In early March I posted an article about the addressed the energy needs of Micron Technology’s planned semiconductor fabrication plant. The takeaway message was that, when fully complete, the facility will consume more energy than the State of Vermont. As part of their environmental impact analysis, it was recently revealed that more electric power will be needed. More as in add the electric load of New Hampshire. Earlier this month I did an article on this. This post references an article by James Hanley at the Empire Center that describes other potential ramifications.
One of the implementation components of the (Climate Act) is a cap-and-invest program that sets a price on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The first round of stakeholder comments were due in early July. This post provides an update on the process and another upcoming advocacy dogma and reliability conundrum that must be addressed. I recently noted that the retirement of peaking power plants is considered non-negotiable by environmental justice advocates but those facilities are needed for electric system reliability. The same advocates are demanding removal of certain components that are in every emissions trading program variation, such as the New York cap-and-invest, that must be included or the claimed affordability and cost-effectiveness benefits will not be produced.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act since it was first proposed. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 350 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 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. The cap and invest initiative is one of those recommendations.
Micron vs NY Energy Policy
James Hanley writes:
Computer chip manufacturer Micron has revealed that by the 2040s its Onondaga County factories are going to be sucking up enough electricity to power New Hampshire and Vermont combined. Put another way, in a single year Micron will use enough energy to power the city of Buffalo for more than six years.
All of it is supposed to come from renewable energy—but to date, despite offering Micron $6.3 billion in taxpayers’ money to move to New York, the state has no plan for providing that much renewable power.
Micron predicts it will use over 16,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually. To get a sense of how much that is, a gigawatt-hour is roughly the amount of energy produced by a single large nuclear reactor in one hour. Micron’s expected demand is almost exactly what the two reactors at the Nine Mile Point nuclear plant produce each year.
But since their factories will allegedly use 100 percent renewable energy, the big question is where it will come from.
Micron will need to draw 1.85 gigawatts of power from the grid continually, 24 hours a day, to power its operations. The New York Power Authority has offered Micron 140 megawatts (0.14 gigawatts) of hydropower. It may not have that much to spare, except at night when statewide electricity demand drops. But even if it can steadily provide Micron that much power, that’s just over 7 percent of the company’s needs.
Micron has also signed a 178-megawatt (0.178 gigawatt) onshore wind power agreement. That will produce less than 467 gigawatt-hours annually, a mere three percent of Micron’s needs.
Add those together, and 90 percent of Micron’s power demand remains to be determined.
Even before Governor Hochul bribed Micron to come to New York, the state faced a 10 percent deficit in its energy supply by 2040, creating a risky future of probable blackouts due to insufficient power production.
The danger is caused by the state’s climate policies. As consumers are mandated to buy electric cars, and households are forced to switch from natural gas to electric heat, electricity demand is expected to as much as double by midcentury. And 70 percent of that future electricity demand must be supplied by renewable energy.
Because hydropower output will not increase significantly, solar and wind power must increase from their current output of approximately 7,600 gigawatt-hours to as much as 185,000 gigawatt-hours by 2050. When Micron is added to the mix, the need will rise to almost 200,000 gigawatt-hours of wind and solar, a 2,600 percent increase from today.
That’s a challenge New York simply has no real plan for achieving, because the state’s renewable and clean energy goals are based more on wishful thinking than hard-headed analysis about the technical challenges of radically restructuring the state’s power system.
Discussion
I agree with all the points made. I have a couple of other observations.
Hanley notes that Micron predicts it will use over 16,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually which is almost exactly what the two reactors at the Nine Mile Point nuclear plant produce each year. Those two reactors have a nameplate rating of 1900 MW.
The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) released its quarterly assessment of reliability of the bulk electric system for the second quarter of 2023. The report noted that:
As an informational scenario, this STAR includes an evaluation of the impact of additional large load interconnection projects primarily in western and central New York. The anticipated increases to the demand forecast due to these large loads in 2025 is 764 MW
Based on the new estimate of electric load needed a new assessment is going to have to incorporate that estimated increase, maybe not in the short-term but necessarily in the longer term.
I previously discussed the increased load projection and got a reaction from Richard Ellenbogen. He explained:
To put the Micron facility’s usage into perspective, in its last full year of operation the 2 Gigawatt Indian Point nuclear plant generated 16.3 Tera-watt hours so the Micron facility will need to be supported by a 2 Gigawatt fossil fuel or nuclear plant on site or 2.1 Gigawatts of generation off site, 5% more. NY State’s policy makes absolutely no sense. To run the Micron facility would require using about 4 GW of the projected 9 GW of offshore wind to support the plant or 16 GW of solar arrays covering 128,000 acres (80 acres per 10 MW) or 200 Square miles. NY State has 7 million acres of farmland so solar arrays to support the Micron facility would use almost 2% of the farmland in the state and would also require an enormous amount of battery storage, the cost of which would greatly exceed the cost of a nuclear plant on site. A combined cycle generating plant on site would be about 75% less than the cost of the nuclear plant. Both the combined cycle gas plant and the nuclear plant on-site offer the option of recovering the waste heat and using it in the plant to make Micron even more energy efficient. With regard to the solar and wind, NY State is having major difficulties getting all of their renewable projects finished because of cost issues and interconnection issues, let alone adding this gigantic lead weight to the Camel’s back.
Conclusion
Ellenbogen emphasizes the point that “When fantasies meet reality, reality always wins.” Reality is that a modern manufacturing facility needs reliable electrical energy. Available renewable technology such as solar, wind, and energy storage is not currently able to provide the needs of the proposed semi-conductor facility. It was not so long ago that co-generation like that proposed by Ellenbogen was embraced by the environmentalists and politicians. The irrational mandate to go to zero eliminates this pragmatic approach that we know will work. Will the state sacrifice the benefits of the Micron facility to energy fantasy?
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 