At the Business Council of New York 2023 Renewable Energy Conference Energy Richard Ellenbogen, President [BIO] Allied Converters, gave the keynote address. This post summarizes the power point presentation for his address: “Energy on Demand as the Life Blood of Business and Entrepreneurship in the State – Why NY State Must Rethink Its Energy Plan and Ten Suggestions to Help Fix the Problems.”
Ellenbogen frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). I have published other articles by Ellenbogen because he truly cares about the environment and the environmental performance record of his business shows that he is walking the walk. When he sent a copy of the presentation I asked if I could it post after the conference.
Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act Background
The CLCPA established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and an interim 2030 target of a 40% reduction by 2030. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan. After a year-long review the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022. In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.
Richard Ellenbogen
I have published other articles by Ellenbogen because he truly cares about the environment and the environmental performance record of his business shows that he is walking the walk. His bio is available at the Business Council website.
Ellenbogen’s presentation covers four major points before making recommendations. I summarize each of these points in the following.
Energy System
Ellenbogen describes the energy system as an introduction to the problem and what he thinks we should do. He explains that we want an energy system that provides reliable, affordable, and clean power but that based on what has been happening in Germany the current plan will negatively impact all those features. He argues that climate change is a real issue and that methane also needs to be addressed. He makes a good argument that the plans to eliminate natural gas before zero emission sources of electrical generation will decrease the rate of decarbonization. He projects that the costs of CLCPA implementation will exceed $4 trillion because the entire electric transmission, distribution, and electric service system will have to be replaced. These costs are far in excess of anything that the Hochul Administration has claimed. His introduction concludes that we need to adjust the plan.
Implementation
Ellenbogen describes obstacles to implementation in the next section. He lists ten specific obstacles and then goes on to highlight a few issues. He addresses heat pumps and gas stoves. His presentation points out that converting to heat pumps “will not reduce GHG emissions or energy prices on a generation system supported by fossil fuels”. Germany has tried to do this and it has not worked out as planned. In particular, he explains in Germany that “it just moved the CO2 emissions to a different location with an as large or larger CO2 footprint and with much higher operating costs!”. He points out that Germany’s past 30-year history is New York’s future. There are similar concerns about gas stove and explains why the conclusions of recent gas stove studies are “extremely questionable” that are being used to justify banning those appliances.
In order to describe the difficulties associated with implementation he delves into the physics of power and energy. They are not the same thing as shown in the following slide. CLCPA proponents often do not properly recognize the distinction and that misleads the public on the capabilities of wind and solar generation. He also describes the capabilities of different types of generation.
CLCPA Fantasy
The physics lessons are necessary to show why the CLCPA Scoping Plan is a fantasy. He compares the power and energy projections in the Integration Analysis and then explains why the documentation is using unrealistic energy estimates. As a result, he points out that “the solar energy output is being over-estimated in the CLCPA by 72%”. There is a slide that describes the CLCPA generation plan that concludes that the assumptions are unrealistic. Keep in mind that the Integration Analysis model back calculated the resources required to meet the CLCPA targets but did not incorporate a feasibility analysis to determine if those assumptions were realistic. He points out that the benefits claimed do not consider state emissions relative to the rest of the world: “NY state could eliminate 100% of its GHG emissions and not affect damages caused by climate change”. He also notes that “in the last two years the rest of the world GHG emissions increased seven times as much” as New York total emissions.
Reality
Ellenbogen summarizes New York State energy in a chart with four columns that list energy use in gigawatt-hours:
- Total existing energy use
- Energy use if it was fully converted to electric systems
- The amount of storage expected to be installed by 2040 according to the recently released NYSERDA NY state energy roadmap
- The amount of new renewable generation that will be installed by 2035.
He makes two points with the graph. The renewable energy installation schedule is falling behind as he predicted in March 2019. The other point is that converting buildings to all electric energy has a hidden problem. Natural gas deliveries to homes are “used with an efficiency over 80% to 95% during onsite combustion so replacing it will require staggering amounts of electrical generation.” In order to replace it power plants will have to generate the needed electricity because the renewables won’t be reading in time. Power plant efficiencies are in the range of 33% – 50% and there is another 7% energy loss on transmission lines delivering it to the end user.
