Two Views of the Climate Act Energy Plan

Dennis Higgins passes on his commentaries associated with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  I asked his permission to present his status analysis of the transmission system components of the Climate Act net-zero transition that was published in AllOtsego.    I also became aware of a puff piece claiming all is well by Basil Seggos, co-chair of the Climate Act’s Climate Action Council that provides the State’s story.  Comparing the two pieces I don’t see how this will end well.

Dennis taught for just a few years at St Lawrence and Scranton University, but spent most of my career at SUNY Oneonta, teaching Mathematics and Computer Science.  He retired early, several years ago, in order to devote more time to home-schooling his four daughters. (Three will be in college next year and the youngest opted to go to the local public school, so his home schooling is ending this June.) Dennis and his wife run a farm with large vegetable gardens.  They keep horses and raise chickens, goats, and beef.  He has been involved in environmental and energy issues for a decade or more. Although he did work extensively with the ‘Big Greens’ in efforts to stop gas infrastructure, his views on what needs to happen, and his  opinions of Big Green advocacy, have served to separate them.

Climate Act Narrative

Basil Seggos is the politically appointed Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).  The header (title?) for the article posted at the Empire Report was Climate change is here. New York’s comprehensive approach will help ensure the Empire State is prepared. 

The game plan for the Climate Act public narrative is to point to a recent weather event and claim that is proof of climate change.  The difference between weather and climate is never acknowledged and there has never been any estimate of how much Climate Act implementation will affect the alleged weather impacts.  Seggos follows the script:

As made clear by the recent storms that ravaged many Long Island communities, time is running short to comprehensively address the flooding, erosion, and regional economic damage being wrought by increasingly common extreme weather events. We are witnessing the impacts of the climate crisis in real time, both here in New York and across the planet. It’s time for bold action at every level of society.

The next item in the usual script is to tout some new effort and its alleged benefits.  That is the primary purpose of this article:

With the ongoing leadership of Governor Kathy Hochul, New York State is taking sweeping actions to reduce the many sources of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. And in her recent State of the State Address and 2024-25 Executive Budget, Governor Hochul proposed a suite of actions to address climate change’s effects – including $435 million for initiatives to support long-term resiliency projects and protect communities across the state.

The funding will help create a new ‘Resilient & Ready Program’ with resources for low- and moderate-income households experiencing flood damage to assist with necessary repairs in the aftermath of storms, as well as improvements to prevent future damage.

The Governor also proposes a ‘Blue Buffers’ Voluntary Buyout Program to compensate residents in communities most vulnerable to flooding so they can relocate to another area with lesser flood risk. This not only saves taxpayer dollars when inevitable flooding occurs, it spares households the tangible and emotional losses that come with each rising tide and record rainfall.

Supported with $250 million from the $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, Blue Buffers would first educate property owners on the benefits of relocating homes and businesses regularly affected by high water, sea-level rise, and storm surges, and then partner with willing sellers on projects that could be eligible for buyouts. Purchased properties then revert to becoming permanently protected as open space, serving as a buffer against future flooding and benefiting the resiliency of the surrounding community.

Building on past investments, Governor Hochul is bolstering New York’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change with new proposals to repair aging flood control projects and remove hazard dams. The Governor also directed an update of Coastal Erosion Hazard Area maps essential to the protection of beaches, dunes, and bluffs that maintain and enhance flood resilience, and to overhaul building codes design to create higher standards for resistance to wind, snow, and temperature extremes.

As many Long Islanders know, since Superstorm Sandy, New York aggressively stepped-up efforts to boost targeted investments for critical infrastructure, flood-proofing, shoreline restoration, and disaster response. The response included ongoing work with federal and local partners to use every tool at our disposal.

The recent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determination of eligibility for the process to assess, fund, and repair their damaged coastal projects on Fire Island, as requested by the Governor and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), is welcome news. It is one of many projects that DEC will continue to help implement to protect homes, critical infrastructure, and shorelines.

Climate change is here. With the ongoing cooperation and collaboration of Long Islanders, New York’s comprehensive approach to adaptation and resiliency will help ensure the Empire State is prepared for the gathering storm.

As far as I can tell the only way for the State to meet the Climate Act targets is magical game-changing technology. I do not see anything in these projects that makes me think that these programs are game changers.  Another component of the narrative is to never discuss the status of the transition and the component programs.  The question whether the existing programs are having any sort of an effect are not mentioned and no issues associated with recently proposed programs are ever addressed.

Flawed Energy Plan Moves Forward

On the other hand, Dennis Higgins’s article Flawed Energy Plan Moves Forward in AllOtsego takes a critical look at one new effort.  This one is associated with transmission development.

Legislation proposed in Albany would create “RAPID,” a new department in the Office of Renewable Energy Siting to accelerate transmission buildout. Per megawatt-hour—amount of energy moved—those new lines will be very expensive. We must build full nameplate transmission for wind, which has a capacity factor under 25 percent. Solar has a capacity factor of under 14 percent: Although full capacity generation might occur mid-day in summer, much of the rest of the time solar yields little or no energy. Transmission for hundreds of solar and wind resources represents a lot of expensive wire to buy and install and maintain; wire which will need to be run across private land; wire that mostly will move nothing at all.

