Featured

Time to Reconsider New York’s Climate Act

Update: The deadline for comments noted in this post has been changed from March 30 to May 1.

New Yorkers now have hard numbers showing that the Climate Act is not just ambitious environmental policy – it is a massive, regressive cost shift onto households that Albany never honestly explained.  The good news is New Yorkers can demand that the Public Service Commission consider Public Service Law 66‑p(4), which explicitly authorizes the Commission to temporarily suspend or modify Renewable Energy Program obligations if they impede safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.  Clearly the Climate Act impedes affordable electric service and this article explains how you can submit a comment.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for approving the Scoping Plan prepared by New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” NYSERDA also prepared the recent State Energy Plan that was approved by Energy Planning Board (EPB).  Three recent events call the timeline and ambition into doubt. 

Safety Valve

New York Public Service Law § 66-p (4) “Establishment of a renewable energy program” includes safety valve conditions for affordability and reliability.   Section 66-p (4) states: “The commission may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”. 

The Legislature included Section 66-p(4) precisely to address the situation New York now faces: implementation challenges that threaten reliability and affordability as the aggressive timelines and technology requirements of the Climate Act confront real-world constraints. The Commission has both the authority and the obligation to act.

New York Cap-and-Invest

A leaked NYSERDA memo to the Hochul administration finally quantifies what the Climate Act economy-wide New York Cap-and-Invest program would mean for everyday energy prices. By 2031, the memo projects that cap‑and‑invest could add $2.23 to a gallon of gas on top of whatever motorists are already paying at the pump. It also warns that upstate oil and natural gas households could face gross annual cost increases in excess of $4,000, with New York City gas households seeing around $2,300 more per year.

The response from supporters has been negative.  On March 5, 2026, a group of 29 New York Democratic state senators responded with a letter (“Democratic Letter”) to Governor Hochul saying they “categorically oppose any effort to roll back New York’s nation leading climate law” and urging Hochul to “stand strong in the face of misinformation” about affordability.  The letter states that the memo is “based on a specific Cap & Invest program design that has not been shared with the public and clearly does not include any price guardrails, with a completely unrealistic carbon price.”  I agree that this is a new design scenario but what the senators fail to understand is that this design forces compliance.

Those numbers do not come from critics of the law; they come from the state’s own modeling of a cap-and-invest program that includes no guardrails for high carbon allowance prices.  The modeling shows that allowance prices starting around $120 per ton and rising toward $180 per ton by 2031 are necessary to force emissions cuts fast enough to comply with the Climate Act mandates. In other words, the policy path required by the statute to meet Climate Act goals is intentionally designed to drive up fossil fuel prices until families change behavior, whether they can afford to or not.

State Energy Plan Affordability

While there has been much discussion about the cap-and-invest costs, the household costs buried in the NYSERDA Energy Affordability analysis underpinning the 2025 State Energy Plan have not made the news. In public‑facing materials, the agency emphasized that electrification and efficient equipment could lower monthly utility bills for many households when you look only at energy expenditures. But a close look at the data annex and the underlying analysis reveals a very different story once the cost of buying the required equipment is included.

For an upstate, moderate‑income household that uses natural gas for heat, NYSERDA’s own analysis shows that the levelized costs to replace fossil fuel systems and vehicles with the “zero‑emission” equipment required to comply with Climate Act goals adds about $594 per month—roughly a 43% increase in monthly energy‑related costs in 2031 compared to a conventional replacement path. That equates to $7,000 per year and reflects the combined impact of new electric heating systems, building envelope upgrades, and electric vehicles necessary to match the state’s mandated trajectory. When people ask what “decarbonization” means for their pocketbook, an extra $7,000 a year for a moderate‑income upstate family is a concrete, sobering answer.

Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy Petition

The Public Service Commission’s recent notice on the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition is a major crack in the façade. That petition invokes Public Service Law §66‑p(4), which explicitly authorizes the Commission to temporarily suspend or modify Renewable Energy Program obligations if they impede safe, adequate, and affordable electric service. In response, the PSC issued a formal notice on January 28, 2026, soliciting comments on whether the Climate Act’s 66‑p renewable targets should be suspended or adjusted.

That step is not routine housekeeping; it is a legal acknowledgment that the Legislature included a safety valve into the statute because it recognized that rigid mandates could collide with grid reliability and affordability. The Coalition—representing businesses and civic groups—argues that current renewable procurement obligations, layered on top of rising costs and reliability concerns flagged by the New York Independent System Operator, meet exactly that standard. When the agency charged with keeping the lights on invites public input on whether to invoke the safety valve it is effectively admitting that “full speed ahead” on the current timeline may no longer be responsible public policy.

Discussion

Taken together, these three developments paint a consistent picture that should worry anyone who cares about both the environment and ordinary New Yorkers’ standard of living. NYSERDA’s cap‑and‑invest memo admits that hitting statutory targets on the current schedule requires fuel price shocks and thousands of dollars per year in added household energy costs. The PSC’s notice shows that the state’s own regulator is now weighing whether renewable mandates under the Climate Act have crossed the line into threatening safe, adequate, and affordable service—the core mission it cannot ignore. And NYSERDA’s Energy Affordability analysis, once you include levelized capital costs, demonstrates that “electrify everything” is not a free lunch but a sustained 40‑plus percent increase in monthly costs for a representative upstate family.

Supporters will argue that long‑term climate benefits justify near‑term pain and that subsidies or future technology breakthroughs will ease the burden. But the state’s own documents show that the current design front‑loads costs onto today’s ratepayers and motorists, with no guarantee that promised benefits will materialize on schedule or be distributed fairly. Given that New York emissions are less than half a percent of global emissions there is no reason to expect any climate benefits.  When an environmental law collides this sharply with affordability, reliability, and public acceptance, clinging to the original timetable becomes less about science and more about political stubbornness.

Nothing in the Climate Act’s text requires New York to ignore new information or double down on obvious implementation problems. In fact, §66‑p(4) explicitly anticipates the need to pause or modify obligations when they jeopardize safe, adequate, and affordable service. The leaked NYSERDA memo, the PSC’s comment solicitation, and the energy affordability findings together meet that threshold: they show that the current path imposes disproportionate burdens on moderate‑income households, risks higher fuel and power prices statewide, and may stress a grid already wrestling with reliability warnings.

What You Can Do

Update – Comments are now due on May 1, 2026.

The Commission  invited interested stakeholders to submit comments by March 30, 2026 May 1, 2026, on the Petition filed by the Coalition.  Comments provided in response to the notice should reference “Case 22-M-0149.” Comments should be submitted electronically by going to http://www.dps.ny.gov, clicking on “File Search” (located under the heading “Commission Files”), entering “22-M-0149” in the “Search by Case Number” field, and then clicking on the “Post Comments” box located at the top of the page.

If you do not want to develop your own comments please consider the following that can be copied into the post comment prompt.

I support the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition requesting that the Commission hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-p(4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the targets or provisions under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

PSL 66-p(4) provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  A PSL 66-p(4) hearing is essential to evaluate whether the Renewable Energy Program, as currently implemented, is compatible with safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.

Safe and adequate service is imperiled by declining reliability margins documented by the New York Independent System Operator.  Acceptable reliability risks associated with the Renewable Energy Program have not been defined so the public has no assurance that the declining margins are safe.

Transmission deficiencies threaten reliable delivery.  New transmission is needed to get the renewable energy collected to where it is needed.  If this transmission is not available, then the energy supply will not be adequate.

The affordability crisis demands a hearing because safe and adequate is only possible if it is affordable.  A PSL 66-p(4) hearing is needed to define acceptable affordability metrics that can be tracked.

Multiple independent sources confirm the need for a hearing.  State agencies, the Attorney General Office, the NYISO and others have identified schedule and ambition issues associated with the Climate Act implementation that affect the viability of the Renewable Energy Program.

The Legislature included Section 66-p(4) precisely to address the situation New York now faces: implementation challenges that threaten reliability and affordability as the aggressive timelines and technology requirements of the Climate Act confront real-world constraints. The Commission has both the authority and the obligation to act.

Conclusion

Reconsidering the Climate Act does not mean abandoning climate goals; it means aligning them with reality. A hearing should find that that the program as currently structured impedes the provision of safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.  Then it could layout a path going forward that would include revisiting timelines, allowing a broader range of low‑carbon technologies, and explicitly capping household cost impacts so that climate policy does not become a de facto energy tax on working families. New Yorkers were promised a “clean, resilient, and affordable” energy future; now that the state’s own analysis shows how far current plans fall from that promise, it is not only appropriate but necessary for the Public Service Commission to address their obligation to provide safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.

Featured

Calling Questions “Climate Denial” Won’t Keep the Lights On

On February 26, 2026 the Hochul Administration “leaked” a New York Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) memo that said that “full compliance with New York’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act could cost upstate households more than $4,000 a year – on top of what they are already paying today”. On March 5, 2026, a group of 29 New York Democratic state senators responded with a letter (“Democratic Letter”) to Governor Hochul saying they “categorically oppose any effort to roll back New York’s nation leading climate law” and urging Hochul to “stand strong in the face of misinformation” about affordability.  The letter insists that any pushback on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) amounts to “climate denial” and that only their “bold” agenda will save New Yorkers money, clean the air, and protect a livable climate for our grandchildren. That framing gets the politics right, but the facts are wrong.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for approving the Scoping Plan prepared by New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” NYSERDA also prepared the recent State Energy Plan that was approved by Energy Planning Board (EPB).  Both the CAC and the EPB were composed of political appointees . 

I am not a climate denier.  The climate is always changing, and greenhouse gases affect climate, but the authors of the Democratic Letter do not acknowledge that climate uncertainty, natural variability, or observational constraints call for a realistic response. . I spent my 50-year career as an air pollution meteorologist working with real emissions, real regulations, and real power plants. The most disappointing aspect of the letter is that there is no recognition that as Dr. Matthew Wielcki has said  “energy is not merely an input to the economy, but the foundation of human flourishing”.  The question before New York is not whether climate change exists, but whether the package of mandates in the Climate Act is feasible, affordable, and effective. When it comes to those practical issues, the facts don’t sit well with the people throwing around the “denier” accusation.

Costs

Start with costs. When the Climate Act was passed, there was no honest, front‑end feasibility and cost analysis. Only after the targets were locked into law did agencies begin publishing scenarios showing the scale of spending required. Those scenarios all assume massive expansion of the electric grid, rapid electrification of heating and transportation, and large‑scale deployment of wind, solar, and batteries. None of this comes free. We are already seeing rising bills, growing arrears, and households struggling with basic energy costs, even before the most aggressive requirements take hold.

These lawmakers do not understand that NYSERDA’s cost estimates for the Climate Act Scoping Plan and the State Energy Plan are built on modeling choices that systematically understate the burden on New Yorkers: they embed Climate Act programs inside opaque “system” totals, use a “No Action” baseline that already includes other greenhouse‑gas policies, and present small percentage changes instead of the several‑hundred‑dollar‑per‑month increases that households will actually face. 

For example, the NYSERDA memo notes “absent changes, by 2031” that “Upstate oil and natural gas households would see costs in excess of $4,000 a year”.  I believe that these costs are underestimated.  Using State Energy Plan December 2025 data I determined costs to buy the equipment to meet the Climate Act household mandates for an Upstate New York moderate income household that uses natural gas for heat.  NYSERDA’s Affordability Analysis Overview Fact Sheet claims that the use of new, efficient equipment can cut energy spending by $100 to over $300 per month, but those estimates do not include the costs of equipment.  When equipment costs are included, the difference in monthly energy costs and levelized equipment costs between replacement with conventional equipment and electrification equipment consistent with Climate Act goals is $594 a month or $7,200 per year. For the only scenario where NYSERDA included equipment costs sum of those costs and those in the NYSERDA memo total compliance costs are $11,200 a year.

If these policies truly “saved New Yorkers money,” we would not need to hide behind slogans and carefully worded “average household savings” claims that depend on subsidies and optimistic modeling assumptions. We would see transparent accounting of rate impacts, program costs, and who pays when things go wrong. Instead, we get talking points and attacks on anyone who asks for a balance sheet.

Pollution

The pollution story is similarly oversold. New York dramatically cleaned up its air decades ago. We now live in one of the cleanest air basins in the country by traditional criteria pollutants. Additional greenhouse gas reductions here may be desirable, but they do not magically translate into big local health improvements when we are already near the floor. On climate itself, New York’s emissions are a tiny fraction of the global total. Even if we somehow hit every target in the Climate Act on time, the effect on global temperature would be too small to measure.

That does not mean “do nothing.” It does mean we should stop pretending that blowing up our energy system on an unrealistic timeline is a gift to the world’s climate and will have sufficient societal co-benefits to offset the actual costs. New York can and should reduce emissions, but it must do so in ways that maintain reliability, preserve affordability, and respect the limits of what one state can accomplish.

