Author: rogercaiazza

I am a meteorologist (BS and MS degrees), was certified as a consulting meteorologist and have worked in the air quality industry for over 40 years. I author two blogs. Environmental staff in any industry have to be pragmatic balancing risks and benefits and (https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog/) reflects that outlook. The second blog addresses the New York State Reforming the Energy Vision initiative (https://reformingtheenergyvisioninconvenienttruths.wordpress.com). Any of my comments on the web or posts on my blogs are my opinion only. In no way do they reflect the position of any of my past employers or any company I was associated with.

Guest Post – NYS Energy Storage

Richard Ellenbogen frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with New York’s Climate Act.  I asked his permission to present his analysis of the New York State Energy Storage Roadmap Report as a blog post here.

I believe that he truly cares about the environment and the environmental performance record of his business shows that he is walking the walk.   Ellenbogen is the President of Allied Converters  that manufactures food packaging.  His facility is about 55,000 square feet and does a lot of manufacturing with heat to seal the bags, all electrically driven.  The facility has solar panels and uses co-generation.  He explains:

In 2008, the average energy cost per square foot for a commercial facility in  Westchester was $1.80.  We were at 16% of that 12 years later and even with the increases, we are at 62% of that 14 years later.  That has been done while having a carbon footprint 30% – 40% lower than the utility system.  The $1.80 per foot  also included commercial office space and our operation is far more energy intensive than an office.  We use energy extremely efficiently and as a result, our bills are much lower than everyone else. 

NY State Energy Storage Report

On December 28, 2022 the New York Department of Public Service and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority released New York’s 6 GW Energy Storage Roadmap: Policy Options for Continued Growth in Energy Storage (Roadmap Report).  I did a couple of posts (here and here) on the Roadmap Report that concentrated on the costs.  Ellenbogen’s analysis fills in another part of the story.  His lightly edited description of the feasibility follows.

This is another document of such questionable quality that had I presented it to my superiors when I worked for Bell Labs and asked them to implement a multi-billion dollar project based upon it, they first would have rolled on the floor laughing thinking it was a joke, and then when they realized that I was serious,  they would have promptly terminated me.   No sane entity would embark on a project based upon such questionable parameters as are shown in this document.  This is not science or engineering.  This is politics disguised under a veneer of technical terms designed to delude the public that won’t take the time to read its 104 pages.  The fact that this policy is being pursued based upon documents such as this is borderline criminal  (And maybe not so borderline.  Just plain criminal).

Note that the page numbers I list are the pages of the pdf and not the document page numbers to enable easy searching of the document using Acrobat.

We can start with the fantasy on page 31 in Figure 5 (Also duplicated in the analysis in Appendix A) that immediately makes the entire document questionable.  It has all of the storage being charged by renewable energy by 2040 which will be impossible based upon NY State’s rate of renewable installation and the rate at which loads are being mandated to be added to the system.  (See below.  There is no fossil fuel generation even listed and it doesn’t list the composition of the “Imports”.  If they are like California’s imports, they will be coal generation.  Very environmentally friendly.)  Germany has been doing this for 32 years and has reached a 34% carbon free system with very few EV’s on the road.  While NY State is starting at 41% carbon free because of Niagara Falls and its upstate nuclear plants, the new renewables are not even going to offset the added load that has been mandated by state policy starting in 2024 and going into overdrive in 2030 and 2035 for EV’s and Heat Pumps, let alone replace all of the fossil fuel generation.  2040 is only 17 years away.  By 2050, the upstate nuclear plants will be 75 years old and nearing the end of their useful lifespan.  What will replace them?

Also, why are they using shoulder months in the analysis?  What will happen in July, August, January, and February when the electric load peaks?  That is what has to be analyzed as that is the worst-case scenario and is when the system will be most likely to fail.  The most likely reason for that is that the numbers and graphs looked so bad for those months, even in fantasy land, that they couldn’t be displayed for what they would show.

If you look at the following graph (link), the right-hand column documents the new renewables that will be available to offset the loads that they will be adding and it is clearly insufficient even if only 30% of the vehicle fleet is electrified and 10% of the buildings. 

Instead of Figure 5, the reality will be closer to Figure 5d below, produced by Cornell University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory,  which show the batteries being charged from fossil fuels and 15% to 20% of that energy being lost because of charge/discharge losses, which is actually going to increase NY State’s carbon footprint.  The storage losses are acknowledged in the Roadmap Reprt document on page 99 where it says that the battery owner will have to buy 1.15 MWh in order to sell 1.0 MWH, implying a 15% energy loss.   

If that isn’t bad enough, on page 89 the Energy Roadmpa says, 

Customer load shifting can provide many of the same flexibility attributes as battery storage, by enabling reductions in peak demand, and shifting demand to times of high renewable output. As a result, there are direct impacts of lower or higher amounts of end use flexibility on the economics of battery storage. In  the base case, 12.5% of the light duty EV charging load is assumed to be flexible by 2030, increasing to 25% by 2050. In addition, 50% of the hydrogen required economy-wide is assumed to be generated via electrolysis within New York, and this electrolysis load is assumed to be highly flexible as well to make the most of excess renewable energy when it exists.

As clearly documented, WHAT EXCESS?  What are these people looking at?  THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT BASED UPON REALITY!!!

