New York’s Energy Transition Club

Ron Clutz wrote an article describing an article by Irina Slav that lists the rules strictly followed by leaders of the Great Energy Transition at her substack Irina Slav on Energy.   I want to illustrate how proponents of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) follow these rules.  In the end, however, reality will win out and the energy transition will flounder.

I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 350 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good by increasing costs unacceptably, threatening electric system reliability, and causing significant unintended environmental impacts.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible using zero-emissions electricity. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies.  That material was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan.  After a year-long review, the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022.  In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation. 

Irina Slav  describes net-sero transition leadership as “climate crusaders, climateers, a cult, and other, less polite words.”  She points out this crowd is a club that follows six rules:

Rule #1: We do not talk about the problems. (Unless we absolutely have to.)

Rule #2: Facts are obsolete. Only the transition matters. (Until facts punch you in the face.)

Rule #3: Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it

Rule #4: If it’s failing, double down

Rule #5: Words and numbers are weapons

Rule #6: Questions are denial

Rule #1: Do Not Talk About Problems

Irina Slav gave an example for this rule citing an International Energy Agency report  that said the world needed to replace and build 50 million miles of transmission lines to make the transition work.  She explained:  

This would only take $600 billion annually by 2030, which is double the current investment rate for transmission lines. For context, the global transmission line network is half the length the IEA says we need right now.

The expansion needs to take place by 2040 because Climate Targets. In other words, the world needs to double its transmission line network in a matter of less than 20 years… after it took a century to build all the lines we currently have. Realistic, right?

In fairness, the IEA does hint that there might be a slight problem with securing all of the raw materials necessary for this enormous undertaking. It absolutely had to admit it, what with miners crying shortage all the time, annoying people. But that cannot stop the transition. Else we get global broiling.

The New York Independent System Operator’s 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook notes that “A minimum of 5 TWh of renewable energy in 2030 and 10 TWh in 2035 is projected to be curtailed due to transmission limitations in renewable pockets.”  The report notes that “Without investment in transmission, these areas of the New York grid will experience persistent and significant limitations to deliver the renewable power from these pockets to consumers in the upcoming years.”  New York’s Energy Transition Club has not addressed supply chain materials issues, skilled labor shortages, or funding for the transmission projects necessary for the schedule needed to meet Climate Act mandates.

Rule #2: Facts are obsolete

Slav’s second rule states “Facts are obsolete. Only the transition matters. (Until facts punch you in the face.)”  She explains that the UK government had a plan to replace gas heating systems in homes with hydrogen but “following massive opposition from the target community, the government ditched the trial plan and started mumbling that maybe hydrogen for heating is not such a marvelous idea.”  She explains:

The facts: hydrogen — green hydrogen, that is — is expensive. All hydrogen is also dangerous, which makes the green variety even more expensive. At the time the plans were made, these facts were shunned. The opposition of the locals in the village of Whitby, however, prompted their return to the scene, ultimately leading to this piece of news: Hydrogen for UK home heating should be ruled out, says infrastructure adviser

Summed up, the match between facts and fantasy in hydrogen sounds like this, per the FT: ““We do not see any role for hydrogen in the future of home heating,” said Nick Winser, NIC commissioner, arguing it was “simply not ready at scale” and risked being an inefficient use of green electricity.”

The leaders of the New York’s Energy Transition Club are in the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority.  This organization is responsible for the Integration Analysis that supports the Scoping Plan and they chose to use “green” hydrogen as the place holder for the dispatchable emissions-free resource (DEFR) included in future generating resource projections.  All the issues raised by Slav are relevant for this plan.  An article by Steve Goreham expands on “green” hydrogen problems and the facts that have been ignored by NYSERDA.

Rule #3: Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it

Slav explains the derivation of this rule.  Here’s the whole quote:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

She notes:

It kind of feels I can add nothing constructive to this description of the climate change narrative, especially if you consider the source, which appears to be (though not verbatim, I understand) a little book called Mein Kampf. I mean, if a tactic was tried in one context and it worked splendidly, you can totally make it work in another, and I’m not being ironic. The tactic does work.

Despite the Climate Act requirement in section 16 of § 75-0103 to consider efforts at other jurisdictions and observed increases in energy costs in Europe, NYSERDA continues the “big lie” that the transition will be affordable.  After the Public Service Commission decision to deny an increase in contract prices for renewable projects, NYSERDA announced the award of 6.5 GW of two award groups renewable energy.  Doreen Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA said “In this case, the two award groups combined will have an impact of about $3 a month on your average New York residential consumer” and “Affordable, but we certainly keep that central to our work.”  Unfortunately, she has never admitted how much they expect the total costs for the transition, instead deceptively claiming that “the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action”.

Rule #4: If it’s failing, double down

Slav describes this rule:

The countries with the greatest wind and solar power generation capacity in the EU also have some of the highest electricity prices. This is a mystery to absolutely no one with rudimentary mental acuity. And yet the billions continue flowing into wind and solar. And then, once a gas crunch hits, they start flowing into households.

Wind and solar clearly cannot work at the scale their fans want them to work. It is physically and financially impossible for them to make sense at that scale at this point in time. The evidence is there on a daily basis, courtesy of Electricity Maps and, I’m sure, other real-time tracking websites.

