Frequent readers of this blog know that many of my posts are long because I get document all my statements. This is because of my background in industry where it is necessary to prove my arguments to have credibility. This is an update of articles that I have read that I want to mention but do not require a detailed post. Previous commentaries are available here.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described below are related to the 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 article 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.
Vermont Clean Heat Standard
Robert Roper publishes the Behind the Lines Substack where he writes about Vermont politics. His latest article describes the Vermont Clean Heat Standard which is their equivalent to the New York HEAT Act. I recommend reading it highly.
Roper explains that when the “Agency of Natural Resources secretary, Julie Moore, testified to the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee back in January 2023 that the cost of the Clean Heat Standard program would be $2 billion over the first five years, 2026-2030, — an amount that she said would result in an additional 70¢ per gallon for home heating fuels– oh, did she catch hell! Supporters of the program decried her “back of the envelope” calculations and demanded that a proper study be done:
Critics seized on Moore’s honest assessment of the limitations of her own calculations, “I’m confident this is wrong. I could easily be off by a factor of two here,” to imply that her assumptions were not just wildly wrong but wildly high.
So the State did a professional study that was just completed and the draft released. Roper writes:
The Clean Heat Standard Potential Study, Final Draft Results were presented to the Public Utilities Commission’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on July 25, and according to their professional (let’s see if Senator Bray gives them weight) calculations, the Clean Heat Standard program will cost Vermonters $17.3 billion between 2026 and 2050. In the up-front years that Secretary Moore analyzed (2026-2030), the report shows the cost at being around $7.25 billion, or over three and a half times more than Moore’s estimates.
Roper concludes with the point that these costs are just for the home heating sector. No costs yet for the transportation sector.
Green Hydrogen
The placeholder technology to provide the necessary dispatchable emissions-free resource is green hydrogen. However, there are physical constraints that make this an impossible dream. At Stop These Things two articles describing those constraints were described. John Gideon Hartnett describes the ways hydrogen can be generated and concludes “It is pure fiction to believe you can somehow separate water into its natural component gases and then burn them again to produce energy efficiently.” An article by Graham Lloyd describes the demise of an Australian green hydrogen project.
Electric School Buses
This news article gives a good overview of the New York electric school bus program. It makes the point that when New York school districts borrow money to buy buses they must get specific approval from the voters. As a result, there is local veto power over an unfunded state mandate.
Even proponents admit that electric bus costs are higher and that there are range limitations today. One quote by a National Grid spokesperson epitomizes a common belief amongst advocates: “The technology is going to drastically improve by 2035,” she said. “So we don’t encourage you right now to be thinking about the field trips or the state championships, because we need time to build out the infrastructure.” The first problem is that for the technology to improve a lot it might be necessary to repeal some laws of physics. School districts have pointed out that current technology is incompatible with long trips such as field trips. The cavalier wait until “they” build more infrastructure remark ignores the amount of infrastructure needed and the costs.
CO2 Impact on Global Temperatures
Stephen Heins references a study published in Science Direct, concludes that even though most publications attempt to depict a catastrophic future for the planet due to an increase in CO2, there is serious doubt that this is, in fact, the case.
Judith Curry notes that calling warming is dangerous is questionable:
“This whole issue of ‘dangerous’ is the weakest part of the whole argument,” Curry, Professor Emeritus and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said. “What is dangerous? Everybody has a different idea of what’s good. The only harm from warming is rising sea levels. And that’s a slow creep unless something catastrophic happens, say, to the West Antarctic ice sheet. And if something catastrophic happens there, that’s as likely to be associated with under-ice volcanoes as it is to be with global warming.”
Residential Solar
Norman Rogers looks at residential solar from three points of view:
Three points of view are relevant, of the homeowner, of the utility company, and of society. The homeowner is usually pleased because in most cases he thinks he pays less for electricity. This is not because solar energy is cheap, but because the rest of world is subsidizing him. He may not realize the true cost of the solar electricity. The utility doesn’t like residential solar because it makes the utility lose money and lose control of the grid subjected to uncontrollable input from thousands of residential solar installations. From the viewpoint of the larger society, it is a waste of resources that accomplishes nothing for the economy while making the public incorrectly think solar is a bargain.