Further, Hydrogen electrolysis loses 20% of the energy when Hydrogen is generated from the water and then about 60% of what is remaining is lost during combustion for a total energy loss approaching 70%. That’s not a great tradeoff when you don’t have enough energy to  start with.

For some reason the filed report on the NYS DPS DMM site for Case 18-E-0130 – In the Matter of Energy Storage Deployment Program includes a cover letter.  That letter lists the storage capacity as a power value and not as an energy value.  The title of the cover letter is “Re: Case 18-E-0130 – In the Matter of Energy Storage Deployment Program” and then at the top of the next page the cover page of the document says New York’s 6 GW Energy Storage Roadmap:  Policy Options for Continued Growth in Energy Storage  however, Gigawatts (GW) are Power, not Energy.  While some may think that this is nitpicking, it isn’t.  Engineering students can fail tests over incorrect units.  All of the energy storage targets are listed as power, not energy.  The system runs on energy and with an intermittent renewable driven system, the storage duration is critical.  Nowhere will anyone be able to determine how long the storage will support the system except  on page 15 and those figures should be included with the question, “Are you kidding me?” next to it.  The explanation is below.

In fact, if anyone searches the entire pdf for “WH” to find all of the references to energy that are contained in it (Gigawatt Hours – GWh, Megawatt Hours – MWh, and Kilowatt Hours – KWh) the vast majority are devoted to information about rebates and costs and not what will be available to run the system.  Most of what was found were “What”, “Why”, “Which”, but very little about system capacity except in a couple of places.  On page 15 the Energy Roadmap discusses the cancellation of 20% of the battery projects:

While the program initially procured 580 MW and 1,654 MWh of energy storage, cancellations have brought these numbers down to 480 MW and 1,314 MWh.

Keep in mind that the pre-cancellation figure of  1654 MWh of battery storage with a 580 MW Power Capacity is less than THREE hours of storage for the bargain price of $193 million in state incentives.  During a heat wave, peaker plants can run for days.  On page 25 of the pdf, it states that many of the peakers only run 5% to 10% of the year,  which equates to 440 – 880 hours annually, however much of that time is contiguous during periods of high load and is far longer than 3 hours so how can a 3 Hour battery keep the system running if replacing a peaker plant?

On page 27, the Energy Roadmap discusses the possibility of using EV’s to offset a shortage of storage.   You can tell that whoever wrote this lives in Albany and not downstate where  a large number of people live in apartments.  Vehicles parked on streets are not going to be able to discharge to support the system in times of need.  Are they planning on putting a bidirectional charger on every parking spot in every downstate garage and on every parking spot on the street?    What will that cost and who will install it?   In New Rochelle, it took several months to install about ten internet kiosks with multiple street cuts to house data cables.  How long will it take to install thousands of chargers supported by far larger megawatt power cables to enable vehicle charging?  Also, having driven a Tesla for nearly six years now, I can safely say that trying to run a domicile for any extended period with the car’s battery and still having energy remaining to commute are mutually exclusive.  Again, times of peak load can run for days during the summer.  Winter peak load durationss will be similar in NY State during future winters when large numbers of heat pumps are installed.

On page 40 of the pdf, under 4.3 “Barriers To Energy Storage”, it says:  

As highlighted in other sections of this Roadmap, one of the most critical barriers to energy storage projects relates to the uncertain and insufficient nature of the revenue available through existing markets and tariffs, particularly capacity revenue. Retail or distribution-level projects, participating in certain regions through VDER, provide investors with a more certain revenue stream; however, these projects are still difficult to underwrite given the variable nature of both capacity and energy prices. 

On page 9, it says:  

Over the past year, supply chain constraints, material price increases, and increased competition for battery cells have driven up the cost of energy storage technologies, particularly lithium-ion batteries. Many of the drivers of cost increases are expected to persist until at least 2025. These cost increases may impact the cost of any new programs designed to procure storage to be installed by 2030.  

How they can predict the cost of commodities out past five years is beyond me, but it is safe to say that with everyone trying to install storage and at least nine states mandating electric vehicles, the demand is only going to make the price of storage go up and the materials will be scarce.  That doesn’t require a Crystal Ball, only a small degree of common sense.

The document states that the residential incentive is $ 250/KWh as seen on page 17, however if you look on page 37 it says:

Since July 2021, prices for lithium carbonate, a key ingredient of lithium-ion batteries, have increased 500%. Among projects awarded NYSERDA incentives, average total installed costs for non-residential, retail projects averaged $567/kWh for installations occurring in 2022 and 2023, up from $464/kWh for installations in 2020 and 2021, an over 20% increase in total costs.  This is consistent with recent industry reports that indicate near-term increases in storage costs.

That cost increase helps to explain the battery project cancellations.

Then on page 104, it says “Stakeholders across all segments that were surveyed or engaged with brought up increases in lithium-ion battery pricing over the course of 2021 and 2022 as a fundamental challenge to deploying storage and the development of the storage market going forward.”