Short-term Recommendations
His presentation explains that we need to decrease energy use and increase renewable energy development to reduce the carbon footprint. He goes on to describe problems with energy storage. All this leads up to his recommendation to keep onsite gas combustion in place so that less energy is needed to heat homes and energy storage is not needed. He makes a total of ten short-term recommendations that will rapidly reduce GHG emissions with much lower installation costs while also slowing or reversing utility bill increases. The ten recommendations are:
1 – Do not electrify buildings that run on natural gas – while it will reduce GHG at the building, it will increase it as much at the generating plants While forcing residents and the utilities to incur enormous rewiring costs. There will be no reduction in column a (fossil fuel consumption). Also, the gas stove analysis that was done recently was mathematically flawed and should not be used to set public policy. However old gas stoves should be replaced with new ones and a gas detector.
2 – Focus heat pump efforts on locations that use oil heat or that use radiant electric heat. Those locations will see a significant reduction of GHG and heat pumps will reduce grid load when compared to radiant electric heat.
3 – Focus resources on expanding grid infrastructure. This will reduce the cost of installing solar in upstate locations and reduce the number of system cancellations allowing the state to increase renewable energy development.
4 – Increasing grid infrastructure will also help with the installation of chargers for the electric vehicle wave that is about to arrive, with or without the state mandate.
5 – Do not install large amounts of battery storage until there is sufficient renewable generation to support the storage. It will increase fossil fuel usage while incurring an enormous capital outlay and starving other projects of funding. They will also decay well before sufficient renewable generation is installed.
6 – Replace older generating plants with higher efficiency combined cycle natural gas generating plants. The state will need the energy to support the EV’s and the newer plants are far more efficient. It will lower energy use, reduce gas usage and put downward pressure on the commodity price.
7 – Develop technologies other than electrolysis to generate green hydrogen (thermochemical, pyrolisis, etc.) Place an emphasis on hydrogen injection into natural gas combustion plants. It will decrease gas usage and increase combustion temperatures which reduces NOx emissions and overall energy use It will greatly lower GHG emissions at those generating Plants
8 – Focus available natural gas resources on combined heat and power systems. It will reduce the utility bills for the system owners while also reducing requirements for grid infrastructure. Allow multiple buildings to form micro-grids to utilize the thermal output and increase the generation capacity. It will greatly reduce statewide energy use and reduce the need for as much transmission infrastructure
9 – Allow Micron Technologies to build a combined cycle plant the size of Cricket Valley Energy Center on their property. The Micron facility will use more energy than the state of Vermont. With generation on-site, the thermal energy could be used at the plant and the 350 GWh of annual line loss will be eliminated. Instead of making them look “green” on paper by buying carbon credits, let them be green
in reality with high efficiency generation and have lower energy costs to make them more competitive and able to recoup the $5 billion rebate without faking it. That will eliminate the increase in statewide energy use related to the facility.
10 – Figure out how the utilities can interconnect the 9 GW of offshore wind because at the moment, no one is certain how to do it. There is limited space for underwater cables. Without that, energy curtailments will occur and impede the increase of renewable energy development, unless they use the alternative idea which is to run transmission lines across Long Island where there will be inevitable NIMBY delays.
Long-Term Recommendation
His long-term recommendations call for the development of 12 GW of nuclear generation. That is equivalent to six facilities the size of the recently closed down Indian Point plant. He suggests that they should use a circular fuel cycle to cut down on nuclear waste and be located near existing plants that already have necessary infrastructure. He argues that the fatal flaw of the state’s plan is the cost of the energy storage required to backup wind and solar. Even though nuclear is expensive the costs will be much lower than the any storage options. In addition, the land required to provide the power would only be 3% of the land for just the solar developments.
Conclusion
Ellenbogen provides a rational and pragmatic approach to greatly reduce GHG emissions at costs that would be far less expensive than the costs of the CLCPA. At some point the Hochul Administration is going to have to confront the reality that no amount of dodgy cost benefit analysis can avoid the reality of enormous costs. Also ignored are the technological challenges associated with a new resource that can be dispatched without generating emissions. Ellenbogen proposes to use the only proven resource that meets those requirements and I agree that his long-term recommendation to develop nuclear power is the only chance to succeed. I fully support his argument that New York State is headed down a path that has not worked elsewhere as described in the following slide.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 