In response to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, Governor Cuomo issued an Executive Order reaffirming the state policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by forty percent by 2030, and eighty percent by 2050 from 1990 levels, across all emitting activities of the New York economy. The Manhattan Institute recently published “New York’s Clean Energy Programs, The High Cost of Symbolic Environmentalism” by economist Jonathan Lesser that provides cost estimates for some of the programs referenced in the Executive Order which are clearly symbolic only. In this post I will summarize his findings but I recommend that you read his entire paper.
The Executive Order states that “New York has already committed to aggressive investments and initiatives to turn the State Energy Plan goals into action through its Clean Energy Standard (CES) program, the $5 Billion Clean Energy Fund (CEF), the $1 Billion NY-Sun solar program, the nation’s largest Green Bank, and unprecedented reforms to make the electricity grid more resilient, reliable, and affordable.” Dr. Lasser shows that meeting the Clean Energy Standard mandate could easily cost New York consumers and businesses more than $1 trillion by 2050. Amazingly he does not include all the costs so it is an underestimate. He does not include costs of Reforming the Energy Vision mandates that are buried in the rate case requirements, the recent changes to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or the cost to incorporate a carbon fee on generators. I will address those programs at some point on this blog.
Disclaimer: I am writing this series of posts on New York State (NYS)energy policy because I am concerned that this whole thing is going to end as an expensive boondoggle and drive electricity prices in particular and energy prices in general significantly higher without any appreciable improvement to global warming in general and certainly will have no effect on the purported impacts in NYS. It is a very sad commentary on this process that the State has not provided either an analysis of total costs or disclosed the actual impacts of these reductions. Before retirement from the electric generating industry, I was actively analyzing energy and air quality regulations that could affect company operations. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Evaluation Summary
There are three sections in the analysis: The New York Clean Energy Standard, An Introduction to Cost-Benefit Analysis Concepts, and Evaluating the Benefits and Costs of New York’s Clean Energy Programs. The description of the Clean Energy Standard (CES) describes the focus of the report. The introduction to cost-benefit analyses review of key concepts that “provide the framework for evaluating the costs and benefits of the CES, identifying specific categories of costs and benefits relevant to the evaluation”. The last section assesses the costs and benefits of the CES, and two related components: the solar PV Programs, Cuomo’s January 2017 mandate to install 2,400 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind generation off Long Island by 2030, and Cuomo’s March 2017 “Drive Green” program that will subsidize purchase of electric vehicles.
The summary of the Clean Energy Standard includes an analysis of the required Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions which is a good overview of the planned reductions and the scale of the mandate. Notably he shows that the Clean Energy Fund mandates are not clearly defined and as far as can be determined are ambitious. For example, to meet the 600-TBTU savings mandate, the cumulative savings will have to increase by an average of 30% each year. He concludes: “The gulf between the 600-TBTU energy-efficiency goal and the optimistic projections by NYSERDA, to say nothing of the still-lower forecast of electric savings recently projected by NYISO, calls into question the ability of New York to realize anything close to that goal, apart from the costs of doing so.”
His analysis also looks at the feasibility of the 80 by 50 mandate. His first conclusion is important: even if NY electric generation was 100% fossil free, the resulting decrease in emissions will not even come close to meeting the interim 40% goal much less the 80% goal. Therefore, emissions will have to decrease from all end-use fossil fuel energy consumption: residential, commercial, industrial and transportation. The problem is that in order to reduce emissions in those sectors increased electrification is necessary. He concludes that “the generating mix would have to be about 63% renewables and 37% natural gas, assuming that no other higher CO2-emitting fossil generation, e.g., coal, was used. That means that by 2050, there would need to be sufficient renewable generation to provide 1,420 TBTUs of end-use energy, equivalent to about 400 TWh of electricity.” He then goes on to equate the amount of renewable energy needed, the land needed and the supporting requirements. Ultimately concluding that, given today’s technology, meeting the 80 by 50 mandate appears to be technologically impossible, regardless of cost.
One would think that his analysis could be compared to the state’s implementation plan for all these programs. However, this is NYS and the answer is no implementation plan has been provided. While I could find a couple of points that I think were stretches in his evaluation I also think that he missed some implementation issues vis-à-vis storage and transmission support requirements for the 63% renewable target. I agree that the plan is technologically impossible to implement with today’s technology.
I found his introduction to cost-benefit analysis fascinating. I have never taken a course on economics so this helped me better understand concepts I have “learned” from my work over the years. It confirmed my suspicions on several issues. After describing the alleged benefits for four analyses of green energy programs he explains “Claims of economic benefits arising from new investment and job creation are erroneous. Using subsidies to increase investment in low carbon energy sources and to create jobs is simply a transfer of wealth from electricity consumers and unsubsidized electricity generators to renewable energy and energy-efficiency providers.”
