Overview of My Comments on the Draft Scoping Plan Comment

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) has a legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  In response to the request for comments on the Draft Scoping Plan I submitted 26 comments on specific issues primarily related to subjects raised at this blog before the end of the comment period on July 1.  This article sums up the comments I submitted as described in my executive summary comment.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies.  I have written extensively on implementation of New York’s response to that risk because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that it will adversely affect reliability, impact affordability, risk safety, affect lifestyles, and will have worse impacts on the environment than the purported effects of climate change in New York.  New York’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are less than one half one percent of global emissions and since 1990 global GHG emissions have increased by more than one half a percent per year.  Moreover, the reductions cannot measurably affect global warming when implemented.   This page documents all the comments that I submitted as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act implementation process. 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.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to the meet the goals to the Council.  Those strategies were used to develop the integration analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that quantified the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council will revise the Draft Scoping Plan based on comments and other expert input in 2022 with the goal to finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the year.

I have been following the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) process since it started.  I used information published on my blog to submit 26 comments on various aspects of the Draft Scoping Plan since the comment period opened.  This post summarizes the executive summary comment I submitted that highlights the most important points that I think the members of the Climate Action Council should know about the Draft Plan.  Given the breadth and scope of the Climate Act transition and the Draft Scoping Plan it is unreasonable to expect that any Council member could devote enough time to evaluating it to understand the substantive nuances that have not been forthcoming from the authors of the Integration Analysis or the leadership of the Climate Action Council.

Summary of Key Recommendations

I believe that the Climate Action Council has lost sight of its primary objective to inform the next Energy Plan in the context of its Climate Act mandates as specified in § 75-0103.  Instead of focusing on specific technical issues, the Council should be considering how to address those mandates in their review of the Draft Scoping Plan that will inform the state energy plan. 

The Council should be defining criteria for safe and adequate electric service, impairing existing obligations, and increase in arrears or service disconnections for Climate Act implementation.  I recommend that those conditions be established up front, implementation plans should be evaluated against those criteria, implementation only proceed if the conditions are met, and then tracked during implementation to see if they are being maintained.  I think the safe and adequate electric service requirement means that the most important thing that has to be done before the Scoping Plan is finalized is to reconcile the NYISO projections for future resource capacity with the Integration Analysis projections. 

The final Climate Action Council mandate that needs to be considered is section 16 of § 75-0103 where there is a requirement to consider efforts at other jurisdictions.  Every jurisdiction that has attempted to transition their energy system away from fossil fuels to wind and solar has seen significant price increases that significantly affected affordability.  As a first step, I recommended that the Climate Action Council establish criteria for affordability.  My comments point out that there have been recent issues at other jurisdictions that affect both reliability and affordability that should be considered by the Council.

The Climate Act specifies that the costs and benefit have to be publicly available.  There is no breakdown of costs within sectors that is needed to evaluate the validity of Integration Analysis cost estimates. I recommended that the Council address this mandate by defining what will meet this requirement. I think that the Final Scoping Plan must describe all control measures, assumptions used, the expected costs for those measures and the expected emission reductions for the Reference Case, the Advisory Panel scenario and the three mitigation scenarios. 

I believe that the Climate Action Council should develop criteria for schedule implementation. The Scoping Plan should establish the milestones and conditions that have to be met before any existing technology is dismantled.  The Integration Analysis and the Draft Scoping Plan zero-emissions electric grid transition plan depend on a long-duration, dispatchable, and emission-free resource that does not exist.  Another comment explains why there are reasons to believe that a commercially viable and affordable resource like this may never be developed.  I conclude that the Final Scoping Plan must include a conditional implementation schedule based on the availability of this resource.

In order to plan adequately for the amount of backup resources needed the worst-case intensity, duration, and frequency of occurrence for winter-time wind lulls has to be determined.  I believe that the best way to do that is to use the longest period of historical data as possible and it has not been used as far as I can tell.  My comment made specific recommendations for this analysis.

