A coalition of community-based environmental groups and a few individuals, including me, recently filed comments with the New York Public Service Commission (PSC). Our comments called for reconsideration of the PSC’s plan for reducing power plant emissions principally with large-scale renewables to meet the mandates in the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act). This post describes the submitted comments.
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.
Overview
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 (CAC) 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, PSC orders, and legislation. The comments described follow a recent decision by the PSC to deny petitions seeking to amend contracts with renewable energy projects.
Coalition Calls for Rethinking of Energy Plan
All Otsego recently described the comments submitted by an ad hoc coalition. The submittal was filed to the Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and a Clean Energy Standard, Case Number:15-E-0302. The following listed parties submitted the comments: Glen Families Allied for the Responsible Management of Land (GlenFARMLand), Protect Columbia, Farmersville United, Freedom United, Litchfield United, Flyway Defense, No Big Wind, Centerville’s Concerned Citizens, Concerned Citizens of Rushford, Save Sauquoit Valley Views, StopCricketValley, Protect Orange County, Cattaraugus County Legislator Ginger D. Schroder, Esq, Gary Abraham, Esq., Roger Caiazza, David Sunderwith, and Greg Woodrich.
The All Otsego article provides a good summary of the comments:
TOWN OF COLUMBIA—A coalition of community-based environmental groups around the state filed comments with the New York Public Service Commission last week, calling for a reconsideration of the PSC’s plan for reducing power plant emissions principally with large-scale renewables.
According to the press release, the coalition is comprised of environmentally-minded people participating in the review of large-scale renewable energy projects around the state. The coalition points to physical constraints on the ability of wind and solar to contribute to carbon emission reductions and energy analysts who project that the electric grid will become less reliable as more intermittent renewables are connected. Backup power plants to ensure grid reliability and extensive infrastructure changes are needed to utilize wind and solar energy, coalition members contend, saying these are not warranted given the environmental damage renewables cause, along with potential health and safety hazards associated with the projects, including their battery storage systems.
“Large-scale renewables are being sited on prime agricultural land and are clearing thousands of acres of forests,” according to Ginger Schroder, a Cattaraugus County legislator and member of the coalition.
Schroder pointed to the 100-square-mile project area needed for the proposed Alle-Catt wind farm in western New York.
“Renewables require massive amounts of land, not only for sprawling solar and wind projects, but also for all of the additional transmission, storage, and backup generation needed. These are destroying communities,” Schroder said.
Steve Helmin with GlenFARMLand in the Town of Glen said, “Small rural communities across New York are being targeted as a result of poor planning and over-zealous expectations. The commission needs to step back and review what can work to meet our climate goals.”
Coalition member Nathan Seamon, with Protect Columbia in the Town of Columbia, added, “Since the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, New York State has moved from a 60 percent carbon-free grid in 2019 to one that is only 50 percent carbon-free today. Meanwhile, energy costs—for both natural gas and electricity—continue to rise.
“Upstate communities have been robbed of robust environmental review and fair tax revenue from underperforming industrial solar and wind projects which they are forced to host. How this makes any sense should be baffling to anyone who has paid attention to this over the past several years,” Seamon said.
The group is calling on the PSC to support a jobs and cost analysis of an energy transition that uses a diverse set of technologies, including nuclear and expanded hydropower, compared to one that relies on intermittent, unreliable, and environmentally unsound wind and solar.
“The Public Service Commission needs to put the words ‘leadership’ and ‘community’ back into the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” coalition members insist. “Real climate leadership requires solutions that work in the real world and that do not destroy communities in the process.”
The 22-page document filed with the PSC on November 2 concludes: “…by respecting communities and embracing a balanced energy plan that supports the expansion of all carbon-free resources—including those capable of generating reliable electricity within an energy-dense footprint—the state can meet its climate goals, protect the environment and natural beauty of New York, and meet the needs of a vibrant economy. We urge the Commission to exercise its authority to help New York chart a course that accomplishes the latter.”
