New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) and includes a safety valve provision. In recently published posts I provided a status update that provides extensive background information, a description of the Independent Intervenor (Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, Francis Menton, and myself) filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled, described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations, and finally described the Independent Intervenor filing. This post describes comments opposing the petition from parties to the cases.
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 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. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries included in this document.
Background
New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act. It provides that 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”. This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.
Party Comments Opposing the Petition
There were ten submittals that opposed the petition:
- Green Energy Developers Advanced Energy United, Alliance for Clean Energy New York, Inc, Coalition for Community Solar Access, New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium, Solar Energy Industries Association
- Green Energy Advocates Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthjustice, Environmental Advocates of New York, Natural Resources Defense Council, New York League of Conservation Voters, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Sierra Club, Urban Green Council, WE ACT for Environmental Justice
- Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc.
- Environmental Defense Fund
- First Unitarian Church Environmental Justice Ministry
- New York State Solar Energy Industries Association
- PEAK Coalition
- Public Utility Law Project of New York, Inc.
- Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School
- Third Act Upstate New York
In response to a query to summarize and critique these comments Perplexity AI responded.
The opposing party comments generally argue that a PSL §66‑p(4) hearing is unnecessary, legally unwarranted, and contrary to the CLCPA’s purposes; however, across the various filings there is a recurring tendency to conflate “opposition to the program” with “request for oversight,” to rely on policy aspirations more than record evidence on reliability and costs, and to treat §66‑p’s hearing provision as effectively formally in effect but no longer necessary.
The Perplexity response addressed each of the comments. The following are the highlights.
The “Green Energy Developers” coalition (Advanced Energy United, ACE NY, CCSA, NY‑BEST, SEIA) positions the petition as a broadside against the CLCPA and the clean‑energy transition rather than as a procedural request to use §66‑p(4). In other words, they do not want anything to get in the way of their revenue stream. They argue that granting a hearing would increase investor uncertainty, slow project development, and jeopardize achievement of the 70‑by‑30 and 100‑by‑40 mandates. Their comments emphasize sunk costs, signed contracts, and an existing “orderly” procurement framework, and they tend to characterize reliability and bill‑impact concerns as either already addressed in prior Commission orders or overstated by petitioners.
New York State Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSSEIA) has similar interests as the Green Energy Developers coalition, but their comments focused on small developers and customer-sited projects. They made the same arguments that the act of holding a hearing is tantamount to rolling back the Climate Act and their desire for investor certainty and program continuity are more important than reliability and cost impacts.
The “Green Energy Advocates” group (Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthjustice, NRDC, NYLCV, Sierra Club, etc.) generally frames the petition as an attempt to “roll back” CLCPA mandates and to “suspend” the renewable program, emphasizing the urgency of climate action, public‑health co‑benefits, and environmental‑justice goals. They argue that any delay or reconsideration via a §66‑p(4) hearing would violate the CLCPA’s spirit, exacerbate climate risk, and perpetuate fossil‑fuel pollution in disadvantaged communities. The comments rely heavily on broad climate‑science consensus and statewide emissions‑reduction imperatives rather than on the specific evidentiary record on reliability, costs, or implementation feasibility.
Consolidated Edison and Orange & Rockland’s joint comments oppose the petition for a hearing but do so in a more procedural and incremental tone. They emphasize that reliability is being managed through existing NYISO and DPS processes, that the Commission has previously reviewed and adjusted the Clean Energy Standard and related programs, and that another formal §66‑p(4) hearing could be duplicative or disruptive. Note as rate‑regulated entities with pass‑through cost recovery, these utilities have a structural incentive to avoid procedural steps that might slow capital deployment or introduce new prudence reviews, a factor not fully acknowledged in their arguments.
Other opposing commenters include Environmental Defense Fund, the First Unitarian Church Environmental Justice Ministry, Public Utility Law Project (PULP), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Third Act Upstate New York, and the PEAK Coalition. EDF and the Sabin Center focus on the legal structure, arguing that §66‑p(4) gives the Commission discretion (“may”) and that existing orders, impact analyses, and ongoing CLCPA implementation proceedings already satisfy any implied need for review. They argue that the petitioners have not met the burden to show that safe and adequate service or just‑and‑reasonable rates are at risk. PULP and EJ‑oriented commenters stress that low‑income and disadvantaged communities stand to benefit from the CLCPA and that a hearing framed around costs and reliability could be used to justify delaying those benefits. This is frustrating because it does not recognize their benefits are societal but the cost and reliability impacts personally affect low-income and disadvantaged community members. The PEAK Coalition emphasizes the point that delays are unacceptable because local public health impacts improvements and peaker plant retirements would be delayed. All these commenters do not recognize the risk that reliability events or bill spikes could politically endanger the very Environmental Justice‑oriented clean‑energy policies they want to protect.