I do not like residential solar installations because I subsidize them. Rogers explains that residential solar owners do not contribute to the utility’s cost of capital investment. “The utility must have infrastructure sufficient to handle the hottest day in July. The rest of the time the equipment is underutilized.” Solar owners expect that the rest of this will provide them with power on the hottest day when the grid is most stressed but do not pay their fair share for that infrastructure.
Rogers goes on to explain why he thinks that it is time to kill the residential solar industry.
Calling for a Pause to the Climate Act
In the past couple of weeks there have been calls to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the Climate Act. The Business Council of New York issued a statement calling for a pause. The Orlean Times Herald quoted Ken Pokalsky: ““Stakeholders in the state’s climate policy implementation efforts are increasingly concerned about the achievability of key (Climate Act) mandates, and what that means for the future reliability and cost of the state’s energy system.”
Responding to the comptroller’s report, Upstate United Executive Director Justin Wilcox stated, “Following the release of the New York State Comptroller’s most recent audit, we reiterate our calls to pause the implementation of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) until critical issues are addressed. Moreover, the report shared today highlights what we have been saying publicly for years – utility bills are rising dramatically, and New Yorkers continue to be left in the dark when it comes to the true costs associated with the CLCPA.”
Senator Tom O’Mara opined in the Hornell Sun that “Doubts continue to grow over New York’s climate mandates”. He called for a public discussion of the Climate Act:
That discussion must start out with what the Albany Democrats failed to do in the first place six years ago: a true cost-benefit analysis of New York State eliminating our 0.4% of global carbon emissions and what impact that will have on the climate change issues we have been dealing with. While I fully support efforts to lower emissions, it must be done in a responsible manner that will actually make a difference on climate. If that answer is nil, which I believe it will be, we should focus our resources toward resiliency on the effects of climate change.
Senator George Borrello urged state leaders to hit the pause button on this effort in order to devise workable, affordable plan:
Now is a good time to hit the pause button on this collapsing house of cards. A climate agenda developed primarily by bureaucrats and environmental activists was bound to be unworkable in the real world. Rather than continuing to flounder in the face of unachievable goals and burdening ratepayers, businesses, school districts and organizations with the costs of poorly supported mandates, I urge the governor and majorities in the legislature to reassess and authorize a thorough study, led by energy experts and engineers, of how our state can pursue green energy goals in a way that is affordable and achievable.
How Much?
Institute for Energy Research describes Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent statement that the global energy transition will cost $78 trillion through 2050 or $3 trillion a year, of which the United States should spend $1 trillion per year–more than it spends for national defense. The article notes that:
Under President Biden, the climate change spending movement began with the Democrat-passed Inflation Reduction Act that was supposed to cost taxpayers $369 billion in climate spending. But the congressional budget estimators misjudged the number of firms and consumers wanting to reduce their taxes by capturing tax credits and other incentives of the bill with estimates now showing the bill will cost over a trillion dollars—three times the original estimate.
Meredith Angwin explains how the capacity market in the adjoining PJM market capacity market clearing price went from $28.92/MW-day for the 2024-2025 auction to $269.92/MW-day for the 20205-2026 auctions. Angwin does a good job describing the policy framework of electric markets like PJM. I recommend reading the article and the comments to understand what will eventually come to NY.
New York Might Not be the First
I have always thought that either New York or California would be the first states to see a catastrophic blackout due to the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling presented slides from their presentation on the state of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) for the Energy Policy Research Foundation’s Electricity Policy Working Group. They describe issues resulting from premature retirement of resources in favor of renewable energy and demand response programs to reduce load. They conclude:
Obviously, something will have to give. The region will either need to scale back the scheduled retirements of coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants to meet this rising demand or forego the economic growth that would accompany the increase in electricity consumption.
This reality exposes the silliness of arguments that rely heavily on demand response—or, as we like to call it, the opposite of Motel 6: We’ll turn the lights out on you—to keep the grid solvent. Not consuming energy comes at a cost, and states like Michigan are currently bending over backward to get these energy-hungry projects.
Unless MISO states get their energy policies in order, there won’t be any room at the inn.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 