Reliability

The biggest gap in the “bold policy” rhetoric is reliability. A livable climate for our children and grandchildren does not include routine blackouts, shuttered industries, and a grid that fails under stress. Yet the very same politicians who decry “denial” are remarkably casual about the technical challenge of running a winter‑peaking system in a cold climate on weather‑dependent generation backed by storage that does not yet exist at the necessary scale.

Many lawmakers do not understand the electric system and advocate for a flexible electric grid.  They don’t understand that the electric system must be built around reliability during peak demand because that is when it is needed the most.  That is why utilities must invest so much in preparation for peak times.   While that adds to costs it  is also why ratepayers are assured power is always available.

The Climate Act proposes a weather-dependent electric system.  We already know what happens when extended periods of low wind and sun line up with high demand. Europe has experienced it and this winter’s weather showed what will happen in New York when there is a dark doldrum period where both wind and solar underperform for days. NYISO data clearly shows that the January 24-27 snowstorm caused both the utility-scale and rooftop solar resources to go to essentially zero on January 25th at the height of the storm.  The subsequent period of cold weather prevented melting of the snow covered panels through the end of the month.  On January 31, the winds tailed off and the total renewable energy resources only provided 2% of the total energy.  The current plans still have no proven, affordable solution for these worst‑case conditions, even as dispatchable fossil units are pushed toward early retirement. That is not bold; it is reckless.

Discussion

Calling anyone who raises these concerns a “denier” is a way of avoiding the hard work of fixing the plan. It flips reality on its head. The truly irresponsible position is to insist that the laws of politics can overrule the laws of physics and economics, and to dismiss the engineers, grid operators, and analysts who point out the contradictions.

New Yorkers deserve better than this false choice between blind faith in an untested transition and caricatures of anyone who dissents. A responsible path forward would:

  • Admit that the current schedule and mandates are not aligned with demonstrated technology and cost.
  • Use existing safety‑valve and review provisions to pause, reevaluate, and correct course where needed.
  • Prioritize reliability and affordability as co‑equal goals with emissions reduction, not afterthoughts.
  • Be honest about New York’s tiny share of global emissions and focus on scalable innovations that others might actually adopt.

You can call that pragmatism, skepticism, or just basic due diligence. What it is not, under any honest definition, is “climate denial.” If New York’s climate agenda is as strong as its supporters claim, it should be able to survive tough questions from people who pay the bills and rely on the grid. If it cannot, the problem is not the questions.

Climate Act Budget Status and Cap-and-Invest Program

This year’s New York budget negotiations include significant changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  One of the contentious issues is implementation of the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) program.  This post addresses a misleading opinion piece published in the Albany Times Union by environmental organizations.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate an outline and draft for sections of this post.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

In a recent post I described several initiatives that have led Governor Hochul to suggest that the timeline for the Climate Act electric sector goals needs to be revised. Legislative leaders and Hochul have not yet announced a final climate plan deal.  Reporting as of April 19–21 describes a stalemate with ongoing behind‑closed‑doors talks rather than agreed‑upon bill text.  Environmental groups have rejected the proposed revisions to the Climate Act.

I believe that opinion pieces published in the Albany Times Union have an out-sized impact on negotiations in Albany simply because everyone sees what is published.  I also believe that the Times Union is biased towards the environmentalist side.  This post addresses the Governor Hochul is mispresenting our CLCPA lawsuit (“TU Letter”) piece published this week written by Josh Berman, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program and Eric Walker, energy justice senior policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice.  I do not think that the Times Union will publish a response to  the op-ed that is long enough to rebut what I think is a misleading opinion.

NYCI Lawsuit

The first argument in the TU Letter describes the author’s rationale for the lawsuit.  I will only address the claims associated with NYCI. The letter states:

The governor asserts that only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost will satisfy the law and litigants. This is false.

The Preliminary Statement in the litigation Petition filed by the authors clearly states that they wanted to ensure that the emission reduction requirements were achieved. 

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 10 states that

DEC’s abdication of its statutory duties is unlawful and critically threatens the state’s ability to achieve the emissions reductions requirements of the CLCPA. DEC’s failure to implement the Legislature’s directive is also endangering Petitioners’ members who continue to breathe dirty air, suffer from pollution-related illnesses, and face economic barriers in their efforts to protect themselves and their communities by replacing fossil fuel-burning equipment with clean new technology. The state must not be allowed to continue to violate the law by withholding a climate solution that it has deemed necessary to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the climate law and that it estimates will prevent many premature deaths and asthma-related emergency room visits each year.

The litigation clearly states that they sued to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

The petition also describes the timeline of the regulatory process.  It started in 2023 with the release of draft regulations and public meetings.  Of particular interest was the June 1, 2023 pre-proposal Cap-and-Invest overview session because DEC requested feedback on the Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) program stability mechanism.  As described in the NYCI Second Stage Outreach: Preliminary Analysis Overview Preliminary Analysis on January 26, 2024, the CCR is a price control mechanism.  If the bidding price reaches a preset trigger limit, additional allowances would be released to the market.  That results in lower prices.  However, the CCR is a pool of extra allowances that is only used if the trigger price is exceeded and that means that the cap will be exceeded if used.  I

I always felt that this was an inconsistency that would eventually cause problems.  Proponents of the economy-wide cap-and-invest approach presumed compliance with the Climate Act mandates, but this affordability mechanism would cause non-compliance.  Frankly, I do not think that the litigants understood that this provision was inconsistent with their desire to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

As the petition notes everyone understood at the end of 2024 that the regulations were ready and would be released in January 2025.  That did not happen.  The only regulation released was the greenhouse gas emission reporting rule and that was months later.  The cap-and-invest rule regulation was put on hold and on March 31, 2025 the litigants filed the petition demanding that the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issue the draft regulations.

In October 2025, the New York Supreme Court issued a decision ordering the DEC to either issue the regulations or revise the regulations.  DEC appealed the decision, a hearing was held in the last month, but no decision has been made. 

However, this is an election year and the Governor is pushing an affordability agenda.  David Caralfamo described the political theater that preceded the budget deliberations:  “Two days after Governor Hochul’s own budget director stood up at a hearing and all but announced that CLCPA rollbacks were coming, a conveniently alarming memo from NYSERDA — dated the very same day — found its way into the press.”  The NYSERDA memo was allegedly a new analysis, but I believe that these numbers have been available since early 2024 and were the driver for the recommendation to include the CCR mechanism.  That is the key.  These are the cost estimates for NYCI without the CCR which will necessarily increase the costs but is also the only way to ensure compliance.

NYCI Affordability

The TU Letter addresses Hochul’s affordability arguments:

Hochul appears to have forgotten that many of our groups had expressed support for a program that controlled for cost and would have lowered energy bills by over $1,000 a year for families making under $200,000. That’s not our number; it’s based on two independent research reports. There is no reason such a program cannot move forward now.

I addressed those “independent research reports” when they came out.  I believe they are referring to a January 2025 report titled New York’s Affordable Energy Future and a January 2026 report titled Investments for New York’s Future.  In my opinion described research reports as “independent” when they were sponsored by the authors’ organizations is misrepresentation.  The 2025 report was funded in part by WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the 2026 report was funded by EDF.  Moreover, there was no independent peer review of the reports so they are not unbiased independent analyses.

I raised a number of concerns with the 2025 analysis by Switchbox. I found that while the report does acknowledge that cap-and-invest alone won’t achieve the 2050 goals (which is honest), it doesn’t adequately address a critical problem: the proposed investments cannot achieve the required annual emission reduction rates to meet 2030 targets. I showed that under Scenario C (lower revenue), the program falls short of the 2030 goal entirely, and neither scenario achieves the 2050 target.

The bigger problem, and one that exemplifies the authors’ presumptions about NYCI, is that fundamental feasibility problems are not addressed.  The authors assume compliance as a matter of faith and ignore reality. There are no add-on controls that achieve zero emissions for any sector. The only strategy is to convert to different energy sources, which takes time and is partially outside the control of compliance entities.  The political timeline of the Climate Act has never been evaluated for feasibility and the record since 2019 proves that it is impossible. 

Another feasibility aspect is the cost-effectiveness of controls.  I showed that using New York’s experience with Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative proceeds that the proposed spending allocations will not provide meaningful reductions.  Furthermore, in the book Making Climate Policy Work, the authors argue that the level of expenditures needed to implement the net-zero transition vastly exceeds the “funds that can be readily appropriated from market mechanisms”. 

The TU Letter and this report don’t acknowledge what happens if the program fails to meet emission reduction targets. Organizations don’t voluntarily violate compliance requirements, and the penalties are severe. If the schedule or technologies aren’t feasible, the only remaining option is to simply stop selling fuel or generating power.  This could create an artificial energy shortage with serious consequences as the only way to comply with the regulations.

I concluded that while Switchbox is more transparent than some analyses in acknowledging price ceiling limitations, it remains advocacy research designed to support a predetermined conclusion. It overstates benefits while downplaying the fundamental feasibility challenges of meeting Climate Act targets, and it doesn’t adequately address whether the proposed investments can actually deliver the emission reductions needed—especially by 2030.

I also reviewed the2026 EDF Investments for New York’s Future report and found that it was advocacy research, not independent analysis. I showed that:

  • Greenline Insights explicitly states they “develop compelling research questions and build the right mix of tools to answer them” – which I interpret as getting the results clients want
  • EDF has been actively lobbying for cap-and-invest since 2023 and has a vested interest in the program’s success
  • They strategically rebranded the program as the “Clean Air Initiative” (CAI) instead of using the official “New York Cap-and-Invest” (NYCI) terminology – a deliberate messaging strategy

I also explained that the methodology has serious flaws:

  • The analysis doesn’t account for opportunity costs—what else could be done with those resources
  • It assumes idle economic resources, which is unrealistic in a full employment economy
  • It measures “gross economic activity” without subtracting displaced economic activity elsewhere
  • It’s missing “the Missing Peter Problem”—robbing Peter (existing economy) to pay Paul (clean energy sector) while claiming total growth

I also showed that the economic projections are questionable and concluded that the report is simply a lobbying presentation that was commissioned by EDF. The benefits are overstated, the costs are minimized, if not ignored, and the methodology is sketchy.

Discussion

The TU Letter was published without qualification at a critical time in the Climate Act revision negotiations by the organizations that sued the DEC to release the NYCI regulations.  It is ironic that the unintended consequence of their successful lawsuit turned into political cover for the Governor to argue that NYCI would be unaffordable.  However, the TU Letter attempt to resolve the perverse result of their actions is flawed and their arguments that the Climate Act does not need to be changed are without merit.

Their lawsuit explicitly demanded NYCI regulations that “ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates”.  The authors of the TU Letter disagree with the presumption that “only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost” will satisfy the law and their litigation.  However, I showed that the CCR checks on cost mechanism in the pre-proposal documents was incompatible with ensuring compliance with the reduction mandates. 

The two reports referenced in the TU Letter do not provide credible affordability mechanisms.  Moreover, the reports do not acknowledge that the CCR mechanism is necessary to keep the costs palatable.  The NYSERDA memo with the high costs that Hochul cites as the reason that revisions to the rule are necessary simply shows costs for NYCI without the CCR mechanism.

Conclusion

This opinion piece offers no credible reasons why New York State should not be considering revisions to the Climate Act but got published in Albany while negotiations are underway.   I plan to submit a letter to the editor of the Times Union summarizing this post.  Unfortunately, a word limited summary could not incorporate the explanations why this letter was flawed even if it was accepted.  This is a perfect example of the BS Asymmetry Principle: Alberto Brandolini: “The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

PSL 66-P Safety Valve Advocacy Comments  

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act and includes a safety valve provision.  In posts published this week I provided a status update that provides extensive background information and a description of the Independent Intervenor filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled.  This post explains how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates. 

I have joined Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (“Independent Intervenors”) submitting comments in a few Public Service Commission proceedings.  I am a retired utility meteorologist, with extensive electric energy and environmental regulatory analysis experience.   Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles on his Manhattan Contrarian blog that analyze New York’s energy transition.  We have no financial interest in the Climate Act, have received no funding from any outside interests, and have invested thousands of hours of our time in efforts to explain why physics, engineering and economics prevent a Renewable Energy Program that powers a safe, adequate, and affordable electric system in New York State.

The Problem

As I explained in my previous post, the Independent Intervenors filed a petition on April 17, 2026 recommending that the stakeholder process for the PSL 66-P hearing should differ from the process used in the Scoping Plan and the Energy Plan.  In those proceedings the response to comments was handled by the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA).  NYSERDA did not use the stakeholder process as an opportunity to improve those plans.  Instead, they went through the motions of stakeholder interaction and only provided a list of comments without any responses.  I was particularly disappointed that the NYSERDA general characterization of comments was along the lines of “most of the comments agreed” with the draft documents. As a result, green energy advocacy organizations were encouraged to organize advocacy campaigns to swamp the public comments with comments supporting their policy preferences.

