On July 11, 2023 the Partners for Climate Action, Hudson Valley hosted a morning coffee webinar titled “Bringing Climate Into the Classroom”. The first presentation by Samrat Pathania included a slide that stated that climate change is not a technological problem because “most climate solutions exist and are economically feasible”. I consider those statements net-zero transition myths that underpin the narratives of climate activists. This article addresses them both in the context of New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) 2040 mandate for a zero-emissions electric grid.
I have been following the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 300 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. 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 established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources. 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.
The idea that the Climate Act has no technological issues and that the transition will be affordable is a basic component of the Act. Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University claims that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act. His statement supporting the approval of the Scoping Plan explains (my emphasis added):
I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.
The presentation by Pathania included a slide that said that solving climate change was not a technological issue. In the video he explains that most climate solutions exist and are economically feasible. The remainder of this article will address those two components relative to the Climate Act requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. I assume New York will follow the advice of Howarth that New York can “rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro”.
Before I address the claims, I want to address why academics like Howarth and the NGOs that evaluate electric energy net-zero transition programs generate misleading studies and reports. Russell Schussler wrote three articles after reading an argument that wind and solar could “easily” be made reliable. In the first article he points out that analyses that claim reliability is not an issue don’t consider all the complex interactions in the electric system. Frequently the difference between power and energy is not understood or misused either by the authors or those who reference the studies claiming current technology is adequate. In the second article Schussler explains that “academics study some problems, determine those are solvable and that is then misinterpreted to imply that greater emerging problems are also solved or easily solvable”. He states that “Barring major breakthroughs in the areas of critical technical challenges (which don’t seem to be receiving a lot of attention at the policy level) the grid cannot reliably support the envisioned increase penetration of wind and solar need to get anywhere close to a net zero goal.” In the third article, he points out that we are a long way from figuring out how to solve for a net zero grid in terms of just theory and what might work on paper is not working as planned as new technology is deployed for many fundamental emerging grid problems.
Climate Solution Technology
A fundamental tenet of the Climate Act is that New York’s electric grid can be powered wind, solar, and hydro and that it can be done completely with currently available technologies. In my opinion one of the greatest missed opportunities of the Climate Action Council was the failure of the Hochul Administration to confront this claim during Council deliberations. . On September 16, 2020 In their presentation to the Power Generation Advisory Panel E3 included a slide titled Electricity Supply – Firm Capacity. Their presentation states: “As the share of intermittent resources like wind and solar grows substantially, some studies suggest that complementing with firm, zero emission resources, such as bioenergy, synthesized fuels such as hydrogen, hydropower, carbon capture and sequestration, and nuclear generation could provide a number of benefits.” The Integration Analysis future generating resource projections project that this resource will equal the amount of existing fossil generation capacity in 2040. The Scoping Plan mentions nuclear only in passing, the Council discouraged any thought of combustion with carbon capture and sequestration, and the amount of bioenergy and hydro resources that can be added to New York’s electric system are small relative to the need. That leaves synthesized fuels. That technology and any other possibilities are not commercially available. Despite the best efforts of the New York State Independent System Operator (NYISO), the New York State Reliability Council (NYSRC), and several members of the Council to prod the Administration and Council into confronting the reliability ramifications of reliance on an unproven technology it was essentially ignored in the Scoping Plan.
The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) recently initiated an “Order initiating a process regarding the zero-emissions target” that will “identify innovative technologies to ensure reliability of a zero-emissions electric grid”. The press release states:
Today’s action recognizes that as renewable resources and storage facilities are added to the State’s energy supply, additional clean-energy resources capable of responding to fluctuating conditions might be needed to maintain the reliability of the electric grid. The Commission’s work to meet the Climate Act targets must include exploration of technologies that can support reliability once fossil generation has been removed from the system. The order initiates a process to identify technologies that can close the anticipated gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs. Within the order, the Commission asks stakeholders a series of important questions, including how to define ‘zero-emissions’ for purposes of the zero emissions by 2040 target, and whether that definition should include cutting edge technologies such as advanced nuclear, long duration energy storage, green hydrogen, and demand response. The order further elicits feedback from stakeholders on how to best design a zero-emissions by 2040 program, consistent with the Climate Act’s requirement of delivering substantial benefits to disadvantaged communities and New York State’s electric grid reliability rules, while also leveraging other state and federal efforts to research, develop, and deploy zero-emission resources.
The organizations responsible for the reliability of the electric system in New York all say that additional clean-energy resources that do not have emissions and can be dispatched as necessary are needed. Anyone who disagrees with that is naïve, ignorant or deliberately ignoring reality.
Affordability
The myth that converting to solar and wind resources will be cheaper than using fossil fuels is very persistent. The only way it can be perpetuated is if only relative costs are considered or if the difference between power and energy is not recognized. The Scoping Plan claims that “The cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action by more than $90 billion” but that realtive number reduces costs by subtracting value-laden benefits.