On page 94 it does imply that 1000 hours of storage will be needed.   “With seasonal storage (1000+ hours), the availability of a specific resource during critical weeks – or in between multiple critical weeks in a season matters less; instead, the cheapest form of energy”

Coincidentally, that is almost the same time frame (40 days) that I showed on the graph above that was created about 5 weeks ago.  However, at the current average national cost of utility grade storage of $283 per KWh, 4 GW of storage that will last for 960 hours will cost over $1 TRILLION.  The 6 GW will cost over $1.5 TRILLION.  But with the escalating costs of Lithium, that figure could easily reach $ 3 TRILLION.  That figure is fourteen times the entire NY State budget for 2023.  The Inflation Reduction Act had $387 billion allocated for renewable energy projects for the entire United States.  That will just be the cost of the storage, independent of the cost of the renewable generation needed to charge it.

Conclusion

So  basically what they are saying is, “We aren’t sure how the economics of this is going to work but we are going to mandate its installation in lieu of fossil fuel plants, with an unknown price structure, increased energy losses when there already isn’t enough energy to support the system, insufficient capacity to replace the peaker plants that we are trying to close, rapidly escalating costs for the battery storage that already is not affordable and are only going to get more expensive in the future, and cross our fingers that this won’t make it impossible to complete the installation of 6 GW of energy storage.  However, in the interim, we will have shuttered the energy plants that we have for ones that we can’t afford to install.”

They are pushing forward with it anyway when it is doomed to fail.  This  goes way beyond money.   The inevitable failure is going to cost lives and they don’t even seem to care.  I was able to produce this analysis in hours.  They’ve had years to ponder these issues.  This is insanity and again, it is borderline criminal.

If they gave a damn, they would say, “Wait a minute.  This isn’t going to work.  We’re going to kill a bunch of people.  Maybe we should rethink this.”  Unfortunately, they aren’t doing that.   

Caiazza Closing Thoughts

New York State’s GHG emissions are less than one half a percent of global emissions.  Global GHG emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half a percent per year since 1990.  That does not mean that we should not do something but it surely calls into question why these limitations of the proposed plans are being ignored.  There is time to make sure the net-zero transition does not do more harm than good. I fully agree with Ellenbogen’s frustration that fundamental feasibility questions are not being addressed and his conclusion that this is insanity.

Net Zero or Good Enough?

Originally published at Climate Etc.

Russel Schussler and Roger Caiazza

Electric generation plans need to be well crafted and carefully considered. Because of concerns around  climate change many politicians have become galvanized to hastily enact legislation to target  net-zero anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  The authors argue that the more seriously you take climate change, the more important it becomes that you have a good plan for electric generation in the near and midterm planning arena.  Taking foolish actions in the near to mid-range time periods will not help with CO2 reductions or climate change and may be far worse than doing nothing.  Maybe we all could compromise and find a less grand something that has more likely benefits with far fewer threats to reliability, affordability, and overall environmental impacts.

The authors have both been writing about the proposed net-zero transition by 2050 for years.  Schussler (aka the Planning Engineer) has been writing about the challenges of “green energy” since 2014 at the Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog.  Caiazza has focused on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog since 2017.  Since the original proposal for New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) in 2019, he has written over 280 articles about that plan to transition to net zero by 2050.

Traditional Generation Planning

Utilities used to look at 30-year time periods in developing their generation expansion plans.  This was not because they believed anyone could forecast what might happen 30 years into the future, but rather because of the recognition of the futility of such efforts. Decisions were made about the next ten years or so, but the later years tested the flexibility of the plans.  Because power plants have a long life, many different scenarios were studied in the additional 20 years or so after the plant addition.  Commercial technologies were supported by more dependable cost and performance estimates than what could be obtained for newer technologies, but it was recognized that all parameters could change across any technologies.  Scenarios would vary fuel prices and availability, potential environmental requirements, as well as other varying system requirements. Back then, no one had the hubris to say this is what the system would, or should look like 20 or 30 years from now.  Planners sought to make decisions that would be flexible enough to work well across a variety of future potential scenarios. The hope was for this plan to work with and adapt to the emerging future. 

Some jurisdictions have made commitments to completely transform their electric generating systems in less than 30 years.  Rather than intending to be flexible in the mid to long term, these plans are often overly prescriptive. This post addresses the potential consequences and suggests a less risky approach.

New York Climate Act

New York’s Climate Act is a good example of prescriptive net-zero legislation.  Implementation to meet the following inflexible targets has begun:

  • Reduce GHG emissions to 60 percent of 1990 emissions levels by 2030;
  • Zero GHG emissions from electricity production by 2040; and
  • Reduce GHG emissions to less than 15 percent of 1990 emissions levels by 2050, with offsets to reduce net emissions to zero.

New York passed the Climate Act in 2019 effective 1/1/2020.  The legislation established a Climate Action Council to prepare 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 and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantified the impact of the electrification strategies.  The Final Scoping Plan was completed at the end of 2022.  In 2023 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Legislature are supposed to promulgate the necessary regulations and legislation to fulfill the recommendations in the Scoping Plan. 

There are deep flaws in the New York implementation process.  The Scoping Plan is just an outline list of control strategies that NYSERDA claims will reduce emissions as needed and provide reliable electricity.  NYSERDA, New York State Independent System Operator (NYISO), and New York State Reliability Council (NYSRC) have not done a consolidated feasibility analysis that addresses the fundamental question: will it work?  There are significant differences between the Final Scoping Plan and NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook.  The following figure from the Resource Outlook summarizes the key findings that are applicable to any net-zero by 2050 initiative.  Our biggest concern is that both resource projections rely on untested technology.  The Resource Outlook notes:

By 2040, all existing fossil generators are assumed to be retired to achieve the Climate Act target for a zero-emission grid and are replaced by Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources (DEFRs). These resources represent a proxy technology that will meet the flexibility and emissions-free energy needs of the future system but are not yet mature technologies that are commercially available (some examples include hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and small modular nuclear reactors).