Perplexity Summary
• Most opposing parties reframe the petition as an attack on the CLCPA itself, not as an effort to use a statutory safeguard that the Legislature expressly included. This framing lets them avoid a granular debate over NYISO reliability indicators, actual bill trajectories, and implementation challenges.
• There is heavy reliance on prior Commission orders and broad policy goals instead of a acknowledging the observed evidence of impacts on system reliability, project attrition, cost escalation, and deliverability constraints that have emerged since 2019.
• Several commenters implicitly treat §66‑p(4) as a purely discretionary “safety valve” never actually meant to be opened, which risks reducing a substantive statute to symbolic surplusage.
• Investor confidence, climate urgency, and EJ goals are repeatedly invoked as reasons not to hold a hearing but rarely balanced against the statutory obligation to ensure safe and adequate service and just and reasonable rates. A more balanced approach would treat a narrowly focused, evidence‑driven hearing as a way to protect those goals from backlash driven by reliability events or bill shocks.
Public Comments
In addition to the comments filed by parties to the cases, the PSC accepted public comments. In a previous post I described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments opposing the petition. From the very first comments submitted about the petition in early March until May 1, 2026, there were 3,789 public comments submitted in Case 15-E-0302 and 2,516 comments submitted in Case 22-M-0149. Case 15-E-0302 covers a wide range of topics and there were some public comments submitted in this time frame addressing other topics. Nonetheless there are thousands of comments that were essentially identical. As described in the previous article, the arguments made do not warrant rejecting the petition or make a convincing argument that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program obligations may not need to be temporarily suspended or modified to ensure safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.
Steve Helmin pointed out that there is a pattern to these nearly identical comments that suggests the use of automation in submitting to the DMM site. This pattern and what has been observed in other proceedings suggests that advocacy organizations are collecting comments on their own servers and then pushing them to the PSC, as opposed to requiring commenters to navigate the DMM interface to submit comments. This enables a “Click Button” knee jerk reaction that insulates commenters from any potential independent review of the case materials and enables an unrivaled single point of context for commenters as they never even see the DMM website. This automation reinforces my opinion that State Agencies should not be swayed by the number of comments but judge each different opinion on its merits. The stakeholder process in the Scoping Plan and the Energy Plan did not respond to comments in this manner. This must change.
Discussion
Consider this quote from the PEAK Coalition comment:
The Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy (“Petitioner”)—solely representing business interests—has requested a hearing to permanently suspend or modify the Renewable Energy Program pursuant to PSL § 66-p(4), alleging that the program and its associated CLCPA targets “might negatively impact electric reliability” (emphasis added) and may subsequently impede the Commission’s duty of ensuring safe and adequate electric service.
This illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding in common with many other opposition comments. The petition is only requesting a hearing to determine if the Renewable Energy 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”. If the hearing finds that there are problems, then the PSC “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations” of the Renewable Energy Program. In my opinion, the most likely outcome, given all the renewable energy deployment problems observed since 2019, is some modification to the schedule for renewable energy deployment.
Opponents who demand that the request for the hearing consistent with PSL 66-P be denied suggests that they are not confident that renewable energy programs can provide safe and adequate electricity. Given that there has never been a feasibility analysis confirming that the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act are possible and the fact that no jurisdiction has successfully implemented an electric system totally consistent with the Climate Act should be red flags. Don’t forget that the Climate Act was passed during the 2019 budget process without the opportunity for the public to weigh in. It is long past time that New Yorkers are given a complete accounting of what will be needed, what it will cost and how it will risk safe and adequate energy supply. I naively hope that if there is a hearing that those issues will be addressed for the renewable energy system.
Conclusion
Opponents of the petition to hold a hearing to consider whether the Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable energy do not have strong arguments against holding a hearing. I also believe that they oppose the hearing so much because they know that their support of the Program cannot be defended. Finally, a hearing would expose the impacts of the Climate Act to many New Yorkers who are unaware of it. I think those are three good reasons to hold the hearing.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 