Can the State Respond?
Advocates for the Climate Act and the renewable energy developers argue that the energy transition must proceed no matter what because the Climate Act law says so. However the recent PSC Order Denying Petitions Seeking to Amend Contracts with Renewable Energy Projects suggested that there are conditions that must be considered. On page 39 of this order, it states:
We recognize that PSL §66-p(2) adds the pursuit of the 70 by 2030 and Zero Emissions by 2040 Targets to the Commission’s obligations but do not read the provisions of the more recent statute as superseding the Commission’s longstanding mandate to ensure that rates are just and reasonable. There is no indication in the statutory language or history that the legislature intended such a result, which could have the undesirable effect of driving ratepayer costs so high as to put the entire program at risk. To the contrary, the legislature provided the Commission with significant discretion under PSL §66-p(2) regarding how to establish the program to implement the 70 by 2030 and Zero Emissions by 2040 Targets by authorizing the Commission to “address impacts of the program on safe and adequate electric service in the state under reasonably foreseeable conditions,” as well as to “modify the obligations of jurisdictional load serving entities and/or the targets” based on consideration of such factors.
I believe that another provision of New York Public Service Law § 66-p. “Establishment of a renewable energy program” includes safety valve conditions. Section §66-p (4) states “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”.
The PSC has a longstanding mandate to provide safe and adequate electric service. The comments submitted describe many of the problems with the plan to use intermittent wind and solar resources that I believe will inevitably lead to unsafe and inadequate electric service. I think that there are mechanisms that can be used to respond to the comments. However, it is an open question whether the Hochul Administration will risk the wrath of the environmentalist constituency in the progressive left wing of her party and admit that implementation of the Climate Act may not be affordable and has unacceptable risks to reliability.
Discussion
I was asked to join the coalition late in the game so did not have a chance to provide comments to modify anything in the text. Had I had a voice in the development of the text I would have pointed out that the claim that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has not provided a Generic Environmental Impact Statement solar and wind development is incorrect. They have done that evaluation, but it was completed in 2019 and does not consider the much larger number of wind turbines and solar panels that the Scoping Plan projects are necessary for the net-zero transition. The cumulative ecological impact of the current plan due to its extremely low energy density and permanence of extensive infrastructure still needs to be evaluated.
My only other quibble is the implication that fossil fuels should not be considered in the future. Reliance on weather dependent wind and solar resources must address extreme variability in resource availability. If that constraint is handled incorrectly, then electric energy will run out at the worst possible time. The challenge of developing a dispatchable emissions-free resource to handle this possibility is immense. The worst part, in my opinion, is that any long-duration storage option must push the physics envelope so this technology may be impossible. Even if that challenge is overcome, the comments point out that the projected resources are on the order of the existing fossil fuel system resources and the expectation is that they will be used infrequently. For example, if the future system is designed to provide support for a once in twenty-year event, then some portion of this resource will only be used every twenty years. I cannot see any way to overcome the economics needed to pay the huge costs for this entirely new and untested resource such that it would be viable. In order to address the problem, I think that retaining fossil fired resources for this rare but impactful event makes sense. Even if the State came to its senses and developed nuclear resources as proposed in the comments, some share of reliable fossil resources probably makes economic sense. The incremental global warming impact of those rarely fossil-fired resources would be insignificant.
Conclusion
The comments urge the PSC to “exercise its authority to avoid this tragedy by conducting substantive engineering, economic, and logistical analyses that should have occurred long before now.” Obvious problems in other jurisdictions should be addressed now rather than wished away. New York should also learn from places that successfully decarbonized. Throughout the world, “large economies that have achieved very low-carbon grids did so not by relying on underperforming intermittent generation, but instead by using high-capacity-factor firm resources—namely hydropower and nuclear—which are capable of producing abundant, reliable energy.”
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 