To have a stakeholder process that informs the PSC decision on the PSL 66-P hearing we stated that the Commission should order the following process steps:

  1. A notice opening an initial comment period that gives all stakeholders a meaningful opportunity to identify issues relevant to the statutory findings required by PSL § 66-p(4).
  2. At the conclusion of the comment period, Commission Staff should prepare an issue list that categorizes and prioritizes the comments received into major technical subjects, including reliability, resource adequacy, transmission readiness, contract and compliance obligations, arrears and disconnections, and definitions of safe, adequate, and affordable service.
  3. The documentation should identify opposing positions on each material issue so that participants and Staff can see where there is consensus, where there is factual disagreement, and where methodological disagreements require focused review.
  4. The schedule must provide sufficient time for written comments, reply comments, and preparation of supporting technical materials so that the record is not limited to conclusory assertions.
  5. One or more technical conferences should be convened at which both sides of disputed issues are presented in a structured manner, with sufficient time for questions from Staff and stakeholders.
  6. A dedicated conference session addressing the meaning of “safe,” “adequate,” and “affordable” service should also be included, because those terms are central to the Commission’s statutory findings and need common definitions before competing analyses can be compared.
  7. A post-conference report prepared by Staff that summarizes the issues raised, the competing positions presented, the areas of agreement and disagreement, and explains how those discussions inform the Commission’s determination under PSL § 66-p(4).
  8. This information would enable the Commission to determine if it is necessary to temporarily suspend or modify obligations under the Renewable Energy Program.

This post explains how I think the proposed stakeholder process should handle hundreds of similar advocacy comments expressing policy preferences without technical or economic support.

Recommended Response to From Letter Campaign

The Independent Intervenors plan to submit our comments on the petition on May 1. Our filing addresses a comment submitted by hundreds that express policy preferences without technical or economic support. The comment lacks the analytical detail needed for meaningful regulatory consideration.  We are not suggesting that these comments lack value.  In our April 17 filing, we recommended that once everyone has had an equal chance to raise their concerns that the Commission categorize and prioritize the technical issues submitted and convene a technical hearing conference that resolves the substantive issues raised in comments.  This exhibit is an example of issues that need to be addressed in this manner.

As an example of our recommended comment process consider 100 public comments number 1151 posted on 4/23/26 through number 1050 posted on 4/3/26 at Case Number 22-M-0149.  The first 50 characters of more than half these comments were identical, which clearly indicates a campaign to submit comments.  Comment number 1151 posted on 4/23/26 by Melanie Acampora met these criteria.  It states:

Dear PSC Commissioners, I urge the Public Service Commission (PSC) to reject the petition filed by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, which would improve neither safety nor reliability, and would instead raise utility costs by deepening New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels. With the cost of oil and gas skyrocketing as a result of the U.S. war on Iran, this is not the time for New York to be considering rollbacks to our renewable energy targets. I urge the PSC to remain committed to the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and the Clean Energy Standard. Temporarily modifying or suspending the clean energy mandates in the CLCPA will not benefit New Yorkers and is entirely unnecessary to maintain a reliable electric grid. In fact, any further investments in the fossil fuel economy will have a negative financial impact on New Yorkers. Costs of energy in New York are driven by the price of fossil fuels, which are highly volatile and affected by events outside of the control of New York, such as the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia and the U.S. war on Iran. Sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers. Renewable energy – which requires no fuel – offers predictable costs which makes families less vulnerable to energy price shocks. Renewable energy is a long-term cost-saving strategy that will promote affordability and protect New York utility customers from the impacts of volatile fossil fuel prices. I urge the PSC to reject the unsupported request to hold a hearing to consider temporarily modifying or suspending the renewable energy and zero-emission energy goals. Sincerely,

This comment appears many other times since the first comment addressing the petition (Comment number 33) appeared in the record on 3/9/26 in Case Number 22-M-0149.  It also appears many more times in the public comments for Case Number 15-E-0302.  The Independent Intervenors believe that the comment incorrectly characterizes the petition as an attempt to “roll back” or “suspend” the CLCPA mandates and asserts, without record support, that a §66‑p(4) hearing is “unsupported” and “entirely unnecessary.”  In the following sections we describe our responses to this comment as an example of responses to a disputed issue that should be resolved in a hearing.

Recommended Response

The form letter argues that the petition filed by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy should be rejected because it “would improve neither safety nor reliability and would instead raise utility costs by deepening New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels.”  However, it does not provide any support for those claims.

It argues that “Temporarily modifying or suspending the clean energy mandates in the CLCPA will not benefit New Yorkers and is entirely unnecessary to maintain a reliable electric grid.”  It is important to note that the hearing will not necessarily temporarily modify or suspend the Renewable Energy Program, but it will address feasibility.  The fact is that the State has never done a feasibility analysis to determine if Renewable Energy Programs are a viable path to a zero-emissions electric system.   If the hearing finds that safe and adequate energy is not impeded by the Renewable Energy Program, then we can continue the current path reassured that it is feasible.  However, the Independent Intervenors cannot help but think that the concerted effort to flood the docket with comments that all say do not even consider the hearing is a sign that even devoted proponents have concerns.

The comment goes on to argue that fossil fuels are the cause of the high prices and that renewable energy is a long-term cost saving strategy.  The Independent Intervenors believe that this argument needs to be addressed at a hearing.  We believe that cheap intermittent energy does not lead to a cheap energy system.  The claims that renewable energy is cheaper are based on an incomplete analysis that tells you what it costs to produce electricity under ideal conditions, but it leaves out what it takes to run a system that has to perform under real ones. Accounting for reliability, timing, infrastructure, and risk, the picture changes and renewable costs are not cheaper.

The commenters deserve to have their arguments addressed.  As detailed below, the Independent Intervenors believe that those arguments are flawed but they must be addressed.  A PSL 66-P hearing is the appropriate venue to resolve the issues raised.

The Petition Properly Invokes PSL §66‑p(4)

The Coalition’s petition expressly requests that the Commission “hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law §66‑p(4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”

Thus, a hearing is the statutorily prescribed mechanism for testing whether the safety‑valve criteria are satisfied; it is not an extraordinary or anti‑CLCPA measure but part of the CLCPA implementation framework itself. The adverse comment’s request to deny a hearing disregards this structure and effectively ignores §66‑p(4) in the statute. Note however, that the hearing must resolve issues.

Reliability and Affordability Triggers Have Been Met

Multiple filings in Case 22‑M‑0149, as well as the Coalition petition, present credible evidence that the current implementation of the Renewable Energy Program may: (a) impede safe and adequate service, and (b) coincide with a significant increase in arrears, thereby implicating both primary §66‑p(4) triggers. The recommended technical conference would evaluate this evidence.

The Commission itself has acknowledged in Case 22‑M‑0149 that PSL §66‑p(4) includes safety‑valve provisions and that the customers‑in‑arrears condition has been specifically raised as a trigger. The adverse comment does not grapple with any of this record; it simply asserts that a hearing is “unsupported” and “unnecessary,” which is inadequate given the clear statutory language and evidence already before the Commission.

Mischaracterization of the Petition and of Fossil Fuel Risk

The form comment argues that granting the petition and potentially modifying obligations would “deepen New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels” and that “sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers.”

If this issue were addressed as proposed we believe that it would show the Coalition petition does not seek to abandon the CLCPA’s targets; it seeks a recalibration of obligations and timelines, if warranted by the evidence, so that the Renewable Energy Program is compatible with reliable and affordable service. A transition that outpaces feasible infrastructure development, transmission build‑out, and proven firm zero‑emission resources can actually increase reliance on emergency fossil generation and expensive backstop measures, thereby exacerbating the very fuel‑price and affordability risks the comment highlights.

Granting the Hearing is Consistent with, Not Contrary to, the CLCPA

The Independent Intervenors generally support the CLCPA’s broad decarbonization objectives, but durable climate policy must be aligned with reliability and affordability constraints. A PSL §66‑p(4) hearing is the means the Legislature chose to ensure that alignment. If there was a hearing these concerns could be addressed.

Conclusion

New York’s climate and energy policy choices are too consequential to ignore the legal mandate to confirm that the Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.  The Independent Intervenors believe that genuine stakeholder processes require open discussion of trade‑offs, clear documentation of how comments are handled, and a willingness to adjust course when the evidence points in a different direction.  In my opinion, green energy advocacy organizations are trying to game the system by submitting an overwhelming number of comments.  While they deserve to have their opinions heard, the system should transparently address their concerns.  In the example shown, the arguments do not warrant rejecting the petition or make a convincing argument that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program obligations should not be temporarily suspended or modified.

One Thousand Posts

I started posting on this blog on January 11, 2017 so it took a few months over nine years to produce 1,000 posts.  This is a similar retrospective to my 500th post published on January 28, 2023.

The goal of my blog is to describe environmental issues from a pragmatic viewpoint.  Pragmatic environmentalism is all about balancing the risks and benefits of both sides of environmental issues.  It is not possible to grow and maintain our society without environmental impacts.  Public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided sound bites that describe all impacts as existential threats.  Unfortunately, those stories must be rebutted by getting into details.  I have tried to show the complicated “other” side of environmental issues that gets overlooked during policy discussions.

My background as a scientist and my earlier responsibilities to provide technical comments on new or revised regulations means that I have the experience to explain the nuances of environmental policy.  However, I tend to get bogged down in technical details that are, too be kind, wonky.  To address that I publish a fortnightly summary of posts where I try to simply describe recent posts.  If you want to get that summary, use the contact form.

There is another option.  In May 2024 I started a Substack blog.  I generally only use that site to publish the summary of posts on this blog.  I have been asked why I don’t switch to Substack.  After publishing a thousand posts I have the routine down for WordPress and it does not whine when my posts run long.  I also get storage for media files, spreadsheets and reports which I use regularly.  I have used that feature to provide a link to reports that have not shown up on the web elsewhere.

Topics

Although my posts cover a wide range of topics that interest me there are two primary topics covered.  At the time of my 300th post, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act implementation process accounted for 109 articles.  When I hit 500 articles 169 of the 200 latest published articles addressed the Climate Act for a total of 278 out of the 500 articles. Now there have been 651 articles about the Climate Act.  This obsession is caused because I truly believe that the Climate Act “solution” will be far worse than the impacts of the problem they are trying to address and that does not consider the enormous costs.  My other main topic is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).  This greenhouse gas control program is frequently described as a success but I have not been able to resist pointing out the flaws in that belief.

In the past year I have started using Perplexity AI to research topics and provide an outline for documents. It is very useful for me as a search engine if I cannot recall when I wrote about a specific topic.   It is an amazing resource, but I have found that I cannot rely on its references, so I have to verify all the references and frequently replace what was recommended with something more appropriate. 

Consider this example Perplexity query: What are the main topics covered in the blog?  It provided the following response with my corrections and some changes.

The blog has focused on a consistent set of energy‑ and climate‑policy themes, with an increasing emphasis on New York’s Climate Act after 2019.

Core long‑running themes (Note that this query searched the website and listed topics that have been present since the beginning but does not try to rank the themes by the number of posts on each theme.)  I have modified the references from the query response to point to specific pages.

  • Pragmatic environmentalist principles – Foundational posts laying out principles such as balancing risks and benefits, finite resources (“we can do almost anything but not everything”), and the “iron law of climate.”
  • Air quality issues – Pieces drawing on air pollution and meteorology experience, including regulatory analysis and discussion of real‑world air quality outcomes.
  • Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) – I have been involved in the RGGI program process since it was first proposed prior to 2008.  Dealing with the RGGI regulatory and political landscapes is challenging enough that affected entities seldom see value in speaking out about fundamental issues associated with the program. 
  • New York State Energy Plan – I spent a  lot of time evaluating the 2025 State Energy Plan
  • New York energy policy – Ongoing coverage of NYISO, resource mix, reliability, and how state policy interacts with the grid and markets.
  • New York environmental policy – Broader state environmental initiatives beyond energy (regulatory, legislative, and planning actions) viewed through a pragmatic lens.

Climate Act and decarbonization focus

  • Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) – Since the law’s passage in 2019, this has been the dominant topic: targets, implementation plans, schedule changes, and feasibility concerns.
  • Climate Act implementation pages – Dedicated pages summarize “many articles on various aspects of the Climate Act,” including high‑level guides and deeper technical material considered too detailed for general audiences.  (If you are interested in a specific topic I recommend using an AI search engine to find what you want because my documentation leaves a lot to be desired.)
  • Cap‑and‑invest and carbon pricing – Multiple articles on New York’s cap‑and‑invest proposal and comparisons to other emissions trading programs, especially RGGI.

Technology and infrastructure topics

  • Electric sector and “zero‑emissions” resources – Repeated analysis of the 70 percent renewables by 2030 and 2040 zero‑emissions electricity targets, including reliability, resource adequacy, and what counts as “zero‑emissions.”
  • Wind, solar, and energy storage impacts – Posts under “Zero‑emissions Environmental Impacts” look at land use, wildlife, materials, and other environmental consequences of large‑scale wind, solar, and batteries.
  • Electric vehicles – A dedicated section notes “many issues associated with widespread implementation of electric vehicles,” including infrastructure, grid impacts, and cost.

