia, and there was a creek that went through my town and we played there all the time. At one point it was contaminated by dioxins from a photo plant nearby. It just changes the nature of the entire town. You can’t fish, you probably shouldn’t be swimming, and it just becomes something to stay away from. So it was a basic quality of life thing as a little kid. I think the environmental movement has done great things, but one thing that’s unfortunate is it seems to be removed from everyday lives—but it’s not. It’s the foundation of our economy. We can’t extract ourselves from it, and we’re always of it and in it. On a practical level, whether you consider yourself a tree hugger or not, you have every reason to make sure it’s functioning and healthy, and obviously it directly affects the health of human beings.

C&S: You’re involved with a number of environmental groups, including Riverkeeper, which focuses on keeping the Hudson River clean.

MR: Riverkeeper is a microcosm for a lot of what’s going on. There’s a lot more to it than saying, “We’re going to go get the bad guys and the polluters.” The basic idea is there are rules on the book that say we can’t pollute. It also is doing some amazing work in terms of getting its water stewardship program. We can’t just go around and say, “This guy’s polluting, and this guy’s not.” The Hudson River is 300 miles long and it seems like a single entity, but it’s attached to everything else and it’s a huge 600-square-mile watershed. So it’s a bit of a canary in the coal mine in terms of our land use and agricultural runoff from streams and sewer outflows. All of those things affect the quality of the river, and it’s really improved a lot in the last 20 years. In order for it to continue to do so, you’ve got to have a baseline. They’re doing an unbelievable job with basic sites along the river to test for both biological and chemical contaminants to recognize where they come from and when and why they exist. The better the water, the better the quality of life and the better the property values. In my day-to-day life, it’s really a sense of fairness. It seems wrong for a town downstream to be affected by someone else’s trash upstream. I can save a lot of money by dumping my garbage in the water, but it doesn’t seem to be fair.

C&S: You’re also involved in the renewable energy industry. What is your take on the state’s energy policy?

MR: New York’s energy policy is fascinating. New York is such an interesting, diverse state with a lot of population, some very rural areas and obviously some very dense urban areas, and we all need energy. We all have our carbon footprint. We have to figure out what we’re going to do. We’re trying to lower the amount of coal we use, but what are we going to do? That’s the big question. You have to replace it as well. There’s been a lot of leadership and a lot of hope on renewables. They’re not perfect, but we haven’t scratched the surface of deploying existing technology. I’m not even talking about potential technology, like battery storage and other things that will end up replacing a lot of the dirty technology. We have energy efficiency technology, and certainly renewables like wind and solar. We haven’t even scratched the surface. When you start bumping up to “you can’t put one more solar panel on a building and we still need energy,” then you have a problem. We’re a long way off from that. That’s what my company, Healthy Planet Partners, does. We finance the deployment of more efficient and cleaner energy sources for small commercial buildings.

C&S: One initiative at the state level that relates to your work is the New York Green Bank, which is aimed at improving financing for clean energy projects. Are you involved in that?

MR: I know [NYSERDA Chairman) Richard Kauffman pretty darn well, and he has been excellent, and the governor has shown really important leadership on this. We’re trying to figure, basically, how to move from one operating system to another, and it’s not going to happen overnight. There are winners and there are losers. Sometimes we forget that whole industries will be displaced. But that’s okay—that’s what capital is. That new—and hopefully better— replacements to what was there. And right now we have a huge need for new and better, and that Green Bank and the governor showing leadership is a huge way that a very important state in the union can lead the way to where we need to go. If you look at a lot of this on scale, it can happen. Some of the big, big projects happen. But the credit risk of some of the smaller buildings, for instance, in my world, where I retrofit these buildings, can be high. You have a really willing potential client, maybe an ice rink or a bowling alley or whatever commercial building, and there’s a concern that these guys might not be there in 5, 10, 20 years when you have a decade or longer power purchase agreement. The Green Bank can come in and help mitigate some of the risk financially that’s there. We are moving to a new platform to get the technology out there. What I have seen is the big hurdle is the upfront costs of renewable energy. Many people have been wrestling with this. If you go from county to county and state to state, there are different incentives, different permitting processes, so to get this to scale can be very difficult. The need is there, the demand is there and the technology is there, so we have to get these things deployed with some kind of scale and rapidity that the environment needs.

C&S: Do you have time to play hockey any more?

MR: I still play in men’s leagues, and I go to the Adirondacks where I went to high school, outside of Lake Placid. I have a great group of guys. If you boil this down, I’m trying to solve global warming so my pond freezes earlier and melts later. It’s a damn bit of fun playing outside. I’ve always been a fan, and I still am.

C&S: Do you have any favorites in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

MR: I really do like the Rangers this year. I guess that’s what you’d expect me to say. They’ve been getting better as an organization each year. It’s pretty funny that they’re playing the team I grew up worshipping—the Philadelphia Flyers—and I’m a Rangers fan now. In all sports, but particularly hockey right now, the difference between the top team and the bottom team is so minimal that you really have to pay attention, and anyone can win on any given night. It does keep the fans’ attention, and the quality of hockey always goes up during the playoffs. The intensity rises, and that’s when it really gets compelling. I like the Rangers a lot, and Boston is an excellent, excellent team, so I think they’ll end up meeting each other if all goes as I expect. Who knows? Last year Boston got the better of them, but the Rangers have improved and matured. That would be an amazing series if it gets to it.