The reality is that the benefits are imaginary but the costs are real and the Integration Analysis that provides the basis of the Draft Scoping Plan consistently over-states benefits and under-estimates the costs such that the claim that the benefits are greater than the costs is incorrect.

The Climate Action Council should address the feasibility of the Integration Analysis control measures as part of the Final Scoping Plan.  Nuclear power is the only scalable dispatchable emissions-free generating resource that has been proven to work so the Final Scoping Plan should include a Scenario that takes advantage of those capabilities. 

Carbon pricing is a great theory but in practice there are practical considerations that make it a poor choice for funding decarbonization efforts.  I explained why I believe carbon pricing will always be a regressive tax and list a number of practical reasons that carbon pricing will not work as theorized.  I recommend that this proposal be dropped.

Based on my evaluation of electric vehicles and other strategies, the final Scoping Plan has to a feasibility analysis for all the control measures showing how this could possibly work.  It is not enough to simply say they will work.

One of my biggest concerns about the massive transition to diffuse wind and solar generating resources is the cumulative effect on agriculture and the environment.  The Final Scoping Plan must include proposed thresholds for unacceptable cumulative environmental impacts based on an analysis of all the impacts of the resources projected in the Draft Scoping Plan.   

The following sections provide link to each comment submitted with a brief description.

Goal of Scoping Plan and Council Mandates

I believe that the Climate Action Council has lost sight of its primary objective to inform the next Energy Plan in the context of its Climate Act mandates. In § 75-0103. New York State Climate Action Council (11) the goal of the scoping plan is spelled out:

The council shall on or before two years of the effective date of this article, prepare and approve a scoping plan outlining the recommendations for attaining the statewide greenhouse gas emissions limits in accordance with the schedule established in section 75-0107 of this article, and for the reduction of emissions beyond eighty-five percent, net zero emissions in all sectors of the economy, which shall inform the state energy planning board’s adoption of a state energy plan in accordance with section 6-104 of the energy law. The first state energy plan issued subsequent to completion of the scoping plan required by this section shall incorporate the recommendations of the council.

I submitted comments that explained that there are specific Climate Act mandates are related to expertise, an implementation safety valve, costs and benefits documentation, and consideration of the experiences of other jurisdictions.  Instead of focusing on specific technical issues, the Council should be considering how to address those mandates in their review of the Draft Scoping Plan that will inform the state energy plan. 

My primary concern is reliability. In that context expertise is an issue. Section 2 of § 75-0103 notes that “at large members shall include at all times individuals with expertise in issues relating to climate change mitigation and/or adaptation, such as environmental justice, labor, public health and regulated industries.”  It is extremely telling that energy sector expertise is not mentioned as a specific criterion, unless you assume that regulated industries refer to the energy utilities.  At the May 26, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting some members of the Council stated that concerns about reliability with a 100% renewable grid were mis-information.  This directly contradicts the experts who authored the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) Power Trends 2022 report that notes: “Long-duration, dispatchable, and emission-free resources will be necessary to maintain reliability and meet the objectives of the CLCPA. Resources with this combination of attributes are not commercially available at this time but will be critical to future grid reliability.” 

There are members of the Climate Action Council who believe that the energy transition must proceed no matter what because the law says so.  However, New York Public Service Law  § 66-p. “Establishment of a renewable energy program” includes a safety valve condition:  “(4) 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”.  I believe that instead of getting bogged down in details of specific technologies, the Council should be defining criteria for safe and adequate electric service, impairing existing obligations, and increase in arrears or service disconnections for Climate Act implementation.  I recommend that those conditions be established up front, implementation plans should be evaluated against those criteria, implementation only proceed if the conditions are met, and then tracked during implementation to see if they are being maintained.