Cost, policy design, and tradeoffs

  • Green energy costs – The blog links to and discusses estimates of green‑energy costs in other jurisdictions and how those lessons apply to New York.
  • Affordability and iron‑law themes – Posts frequently emphasize that willingness to pay for climate objectives has limits and that aggressive targets without feasibility studies pose affordability and equity risks.
  • Policy “doing more harm than good” – Principles posts (e.g., Ridley’s paradox) and later climate‑policy analyses highlight cases where policies may impose real economic or environmental costs with limited climate benefits.

How the content is organized

  • The Menu and dedicated Climate Act summary pages serve as hubs that group posts by topic (Climate Act, electric vehicles, green‑energy costs, RGGI, air quality, New York energy and environmental policy, and the principles series).
  • Substack summary updates (since about 2024) provide fortnightly or periodic digests of recent posts, reiterating that the blog has been “writing about the pragmatic balance of the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives in New York since 2017 with a recent emphasis on the Climate Act.”

Website organization is definitely a weak point. You know it is bad when the blog author resorts to searching with Perplexity AI because it is easier than trying to track something down on the blog.

Impact

One question I have asked myself is whether my obsession with this blog has been a success and to me success is having people read the blog.  According to the WordPress statistics, the views of the blog have been steadily increasing and there have been over 79,927 visitors.  In context, popular blogs get this many views and visitors in a week and the most popular can match my totals on a good day.

Table 1: Overall Statistics

So where are the people coming from to find the blog.  Very early on Judith Curry included this blog on her blogroll and a large percentage of the visitors visited since then.  Tom Shepstone started reposting my articles at his Natural Gas Now blog starting 12/28/18 and continues to do so on Energy Security and Freedom.  My thanks to both for bringing visitors.

I have also done blog posts for Judith’s site and Watts Up With That and there usually is a flurry of visitors after those posts.  The comments on my work at those sites dwarf the responses on the blog itself and I am sure the total views were larger too.

Finally, it is a source of amusement to me that people from all over the world have visited the site.  Someone has visited the site from every country that is highlighted in the following map since the blog started.

Conclusion

In conclusion this has been a rewarding experience for me.  I devoutly believe that it is important to keep busy during retirement and this blog keeps me busy.  Just when I get discouraged and think about quitting, some insane proposal or article comes up that provides more than enough incentive to keep writing.  My thanks to everyone who has read my work.

PSL 66-P Safety Valve Stakeholder Process

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act and includes a safety valve provision.  Yesterday I provided a status update that provides extensive background information.  In this post I describe the Independent Intervenor filing on April 16, 2026 that explained why the PSL 66-P stakeholder process must be changed from what was used in the Scoping Plan and the State Energy Plan.   

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates. 

I have joined Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (“Independent Intervenors”) submitting comments in a few Public Service Commission proceedings.  I am a retired utility meteorologist, with extensive electric energy and environmental regulatory analysis experience.   Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles on his Manhattan Contrarian blog that analyze New York’s energy transition.  We have no financial interest in the Climate Act have received no funding from any outside interests, and have invested thousands of hours of our time in our efforts to explain why physics, engineering and economics prevent a Renewable Energy Program that powers a safe, adequate, and affordable electric system in New York State.

The Problem

At one time or other all the Independent Intervenors have submitted comments in proceedings that were ignored.  That prompted us to make this filing recommendation for a stakeholder process that meaningfully assures New Yorkers that all technical issues have been addressed.

New York’s Climate Act Scoping Plan and the 2025 State Energy Plan were both sold as products of robust “stakeholder engagement.” My experience participating in both processes suggests something very different: carefully choreographed exercises designed to check the stakeholder box without ever putting core assumptions, modeling, or policy direction at risk.

The Climate Act Scoping Plan was supposed to be built on a transparent public process that clarified feasibility, affordability, and reliability concerns. Instead, the stakeholder phase functioned more as a one‑way comment intake system with no meaningful response‑to‑comments record and no evidence that critical technical input affected the final product.

The 2025 Draft State Energy Plan was billed as a “comprehensive roadmap” developed with extensive stakeholder input. The actual process closely mirrored the Scoping Plan experience: scripted hearings, limited opportunities for real dialogue, no systematic response to comments, and no acknowledgment of stakeholder concerns reflected by revisions in the Plan.  I submitted formal comments on the stakeholder process that explained how the lack of any commitment to a response‑to‑comments document strip the process of credibility. As an example of a material problem that the State ignored, consider the Draft Energy Plan Air Quality Health Benefits Analysis Shortcomings article that showed flaws in the analytical methods and assumptions that were treated as obstacles rather than inputs to improve the Plan.

Our experience with comments in the Scoping Plan and Energy plan show a consistent pattern that we attempted to address in this filing:

  • Stakeholder engagement is emphasized in the marketing materials but minimized in the actual decision‑making.
  • Critical technical comments on feasibility, modeling, costs, and health benefits analysis are accepted but not addressed transparently.
  • Final documents move forward as if consensus exists, when in fact substantial unresolved issues were raised in the record.

Stakeholder Process Comments

On April 17, we submitted comments arguing that the PSC must establish a revised stakeholder process for any PSL § 66-p(4) hearing that is designed to develop a usable factual record on the statutory standards in the law. The requested process should replace prior stakeholder approaches for the Climate Act Scoping Plan and the New York State Energy Plan that relied primarily on broad public participation without a structured mechanism to identify, test, and resolve disputed technical issues bearing on reliability, system adequacy, affordability-related arrears, and consistency with existing obligations.

Specifically, we stated that the Commission should order the following process steps:

  1. A notice opening an initial comment period that gives all stakeholders a meaningful opportunity to identify issues relevant to the statutory findings required by PSL § 66-p(4).
  2. At the conclusion of the comment period, Commission Staff should prepare an issue list that categorizes and prioritizes the comments received into major technical subjects, including reliability, resource adequacy, transmission readiness, contract and compliance obligations, arrears and disconnections, and definitions of safe, adequate, and affordable service.
  3. The documentation should identify opposing positions on each material issue so that participants and Staff can see where there is consensus, where there is factual disagreement, and where methodological disagreements require focused review.
  4. The schedule must provide sufficient time for written comments, reply comments, and preparation of supporting technical materials so that the record is not limited to conclusory assertions.
  5. One or more technical conferences should be convened at which both sides of disputed issues are presented in a structured manner, with sufficient time for questions from Staff and stakeholders.
  6. A dedicated conference session addressing the meaning of “safe,” “adequate,” and “affordable” service should also be included, because those terms are central to the Commission’s statutory findings and need common definitions before competing analyses can be compared.
  7. A post-conference report prepared by Staff that summarizes the issues raised, the competing positions presented, the areas of agreement and disagreement, and explains how those discussions inform the Commission’s determination under PSL § 66-p(4).
  8. This information would enable the Commission to determine if it is necessary to temporarily suspend or modify obligations under the Renewable Energy Program.

Basis for the Petition

PSL § 66-p(4) does not authorize a policy-only exercise; it requires the Commission to conduct a hearing and make findings on whether the renewable energy program impedes safe and adequate electric service, is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements, or is related to significant increases in arrears or service disconnections. Those subjects turn on technical evidence, analytical assumptions, and transparent evaluation of conflicting claims, so the stakeholder process must be designed to identify and test those issues rather than obscure them.

New York State’s prior stakeholder processes in related planning exercises did not provide an adequate mechanism to acknowledge and resolve technical objections raised in comments. As a result, parties could submit technical concerns, but there was no reliable process to classify disputed issues, identify contrary positions, and explain how unresolved disagreements affected the final conclusions.

A revised process is also consistent with the statute’s structure. Section 66-p(2) requires the Commission to consider impacts on safe and adequate electric service under reasonably foreseeable conditions when establishing the renewable energy program, and Section 66-p(4) provides a hearing mechanism to suspend or modify obligations if the program later impedes safe and adequate service or triggers other statutory concerns.

Because both provisions depend on technically supportable judgments, the Commission should adopt a stakeholder framework that is structured enough to support findings pursuant to Public Service Law § 20, the statutory standard for Commission hearings, including contested matters and proceedings where the Commission is required to make findings on the record under Section 20 hearing standards and eventual Commission action.

Proposed Process Elements
We recommended the following process components.

Open Comment Period
The first step should be an open comment period that allows any stakeholder to identify issues relevant to the PSL § 66-p(4) standards. That period should be long enough to permit submission of technical analyses, not merely summary statements, because the statutory questions involve complex electric system and affordability matters.

Staff Issue List and Prioritization
After the initial comments, Staff should prepare a public issue list that groups submissions into discrete categories and ranks them by their significance to the statutory findings. This step would focus the proceeding on the issues that matter most to whether the renewable energy program is compatible with safe and adequate electric service and related legal obligations.

Opposing Positions
For each major issue, the process should identify the principal opposing positions and the key factual or methodological disputes separating them. Doing so would prevent a one-sided workshop format and would ensure that the record clearly distinguishes contested assertions from uncontested facts.

Technical Conferences
The Commission should convene technical conferences devoted to the prioritized issues, with balanced presentation of opposing analyses and active questioning by Staff. This format would better align the proceedings with the statute’s hearing purpose by creating an organized record on disputed technical issues instead of a generalized policy conversation.

Definitions Session
A separate session should address the definitions of safe, adequate, and affordable service. Without agreed or at least clearly stated definitions, parties may use those terms inconsistently, making it difficult for the Commission to determine whether the statutory thresholds in PSL § 66-p(4) have been met.

Staff Report
At the close of the technical conferences, Staff should issue a report that documents the issues discussed, the competing positions, the evidence relied upon, and the way those discussions bear on the statutory findings the Commission must make. That report would improve transparency and help ensure that final Commission determinations are traceable to the actual record developed in the proceedings.

Rationale
The proposed process is necessary because technical comments are useful only if the proceeding has a structure that can evaluate them and explain their effect on the ultimate decision. A revised process that classifies issues, identifies competing positions, allows time for technical support, and produces a documented record would materially improve the Commission’s ability to decide whether the renewable energy program impedes safe and adequate electric service within the meaning of PSL § 66-p(4).

The process would also provide a fairer and more credible framework for all participants. Supporters and critics of the renewable energy program would each have an opportunity to present their best technical case, respond to contrary analyses, and create a record that the Commission can use for findings that are legally and factually defensible.


Proposed Ordering Clauses
Our filing requested that the Commission issue an order:

Establishing a revised stakeholder process for any PSL § 66-p(4) hearing consistent with the process elements described above.

Directing Department of Public Service Staff to develop and publish a categorized and prioritized issue list based on stakeholder comments.

Requiring the identification of opposing positions on disputed technical issues material to the statutory standards in PSL § 66-p(4).

Scheduling technical conferences with adequate time for written submissions, replies, and conference presentations.

Including a dedicated session on the definitions of safe, adequate, and affordable electric service for purposes of the hearing record.

Requiring a post-conference Staff report that explains how the record developed through the stakeholder process informs the Commission’s determination whether the renewable energy program should be suspended or modified under PSL § 66-p(4).

Conclusion
New York’s climate and energy policy choices are too consequential to be based on engagement promises. Genuine stakeholder processes require open discussion of trade offs, clear documentation of how comments are handled, and a willingness to adjust course when the evidence points in a different direction. If a PSL 66-P hearing follows the approaches used in the Scoping Plan and Energy Plan, then all the arguments for a hearing will have been in vain.

PSL 66-P Safety Valve Status Update

This post summarizes the status of the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy petition with the Public Service Commission (PSC) requesting that “the Commission act expeditiously to hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law § 66-p (4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”  On January 28, 2026, the New York State Public Service Commission issued a notice soliciting comments regarding a petition for a hearing to suspend or temporarily modify the Renewable Energy Program.  This week I am going to publish posts about this because comments are due on May 1.  I debated whether to include this material in a longer post but opted to go for a short post.  This provides background for the forthcoming articles and includes a reminder to submit a comment.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.  I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate an outline and references included in this document. 

Overview

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates.  Conducting a hearing is a commonsense reality check.

In March Rory Christian, Chair and CEO of the Public Service Commission posted a brief status update regarding the Commission’s ability to make changes to the Climate Act.  He explained that they can only make changes to the electric sector targets established in the Public Service Law section of the Climate Act.  Although he did not explicitly mention PSL 66-P there is no question the electric sector targets in that law is what he is referring to.  I believe he was trying to placate Climate Act proponents who have been claiming that the petition somehow would temporarily suspend or modify all the obligations of the Climate Act.  That is simply not the case.

