I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed. This article describes more reasons to pause implementation.
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article 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.
Department of Energy Reliability Report
Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling describe the relationship between retirements, demand growth and outages. The U.S. Department of Energy recently released a report entitled Evaluating the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid, which concludes “the United States will experience a 100-fold increase in blackouts if coal and natural gas plants are retired amid rising demand from data centers.”
The report evaluated multiple scenarios for power plant retirements across the country. One scenario allows the retirement of 104,000 MW of power plant capacity that intends to retire and adds 209,000 MW of Tier 1 resources to the grid by 2030. The Tier 1 resources are overwhelmingly wind, solar, or battery storage. It only includes 20,000 MW of new natural gas capacity expected to come online by 2030, along with 31,000 MW of additional 4-hour batteries, 124,000 MW of new solar, and 32,000 MW of incremental wind. If the plants that have announced retirement go offline, then coal capacity will go down 72,000 MW and gas capacity almost 5,000 MW.
At the same time, the analysis expects “electricity demand for data centers to increase by 52,000 MW by 2030, representing about 6.7 percent of the current average peak demand in the United States.” Orr and Rolling note that one of the future load projections is “projecting zero demand increases in New England or New York, resulting from data centers.” They speculated that “it could be due to tight electricity supplies and consistently high prices in these regions.”
They described the expected impacts on reliability. The report found “huge blackouts throughout much of the country” if all the plants that have announced retirements are allowed to go offline. They also noted:
In a somewhat unexpected finding, the DOE report did not find capacity shortfalls in ISO New England or New York in either of the scenarios studied. This is likely due to the fact that load growth is expected to be small in both of these areas because there is no expected data center demand growth in these regions in the DOE study.
In my opinion, the future load projections did not consider the potential load impact of new manufacturing facilities in New York, most notably the Micron chip fabrication plant. That undoubtedly would affect capacity shortfalls.
Orr and Rolling note that this report is an indication that the Department of Energy is stopping the “childish fantasy that America can shut down its reliable coal and natural gas plants and rely on wind, solar, and battery storage to meet surging electricity demand, it’s clear the energy adults are now back in charge.” It is also time for New York to stop its own childish fantasy that existing fossil-fired power plants can be shut down here.
Lessons from Europe – Germany
Brawl Street Journal (BSJ) explains how Germany’s energy policies are affecting neighboring jurisdictions. The article recounts the bureaucratic morass of European Union energy policy. Teresa Ribera, the woman who “helped turn Spain into blackout country” is now the EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy.” In that role, she “plays a powerful part in shaping Germany’s energy choices.”
Germany has figured out that wind and solar don’t work all the time. Instead of pinning their hopes on a magical solution like New York is proposing, they are planning to deploy “21 GW of new gas-fired backup plants.” BSJ explains the problem with this plan:
These plants would operate so rarely, their revenues wouldn’t come close to covering their fixed costs. No sane investor would finance them without some form of guaranteed support. In other words: subsidies.
And that’s where Ribera comes in. As the European Commissioner overseeing competition policy, she effectively gets to say whether Germany can subsidize these gas plants or not. Given her past as a fierce advocate for a 100% renewable grid in Spain, you can probably guess where this is going.
In its quest for clean energy the EU is pulling the plug on fossil fuel infrastructure subsidies.
In the past, the Commission signaled it might tolerate up to 5 GW of new gas plants in Germany to help secure supply. But anything beyond that? Only if the plants are designed to eventually run on hydrogen — an option so expensive and speculative it borders on science fiction.
The result is that German coal plants will have to run longer. I love the summation:
This creates the absurd situation that high-emission coal must run longer because support for lower-emission gas plants is being denied. It’s the kind of logic you’d expect from a socialist economy where outcomes don’t matter, only ideological purity.