I think New York Public Service Law  § 66-p. is a clear mandate to address reliability.  Therefore, the most important thing that has to be done before the Scoping Plan is finalized is to reconcile the NYISO projections for future resource capacity with the Integration Analysis projections.  It is also critical that the Final Scoping Plan include reliability provisions acceptable to the NYISO and New York State Reliability Council are established that meet the safety valve provisions in § 66-p.

My background as a meteorologist led me to comment on the analyses done to date for the worst-case renewable resource availability because I believe address this is a critical reliability issue.  No electric grid proposal that relies primarily on wind and solar resources can plan adequately for the amount of backup resources unless the worst-case intensity, duration, and frequency of occurrence for winter-time wind lulls is known.  I believe that the best way to do that is to use the longest period of historical data as possible and it has not been used as far as I can tell.  My comment made specific recommendations for this analysis.

I am also very concerned about affordability.  Every jurisdiction that has attempted to transition their energy system away from fossil fuels to wind and solar has seen significant price increases that significantly impact those who can afford them the least.  As a first step, I recommend that the Climate Action Council establish criteria for affordability. 

There is a related affordability Council mandate. In section 14,b of § 75-0103 the Climate Act specifically states that the costs and benefits analysis must:

“Evaluate, using the best available economic models, emission estimation techniques and other scientific methods, the total potential costs and potential economic and non-economic benefits of the plan for reducing greenhouse gases, and make such evaluation publicly available.” 

This information is not currently available.  There is no breakdown of costs within sectors that is needed to evaluate the validity of Integration Analysis cost estimates. I recommend that the Council address this mandate by defining what will meet this requirement. In my opinion in order to fulfill this obligation, the Final Scoping Plan must describe all control measures, assumptions used, the expected costs for those measures and the expected emission reductions for the Reference Case, the Advisory Panel scenario and the three mitigation scenarios. 

Additional information was made available in May describing the cost methodologies.  I found this additional documentation describes the calculation methodology but little else.  I note that electrification of home heating is dependent upon building shell improvements.  This recently provided documentation does not provide sufficient information to understand how typical homeowners will be affected by that control measure.  Providing net system costs relative to the Reference Case is not sufficient because stakeholders don’t know the total costs.

The final Climate Action Council mandate is section 16 of § 75-0103 where there is a requirement to consider efforts at other jurisdictions: “The council shall identify existing climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts at the federal, state, and local levels and may make recommendations regarding how such policies may improve the state’s efforts.”  There has been very little discussion of efforts at other jurisdictions.  My comments point out that there have been recent issues at other jurisdictions that affect both reliability and affordability that should be considered by the Council.

I believe that the Climate Action Council should develop criteria for schedule implementation. A collective crossing of fingers that a new technology will maintain existing standards of reliability and affordability is inappropriate. I submitted a comment that explained that the Department of Environmental Conservation’s decision to disapprove two proven interim solutions eliminates reliability options when there is no other commercially proven option available.  The Scoping Plan should establish the milestones and conditions that have to be met before any existing technology is dismantled.  The Integration Analysis and the Draft Scoping Plan zero-emissions electric grid transition plan depend on a long-duration, dispatchable, and emission-free resource that does not exist.  Another comment explains why there are reasons to believe that a commercially viable and affordable resource like this may never be developed.  I conclude that the Final Scoping Plan must include a conditional implementation schedule based on the availability of this resource.

Costs and Benefits

Climate Action Council members and the public should be aware of the games played to be able to conclude that “The cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action by more than $90 billion”.   The reality is that the benefits are imaginary but the costs are real and the Integration Analysis that provides the basis of the Draft Scoping Plan consistently over-states benefits and under-estimates the costs (here, here, and here) . 

I did an extensive analysis of the claimed benefits.  The plan claims $235 billion societal benefits for avoided greenhouse gas emissions.  I estimate those benefits should be no more than $60 billion.  The Scoping Plan gets the higher benefit by counting benefits multiple times.  If I lost 10 pounds five years ago, I cannot say I lost 50 pounds but that is what the Draft Scoping Plan says.  Correcting that mis-characterization reduces the benefits below the costs. 