What are the characteristics of Good Plans versus Bad plans

In this section we consider the characteristic and provide commentary in italics relative to the New York Scoping Plan.

Bad plans assume that critical elements of the future are all known.  Bad plans are narrowly constructed to a specified future. They risk not allowing the flexibility to adapt when things turn out differently than was planned.  Good plans look at their impacts or current decisions across a wide variety of potential futures.  Good plans provide flexibility and nimbleness for when future conditions change. 

The NY Climate Act electrifies as much as possible to decarbonize and presumes all the elements necessary to accomplish the transition are known.  The critical element of future expected load must be well known to determine generation resource requirements.  Future net-zero load is a function of increased electricity for heating, cooking, water, and electric vehicles at the same time there is increased emphasis on energy efficiency and conservation.  Projections in this instance are anything but well known.

Good plans understand that the power supply system and power grid are very complicated systems requiring careful design, construction, and operation.  Great consideration is given to the architecture of the system and how it will work.  A poor plan leaves the power system and grid as an unplanned afterthought.  It specifies some goals and ingredients but ignores the greater system.

The basis of the Climate Act electric grid transition plan is the wind, water, and solar (WWS) approach championed by Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson.  The approach had outsized influence on the members of the Climate Action Council but there are issues with this work.  Advocates of this particular transition approach have overstated its findings, it does not put appropriate emphasis on the high load and low renewable resource problem, and understates the challenges of a quick transition to a zero-emissions electrical grid.

Bad plans are one-size fits all.  They employ a presumption of what is best and fail to take in the particular specific considerations that can vary across time and place.  Good plans recognize that what works in one area, may be less appropriate in another. Good plans seek to capitalize on differing advantages wherever and whenever they may occur.

The New York electrical grid is pretty much two different grids.  There is a traditional grid Upstate but there are unique problems in New York City.  Experience has shown that sufficient in-city generation must be available to account for the loss of a transmission line into the New York City load pocket or blackouts can occur.  The Scoping Plan does not adequately address these differences in their on-size fits all plan.

Good generation plans recognize how people prefer to use electricity.  If behavior needs to be changed, they are sensitive to the capabilities and limits of incentives.  Depending on the generation mix the value of electricity will likely vary considerably across hours, days, months, and seasons.  Good plans will seek to provide value.  Bad plans tend not to differentiate between when and how energy might be supplied.  Plans crafted based on just average use and average costs will likely not have good results.  Traditionally generation planning recognized baseload, intermediate and peaking needs. While many seem to forget these distinctions when comparing alternatives, their importance has not diminished. 

The New York plan presumes that net-zero transition to net-zero required changes to personal energy choice preferences will be universally accepted.  The behavioral changes required by the Scoping Plan are massive (e.g., type of vehicles, heating your home, and cooking your food). Furthermore, there may be limits on the timing of electric usage.  Modeling assumptions on the effects of these changes to personal habits are important for planning but also very uncertain if people do not make the changes expected.   It is highly unlikely that load shifting and energy conservation will prevent a markedly higher electric load peak in winter mornings.  The Scoping Plan compounds these issues because it does not adequately address the baseload, intermediate and peaking requirements naively arguing that “smart” planning will mitigate issues associated with them.

Good plans look at major environmental impacts across the production and lifetime of a resource.  Bad plans tend to look only at marginal impacts when the facilities are operating.  Tremendous resources and costs are incurred just getting a generating resource in place. Generally, the longer that resource can operate, the better its average environmental impact might be.  Good plans should consider the realistic lifetime of potential resource.  Many “green” resources projected to last 30 years fall far shy of 20 years.  Conventional resources typically are capable of lasting many years beyond the thirty-year study life. 

The Climate Act takes this concern to a higher level.  Many life-cycle environmental impacts of fossil generating resources are considered.  None of the life-cycle environmental impacts of wind, solar, and  energy storage are considered.  The Integration Analysis assumes that all wind, solar, and energy storage resources keep operating from the present until 2050.  Furthermore, the Climate Action Council has tried to appease climate justice advocates who fervently believe that the risks of fossil-fired generating resources are so great that existing resources must be shut down as soon as possible.  Their concern is at odds with consideration of environmental impacts across the production and lifetime of all resources.

Good plans rely on proven technology that can fulfill the specific requirements.  For example, providing power for periods of peak load is required for reliable power when it is needed most.  Peak loads are typically associated with the hottest and coldest periods of the year when electricity is used for cooling and heating.  Typically, those periods occur less than 5% of the time so a technology should be as low cost as possible to keep the price of electricity down during peak loads.  A good plan would make the sensible decision to keep an old fossil fired plant around to help the system meet peak loads.  Fossil-fired steam boiler electric generating units are a proven technology that can be used to meet this need.

