I have been writing about the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) for over four years and a constant theme in my work has been concerns about affordability and reliability. For all the analyses and pontification by the State of New York about the net-zero transition, there still is no documentation describing the costs of the control strategies proposed by the Scoping Plan and estimates of how New Yorkers will pay for the transition. The focus of this post is on reliability. I believe that the only way we can be sure that the plans proposed to operate an electric grid that relies primarily on wind and solar is to prove it with a demonstration project. The project should include all the key elements: wind and solar generation, energy storage, a dispatchable emissions-free resource and any other resources needed to provide necessary ancillary services. This post highlights work by Francis Menton that advocates just such a demonstration project.
I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, 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 by increasing costs unacceptably, threatening electric system reliability, and causing significant unintended environmental impacts. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization 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 using zero-emissions electricity. 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 develop the 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. Over nine months into 2023 and reality is starting to set in and cast aspersions on the aspirational plans.
Demonstration Project Proposal
Last February I did a post on Climate Smart Communities and I proposed a challenge to the local governments that pledged to be climate smart. Go for it, but not just this virtue-signaling public relations gesture to get some money. I described Francis Menton’s article explaining that a demonstration project of a mainly renewables-based electrical grid is a common sense prerequisite before there are any more plans or pledges. I said that Climate Smart Communities of New York should prove their bona fides and develop a demonstration project for their community to address the issues he raised:
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Nobody would be happier than me to see a demonstration project built that showed that wind and solar could provide reliable electricity at low cost. Unfortunately, I know too much about the subject to think that that is likely, or even remotely possible. But at least the rest of us need to demand a demonstration project from the promoters of these fantasies.
A few days ago Menton followed up on his February post with What Passes For A “Demonstration Project” Among Our Government Geniuses. I recommend readers check out both articles. I will summarize the key points from the more recent article here.
Menton describes people who don’t support the need for an encompassing fossil-fuel-free renewable grid demonstration project. Government officials and green energy advocates won’t support this because:
(1) they are not bright enough to understand the subject, or (2) their understanding is impaired because they are too blinded by religious fervor to “save the planet,” or (3) they are intentionally deceiving the public to make money or fame or career advancement for themselves. Or it could be all three!
Instead of a single comprehensive demonstration, net-zero proponents promote projects that only “attempt to demonstrate various portions of the full system that would be needed to provide reliable 24/7/365 electricity from predominantly wind and solar generation.” I believe a common problem of all the “green” energy solutions is that they do not work all the time and renewable resource availability is correlated over large distances which makes demonstrations of individual components worthless.
Menton agrees and describes the example of the latest news on energy storage. He explain that on October 13, the Department of Energy announced big new grants and subsidies for a series of what they call “hydrogen hubs.” Here is a report from E&E News Energy Wire. Excerpt:
The Department of Energy on Friday announced seven projects that will receive $7 billion to build landmark hydrogen hubs, delivering a major boost to a nascent U.S. industry. The long-awaited move is a key piece of the Biden administration’s climate agenda. On Friday, the White House said it expects the DOE funding to help cut 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, roughly equivalent to removing 5.5 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road each year. “With this historic investment, the Biden-Harris administration is laying the foundation for a new, American-led industry that will propel the global clean energy transition,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
The New York placeholder for dispatchable emissions-free resources is “green” hydrogen. Menton explains that according to this further piece from Energy Wire on August 21, the Biden Administration has set a goal of having the U.S. produce 10 million metric tons of “green” hydrogen (by electrolysis from water) by 2030. The E&E piece states that the massive funding for “hydrogen hubs” is for “demonstrations.” He points out that this is not the demonstration project needed to prove viability of the net-zero transition because the demonstrations focus on production, storage, transport and consumption but not the integrated resource necessary. He notes:
They are clearly leaving out the critical piece of the puzzle, which is the demonstration of how much of this hydrogen, and capacity to make more of it, will be needed, and at what cost, to get the country — or even some small town — through a full year (or two or five) without need for fossil fuel backup. That completely obvious elephant is not part of this multi-billion dollar “demonstration.”
Another dispatchable emissions-free resource for New York’s net-zero transition could be long duration energy storage. Menton notes that the Department of Energy has a “separate big bucks effort called the “Long Duration Storage Shot” that is throwing bucketsful of cash at various research efforts into batteries.” Unfortunately, he notes:
The battery efforts are even farther removed from any relevant demonstration project. From DOE’s opening webpage describing that initiative (with a date of September 2021):
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade. Achieving the Energy Earthshots will help America tackle the toughest remaining barriers to addressing the climate crisis, and more quickly reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while creating good-paying union jobs and growing the clean energy economy. . . . The Long Duration Storage Shot establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade.
On September 22, 2023 the Administration announced some $325 million for “15 projects across 17 states and one tribal nation” to “accelerate the development” of these “long duration” battery technologies. He writes:
So are these battery technologies, or any one of them, even a potential solution to the problem of making a mostly wind/solar electricity grid work without fossil fuel backup? Again, you will not find any mention at those links, or at other government or advocate sites discussing the issue of how many of these batteries would be necessary and at what cost to actually fully back up a predominantly wind/solar grid and make it into a functional 24/7/365 electricity system.
I cannot over-emphasize how challenging these two technologies are. I fear that some aspects of some of these demonstrations will be deemed a success which will be used to argue that the concerns of organizations responsible for keeping the lights on and skeptical technical experts who have no vested interests in the green energy scam are unwarranted. Theory, small prototype tests, and these demonstration projects all will not prove the feasibility of a fully-functioning wind/solar/hydrogen storage 24/7/365 electricity grid.
Another aspect of this is that until we have a proof-of-concept demonstration that incorporates all the components needed to get to a reliable system, we cannot know how much it will cost. Menton argues that a rough cost estimate “would come to a multiple (not necessarily a huge one, but nonetheless a multiple) of what our current electricity system costs.” He does not bother to make an estimate writing:
The reason I’m not going to do it is that there as an obvious fact that tells you all you need to know, which is that no one in the country is spending their own private money to build out this system. They are all waiting for the government handouts. If this system could be built profitably at a cost competitive with what we have, there would be investors falling all over themselves to build it. When Thomas Edison built his first electricity plant, he did not go to the government for handouts to build it. Because this is all a fantasy kept alive by government handouts, as soon as the handouts go away or even slow down, the whole thing will dry up and fade away.
Conclusion
We do not know if the net-zero transition is technically possible. All we have is assurances from vested interests and slick marketing claims from the state. Richard Feynman said “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” Before New York goes any further, a comprehensive demonstration project for a smaller jurisdiction is the pragmatic approach.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 