With each of New York’s staggering missteps in decarbonization efforts, we reflect on the mess we’re in. ORES itself has stalled out in efforts to site intermittent resources. Solar and wind builders cancelled contracts late last year when the state would not simply award them more money. They are rebidding, and the state will make new, more expensive, awards. Upstate communities are pushing back at the state’s efforts to locate solar and wind projects where local laws say “no” to industrial development.

New York gets about 20 percent of its baseload energy from hydroelectric on the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers. Solar and wind currently account for about 7 percent of total state electricity. The fast approaching 70-by-30 goal in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires that 70 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewables. In other words, 50 percent of the state’s capacity must come from solar and wind. The state must multiply all the installed solar and wind built over the last 20 or more years by seven- or eight-fold in the next six years. Hochul has no ruby slippers and no magic wand, so press releases can safely be ignored. The 70-by-30 CLCPA goal is not going to happen.

Still, the state has decided lack of transmission must be the culprit. Let’s take a closer look at some of the problems with the state plan.

In its 20-year “Outlook” report, the grid operator NYISO detailed transmission constraints across Long Island, the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes. These will prevent energy moving from intermittent resources to downstate through this decade, and maybe the next. Can we fix the state plan by building high-voltage lines over rural New Yorkers’ objections to support energy resources that may never exist?

In its 2023 Power Trends, NYISO indicated that most—70 percent, or about 17,000 megawatts—of the state’s fossil-fuel capacity will need to be available after 2030. NYISO has already determined that peakers, which CLCPA says must be shut down, will need to be kept online. The storage projected in state planning, a hundred times the largest lithium-ion battery on earth and costing many billions of dollars, if fully charged, would not power New York City for a day. Alberta Canada, like Texas, recently issued energy alerts to its citizens as it discovered that wind power does not work well when it is very cold. Of course, solar generates almost nothing in the winter. Assuming we could get anyone in Albany to listen, is there some sort of broader lesson in all this?

California—following the same wacky blueprint New York is using—has had 20 years to build out its solar and wind assets, including transmission lines to move generated energy. California gets twice the electricity from every panel that New York could hope to get. California has deserts to site intermittent resources and transmission, while New York must sacrifice its farmland and forest. California exports solar to Nevada at a loss to avoid curtailment, yet still dumped something like three terawatt-hours of energy in 2023, enough to keep the lights on in New York City for a week. California has struggled to reduce reliance on fossil fuels: It has built new gas plants and still needs to import coal-fired electricity to ensure reliability.

The 2015 Mark Jacobson publication—which was in part the model for New York’s energy plan—was soundly debunked by about two dozen climate scientists two years before the CLCPA was enacted. The Jacobson paper is nevertheless a sort of bible to the Big Greens. As noted in MIT’s technology review, that paper “contained modeling errors and implausible assumptions that could distort public policy and spending decisions.” Consequently, the CLCPA and the resulting scoping plan, following similar flawed analysis, have already led to “wildly unrealistic expectations” and “massive misallocation of resources.”

As MIT Press noted,

“Jacobson and his coauthors dramatically miscalculated the amount of hydroelectric power available and seriously underestimated the cost of installing and integrating large-scale underground thermal energy storage systems…They treat U.S. hydropower as an entirely fungible resource. Like the amount [of power] coming from a river in Washington state is available in Georgia, instantaneously… )“

Following this flawed plan, it always looks like there is a transmission problem, since the grid is not one big copper plate.

In fact, no new energy solution or gigantic storage mechanism is needed at all. New York only needs to look around the world at those places that have successfully decarbonized their grids. New York only needs to look in the mirror: the downstate grid is over 90 percent “dirty,” powered by gas and oil. Upstate is over 90 percent emission free, and like those large economies that have cut fossil-fuel use, it is powered by hydro and nuclear.

But don’t tell Albany: New York is intent on pursuing an expensive land-hungry plan which we already know will fail.

Discussion

The Hochul Administration is not addressing the implementation issues associated with their Climate Act net-zero transition.  Instead, we get a barrage of slick announcements claiming that we have to do something and here’s a whole new pile of “something” that we think might work, will appeal to the constituencies that demand action, and likely provide political payola to some politically connected constituency. 

Dennis Higgins provides the other side of the story.  He describes numerous issues with the transition and relates them to the fundamentally flawed Jacobsen/Howarth transition plan.  The fact is that if New York State is serious about de-carbonizing the electric grid nuclear power must be part of the solution.   Dennis advocates for that position but to little avail.  Without a commitment to nuclear this will never work.

Conclusion

Higgins noted that his piece was incomplete: “The mess is so big you can’t say it all — fiscally irresponsible/unsound engineering and, already failed where it’s been tried.”  He noted that he did not have the space to make the point that RAPID will give developers authority to use eminent domain for transmission. He thinks that this is something we all need to push back on with local and state elected reps.

I agree with Dennis that “New York is intent on pursuing an expensive land-hungry plan which we already know will fail.”  He speaks to reality and in the end reality always wins.