For many years New York City peak load requirements were met with simple-cycle gas turbines installed in the early 1970’s.  However, those units were old, inefficient, and had unacceptably high emission rates so, after a multi-year process of reliability planning the State has instituted a regulation to phase them out.  After the regulation was promulgated the Environmental Justice (EJ) community glommed on to the issue of peaking power plants: “Fossil peaker plants in New York City are perhaps the most egregious energy-related example of what environmental injustice means today”.  Even though the poorly controlled peaking turbines are being phased out, the issue remains a point of contention.  Now the EJ organizations are demanding that all fossil-fired power plants in New York City be shut down including the remaining steam boilers even though they meet all emission limits and do not contribute to the alleged health benefits in disadvantaged communities near the facilities.  The proposed solution to use renewable energy and energy storage replaces proven technology with one that has not been proven on the scale necessary to keep the lights on in New York City.

Bad plans presume that a new technology can fulfill specific needs.  A necessary component of any future system is dependable emergency capacity.  For example, a system might need emergency capacity once every five years due to extreme weather either causing very high loads, an unexpected long-term outage of existing resources, or because of an extended drought of wind and solar resources.  A bad plan proposes a new technology for this emergency requirement. In order to provide capacity in a zero-emissions electric system a new category of generating resources called Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR) has been suggested to keep the lights on during periods of extended low wind and solar resource availability.   In Wyoming, PacifiCorp’s 2021 integrated resource plan (IRP) includes a resource labelled as “non-emitting peaker plants” that is unexplained but appears to be the same as DEFR. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)  2021-2040 System Resource Outlook states:

DEFRs that provide sustained on-demand power and system stability will be essential to meeting policy objectives while maintaining a reliable electric grid. While essential to the grid of the future, such DEFR technologies are not commercially viable today. DEFRs will require committed public and private investment in research and development efforts to identify the most efficient and cost-effective technologies with a view towards the development and eventual adoption of commercially viable resources. The development and construction lead times necessary for these technologies may extend beyond policy target dates.

 In both instances no specific technology has been specified.  The New York Scoping Plan DEFR placeholder is producing and storing “green” hydrogen for use when needed.   

This is the fatal flaw of the New York Scoping Plan.  The NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook states that “To achieve an emission-free grid, Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources (DEFRs) must be developed and deployed”.  This magical resource does not exist!  The Scoping Plan uses “Green” hydrogen as a placeholder for the technology and predicts that it will be used on average around 3% of the time.   The fantasy of the Scoping Plan is that developing the infrastructure to produce hydrogen, store it, and then produce electricity in hydrogen fuel cells can provide affordable and reliable energy to keep the lights on.  The costs will be astronomical for a resource used so little presuming that the technological issues can be overcome.

What are the ingredients of a compromise plan?

As mentioned above good plansrecognize how people prefer to use electricity.  Electricity usage across a region rarely drops to zero, but at times demand peaks for limited periods of time.  It may make sense to build high fixed cost, low variable cost resources (Nuclear, Coal and Combined Cycle) to meet the baseload needs of system.  If the plant can run all the time with low variable cost the higher investment cost can be justified.  It does not make sense to put in such facilities to serve load levels that only occur rarely. For this component of the load it makes more sense to put in low cost infrastructure that might have higher marginal costs.  Between these two conditions there are loads levels that may be present for a few hours a day.  To meet these loads, it is usually better to put in plants with moderate costs and moderate marginal costs.  This is the thinking behind traditional utility planning which looked at peaking, intermediate and baseload needs in terms of generation fitted for those specific characteristics. There is one other type of generation, intermittent.  Intermittent typically was low-cost generation that although it could not be counted on, it could be used to back off generation using higher priced fuels.  In looking at the ingredients below it will helpful to consider where they may be most appropriate. 

Wind, Solar and Batteries can work to displace fossil fuel generation.  With backup from batteries the energy provided can be made to have more value.  Unexpected and innovative changes in the capabilities of batteries could be a game changer, but it is too soon to count on timing in this arena.  The narrative that these “zero-emissions” resources have zero downsides is false.  The construction of wind and solar takes a lot of resources; their construction has a lot of environmental consequences; and fabrication uses a lot of energy that will be difficult to displace away from fossil fuels (making steel for example). 

Nuclear power works well to meet baseload needs.  It also works supports the transmission system providing needed electrical characteristics commonly called Essential Reliability Services.   Nuclear plants can be planned and operated to provide some ramping and load following capabilities.  Nuclear offers the best opportunity to reduce dependence upon fossil fuels for electric generation because it is the only proven technology with no emissions that can be scaled up in the immediate future.

Hydro expansion is very unlikely.  Environmental considerations make it unlikely that additional locations for hydro generation could be developed.  Similarly, there are limited opportunities for additional pumped storage, but there may be some areas where such might be pursued.  Finally, geothermal plants when feasible are a good resource, but opportunities for exploiting this resource are limited.

Natural Gas combustion turbines and combined cycle are best suited to fill in the gaps when reliable and functional generation additions are needed. As more environmentally desirable units become capable of doing the job, eventually new construction should be halted and  existing units phased out as they age.  Keep in mind the US through fracking reduced CO2 more effectively than Germany did with their massive expenditures on “clean” resources.