Filings and Background Information

I have been advocating for the use of the PSL §66‑p safety valve for a long time because of my concerns about relying on wind and solar resources as the backbone of the electric system.  The following blog posts describe my recommendations and the filings chronicle submittals and PSC notices.

Comments

I am impressed by the ability of green energy advocates to mobilize members in their organizations to submit form letters.  On April 27, 2026 alone for Case Number 22-M-0149 402 comments were submitted and nearly all were similar to the following:

Dear PSC Commissioners,

I urge the Public Service Commission (PSC) to reject the petition filed by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, which would improve neither safety nor reliability, and would instead raise utility costs by deepening New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels. With the cost of oil and gas skyrocketing as a result of the U.S. war on Iran, this is not the time for New York to be considering rollbacks to our renewable energy targets.

I urge the PSC to remain committed to the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and the Clean Energy Standard.  Temporarily modifying or suspending the clean energy mandates in the CLCPA will not benefit New Yorkers and is entirely unnecessary to maintain a reliable electric grid. In fact, any further investments in the fossil fuel economy will have a negative financial impact on New Yorkers. Costs of energy in New York are driven by the price of fossil fuels, which are highly volatile and affected by events outside of the control of New York, such as the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia and the U.S. war on Iran. Sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers. Renewable energy – which requires no fuel – offers predictable costs which makes families less vulnerable to energy price shocks.  Renewable energy is a long-term cost-saving strategy that will promote affordability and protect New York utility customers from the impacts of volatile fossil fuel prices. I urge the PSC to reject the unsupported request to hold a hearing to consider temporarily modifying or suspending the renewable energy and zero-emission energy goals.

In my opinion, this comment is long on emotion and opinion and sadly lacking in understanding of the electric system.  The claim that renewable energy is a long-term cost savings strategy is simply wrong.  The only reference to reliability is a throwaway comment that ignores all the concerns that have been raised by the New York State Independent System Operator.

In my next post I will describe the Independent Intervenor filing on April 16, 2026 that explained why the PSL 66-P stakeholder process must be changed from what was used in the Scoping Plan and the State Energy Plan.  In those cases, it seemed that the State valued the number of comments rather than the quality of the comments to support the plans.  I believe the State needs to respond to all comments and resolve all issues raised.  A subsequent post will use this form letter as an example of how all comments should be addressed.

Comment Submittal Instructions

I encourage you to submit comments supporting the petition because the hearing is a commonsense reality check  Comments were originally due on March 30 but the deadline has been delayed to May 1 at 4:30 PM EDT.  Instructions to submit a comment are included at the end of this post.

If you have not done so already, please follow these instructions to submit a comment.

  1. There are two cases.  Either go to this link at the Department of Public Service website:  https://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?MatterCaseNo=15-E-0302  or this link https://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?MatterCaseNo=22-M-0149   E-0302 is a huge proceeding so going to M-0149 will be faster.
  2. Enter your name, address, and email address.
  3. Copy and paste the following message into the comments field
  4. Click the “I understand…” box and the “I’m not a robot” Captcha box
  5. Wait until the Captcha completes and Click  Post Comment 
  6. That’s it. You’re done!

Here is a suggestion for a comment to paste.

I support the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition requesting that the Commission hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-p(4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the targets or provisions under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

The law includes an explicit safety valve for reliability and affordability, conditioned on a hearing and the Coalition petition correctly invokes this mechanism.  There is credible reliability and arrears evidence that triggers the safety valve provisions.  Granting the hearing would implement, not undermine, the CLCPA by ensuring that its Renewable Energy Program is administered in a manner consistent with safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.

Stop Energy Sprawl Call for Action

I have been privileged to join Stop Energy Sprawl monthly meetings for some time.  I always learn something and have been impressed with the dedication of its members. This post describes a recent distribution to its members titled “Tell New York State ‘It’s Time to Pause the CLCPA!’ and save our communities”.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

Stop Energy Sprawl is a “coalition of community groups, municipalities, and elected officials from localities in New York State targeted by land-wasting large-scale wind & solar projects located far from where that energy is needed.”  They have warned that Climate Act‑driven reliance on large‑scale wind and solar could require hundreds of thousands acres of New York farmland and forest for generation, storage, and associated transmission infrastructure.

Stop Energy Sprawl (has provided comments supporting the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition requesting a hearing on suspending or modifying the CLCPA targets.  This post describes a recent distribution to their members where they recommend submitting comments supporting the petition and announced a survey they set up to document how renewable development has harmed their communities.

Petition Recommendation

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  In a rare example of commonsense this safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates.  Conducting a hearing is a commonsense reality check and I encourage you to submit comments.

Comments were originally due on March 30 but have been delayed to May 1.  Stop Energy Sprawl recommended submitting comments on the petition.

The CLCPA targets for 2030 are based on a technology goal — not an environmental goal (and they’re making the electric grid less reliable and more expensive) !

These targets put our communities at risk by mandating poorly-performing large-scale wind and solar facilities that will overrun hundreds of thousands of acres of high-quality farmland and forest, imperil fisheries and shorelines, destroy agriculturally-based, maritime, and tourism-based economies, and severely damage community character, historic sites, and the quiet enjoyment of our homes and communities, as well as the value of those residences and communities.  

The State uses the RAPID Act to implement these wind & solar goals. New York State routinely places out-of-state and foreign developers ahead of its own citizens and stomps on communities’ Home Rule and self-determination by overriding nearly every local law the developers ask them to.

Help us fight back for your community and all our communities by submitting a comment:

  1. There are two cases.  Either go to this link at the Department of Public Service website:  https://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?MatterCaseNo=15-E-0302  or this link https://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?MatterCaseNo=22-M-0149   E-0302 is a huge proceeding so going to M-0149 will be faster.
  2. Enter your name, address, and email address.
  3. Copy and paste the message at the end of the post into the comments field (feel free to modify or add information about projects in your town)
  4. Click the “I understand…” box and the “I’m not a robot” Captcha box
  5. Wait until the Captcha completes and Click  Post Comment 
  6. That’s it. You’re done!

Stop Energy Sprawl also told readers to  share thismessage with others in your organization, friends, neighbors, and town and county officials.  The voices looking to defile our communities with these facilities are already loudly opposing this hearing — we need to make our voices known!

Harmful Impact Survey

In addition, the distribution asked readers to compile their stories from communities targeted by land-wasting and coast-endangering large-scale wind and solar projects located far from where that energy is needed.  They have prepared a survey that seeks to collect information about the impacts experienced by communities throughout New York State targeted be wind, solar and energy storage development.  The goal is to bring awareness to these issues and to fight back against ill-considered laws that enable these destructive policies.

New York readers who have experience with these projects are encouraged to respond to the survey “How Did Wind or Solar Harm Your Community?”  Whether it was fire, farmland desecration, habitat loss, or setting residents against one another, we want to hear about it.  Respond at https://forms.gle/DYxEpmTBFkAAp11M8

For more information, contact them at stopenergysprawl@gmail.com or check out our website, stopenergysprawl.org

Conclusion

I think we are at an inflection point relative to the Climate Act.  It appears that the Hochul Administration has caught on that the net-zero transition is unsustainable.  Unfortunately there are still many that fail to acknowledge that physics, engineering, and economics all indicate that the renewable-based electric system is impossible.  The PSL 66-P hearing will provide a venue for public debate on the capability for renewable energy to provide safe and adequate electricity.

I also think that careful documentation of the harmful impacts of renewables developments will prove that the Rapid Act is an environmental disaster scandal.  The failure of the state to establish siting standards has led to unacceptable impacts that very few people know about.  I look forward to the survey results and encourage everyone with first-hand knowledge to tell their story.

Comment Recommendation

The following are the suggested comments supporting the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition requesting a hearing on suspending or modifying the CLCPA targets

It’s time for a hearing.  I support the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy’s petition requesting that the Commission hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-p(4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the targets or provisions under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

PSL 66-p(4) provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  A PSL 66-p(4) hearing is essential to evaluate whether the Renewable Energy Program, as currently implemented, is compatible with safe, adequate, and affordable electric service.

Safe and adequate service is imperiled by declining reliability margins documented by the New York Independent System Operator.  Acceptable reliability risks associated with the Renewable Energy Program have not been defined so the public has no assurance that the declining margins are safe.

Transmission deficiencies threaten reliable delivery.  New transmission is needed to get the renewable energy collected to where it is needed.  If this transmission is not available, then the energy supply will not be adequate.

The affordability crisis demands a hearing because safe and adequate is only possible if it is affordable.  The PSL 66-p(4) hearing must define acceptable affordability metrics that can be tracked.

Multiple independent sources confirm the need for a hearing.  State agencies, the Attorney General Office, the NYISO and others have identified schedule and ambition issues associated with the Climate Act implementation that affect the Renewable Energy Program.

The Legislature included Section 66-p(4) precisely to address the situation New York now faces: implementation challenges that threaten reliability and affordability as the aggressive timelines and technology requirements of the Climate Act confront real-world constraints. The Commission has both the authority and the obligation to act.  The Commission must convene a hearing as soon as possible.

Why “Cheap Renewables” Don’t Deliver Cheap Electricity

In a recent article I noted instances where Governor Hochul and Public Service Commission Chair Rory Christian have raised the possibility for limited changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) interim targets primarily because of affordability concerns.  Proponents disagree insisting that renewables currently provide cheapest electricity.  I addressed this myth based on an article by Matt Jacobson at Matt’s Substack. I promised to follow up with more details.  This article is based on a series of articles at the Science of Doom blog by Steve Carson.  It is a long post documenting all the reasons cheap renewables is misinformation.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.  A recent recommendation by Governor Hochul to adjust the deadlines has spurred conversations about the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act.  A primary concern is affordability.

Carson’s series of articles provided the supporting arguments for a detailed rebuttal of the myth of cheap renewables.  An article by Emily Pontecorvo summarizes the Green Energy Blob take on decarbonization and affordability if you are interested.

The Seductive “Cheap” Story

The primary basis of the myth that wind and solar are now the “cheapest” sources of electricity is  Lazard’s Levelized cost of energy (LCOE).  This parameter claims renewables beat coal, gas, and nuclear on a dollar-per-megawatt-hour basis. This underpins the narrative that renewable energy should translate into lower electricity bills for consumers.  However, LCOE project-level costs are junk.

Steve Carson explains that the reality of jurisdictions trying to transition tells a different story than the LCOE theory. Germany has massively expanded wind and solar while shutting down coal and nuclear, but German households face some of Europe’s highest electricity prices. The United Kingdom’s coal phaseout and wind surge haven’t delivered cheap power. South Australia, with the world’s highest penetration of rooftop solar and substantial wind capacity, maintains some of the developed world’s highest retail electricity rates.

This disconnect between “cheap renewables” and expensive electricity isn’t a coincidence or a policy failure in implementation. It reflects that the LCOE narrative obscures the fundamental truth that the cost of a reliable electricity system is not the same as the cost of intermittent generation. As Science of Doom’s comprehensive series demonstrates, when you need electricity every hour of every day, the system must pay for flexibility, backup capacity, grid stability services, and expanded transmission infrastructure—costs that persist regardless of how low the marginal cost of wind and solar generation falls.

What “Cheap Renewables” Actually Means – Blind Spots in the LCOE Metric

The levelized cost of electricity is the net present value of the unit-cost of electricity over the lifetime of a generating system. It divides total lifetime costs (capital, operations, maintenance, fuel) by total expected lifetime electricity output. LCOE is useful for comparing similar technologies under similar conditions, but it has significant limitations when applied to system planning or comparing dispatchable and intermittent resources.

LCOE looks attractive for wind and solar because these technologies have:

  • High upfront capital costs but near-zero marginal operating costs
  • No fuel expenses
  • Relatively predictable maintenance schedules
  • Declining capital costs due to manufacturing scale and technological improvements

In New York’s electric dispatch system, renewables with zero fuel cost naturally displace higher marginal-cost fossil generation when available. This creates the appearance of “cheap” electricity—wind and solar bid low or even negative in wholesale markets, setting clearing prices near zero during periods of abundant renewable output.

What LCOE Doesn’t Capture

The critical problem is what LCOE excludes from its calculation.

  • Dispatchability and timing: LCOE treats all megawatt-hours as equal, whether generated at 2 PM on a sunny summer afternoon when demand is moderate and supply is abundant, or at 7 PM on a windless winter evening when demand peaks and solar is unavailable. The market value of these megawatt-hours is radically different, but LCOE treats them identically.
  • Capacity value degradation: The first wind farm in a system has significant capacity value—it can reliably displace fossil capacity. But as wind penetration grows and multiple wind farms experience correlated low-output periods, the system cannot count on wind for reliability. Capacity value falls toward zero at high penetration, even as LCOE remains constant.
  • Integration and system costs: LCOE does not account for the costs of integrating intermittent generation into a reliable grid. These expenses include: transmission upgrades and expansion to connect remote renewable resources; grid stability and frequency control services (increasingly needed as synchronous generation declines); backup and flexible capacity to cover renewable output variability; energy storage or other time-shifting mechanisms; and curtailment costs when renewable generation exceeds instantaneous demand
  • Correlation with demand: Solar generates during midday but not during evening peak hours. Wind output is weather-dependent and poorly correlated with demand patterns. LCOE cannot capture the system cost of this mismatch.