There are issues with the other benefit claims.  The Scoping Plan claims air quality improvement benefits range between $100 billion and $172 billion.  These benefits are due to an air quality improvement for PM_2.5 of 0.35 µg/m³ that is supposed to “avoid tens of thousands of premature deaths, thousands of non-fatal heart attacks, thousands of other hospitalizations, thousands of asthma-related emergency room visits, and hundreds of thousands of lost workdays”. However, the modeled impacts rely on a linear no-threshold model.  The observed PM_2.5 reduction in New York City since 2005-2007 is 5.6 µg/m³ and that is 16 times higher than the projected decrease due to the Climate Act.  Using the linear no-threshold model that means that we should be able to observe sixteen times tens of thousands of premature deaths, sixteen times thousands of non-fatal heart attacks, sixteen times thousands of other hospitalizations, sixteen times thousands of asthma-related emergency room visits, and sixteen times hundreds of thousands of lost workdays.  When the Climate Action Council and Final Scoping Plan verifies that these reductions have been observed I will accept these benefits.  Benefits are also claimed for active transportation but the Final Scoping Plan benefits should be revised to take into account the number of places where this might work. The majority of the health benefits from energy efficiency interventions in Low and Middle Income (LMI) homes are the result of “non-energy interventions” and should not be included in the Final Scoping Plan that covers energy interventions

The key point regarding the Draft Scoping Plan benefit/cost claim is that there is a caveat that the comparison is relative to the Reference Case.  It is very rarely mentioned but it makes all the difference.  Instead of using a business-as-usual case for comparing impacts, the Integration Analysis defines the Reference Case to include already “implemented” strategies.  That approach excludes legitimate Climate Act costs by mis-categorizing initiatives such as the 2035 zero-emission vehicle legislation and the 9 GW of off-shore wind mandate in the Climate Act as part of the business-as-usual Reference case. This raises the Reference Case costs relative to the mitigation scenarios so that the final costs are under-estimated.  If the costs to convert to zero-emissions vehicles and the off-shore wind are properly accounted for, the costs exceed the benefits by at least an order of magnitude.

Time limitations and lack of documentation prevented me from providing many specific comments on plans for the electric system.  I evaluated the capital costs for generating resources in the different scenarios and concluded that in order to fully verify the costs of the Scoping Plan, the Climate Action Council should insist that the authors of the Integration Analysis provide more detailed analyses.

I commented that the retirement assumptions for wind, solar, and energy storage need to be changed to reflect expected lifetimes of those technologies.  This mis-characterization reduces costs on the order of 40%.  A key technology for reliability is the dispatchable, emissions-free resource.  The place-holder for this resource is hydrogen in one form or other.  My concern is that the Plan does not provide enough reliable documentation to support the speculated use of hydrogen as the technology for this critical resource.  My comments describe specific issues that need to be explicitly addressed in the Final Scoping Plan if the Climate Action Council is to make a compelling argument that hydrogen technology will keep the lights and heat on when needed most. 

I compared the capital costs (2020 $/kW) in the IA-Tech-Supplement-Annex-1-Input-Assumptions spreadsheet Resource Costs tabs against the EIA Table 1: Cost of new central station electricity generating technologies.  I show that with the exception of the capital costs for large hydro and a gas-fired combined cycle unit in Upstate New York all the other technology costs are lower and, in some cases, much lower in the Integration Analysis.  If my comparison interpretation is correct then these numbers are outrageous.  The capital costs for offshore wind are half of the EIA costs.  While there may be some interpretation of the battery energy storage cost that can explain why EIA costs are five times higher, I don’t think there is any interpretation issue with the hydrogen fuel cell technology that is five times higher in New York City and four times higher Upstate.  The Climate Action Council must explain why the Draft Scoping Plan numbers are so high for these technologies.