Existing Resources such as coal- and oil-fired boilers should not be ignored for future plans.  It is extremely unlikely that new plants burning those fuels will be built in the US in the foreseeable future.  Clean coal was on the table a few years back, but highly visible failures coupled with environmental concerns have closed this door for a while.  The cost differential between oil and natural gas as well as the efficiency relative to a combined cycle combustion turbine precludes construction of oil-fired boilers.  However, the existing fleet of these plants could be kept around for limited peaking power needs, emergency power, and long-term temporary system needs.

Other potential ingredients to a future plan include technologies currently on the drawing board.  Examples include tidal energy, biofuels, fusion, big HVDC ties and so on.  These new technologies will have to prove themselves before they are employed as anchoring technologies in good plans.  Most new technologies will not prove themselves in the next 10 to 20 years if history is a guide.  But some might.  While we can’t dependably plan on unproven technology, we must be ready to jump on anything valuable that works.  Such technology will likely be available and workable in niche applications many years before they can be deployed more broadly in long term plans.

Smart Grids have also been touted as a component of future electric systems.  This is a favorite approach of visionary academics, to concerns about observed and emerging grid problems.  In the New York net-zero transition planning process many issues were dismissed with a call for “Smart Grids” as if that would magically solve everything.  Modern grids are “smart” but as  with any “smart” technology there are all kinds of applications that could be adopted, so of course it is not a panacea for future grid plans.

Energy Efficiency is another favorite future grid resource for the naïve.  When concerns about peak loads and the necessary infrastructure are raised, the response is to double down on energy efficiency and energy conservation programs to flatten the peak loads.  Of course, if the goal is to decarbonize by electrifying everything, then the load will have to increase to cover building heating, cooking, and hot water.  Add in battery electric vehicles and this approach can only hope to reduce the peak but it will never eliminate the need for a peaking power generation resource.

A Good Enough Plan

Assuming the plan is a compromise between net zero and a working power system, the biggest step would be to commit to getting as much nuclear power as possible into the mix as soon as possible.  This best supports the grid and reduces CO2.  We need to figure out how to get plants built more efficiently and quickly. Adding nuclear must be the centerpiece and driver for meeting emerging generation needs.  Under reasonable regulations, it is the only zero-emissions technology that can be scaled up and provide reliable and dispatchable power.

 The continued massive ramp up of wind and solar does not make sense currently.  There are major reliability concerns which would emerge with the introduction of high level of intermittent asynchronous wind and solar power.  Such programs distract from the needed focus upon nuclear programs.  As technology improves and better resource choice emerges, large scale existing wind and solar that requires some sort of dispatchable emissions-free resource are likely to become dinosaurs.

At this time, it appears that plans for the addition of fossil-fired plants would center around the gaps where new nuclear power can not be made available or meeting peak demand levels not met by current resource plans.  Natural gas plants will be a good compromise.  Lower cost combustion turbines will have long term value to aid with ramping, meeting peaking needs and providing emergency power.  Higher cost more efficient combined cycle plant will make sense the longer the delay for nuclear development.  They can serve variable load levels that occur regularly but vary considerably day to day.

The potential for additional hydro is low, but any ability to effectively exploit remaining opportunities should be considered.  Additionally, some areas may offer the potential for the addition of  pumped storage hydro or geothermal power  Hopefully battery technology will improve and its ability to support energy needs and the grid can be expanded and amplified.

The authors have recognized for years that the economics, even without all the environmental and regulatory considerations, will not support building a new steam boiler plant in the US.  Gas is just too cheap in the US compared to coal or oil.  New coal is a non-starter given the need for elaborate and expensive pollution controls.  However, this does not mean it makes sense to retire functioning coal, gas, and oil plants. In many cases they will be the best emergency back resource available across the board considering economics, environmental impact, and reliability. 

There is another economics aspect of our good enough plan that needs to be stressed.  The plan does not require the development and deployment of the magical dispatchable emissions-free resource that is a necessary component in a electric system that relies on wind, solar, and energy storage.  Eliminating the cost of a brand-new resource to fulfill a very limited role will make this approach cheaper than any net-zero alternative.

There is a segment of society that is invested in the need to do “something” about climate change by mitigating emissions.  A good enough plan would support R&D on clean technologies for future generation, energy storage, and transmission system support.  Currently, these clean technologies are simply not ready to provide reliable and affordable energy.  The developing world will not use zero-emission technologies until they can provide electricity cheaper than existing resources so this R&D is necessary for a global solution.   In addition, if the full life-cycle impacts of those technologies are considered, then they are not nearly as “clean” as commonly portrayed.

Conclusion

The proposed good enough plan provides direction but is not overly constraining. It’s hard to know the future, but it’s a safe bet that any plan will not anticipate some critical twists that will emerge down the road. This plan would lay a strong foundation.   A major shift to the nuclear plants that are the obvious best choice for baseload power, supplemented with natural gas units, and retention of on the ground facilities should be the framework of a good enough plan.  Good enough plans are also flexible so integration of newer technologies when and as warranted is a reasonable attainable path without major downsides. This good enough plan may get you to net zero before the more ambitious ones.  It is likely to have less carbon emissions than the more aggressive plans over time.  It certainly will be more reliable and affordable.

New York State GHG Emissions Update

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) includes a target for a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1990 levels by 2030.  This post describes the latest New York State (NYS) GHG emission inventories and some implications.

This is another article about Climate Act implementation activities that I have written 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 post 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.