The cost that matters to New Yorkers are the direct costs. I recently described my response to the claim that “Solar power is now considerably cheaper than new coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy” by Richard Perez, Ph.D. He claimed that “utility-scale solar electricity has become the least expensive form of electricity generation” but that is true for power capacity (MW). Even if solar capacity is half the cost of fossil capacity the cost for delivered energy is much more. We pay for the kWh electric energy we use each month and we expect it to be available 24-7 throughout the year. In order to provide usable energy, other things must be considered that destroy the myth that utility-scale solar is cheaper than other types of power plants. On average a well-designed solar facility can provide (round numbers) 20% of its potential energy possible in New York. A natural gas fired power plant can operate to produce at least 80% of its potential energy over a year. In order to produce the same amount of energy, that means that you need four times as much solar capacity. Even if the solar capacity cost is half the cost for the capacity, the energy cost is double simply due to this capacity factor difference. My response went on to describe other reasons why it cannot be cheaper: the cost of storage when the sun or wind is not available, the need for ancillary transmission services not provided by wind and solar, and the need for the zero-emissions resource described above.
Since then Alex Epstein published what he called The ultimate debunking of “solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.” His analysis is not confined to resources for the electric system. He explains that:
Solar and wind are only cheaper than fossil fuels in at most a small fraction of situations. For the overwhelming majority of the world’s energy needs, solar and wind are either completely unable to replace fossil fuels or far more expensive.
I encourage any doubters to read the article but provide some highlights below.
- On its face, justifying favoritism toward solar and wind by invoking their cheapness is highly suspicious. If they’re cheaper, why do they need coercive policies to throttle their fossil-fueled competitors (e.g., opposing fossil fuel investment, production, and pipelines) and reward solar and wind?
- That solar and wind aren’t actually cheaper than fossil fuels should be obvious from the fact that despite enormous cultural and political hostility toward fossil fuels that makes fossil fuels artificially expensive, fossil fuel use is still growing.
- When discussing “energy prices” we must recognize that “energy” refers to myriad specific use-cases involving different
- Types of machines
- Reliability requirements
- Locations
- Quantities
- For the vast majority of use-cases solar and wind can’t compete with fossil fuels.
- While it is very common to use the terms “energy” and “electricity” interchangeably, the fact is that the vast majority of machines in the world today don’t run on electricity—they run on the direct burning of fossil fuels, because that is the only or cheapest way to run them.
- Many instances of “solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels” not only ignore the non-electricity uses where solar and wind are totally uncompetitive, they use a bogus metric called “Levelized Cost of Energy” (LCOE) which by its own definition ignores the issue of reliability!
- The basic cost problem with solar and wind is their inherent unreliability. To use them to deliver reliable electricity we need to also pay for a reliable life-support grid (e.g., gas plants). This is very often wasteful; it’s usually cheaper just to pay for a reliable grid.
- When we look at large regions that use solar and wind a lot, we see a trend of price increases and/or reliability decreases, because solar and wind add costs to the reliable grids needed to support them—and if you try to save money by shrinking the reliable grid you get reliability problems.¹¹
- Whenever you hear someone rave about Southern California or Iowa or West Texas in making some general laudatory claim about solar and wind, you can be sure that the person is trying to dupe you through false generalization from one location to every location.
- Note that false generalization from one location to all locations is also common for geothermal energy.
- In addition to all their other problems, solar and wind have mining requirements that make them expensive to scale quickly.
Yet today’s solar and wind prices are falsely generalized to be the same or lower if solar and wind scale on a crazy “net-zero-by-2050” timetable.- Whenever we talk about the price of energy, we need to recognize that the price of energy can change dramatically depending on the scale it is being used on.
- Sometimes larger scales can reduce prices (economies of scale) and sometimes larger scales can increase prices (diseconomies of scale).
Saying “solar and wind are cheaper” because they might be cheaper at powering midday and afternoon air-conditioning in Dubai is like a CEO saying “teenage labor is cheaper” because it can fill some mailroom positions.
The evidence that solar and wind cannot reduce the price of electricity is overwhelming.
Conclusion
The myths that no new technologies are needed to transition away from fossil fuels and that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels are common. I recently had a commentary published that argued the solar could not be cheaper than a natural gas-fired turbine and rebuttals were published that ignored all the reasons I described here. All that pragmatists can do is to continue to point out the facts and hope that policy makers will come to their senses before the economy is devastated by this nonsensical policy. Equally troubling is that the European experience is showing that wind is not viable, the costs of wind and solar in Germany are untenable, and that a rapid energy transition has many risks but that information is also being ignored.
The most troubling aspect of this story is that the “Bringing Climate Into the Classroom” webinar peddled these myths without any limitations. The presentation by Samrat Pathania included a slide that stated that climate change is not a technological problem because “most climate solutions exist and are economically feasible”. After making the statement his presentation argued that all we need to do is to make a cultural transformation. He said that “Hope and Trust are two of the pillars of a classroom community”. I worry that the constant barrage of existential climate Armageddon stories that can be easily solved being peddled as in this webinar is going to destroy trust when the inevitability of reality eviscerates these myths. Won’t the students lose hope when that happens? Then what will they think?
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 