This is exactly what is happening here. We already shut down the coal plants but there are a large number of old, inefficient, and relatively high emitting gas units still in operation. The Hochul Administration blocked plans by several plants to repower their old turbines with modern and efficient combined-cycle turbines. The result is that high-emission units must run longer because support for lower-emission gas plants is being denied. The most recent Energy Planning Board meeting presentations hinted at the need to repower units but there is a tortuous path between suggesting that and having some developer commit to building modern new units and getting them on line.
More Lessons from Europe – Spain
Ed Reid explains that the blackout in Spain earlier this year raises many questions about the “stability and resilience of renewable powered grids”. He listed the following questions:
- Can a renewable plus storage grid operate reliably and stably?
- What is the maximum percentage of renewables consistent with reliability?
- Is there a maximum percentage of solar generation on a reliable grid?
- Is there a maximum percentage of wind generation on a reliable grid?
- Does a reliable grid require inertia; and, if so, how much?
- Is the physical location of the inertia sources on the grid important?
- What is the relative inertia contribution of steam turbines vs. gas turbines?
- What would be the inertia contributions of small modular nuclear generators?
- What is the effect of modulated output on inertia contribution?
- What effect does grid-scale storage have on inertia?
- Can inertia be effectively provided electronically?
These are fundamental questions that proponents of the Climate Act have ignored to date. It is time that we make sure their “solution” will work. These must be addressed by the Energy Plan for it to have any credibility.
Media Energy Credibility
It may just be me, but it seems that the claims by clean energy zealots are becoming ever more hysterical and shrill in the face of evidence that the Trump Administration is advancing a practical, adult energy policy. The global energy transition is faltering but the media still is claiming otherwise. Robert Bryce describes “What The Media Still Won’t Tell You About The Energy Transition”.
There is no energy transition. Just don’t expect the media to tell you the truth about it.
Of course, I could provide dozens, or even hundreds, of other examples of climate-focused journalists, academics from elite universities (hello, Princeton!), and policymakers making risible claims about our energy future and how the world will soon be fueled by “clean” sources like wind, solar, and batteries, with some nuclear and maybe a bit of hydropower, thrown in for good measure. As I explained two years ago in “The Anti-Industry Industry,” the “energy transition” narrative is relentlessly promoted by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate-media complex, a multi-billion-dollar-per-year business that includes dozens of NGOs and media outlets that promote anti-hydrocarbon agendas. The World Economic Forum even maintains an “Energy Transition Index.”
He uses the latest edition of the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy to show that the world runs on hydrocarbons. There is no question that wind and solar capacity is growing but “in 2024, just 3% of global primary energy came from wind and solar while 87% came from hydrocarbons. The costs of the failed transition are staggering: “Since 2004, about $5.4 trillion has been spent on solar and wind, and yet they are still only providing 3% of the world’s primary energy.”
One of the annoying arguments from the useful idiots who support the energy transition is that “Big Oil” is spending huge amounts of money to spread misinformation. The Department of Energy report described above makes it clear that shutting down more US coal capacity would cause blackouts. Bryce notes:
As I reported here in 2023, billionaire media baron Michael Bloomberg is giving $1 billion to anti-hydrocarbon NGOs that want to shut down the entire US coal sector. That’s only part of the billionaire’s radical climate agenda. The billionaire’s “beyond carbon” campaign aims to close all US coal plants, “cut gas plant capacity in half while blocking all new gas plants, and increase US clean energy four-fold, reaching 80 percent of total electricity generation,” by 2030.
Who is really spreading misinformation with massive funding?
The Energy Plan process currently underway appears to be acknowledging that the Climate Act transition plan’s schedule and ambition are out of reach and must be re-assessed. That message is in direct contradiction to much of the media narrative. The Hochul Administration is going to face backlash from the media when it bows to reality.
Conclusion
New York’s energy planners must openly address grid reliability, resource adequacy, and practical transition timelines. Until these fundamental concerns are resolved, pausing the Climate Act’s implementation is the only responsible course.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 