The Merit-Order Illusion

New York’s electric system dispatches on merit order, but when renewables set the wholesale clearing price at near-zero during sunny, windy periods, it creates a misleading signal. Yes, wholesale prices fall—sometimes into negative territory. But the system still requires dispatchable capacity for the hours when renewables cannot generate. That dispatchable capacity must recover its fixed costs from fewer operating hours at higher prices, leading to extreme price volatility. Retailers must price their offerings to survive the high-price periods, so negative wholesale prices do not translate into lower retail bills.

Germany provides a clear test case. From 2010 to 2025, Germany dramatically reduced coal generation, phased out nuclear entirely, and massively expanded wind and solar capacity. Renewable generation now regularly exceeds 50% of domestic production on favorable days. If cheap renewables meant cheap electricity, German consumers should be celebrating.  Instead, German households pay among the highest electricity prices in Europe—often 30-35 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, more than double the rates in France

The merit-order cost stack includes far more than energy and is the reason for the high prices:

  • Grid charges: Massive transmission expansion to connect offshore wind in the north to demand centers in the south, plus distribution upgrades to handle distributed solar,
  • Capacity payments: Gas plants kept available for reliability despite operating far fewer hours,
  • Interconnector costs: Germany now relies heavily on electricity imports from neighbors during low-renewable periods, requiring expensive cross-border infrastructure
  • Renewable subsidies: Feed-in tariffs and other support mechanisms recovered through consumer surcharges, and
  • Ancillary services: Frequency control, voltage support, and system strength services previously provided “free” by synchronous generators now are procured separately.

The Power Grid as Extended Grid Storage

Steve Carson highlights a critical but often invisible function of grid interconnections: they act as “extended grid storage” by allowing regional transmission operators to share both cheap generation and backup capacity. For example, when German wind and solar are abundant, exports flow to neighbors. When German renewables underperform, imports flow back—often from French nuclear, Scandinavian hydro, or even Polish coal.

This flexibility is valuable, but it isn’t free. The infrastructure costs billions, and Germany effectively outsources reliability to its neighbors’ dispatchable capacity. The neighboring countries must maintain that capacity, and those costs ultimately appear in electricity prices across the interconnected system.  This is an inevitable result in North America.

South Australia  -The World’s Renewable Laboratory

South Australia offers the clearest real-world experiment in high-renewable electricity systems. This small state (1.8 million population) transformed its grid faster and more completely than almost any comparable jurisdiction:

  • Extremely high rooftop solar penetration—over 40% of households with solar panels,
  • Substantial utility-scale wind capacity,
  • Tight interconnection to the rest of Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM),
  • Aggressive renewable energy targets and supportive policies, and
  • Near-complete exit from coal generation

If cheap renewables automatically produced cheap electricity, South Australia should have the lowest power bills in the developed world. Instead, it consistently ranks among the highest.

The Canyon Curve: Free Solar, Expensive Evenings

South Australia has better solar resource potential than New York.  Carson’s analysis reveals the “pricing paradox” at the heart of South Australia’s solar experience. The wholesale price pattern creates a dramatic “canyon curve”, i.e., a more intense duck curve load and generation pattern:

  • Midday (high solar output): Wholesale prices regularly fall to zero or go negative. In 2025, nearly half of all trading intervals saw negative prices during midday hours. Generators literally pay to produce electricity because they cannot or will not curtail output.
  • Evening ramp (solar fades, demand peaks): Prices spike dramatically, often reaching several thousand dollars per megawatt-hour. Extreme spikes to $15,000/MWh (the market price cap) occur dozens of times per year during tight supply conditions.

This extreme volatility creates a counterintuitive result: even though wholesale prices are “free” or negative for many hours, retail bills remain very high. Several mechanisms drive this outcome:

  • Scarcity pricing sets clearing prices for everyone: In the NEM’s energy-only market, the last, most expensive generator needed to meet demand sets the wholesale price for all generators in that interval. Even if 95% of electricity comes from “cheap” wind, batteries, and gas, if the final 5% requires an expensive gas peaker bidding $10,000/MWh to cover its costs in limited operating hours, everyone gets paid $10,000/MWh for that interval.
  • Retailers must survive the spikes: Retail electricity providers offer customers flat-rate contracts, but they purchase wholesale power at volatile spot prices. To avoid bankruptcy during extreme price events, retailers must build a substantial risk premium into their retail tariffs. A few hours per year at $15,000/MWh can exceed the cost of thousands of hours at negative prices.
  • Time-of-use tariffs have limited adoption: Most residential customers remain on flat-rate tariffs and cannot respond to price signals. Even customers with solar panels typically don’t have battery storage to arbitrage the price differential, so they export at negative prices and import at extreme prices.

Invisible Costs: Flexibility, Backup, and Wiring

Carson’s detailed analysis of South Australia’s battery deployments reveals a critical misunderstanding in public discourse about energy storage. Large-scale batteries are not being built to store “a day” or even “several hours” of electricity for later use. They’re being built because the market pays premium prices for fast response in specific narrow windows.  I have never seen this distinction mentioned relative to New York but suspect that we are not there yet.

Two articles (Batteries in SA: The Market in Operation and Batteries and the Market Machinery — How the Grid’s ‘Invisible Hand’ Rewards Speed)  describe the  actual function of grid batteries in South Australia (Table 1).

Table 1: Grid battery revenue streams in South Australia

Batteries are valuable and economically rational investments given current market design, but they don’t fundamentally solve the integration challenge. Their limited duration (typically 2-4 hours) means they cannot address multi-day weather events or seasonal renewable output variations.

Transmission: The 1,500km Relay Race

Carson’s analysis of European transmission interconnections illustrates another hidden cost: transmission infrastructure operates as a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar “relay race” to move power across vast distances.  Green energy advocates in New York universally ignore the challenges of supplying renewables across great distances but claim that this is a solution to local renewable lulls.

Carson describes the challenge for jurisdictions further along the transition to renewables,  Spain, for example, often experiences weather patterns opposite to Germany—sunny and windy when Germany is calm and cloudy. In principle, Spanish renewable generation could supply German demand. In practice, moving that power requires it to flow through France, with each border crossing representing a constrained bottleneck. Expanding these interconnectors requires massive investment and decades of planning and construction.

Even within countries, transmission expansion represents a substantial cost. Renewable resources are often located far from demand centers (offshore wind, remote solar farms, high-altitude wind sites). Connecting them requires new high-voltage transmission lines, substations, and grid reinforcements. These infrastructure costs are recovered from consumers through grid charges, separate from energy prices.  Upstate New York electric rates are increasing because of this..

Reliability Problems in a Renewable-Based Grid

Most electricity markets were designed around a specific paradigm: generators with controllable output and marginal costs that rise with fuel consumption compete to supply demand, with the market clearing at the marginal cost of the last generator needed. This “energy-only” market design works reasonably well when most generation is dispatchable.  New York’s market also includes a capacity component but problems remain. These references (one and two) describe how intermittent renewables change electric resource planning in several ways:

  • Zero marginal cost undermines investment signals: When wind and solar set clearing prices at or near zero during periods of abundant output, dispatchable generators cannot recover their fixed costs. This discourages investment in the backup capacity the system requires for reliability during low-renewable periods.
  • Capacity value diverges from energy value: A generator that produces cheap energy when it’s not needed has low system value. A generator that reliably produces energy during scarcity periods has high system value. Energy markets struggle to properly value this difference, leading to underinvestment in dispatchable capacity[.
  • The “missing money” problem: Dispatchable plants kept available for reliability but operating only during scarcity periods cannot earn sufficient revenue from energy-only markets. This creates a “missing money” problem where economically necessary capacity cannot be sustained under market rules.

The Fat Tail Problem

Renewable-dominated systems face what can be called the “fat tail” reliability problem. It’s relatively easy and cheap to supply electricity 90-95% of the time using wind, solar, and short-duration storage. But guaranteeing supply for the remaining 5-10% of hours—when demand is high and renewables are unavailable—becomes disproportionately expensive.

These tail events include:

  • Multi-day periods of low wind across a broad geographic region (wind droughts),
  • Winter evenings with high heating and lighting demand but no solar output,
  • Heat waves with high air conditioning demand and reduced wind, and
  • Cold snaps that strain both electricity and gas systems simultaneously.

Current market designs systematically undervalue the capacity needed to address these tail events. The result is either reliability problems (as seen in Texas and California) or out-of-market interventions and capacity payments that add to consumer costs but don’t appear in LCOE calculations and proponent claims of cheaper renewables..

Conclusion

LCOE is the commonly used proof that renewables are cheapest. Steve Carson’s series of articles demonstrates a fundamental point that policy discussions too often overlook: cheap intermittent megawatt-hours are not the same as cheap electricity systems. LCOE measures the former, but consumers pay for the latter.

A reliable electricity system operating 24/7/365 requires:

  • Sufficient generation capacity to meet peak demand plus reserves,
  • Dispatchable resources or storage to cover periods when intermittent resources underperform,
  • Transmission infrastructure to connect generation to load,
  • Grid stability services (frequency control, voltage support, inertia, system strength),
  • Market mechanisms to ensure adequate investment in all necessary resources, and
  • Coordination across time (energy storage), space (transmission), and technology (diverse generation portfolio)

Intermittent renewables with low LCOE can supply cheap megawatt-hours during favorable conditions, but they don’t eliminate or substantially reduce most of these system requirements. In many cases, high renewable penetration increases system complexity and cost:

  • More transmission is needed to connect remote resources and balance geographic diversity,
  • More flexibility is needed to manage output variability,
  • More grid services are needed to replace functions previously provided by synchronous generators, and
  • More sophisticated market designs are needed to maintain reliability incentives.

These costs appear in consumer bills as transmission charges, capacity payments, ancillary service costs, and renewable support mechanisms—not in LCOE calculations. Germany’s high consumer prices reflect genuine system costs of operating a high-renewable grid. South Australia’s price volatility reflects the challenge of balancing supply and demand with weather-dependent generation. The UK’s persistent high bills reflect the need to maintain dispatchable backup despite growing renewable capacity.  New York’s transition to a renewable-based electric system will inevitably follow these examples.

Policy Implications

Serious energy policy planning must start from total system cost, not headline LCOE numbers. This means:

  1. Evaluate technologies based on system value, not just LCOE. A dispatchable low-carbon resource available on demand may provide more value than a cheaper intermittent resource, even if its LCOE is higher.
  2. Account for all integration costs. Transmission expansion, grid stability services, backup capacity, and storage requirements must be included in cost comparisons.
  3. Design markets to properly value reliability. Energy-only markets systematically undervalue the capacity needed to maintain reliability in high-renewable systems. Market reforms or capacity mechanisms are necessary.
  4. Be honest about cost trade-offs. High renewable penetration may be desirable for emissions reduction, but it comes with real system costs. Pretending these costs don’t exist or can be eliminated through further renewables deployment undermines public trust and leads to poor planning.
  5. Diversify the resource portfolio. No single technology provides all necessary grid services. A mix of resources—including dispatchable low-carbon generation, energy storage, demand flexibility, and transmission—produces a more reliable and likely more cost-effective system than over-reliance on intermittent renewables.

The goal should not be the “cheapest” generation on an LCOE basis, but rather the least-cost pathway to a reliable, low-emission electricity system. As the Science of Doom series convincingly demonstrates, these are not the same thing. Until policy discussions and planning processes grapple honestly with this distinction, consumers will continue to face the disconnect between promises of “cheap renewables” and the reality of expensive electricity bills.

Senator Harkham Climate Act Mal-Information

New York State Sen. Peter Harckham argues that New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  will reduce high utility rates “if we let it.” He blames today’s affordability crisis entirely on fossil fuel volatility, dismisses nuclear as a “fantasy,” and claims that if we just double down on renewables and distributed solar, families will see “real, predictable savings.”  He is wrong on all three counts.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate an outline and draft for this post.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

In a recent post I described several initiatives that have led Governor Hochul to suggest that the timeline for the Climate Act electric sector goals needs to be revised.  Apparently, the proposed changes are part of the budget negotiations and there is very little information describing exactly what the Governor has proposed.  The most disappointing thing to me is that Climate Act proponents like Harkham refuse to acknowledge that there are any issues that cannot be resolved by doubling down on current policies.

The opinion piece by Harkham is mal-information.  Media Defence defines mal-information as information that is based on reality, but it is used to inflict harm on a person, organization or jurisdiction like New York.  Given the status of the Climate Act, it is necessary to refute the opinion piece because what he claims bears little resemblance to what the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), the Public Service Commission (PSC), the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), and even the State Energy Plan are now saying.