NYS Electric Generating Unit Emissions

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): “Emissions trading, sometimes referred to as ‘cap and trade’ or ‘allowance trading,’ is an approach to reducing pollution that has been used successfully to protect human health and the environment.”  One of the requirements for such a program is a monitoring system that consistently and accurately measures the emissions.  NYS electric generating units are in different emissions trading systems and have developed an accurate measuring system that relies on continuous emissions monitoring systems that record pollution levels that are reported to EPA. 

The only GHG monitored and reported to EPA is CO2.  In 2022 the units that report to EPA emitted 30.7 million short tons.  The NYS GHG inventory reports emissions as million metric tons and the 2022 emissions were 27.8 million metric tons.  As shown in the following table NYS emissions had been trending down until 2019 as generation from coal and oil was displaced by generation from natural gas.  The last three years the effect of the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear generating station and the loss of its zero-emissions capacity have become evident.  Since 2019 CO2 emissions have increased 5.8 million tons or 23%.

NYS GHG Emissions

At the end of 2022 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) released the 2022 statewide GHG emissions report (2022 GHG Report).  I published an overview post of this greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory last year that described the games played using that inventory to “prove” that there are societal benefits for the emission reduction programs needed to meet the Climate Act targets. 

New York State greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting it includes upstream emissions and is biased against methane.  Obviously if upstream emissions are included then the total increases but at the same time it makes the inventory incompatible with everybody else’s inventory.  There are two methane effects.  Global warming potential (GWP) weighs the radiative forcing of a gas against that of carbon dioxide over a specified time frame so that it is possible to compare the effects of different gases.  The values used by New York are compare the effect on a molecular basis not on the basis of the gases in the atmosphere so the numbers are biased.  Almost all jurisdictions use a 100-year GWP time horizon but the Climate Act mandates the use of the 20-year GWP which increases carbon dioxide equivalent values.  In addition, I believe the State is using higher emission estimates for methane production, transport, and processing.  As a result, NY GHG emission inventory estimates are nearly double values determined by other jurisdictions.

The 2022 GHG Report includes the following documents:

In order to calculate all the emissions in New York and estimate the upstream emissions it took DEC, the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and consultants two years to produce the reports.  This article is concerned only with electricity generation especially as it relates to overall emission trends and emissions data could be used for a market-based control program. 

2020 GHG Emissions

Table ES.2 in the Summary Report presents emissions for different sectors.  Electric generation emissions are listed as electric power fuel combustion, imported electricity, and as part of imported fossil fuels.  In 2020, GHG gas emissions from electric power fuel combustion totaled 22.12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mmt CO2e) using a 20-year global warming potential.  Imported electricity totaled 7.81 mmt CO2e.  Fuel combustion and imported electricity emissions were primarily CO2.  The Table ES.2 imported fossil fuel value shown covers all fossil fuel used in other sectors.  I found another source that breaks out the electric upstream emissions that I used to calculate emissions.

When I first started looking at the electric sector numbers, I compared the State numbers to the emissions reported by the generating companies to EPA.  The reported 2020 EPA numbers were 24.4 mmt CO2e but the 2022 GHG Report electric sector emissions were 52.3 mmt CO2e.  The 2022 GHG Report Sectoral Report 1: Energy chapter on electricity generation does not provide much detail but references a NYSERDA report: Technical Documentation: Estimating Energy Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that does provide details.  I provide more details on the calculation methodology here.  The following table combines Table 28 electric sector emissions by fuel type in that document with EPA Clean Air Markets Division emissions data.  In Table ES.2 above the total imported fossil fuel emissions in 2020 were 94.08 mmt CO2e and in the NYSERDA technical documentation the upstream emissions are 21.7 mmt CO2e.  New York’s biased accounting methodology doubles electric sector emissions from the emissions reported to EPA.  The claim that upstream emissions are on the order of direct emissions is not credible.

NYS GHG Emissions Data

The 2020 GHG Report includes a sectoral report covering the energy sector.   The results section notes:

The most significant emission reduction in this report was the decrease in fuel combustion emissions in the electricity sector from 1990 to current by over 60%. This is related to the transition away from fuels with higher combustion emissions to those with lower combustion emissions; as natural gas usage has increased, the use of coal and petroleum fuels such as residual fuel oil has declined. As described in NYSERDA (2022a), the emissions from the extraction, processing, transmission, and distribution of these fuels have not followed the same pattern.

I also evaluated the data used in the report.  It is available along with just about everything else at the NYS data website. This is part of the Open NY initiative described as:

Open NY is the award-winning initiative of policies, programs and tools that provide public access to digital data for collaboration and analysis. Empowering the public and government with data for the digital age.

Everything may be there but it is not easy to use.

The data used in the 2020 GHG emissions report are available.  I have developed a spreadsheet (documentation) that simplifies the use of the data for more refined evaluation. 

One finding in my evaluation is that there are changes in the total emissions reported relative to last year’s inventory.  The spreadsheet lists all the differences.  Importantly there is a difference between the regulatory Part 496 1990 baseline emissions of 409.78 million metric tons and this inventory that says 1990 emissions were 404.26 and last year’s baseline emissions were 402.54.  Recall that Part 496 determines the 2030 emissions limit, 245.87 million metric tons and 2050 emission limit, 61.47 million metric tons as percentages of the baseline.  At some point DEC will have to address these differences.