He goes on to say:
“When businesses and consumers pay more for electricity, they have less money to spend on everything else. Consumers have less money to spend on other goods and services; businesses have less money for investments that increase economic output. Goods and services whose production requires electricity also increase in cost, leaving less money to spend on goods and services, which cost more to produce. Thus, subsidizing electric generation—of any kind— effectively imposes two separate taxes on businesses and consumers: the first is a direct tax associated with higher electric bills; the second is an indirect tax in the form of higher costs for purchased goods and services that require electricity as an input.”
In the final section of the report, the benefits and costs of the New York programs are evaluated. He points out that to do a proper cost benefit evaluation you need to compare the proposed plans with how the future would evolve without them. For example, the pollution reduction estimates in all the State analyses include emissions from coal-fired power plants but the reality is that the cost difference between natural gas and coal drove NY coal plant retirements so including coal emissions in the benefits is improper.
He also discusses nonmarket cost in his evaluation. While the New York evaluations of the programs provide all the benefits they have not, to date, included the costs. For example, in order to install the large amounts of solar power proposed the land necessary cannot be used for agricultural crops. Displacing those crops takes money out of the economy that is not reflected in the State analyses.
Moreover, I believe that he has not included the nonmarket cost of fuel diversity. Proponents of renewable energy claim that it provides fuel diversity but that is only true if it includes the full cost of dispatchable electricity. Moreover, one of the strong points of the NY electrical system was that there was a wide range of truly diverse power: hydro, nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas. Even the diversity within the fossil fuels had value because if there was an interruption in supply to any fuel there were alternatives. NY is going to be dependent upon natural gas but what happens if the gas transmission lines get disrupted due to an earthquake? Renewables will not provide any value in this regard.
The final, and most important aspect of his evaluation, is his discussion of the State’s use of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). The SCC is the present day value of projected future net damages from emitting a ton of CO2 today. In order to estimate the impact of today’s emissions it is necessary to estimate total CO2 emissions, model the purported impacts of those emissions and then assess the global economic damage from those impacts. The projected global economic damage is then discounted to present value. Finally, part of the future damage is allocated to present day emissions on a per ton basis.
The vast majority of benefits in both recent NY agency cost-benefit analyses are associated with the value of reduced CO2 emissions, which are, in turn, based on the SCC. The SCC values estimated by Obama Administration are not based on marginal CO2 emissions changes. Instead, the SCC estimates are average values, equal to the estimated impact of a large change in CO2 emissions in a given year, divided by the present value of lost economic output, as measured by a decrease in world GDP.
However, when the increase in CO2 emissions is small, the marginal damage is not even measurable. Equivalently, the marginal benefit of a small reduction in worldwide CO2 emissions is also small. This will be the case with NY policies to reduce CO2 emissions. He notes that “Temperature changes that are too small to physically measure and impossible to separate from natural climate variability cannot be associated with changes in climate and economic output.” Thus, the benefits of equivalent CO2 reductions are effectively zero. Also note that even if there were a measurable impact, virtually all the benefits would, by definition, accrue outside the state. Nor does the NYS approach account for increases in emissions in the rest of the world.
Key Findings
In conclusion, I recommend readers go directly to the source. The report lists four key findings:
“Given existing technology, the CES’s 80 by 50 mandate is unrealistic, unobtainable, and unaffordable. Attempting to meet the mandate could easily cost New York consumers and businesses more than $1 trillion by 2050.”
“The CES mandate will require electrifying most of New York’s transportation, commercial, and industrial sectors. (In 2014, for example, fossil-fuel energy used for transportation was twice as large as all end-use electricity consumption combined.) Even with enormous gains in energy efficiency, the mandate would require installing at least 100,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind generation, or 150,000 MW of onshore wind generation, or 300,000 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity by 2050. By comparison, in 2015, about 11,300 MW of new solar PV capacity was installed in the entire U.S. Moreover, meeting the CES mandate likely would require installing at least 200,000 MW of battery storage to compensate for wind and solar’s inherent intermittency.”
“Meeting the CES interim goals—building 2,400 MW of offshore wind capacity and 7,300 MW of solar PV capacity by 2030—could result in New Yorkers paying more than $18 billion in above-market costs for their electricity between now and then. By 2050, the above-market costs associated with meeting those interim goals could increase to $93 billion. It will also require building at least 1,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission facilities to move electricity from upstate wind and solar projects to downstate consumers. No state agency has estimated the environmental and economic costs of this new infrastructure.”
“The New York Department of Public Service and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority claim that renewable energy and the CES will provide billions of dollars of benefits associated with CO2 reductions. Not so. Regardless of one’s views on the accuracy of climate models and social-cost-of-carbon estimates, the CES will have no measurable impact on world climate. Therefore, the value of the proposed CO2 reductions will be effectively zero.”
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 