Mayor Eric Adams announced key appointments to his climate leadership team, which will focus on environmental protection and environmental justice across the city.

The newly created Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice will consolidate the work of multiple city agencies, the mayor said.

“All of us will be working together to create plans for a clean, sustainable and resilient future and even more importantly turning those plans into progress and making sure that progress is felt in every community across the city,” Adams said at a news conference on Monday. 

Rohit Aggarwala will serve as chief climate officer and commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. He previously worked for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Vincent Sapienza will serve as chief operations officer of DEP, where he's worked since 1983. He's served as commissioner of the department since 2017.

Kizzy Charles-Guzman will serve as executive director of the Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. Previously, she worked in the mayor's Offices of Sustainability and Climate Resiliency, the Department of Health, and as a policy advisor in the Bloomberg administration. 

The mayor also announced that the city will be installing 100 megawatts of solar on schools, libraries, community centers and other public buildings with the goal of reducing reliance on oil and natural gas.

The newly created office will also expand citywide resilience projects and infrastructure and will conduct the city’s first comprehensive study of environmental justice, he said.

“People of color in low-income communities experience a disproportionate share of pollution and environmental degradation,” he said. “Lack of access to greener space and healthy foods is something we forget often. People of color face greater danger from climate change and extenuating weather even though they contribute the least to our emissions.”

The city has already installed 500 kilowatts of solar power at Thomas Edison Career and Technical High School is Jamaica, Queens, he said.

His office will also break ground on a clean energy complex at Wards Island Water Resource Recovery Facility, he said.