Affordability Crisis: Not Just Fossil Volatility

Senator Harckham correctly notes that in 2025 more than 1.3 million New York customers were over 60 days behind on their bills, with arrears approaching $1.8 billion. Where we part company is the explanation.

Harckham says these customers are struggling only because of the “fossil fuel status quo” and “future green energy targets” are not to blame. I addressed this in my “New York Climate Act Affordability Status” article. But the arrears crisis is occurring while Climate Act implementation is driving up both utility and economy‑wide energy costs.  In recent rate cases approved between March 2025 and January 2026, residential electric bills at the major utilities increased markedly, and that was before most Climate Act capital spending shows up in rates. The PSC’s own staff “Second Informational Report” on Climate Act costs found that CLCPA‑related program impacts already account for 4.6% to 10.3% of 2023 residential electric bills—numbers I consider conservative given the political pressure to minimize cost estimates.

And we are still at the front end of the cost curve. As Kris Martin from NY Solar Divide pointed out, only a small fraction of Climate Act expenses has hit bills so far; the bulk will land in the next 5–10 years as offshore wind, large‑scale solar, school‑bus electrification, and other mandates scale up.  So no, this is not just a “fossil fuel” affordability problem. It is also a policy‑driven cost‑loading problem, and the state’s own documents say so.

What NYSERDA and the State Energy Plan Actually Show

If the Climate Act were really a path to lower bills, NYSERDA and the State Energy Plan (SEP) would show that clearly. They don’t.

The 2025 State Energy Plan admits that “current renewable deployment trajectories are insufficient” and that external constraints “continue to impede progress,” concluding that the Climate Act schedule is effectively impossible to meet. It also estimates that achieving the Climate Act goals will require about $120 billion per year in energy system investment through 2040—roughly $1,282 per month per household when you levelize those costs.

NYSERDA’s Energy Affordability analysis underlying the plan is even more revealing. The public‑facing fact sheets emphasize that electrification might lower operating energy expenses for some households. But when you examine the data tables and include the levelized capital cost of mandated equipment, the picture changes dramatically.  For a representative upstate moderate‑income gas‑heated household, NYSERDA’s own numbers show that replacing fossil systems and vehicles with the required “zero‑emission” alternatives adds about $594 per month in 2031 compared to a conventional replacement path—a 43% increase in total energy‑related costs. That is roughly $7,000 per year in additional costs that the glossy brochures don’t emphasize.

In other words, once you include what it actually costs to buy the heat pumps, envelope upgrades, and EVs that the mandates require, the Climate Act is not a bill‑cutting program. It is a massive, regressive cost shift onto households that Albany has never honestly explained.

Reliability: The Cost of Ignoring NYISO

Harckham frames the debate as a simple choice between “low‑cost” renewables and “volatile” fossil fuels. He never mentions grid reliability, even though NYISO has been warning for years that Climate Act timelines and technology assumptions are pushing the system toward unacceptable risk.  NYISO’s 2024 Reliability Needs Assessment shows statewide resource margins declining so quickly that by 2034 there is no surplus left without additional development. A 2025 Short‑Term Assessment of Reliability identified a Zone J (New York City) reliability need as early as summer 2027, requiring peaker units scheduled for retirement to be retained.  There has already been a net loss of dispatchable capacity—NYISO’s 2025 Power Trends notes that since the Climate Act passed, 4,315 MW of capacity have retired while only 2,274 MW of mostly intermittent resources have been added, a net loss of about 2,041 MW.  

These reports also point out that Climate Act planning assumes timely completion of critical transmission projects like Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) if this slips, New York City’s reliability margins become “deficient.” And their studies show that high penetrations of wind and solar require more operating reserves, new reserve products, and far more total installed capacity, including firm, zero‑emission resources that do not yet exist at required scale.

None of that shows up in Harckham’s breezy claim that renewables are “the cheapest new power source.” A system that must rely increasingly on emergency procedures, backstop contracts, and delayed environmental rules to keep the lights on is not a low‑cost system.

The “Cheapest Renewables” Talking Point

Harckham leans heavily on Energy Information Administration data and asserts that a kWh of solar is “consistently” cheaper than electricity from gas or nuclear.  I have addressed this “cheap renewables myth” at length. Project‑level levelized cost of energy (LCOE) comparisons ignore the system‑wide costs that NYISO must actually manage:

  • Backup and firming capacity to cover multi‑hour ramps and multi‑day renewable droughts.
  • New transmission to move remote resources to load centers.
  • Storage sized to reliability needs, not just to smooth daily solar output.
  • Curtailment and overbuild required as penetration rises.

At low penetration, subsidized wind and solar can appear cheap on paper. At high penetration, the cost of keeping the system reliable at all hours rises sharply, and those costs are socialized through rates and surcharges.

Nuclear: New York Policy Disaster

Harckham dismisses nuclear as a “fantasy” for bill relief, citing the long and expensive Vogtle expansion in Georgia. That is a convenient example, but ignores New York’s misguided nuclear policy  Cheered on by Harckham, New York chose to close Indian Point, a major source of zero‑emission, dispatchable power located near the New York City load center, and then tried to cover both that loss and growing demand with a mix of imports, gas, and promised future renewables. Emissions went up in the short term, and reliability margins tightened.

The fastest way to raise both emissions and costs is to shut down existing nuclear plants and then pretend that nuclear is irrelevant to affordability. New York State has not provided clear and transparent cost estimates for the Climate Act transition using renewables or an alternative approach using nuclear as the base load source.  As a result, it is simply false to claim that nuclear has no role in cost containment, especially if the alternative is building a massive overbuilt, weather‑dependent system plus long‑duration storage that does not yet exist commercially at scale.

Distributed Solar and the “$1 Billion” Promise

Harckham touts a Synapse Energy Economics study for the Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power Act, claiming “an estimated $1 billion in annual savings for ratepayers” by raising distributed solar goals and reforming interconnections.  I don’t doubt that a modeling exercise can produce that figure under optimistic assumptions. But New York’s record with these programs is that system‑level “savings” often mask who pays and who benefits.

Net metering and Value of Distributed Energy Resource credits shift revenue shortfalls onto non‑participants. Interconnection and distribution upgrade costs are socialized. Program administration and incentives are funded via surcharges. Those costs show up in the bills of the very households already in arrears.  Unless a study rigorously accounts for these rate‑base effects and distributional impacts, a headline “$1 billion in savings” can easily mean $1 billion in shifted costs, not genuine relief for the typical customer. Furthermore, I recently showed that the distributed solar failed to provide any meaningful energy during last winter’s extreme weather.  I doubt that the long-term costs will be cheaper if all the expenses necessary to support the system when solar is unavailable are included.

What PSL §66‑p(4) Is There For – And Why It Matters Now

One thing Harckham does not mention is that the Legislature itself anticipated a situation where Climate Act implementation might threaten affordability and reliability. Public Service Law §66‑p(4) explicitly authorizes the PSC to temporarily suspend or modify Renewable Energy Program obligations if it finds that the program:

  • Impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service,
  • Is likely to impair existing obligations, and/or
  • Is associated with a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections.

Two recent petitions—one from Independent Intervenors (including me), and one from the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy—ask the PSC to hold a §66‑p(4) hearing based on precisely these concerns. On January 28, 2026, the PSC issued a notice soliciting comments on whether Renewable Energy Program targets should be suspended or adjusted. That is not routine housekeeping. It is a legal acknowledgment that the current trajectory may be incompatible with safe, adequate, and affordable service.  The fact is that New York has never done a feasibility study proving that transitioning the electric system to depend on renewables will work.

Conclusion: Stop Pretending, Start Reviewing

Harckham urges New Yorkers to “reject misinformation” and “double down” on the Climate Act to lower bills. But the state’s own data tell a different story:

  • NYSERDA’s cap‑and‑invest modeling shows steep fuel price increases and thousands of dollars per year in added household costs.
  • Energy affordability analysis shows a 40+% increase in energy‑related costs for a representative upstate family once capital is included.
  • The State Energy Plan projects $120 billion per year in system investment, about $1,282 per month per household on a levelized basis.
  • NYISO warns of declining reliability margins, dependence on a few critical transmission projects, and a technology gap for firm, zero‑emission resources.
  • More than 1.3 million households already owe nearly $1.8 billion in arrears.

This is not what an affordable transition looks like.

Reconsidering the Climate Act’s timelines and mandates does not mean abandoning climate goals. It means using the tools the Legislature provided—especially PSL §66‑p(4)—to align ambition with reality, ensure that reliability is not sacrificed, and prevent climate policy from becoming an uncontrolled energy tax on working families.

New Yorkers were promised a “clean, resilient, and affordable” energy future. Now that NYSERDA, NYISO, the Comptroller, and the Attorney General’s office have all signaled serious cost and feasibility issues, the responsible course is not to “double down” on slogans, but to require a transparent §66‑p(4) hearing on whether the Renewable Energy Program is compatible with safe, adequate, and affordable service.

That is the conversation we should be having—not whether critics are guilty of “misinformation” for reading the state’s own numbers aloud.  It is frustrating that misinformation claims are grounded on information that is based on reality, but it is incorrect that it inflicts harm on the state.

Conclusion

Since the promulgation of the Climate Act we now know we must address what we have learned.  New York’s affordability crisis is being exacerbated by Climate Act‑driven costs, not just fossil volatility.  NYSERDA and the State Energy Plan show large household cost increases once capital is included, not bill reductions.  NYISO’s reliability warnings reveal that a high‑renewables system without firm backup is neither cheap nor risk‑free.  Claims that renewables are “the cheapest power” ignore system‑wide costs, rate‑base effects, and reliability needs. Finally, PSL §66‑p(4) exists as a safety valve and should be used now to review and, if necessary, modify Climate Act obligations.

The Enemy of Good

Kris Martin has put together a superb overview (Substack post and PDF copy) of the myths of New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  Governor Hochul has suggested some changes to the Climate Act but even the suggestion of incorporating any lessons learned in the last six years is anathema to the legislators who foisted the Climate Act on New Yorkers and their cheerleaders in environmental NGO’s.  Martin’s article describes why New York’s quest for an electric system that has zero emissions by 2040 is leading the state down an unsustainable path.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for approving the Scoping Plan prepared by New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” NYSERDA also prepared the recent State Energy Plan that was approved by the Energy Planning Board (EPB). 

In a recent post I described several initiatives that have led Governor Hochul to suggest that the timeline for the electric sector goals needs to be revised.  Apparently, the proposed changes are part of the budget negotiations and there is very little information describing exactly what the Governor has proposed.  The most disappointing thing to me is that clean energy proponents refuse to acknowledge that there are any issues that cannot be resolved by doubling down on current policies.

Kris Martin has put together a comprehensive list of reasons why changes are needed.  She is a retired software engineer and technical writer living in western NY who  writes about solar and wind buildout and opposition in rural communities.  Her technical writing experience is evident in her clear and concise description of issues.

The Enemy of Good

Martin frames the issues in the context of Voltaire’s comment “Perfect is the enemy of good”.  I agree with this concept.  If the state were to accept “good enough” emission reductions and not insist upon zero emissions, many of the challenges for a lower emission energy system would be manageable.  But as she notes:

Albany and downstate politicians want it all, and they want it now. Affordable electricity, zero emissions, reliability, and security. Lots of wind and solar, as soon as possible.

Her response is pure gold:

Unfortunately, you can’t power the electric grid with rhetoric and emotion. And good intentions don’t necessarily result in the best choices.

She summarizes the topic of the post:

The NYS Climate Act calls for “zero by 40”: all electricity generation must come from zero-emissions sources by 2040. This post looks at the myths and realities of “zero by 40.” What will it take to keep the lights on? Will meeting Climate Act goals delay unwanted effects of climate change? Is it possible to build wind and solar as quickly as we need to? Will it be cheap? Or will perfect be the enemy of good?

Myths

I highly recommend that you read the article.  She addresses the following myths with a summary description of reality for each one.

  • Myth: “Zero by 40” will keep climate change from getting worse
  • Myth: We don’t need to be concerned about reliability
  • Myth: We can replace 2,000 MW of gas generation with 2,000 MW of wind and solar
  • Myth: Batteries will take care of that “intermittency” thing
  • Myth: We can build our way out of this by 2040
  • Myth: “Renewables” are cheaper than the alternatives
  • Myth: Wind and solar have minimal impacts on their surroundings

Highlights

In this section I will highlight the points that struck a chord for me.  For example, Martin points out that  “Zero by 40” will keep climate change from getting worse simply because New York’s emissions are less than a half a percent of global emissions.

I think one of the biggest failures of the Hochul Administration and the Legislature implementation of the Climate Act was the politicization of the Climate Action Council (CAC).  The authors of the Climate Act believed that the net-zero transition was only a matter of “political will” and that we don’t need to be concerned about reliability.  The CAC members were chosen to reinforce that belief and concerns about reliability were downplayed.    Considering all the reliability issues outlined by Martin and the concerns raised by the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) this mindset does not age well.  For example, CAC member Paul Shepson, Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, (starting at 23:39 of the 26 May 2022 Council meeting recording exemplifies this attitude:

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.