Transition Club has no truck with evidence, however, unless it’s the right kind of evidence, such as record-setting wind/solar output for some day or another. The rest is dismissed as irrelevant, disinformation, or simply ignored. And the billions keep flowing because there are targets to be hit in wind and solar installations. Whatever it takes.

New York’s transition has not reached the point where we have performance data.  However, doubling down examples abound.  In mid-October the Public Service Commission denied requests by European energy firms Orsted, Equinor, BP and other renewable developers to charge customers billions of dollars more under future power sale contracts for four offshore wind and 86 land-based renewable projects.  “These projects must be financially sustainable to proceed,” Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas, told Reuters, noting Equinor and BP will “assess the impact of the state’s decision on these projects.”   On the same day Governor Hochul announced a “10-Point Action Plan to Expand the Renewable Energy Industry and Support High-Quality Clean Jobs in New York State”.  A couple of weeks later NYSERDA announced the largest-ever investment in renewable energy described previously.  The Hochul Administration has never related the new cost projections to the never revealed estimates in the Integration Analysis.  The Integration Analysis assumed that renewable development costs would decrease over time and that is not happening.  Nonetheless we race ahead doubling down that someday the costs will fall.

Rule #5: Words and numbers are weapons

Irina Slav’s fifth rule:

Old but gold and put to good use by the Club. All the talk about global boiling, the highway to hell, the accelerating extreme weather, the climate catastrophe and all the rest of it are water to the Transition Club agitprop mill. It keeps the lie going.

Numbers are even better: from the 99% of climate scientists who are in agreement about the climate and related catastrophies to all the CO2 emission updates and the horrific temperature readings from this summer we get actual numbers that stoke up fears that the planet is dying and we’re on our way out with it unless we kill the oil and gas industry and go full-wind/solar.

Or unless we check how the authors of the 99% consensus study came to their conclusion and what their sample size was, what the significance of those emission updates is for the total content of CO2 in the atmosphere, and how those temperatures were measured during the summer.

This rule is commonly involked by Club members.  For example, an opinion piece by Francesca Rheannon, co-chair of the Climate Reality Project-Long Island Chapter and a member of the East Hampton Energy and Sustainability Advisory Committee, exemplifies the Club call to action:

I have long been anxiously observing our world as it moves ever closer to the boiling point, noting the growing impacts of climate chaos on our daily lives. This past summer’s orange skies were terrifyingly otherworldly. Atlantic hurricanes are not just stronger, but getting stronger faster and less predictably. This year, we have (so far) dodged the bullet. But what will happen next year or the year after that? My house insurance premium has soared and my broker said the cause was anticipated increased risk from hurricanes. And the policy only covers up to Category 2 hurricane damage; any damages above that fall entirely on me.

Roger Pielke, Jr. addresses global hurricane facts.  For the North Atlantic offshore of Long Island he explains that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recently concluded:   

In summary, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability, although greenhouse gases are strongly linked to global warming.

Rule #6: Questions are denial

Slav describes the sixth rule:

This rule evolved organically from following all the others and sprouted actual disinformation laws, at least in the EU, for now, and not-so-official reporting rules for the media that require the climate narrative to be reported as fact despite evidence to the contrary, said evidence being dismissed as science denial and denialist propaganda, even when — and perhaps especially when — it comes from actual scientists.

Apparently, these days there are two kinds the scientists, the right and the wrong kind. The wrong kind are those asking questions, even though science is by definition a process that involves a lot of question-asking.

Per the Oxford Dictionary science means “the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”

Not in the transition era, it doesn’t. In the transition era, there is a right kind of observation and computer modelling to replace experimentation and testing of theories against evidence. Then there is the wrong kind, which is any systematic study of the physical and natural world that questions the right kind, using evidence.

During the development of the Climate Act Scoping Plan there was no discussion of the scientific rationale for the net-zero transition.  Any thought that there could be questions about the need to move as quickly as possible was not considered.  However, the “Questions are denial rule” was still a prominent talking point by members of the Climate Action Council.

The May 26, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting  (recording) included an agenda item for Council members to describe their impressions of comments made at the public hearings  Many commenters expressed concern about reliability.   Paul Shepson invoked this rule when he said:

Mis-representation I see as on-going.  One of you mentioned the word reliability.  I think the word reliability is very intentionally presented as a way of expressing the improper idea that renewable energy will not be reliable.  I don’t accept that will be the case.  In fact, it cannot be the case for the CLCPA that installation of renewable energy, the conversion to renewable energy, will be unreliable.  It cannot be.

Robert Howarth also invoked this rule when he said that fear and confusion is based on mis-information but we have information to counter that and help ease the fears.  He stated that he thought reliability is one of those issues: “Clearly one can run a 100% renewable grid with reliability”.  A quote from a recent New York Independent System Operator presentation question both claims that dismiss reliability issues associated with renewable energy: “Significant uncertainty is related to cost / availability of Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource IDEFR) technologies, as well as regulatory definition of ‘zero-emissions’ compliant technologies”.

Conclusion

I believe that these rules are followed by New York’s Energy Transition Club.  Slav’s description of these rules is amusing but illustrates some of the techniques used to further the net-zero transition.  She points out that people cannot be shielded from the consequences of these rules for very long because reality always wins.