Scenario Comments

There was a specific request for comments on the three mitigation scenarios.  There are significant technical issues that have to be addressed to maintain current standards of reliability and affordability.  There are technologies in all the sectors that are included in all the mitigation scenarios of the Draft Scoping Plan that are not commercially available at this time but will critical to the transition requirements.  As a result of these technical constraints, I believe that mitigation scenario 2, Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels should be the recommended path forward for the Final Scoping Plan simply because it relies on fewer untested technologies.

My comments on the scenarios showed that the Integration Analysis documentation for the control strategies in the three mitigation scenarios is inadequate.  There isn’t sufficient information about each control measure to be able to compare emission reductions, costs, and viability to be able to meaningfully comment on the components of the mitigation scenarios.  More importantly, the Draft Scoping Plan does not include a feasibility analysis that explains how the control measures will work in the Climate Act transition plan.  The strategies are simply listed and the citizens of New York are expected to believe that the projected emissions reductions will occur.  The Climate Action Council should address the feasibility of the Integration Analysis control measures as part of the Final Scoping Plan.

Additional time for comments would have been needed for me to provide extensive scenario specifics for key sectors.  I did manage to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how electrification of residential heating was supposed to work and how the mitigation scenarios were different.  The primary difference for new heat pump sales for the scenarios is the ramp rate.  Scenarios 3 and 4 accelerate the deployment of heat pumps in 2030 by mandating early retirement of existing furnaces instead of waiting until their end of useful life.  It is easy to include this in a framework but there are at least a couple of implementation issues.  What criteria would be used to determine who would get stuck with the added expense for premature retirements?   Shouldn’t the affected owners get an additional subsidy to cover their costs?  Do those issues make this infeasible?  Without a feasibility analysis the Final Scoping Plan will be incomplete. The Climate Action Council needs to address these questions because this sector is a primary concern for homeowners.

My comments on the mitigation scenarios noted that Mark Mills made the point that “based on today’s physics and technology, the only path to an energy system with a material intensity lower than hydrocarbons would be one focused on nuclear fission.”  Given that nuclear power is also the only scalable dispatchable emissions-free generating resource that has been proven to work, the Final Scoping Plan should include a Scenario that takes advantage of those capabilities.  The Climate Action Council needs to address why this approach has not been considered.

Carbon Pricing

I also submitted a comment on the proposal for carbon pricing.  It is a great theory but in practice there are practical considerations that make it a poor choice for funding decarbonization efforts.  I explained why I believe carbon pricing will always be a regressive tax and list a number of practical reasons that carbon pricing will not work as theorized.  My comment also referenced an analysis in Canada that concluded: “There may be many reasons to recommend carbon pricing as climate policy, but if it is implemented without diligently abiding by the principles that make it work, it will not work as planned, and the harm to the Canadian economy could well outweigh the benefits created by reducing our country’s already negligible level of global CO2 emissions.”  Substitute New York for Canada and I believe this describes this policy option.  I recommend that this economy-wide proposal be abandoned. 

Transportation

I submitted a couple of comments on electric vehicles.  The emphasis in the first comment was my finding that the Integration Analysis is simply making assumptions about future zero-emissions transportation implementation strategies without providing adequate referenced documentation.  I provided numerous recommendations for additional documentation in these comments so that New Yorkers can understand what will be expected and how much it will cost.

As far as I can tell, the electric vehicle costs are based entirely on new vehicle sales. There is no acknowledgement that the used car market will likely change because of the cost of battery replacement.  Sellers will likely get less relative to new cars in the battery electric vehicle market.  Buyers may get a relative deal but will lose in the end when the batteries have to be replaced.  This is a particular concern for low and middle-income citizens who cannot afford new vehicles.