Martin addresses the idea that we can replace 2,000 MW of gas generation with 2,000 MW of wind and solar.  Using NYISO figures, she compares what 2,000 MW might produce using NYS Solar capacity and capacity factors clearly showing different technologies generate different amounts of electricity.

She includes the land use data to make the following points neglected by the CAC:

 Additional generation is needed specifically downstate. We plan to replace NYC’s fossil plants with a combination of offshore wind, battery storage, and upstate wind and solar. But as I discussed in The missing link, right now our grid can’t deliver much of this energy downstate. Doing that will require costly investments in transmission infrastructure.

Martin addresses the challenge of intermittency and the myth that batteries can solve the associated problems.  This is another example where the Hochul Administration failed to keep politics out of the CAC.  The most influential member on the CAC was Dr. Robert Howarth who claims that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act.  As illustrated by his statement  at the meeting where the Scoping Plan was approved he claims that no new technology is needed.  However, the Scoping Plan, Integration Analysis, New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), New York Department of Public Service, the New York State Reliability Council, State Energy Plan, and others all have noted that a new category of generating resources called Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR) is necessary to keep the lights on during the periods of extended low wind and solar resource availability described by Martin.  Hochul’s appointed co-chairs on the CAC did not point out that Howarth’s continued insistence that no new technology is needed is in contrast to the results of the State’s analysis is evidence of political influence rather than rational policy.

Martin addresses two facts that can no longer be ignored.  She does an excellent job explaining the timelines to transition the electric system that prove we cannot build our way out of this by 2040.  The other myth that renewables are cheaper than the alternatives is another persistent misconception standing in the way of rational policy.

I have been meaning to address the myth that wind and solar have minimal impacts on their surroundings.  As far as I am concerned, the lack of environmental constraints on NY solar and wind development is a scandal. Martin explains:

Real grid-scale solar and wind buildout in NYS looks very different from the pretty pictures that developers show us. No one is growing crops on large-scale solar sites here. There are no grid-scale projects brimming with native wildflowers and happy pollinators. I see very occasional sheepwashing on a modest scale, but no large-scale agrivoltaics. Six-hundred-foot wind turbines do not generate silently or coexist peacefully with nearby residents. The blades don’t magically dodge birds and bats.

She goes on:

It helps to understand the scale of “renewable” development in NYS. Solar buildout by 2040 would require over a quarter of a million acres. By 2050, we can expect to have over 350,000 acres of panels. Even minimal impacts to very large areas can add up.

We’re just starting to learn the environmental drawbacks of solar and wind. Because these technologies have such enormous footprints, we need to learn much more about their effects on soils, on ecosystems, on agriculture, on the weather, and on the humans who live around these projects. Without impartial research, we risk doing extensive environmental damage and creating future environmental justice communities. Instead, we’ve largely decided in advance that these technologies are entirely benevolent. Wind and solar developers are unlikely to risk studying effects unless they can control the results, and academic institutions have become captured entities. They are often highly politicized and careful to present “renewables” in a positive light.

Myths and Morals

Martin points out that addressing climate change is often portrayed as the great moral crusade of our time.  However, she argues:

Our society is defined by its use of electricity, whether we like it or not. Morality doesn’t generate electricity. It can’t wage war against the laws of physics and win. Wind and solar alone can’t provide us with a reliable grid just because we think “renewables” are a good thing. It’s time to accept that and decide how to proceed.

She goes on to recommend some pragmatic approaches.  Changing the arbitrary target dates for electrifying everything is one example. As she points out:

What do we gain from the “nation-leading” status that our Climate Act is supposed to confer? Moral superiority? We haven’t gained residents, wealth, or industry; these are leaving the state at an alarming rate.

Another recommendation is moving away from “zero by 2040”:

 If this is the only acceptable outcome we risk trading a working grid for a victory in virtue-signaling. We still need reliable, dispatchable generation for wind and solar to work, and we have no emissions-free resources ready to deploy. By the time we support wind and solar with DEFRs/battery storage, “renewables” will be far more expensive than most conventional alternatives.

She concludes “We can’t afford to let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Conclusion

This is an excellent overview of the problems associated with the Climate Act.  It is well written and should be required reading for all New York lawmakers and recommended reading for all New Yorkers.  Unfortunately, I have decided that many lawmakers have no desire to hear anything that does not comport with what they think their preferred constituencies believe.  That failure to address reality is not going to end well.

Cheap Renewables Myth

In a recent article I noted instances where Governor Hochul and Public Service Commission Chair Rory Christian have raised the possibility for limited changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) interim targets.  The main driver for the proposal to make Climate Act changes is affordability.  Proponents insist that renewables currently provide cheapest electricity.  I address this myth based on an article by Matt Jacobson at Matt’s Substack.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article 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.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.  A recent recommendation by Governor Hochul to adjust the deadlines has spurred conversations about the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act.  A primary concern is affordability.

I have long been meaning to address the myth that renewables can provide cheap electricity.  I was working on an article today and ran across Jacobson’s article.   My goal was to put something together that was simple and his article does better than the one I was working on so I am publishing this.  Not to worry I will beat the myth to death when I publish the other draft.

Matt Jacobson writes about energy markets, infrastructure, and policy in New England. He is a business development executive at Summit Natural Gas of Maine, a Naval Academy graduate, and a former U.S. Air Force pilot.  A quick review of his articles shows that he is fighting the same nonsense that I am addressing in New York.  I highlight his arguments below with my comments.

The Chart Behind the Claim

Jacobson describes the problem.

For years now, we’ve been told that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of electricity. That claim shows up everywhere—in headlines, policy discussions, and investor decks—and it’s usually backed by some version of a simple cost comparison like this.

On its face, the conclusion is obvious. Solar and wind appear to be the lowest-cost options, while gas looks more expensive.  The chart isn’t wrong—but it’s incomplete. And when incomplete math drives policy, the system ends up costing more than advertised.  It measures the cost of producing electricity when it’s available—not the cost of running a grid. Those are very different things.

It’s also worth noting that rooftop solar doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Net energy billing ties compensation to retail rates rather than system value, so deployment follows customer economics—not grid needs. The result is more distribution upgrades, more complex power flows, and costs that don’t always line up with system benefit—all while the grid still has to be built for peak demand.

This is great – simple, direct and spot on.

What the Chart Misses

Jacobson points out the biggest flaw in the analyses that supported the Climate Act transition plan.

The grid doesn’t run on averages. It runs on the worst day of the year—cold, dark, and still.

That’s the moment the entire system is tested, and the moment that determines what it actually costs.

Wind and solar can be cheap when they produce power, but that’s not the same thing as delivering power when it’s needed. Cheap electricity isn’t the same as dependable electricity.

A power system has to be built to meet demand at all times, not just when conditions are favorable. That means having enough capacity available to carry the load even when intermittent resources aren’t producing. It also means maintaining the infrastructure, fuel supply, and operational flexibility to respond when conditions change.

Once you look at it that way, the gap becomes obvious. The cost of producing electricity is only one piece of the puzzle. The cost of making sure it’s there when you need it is what actually defines the system.

What This Looks Like in the Real World

One of the biggest failures of the Climate Act is ignoring what is happening in other jurisdictions that are further ahead in their net-zero transition.

If this still feels theoretical, you can see it play out in real time in places that have leaned heavily into solar.

California now produces so much solar power at midday that electricity prices can collapse to near zero—or even go negative, because supply exceeds demand. That sounds like a success until a few hours later, when the sun sets and demand is still high. At that point, the system has to replace a large amount of lost generation very quickly. Dispatchable plants ramp, imports increase, and prices rise as the system scrambles to maintain balance.

Nothing about that is free. The system still has to be built to handle both conditions—the oversupply in the middle of the day and the shortfall in the evening. That means maintaining capacity that sits idle for part of the day and then runs hard when it’s needed most.

Batteries can shift some of that midday solar into the evening, but only within limits. Most grid-scale batteries today are designed to discharge for a few hours, not to carry a system through multi-day weather events or extended winter peaks. Batteries don’t know where electricity comes from—they respond to price. And in many hours, that price is set by a grid still dominated by natural gas.

To rely on them as a full solution, you would have to build enough excess generation to charge them and enough storage to carry the system when that generation isn’t there. That means building significantly more capacity than you otherwise would, and then maintaining a system that is both larger and more complex.

Also note that New York agencies agree that traditional storage is insufficient for multi-day dark doldrums and have recommended developing a new technology for those periods.

The Simple Reality Check

I agree completely with this:

There’s a simple way to test the claim that wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of electricity. Look at the places that use the most of them. If the claim were true, those places should have the lowest electricity prices.

They don’t. States like California, which have invested heavily in solar, consistently have some of the highest electricity prices in the country, while many lower-cost regions rely more heavily on power plants that can run when needed.

At some point you have to decide whether to trust the model or what’s actually happening.

What It Actually Takes to Run a Grid

In my next post on the myth of cheap renewables I will provide more detail about this topic.

What’s missing from that original chart is everything required to make the system work. A power system doesn’t just produce electricity—it has to deliver it reliably, at all times, under all conditions.

That means maintaining backup generation for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. It means building storage to shift energy across hours or days. It means expanding transmission to move power from where it’s produced to where it’s needed. And it means carrying enough redundancy in the system to ensure it doesn’t fail under stress.

None of that is free, and none of it is optional.

Once those requirements are included, the economics change. The question is no longer which resource produces the cheapest electricity in isolation, but what combination of resources can meet demand reliably. That’s a very different problem—and a much more expensive one.

Additional Complications

I prepared this post to address the myth of cheap renewables.  Jacobson goes on to discuss other topics.  He describes the Myth of “Transition” as the idea that we are switching from one energy system to another. He makes a persuasive argument that historical energy transitions added more energy to the system and did not substitute for the one before it.  “ Wind and solar are being added to the grid, but the underlying system that ensures reliability—power plants that can run when needed, fuel supply, and infrastructure—has not gone away.”

I have followed the Climate Act since 2019 and when I tell people about it that usually have never heard about it but their response is invariably what about reliability.  Jacobson explains: “In colder regions, people rely on fuels that work when it matters—natural gas, oil, propane—because they can deliver heat on demand.” 

What This Means for New England and New York

Jacobson’s description of what is happening in New England is apropos to New York.

On the coldest winter evenings, solar output is effectively zero, wind is often unreliable, and demand is at its highest. The system has to meet that demand regardless of conditions, which means relying on power plants that can run when needed and the fuel supply required to support them.

But the issue isn’t just winter. Solar production is concentrated in the middle of the day, while demand often peaks in the early morning and evening. It also varies by season, producing far more energy in the summer than in the winter, when the system is under the most stress.

That mismatch matters. Even when solar is producing, it often isn’t producing when the system needs it most.

In those moments, the grid isn’t running on what was cheapest to build—it’s running on what is available. And in New England, that often means natural gas, supplemented by oil and imports when the system is tight.

That reality drives cost. The region has to maintain the infrastructure and fuel supply to meet peak demand while also building out additional resources that may or may not be available when needed. The result is a system that is more expensive to operate, not less.

Complexity and Risk

Jacobson points out we are changing how the electric grid operates.

As we push toward more wind, solar, and battery systems, we’re not just changing where electricity comes from—we’re changing how the grid operates.

The traditional system relied on large, predictable power plants that provided stability as a byproduct of how they ran. The newer system relies far more on power electronics, software, and coordination to keep everything in balance. That can work, but it’s inherently more complex.

In pilot training, you learn that the best flights are boring. That only happens with preparation, simplicity, and margin for error. As complexity increases, so does the chance something goes wrong. Power systems aren’t that different.

There’s also a dimension here that gets far less attention: risk. Building out these systems increases reliance on global supply chains for critical materials and components, and much of that supply chain runs through China. China dominates the refining of many key minerals and manufactures the vast majority of the world’s solar panels. Producing those panels is energy-intensive, and much of that energy comes from coal.

None of that makes the technology unusable, but it does change the risk profile. We’re shifting part of our energy system—from fuel we control domestically to supply chains we don’t—while making long-term decisions about infrastructure that will be in place for decades.

The Bottom Line

Jacobson’s bottom line will also serve as my conclusion.

The original chart isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete.

It tells you what it costs to produce electricity under ideal conditions, but it leaves out what it takes to run a system that has to perform under real ones. Once you account for reliability, timing, infrastructure, and risk, the picture changes.

We haven’t built a cheaper system. We’ve built a larger one—one that layers intermittent resources on top of the infrastructure required to keep the lights on when wind and solar aren’t producing.

And that cost doesn’t disappear. It shows up in higher rates, more complexity, and a system that is harder to operate and more fragile.

My thanks to Matt Jacobson for a clear explanation why wind and solar are not the cheapest form of new generation.