There is no bigger disconnect between the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) proposed strategy and reality than the ZEV charging infrastructure requirements.  The biggest problem is that millions of cars will have to rely on chargers that cannot be dedicated for the owner’s personal use because the owners park on the street or in a parking lot.  In order to provide a credible ZEV strategy, the final Scoping Plan has to describe a plan how this could possibly work.  It is not enough to simply say it will work.

I also submitted a comment addressing electric vehicle costs.  the Integration Analysis vehicle cost projections rely on a single vehicle type for light-duty vehicles.  As a result the projections are not particularly useful for many vehicle owners.  The Climate Action Council should consider updating the Integration Analysis to better represent the types of vehicles used.

Impacts

One of my biggest concerns about the massive transition to diffuse wind and solar generating resources is the cumulative effect on agriculture and the environment.  I recommended that the Climate Action Council place a moratorium on the development of utility-scale solar projects until permitting requirements have been established for responsible solar siting and protection of prime farmlands.  The problem with cumulative environmental impacts.  The most recent environmental impact analysis only addressed a fraction of the total number of wind turbines and area covered by solar PV installations.  In addition, the environmental impacts of battery energy storage were not addressed.  It is impossible to project the impacts of the environmental impacts of the dispatchable emissions-free resource that it included in the capacity projections because a specific technology has not been specified.  My comments quantify the renewable energy resource difference between the most recent environment analysis and the Integration Analysis projections.

I recommended that the Department of Environmental Conservation propose thresholds for unacceptable environmental impacts.  I believe that without addressing this problem that it is likely that the environmental impacts from the massive wind and solar resource developments will have far worse impacts than those that can be ascribed to climate change.  For example, I project that at least 216 Bald Eagles could be killed every year when there are 9,445 MW of on-shore wind.  There were 426 occupied bald eagle nest sites in New York in 2017.  I am not a wildlife biologist but those numbers indicate to me that there will be major threats to the survivability of Bald Eagles in New York.  The Final Scoping Plan must include proposed thresholds for unacceptable environmental impacts like this.

I submitted comments that refuted many of the claims made in Section 2.1, Scientific Evidence of a Changing Climate, of the Draft Scoping Plan.  I argued that if documentation is not included that explicitly supports the claims made and contradicts my comments and the attachment, then I think those claims should be removed from the final Draft Scoping Plan.

I recommend that the Final Scoping Plan include a conditional schedule that considers the availability of necessary technology and potential impacts to reliability and affordability before implementing certain control measures.  I expect the response will be that because there is an “existential” threat due to climate change and we are seeing the effects of climate change now that we cannot wait to act.  I submitted comments that provide references by noted experts that explain why there isn’t a climate crisis and why the Draft Scoping Plan’s reliance on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summaries for policy makers is mis-placed.  I also explain that it is inappropriate to claim that every observed extreme weather event is evidence of climate change.  The risks of an unreliable and unaffordable electric system are far greater than the over-hyped risks of climate change in New York.

My final point for the Climate Action Council is that the Draft Scoping Plan does not quantify how New York’s net-zero transition will affect global warming.  My calculation shows that the expected impact on global warming would be an immeasurable 0.01°C by the year 2100.  If you cannot measure the change in temperature there is no way you can detect a change in the purported effects of that temperature change.  In addition, New York’s emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing by more than one half of one percent on average since 1990. Consequently, New York emission reductions will not have an appreciable effect on global warming.

Conclusion

I recommended that the Final Scoping Plan include an implementation schedule that is based on technological availability that maintains current standards of reliability affordability, and environmental protections.  I expect the emotional response will be that we cannot wait.  However, I submitted comments that explained that the claims of an imminent, inevitable climate catastrophe are ill-considered and it is inappropriate to claim that every observed extreme weather event is evidence of climate change.  The risks of an unreliable and unaffordable electric system are far greater than the over-hyped risks of climate change in New York.  Furthermore, because New York’s total emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and total emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year anything New York does will get lost in the noise of global emissions changes.  A conditional schedule is the rational approach to address the many unresolved technological issues.