Another interesting result is the distribution of emissions by economic sector as shown in the following figure.  Overall emissions have been going down since the mid-2000’s.  The electric sector reductions have been the primary cause.  As noted previously electric sector emissions were decreasing over time until 2019 but started increasing since then.   

Projected 2021 and 2022 NYS GHG Emissions

In order to determine where NYS stands relative to the 2030 target currently, it is necessary to combine the EPA and NYS datasets.  The 2020 GHG Report notes that the pandemic shutdowns affected 2020 emissions.  In order to project 2021 emissions, I used the average of the years 2016-2020 for all sectors except electricity and for 2022 I used the average of 2017-2021 excluding 2020. 

Because the electric sector emissions include upstream and imported electricity emissions, I had to do something more refined.  The direct emissions used the EPA reported emissions.  The upstream and imported electricity emissions are in Table 28: electric sector emissions by fuel type of the  NYSERDA (2022a) technical documentation.  I took the average of the 2019 and 2020 data for the imported component.  The upstream emissions are related to the direct emissions.  I assumed that relationship was equal to the ratio of the 2019 and 2020 average EPA emissions to the out-of-state upstream emissions.  Using these assumptions, I project that the 2022 emissions increase to levels not seen since 2018.

Discussion

The Climate Act includes a target for a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1990 levels by 2030.  The NYS Part 496 1990 baseline emissions are 404.26 mmt CO2e.  The total 2020 NYS emissions were 344.85 mmt CO2e which is a 15% reduction from the baseline.  The 2030 limit is 245.9 CO2e which will require a further 29% reduction.

I looked at alternative emission reduction trajectories to get to the 2030 limit.  The following table estimates the emissions needed to meet the targets from starting points in 2018 to 2022.  Using the observed 2020 emissions noted above would require a 2.96% reduction per year.  Using the projected 2021 emissions (381.00 mmt CO2e) the annual reduction rate would be 3.94%.  Similarly, for 2022 because the emissions have gone up the annual reduction rate would have to be 4.52%.  Even if the 2022 emissions turn out to equal the 2020 emissions the annual reduction rate would have to be 3.59%.

Because of the variation of weather-related fuel usage GHG emissions have quite a bit of interannual variability (on the order of 3%).  My impression is that the annual reduction rates required to meet the 2030 target will be a significant challenge.  It is not clear what will happen if anyone of many issues causes delays in the implementation compliance trajectory.

There is another aspect of these data that is relevant with respect to the proposed cap and invest program.  The electric generating sector has developed a verifiable emissions reporting system that provides compliance data two months after the end of the year.  That system uses traceable direct measurements.  The 2020 GHG emissions report that represents the “official” compliance reporting by the DEC takes two years to produce.  It uses fuel use data, emission factors, and many assumptions in a process that is anything but open and transparent.  There have been three iterations of NYS GHG emission inventories and the historical data has changed in each subsequent iteration.  That approach does not meet the EPA emissions trading system recommendation for a timely, consistent, and accurate emissions reporting system.

Conclusion

There are a few takeaway points with these data.  The EPA electric generating unit emissions for 2022 increase over past years because of the NYS decision to shut down 2,000 MW of zero-emissions generating capacity at Indian Point.  Clearly, if the net-zero transition is to succeed then maintaining and expanding the state’s nuclear resources is necessary.  The data also show that the emission reduction trajectory is ambitious and, I believe, unlikely to be met.

The Climate Act GHG emission reporting requirements double the electric sector emissions over the direct measurements used by EPA.  The reporting system developed for EPA gets the results in two months but the reporting system used to generate the Climate Act GHG emissions takes two years. One of the arguments used by the Climate Action Council to justify the proposal for a cap and invest market-based control program was that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) trading system was a successful model that could be used.  RGGI uses the EPA reporting data to provide timely, consistent, and accurate data for compliance requirements.  There is no favorable comparison between the EPA system and the Climate Act reporting system.  The reality that the NYS GHG emissions reporting data are incompatible with any emissions trading system is just one of the practical problems that the cap and invest proposal must address before it can be implemented.

Arctic Blast Foreshadows Problems with Climate Act Renewable Future

This past Friday and Saturday (February 3-4 2023) there was a brief shot intensely cold air to the Northeast US.  This post includes a couple of descriptions of the implications of this weather event relative to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act  (Climate Act) and I present some data describing the event.

This is another article about the Climate Act implementation plan that I have written 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 post 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.

I am Thankful – Mark Stevens

Mark is a regular reader at this blog and has contributed several recent items for posting.  He is a retired science and technology teacher from Long Island.  His email to me this weekend is a perfect introduction to the issues raised by this weather event.

It was 3 degrees F Saturday morning with a wind chill of -3 degrees.  All night the north wind raged, rattling “sealed” windows and doors but still blowing frigid air through them. I did everything I could: raise the boiler’s temperature, cover the big expanse of glass on the patio doors windows, pull the shades.  I even added an electric heater in the room my tropical parrot resides so he doesn’t get a fatal pneumonia.

The possibility of a power failure crossed my mind with the overhead wires, high winds, many surrounding trees, and almost monthly power interruptions in the past.  It would be an absolutely worst-case scenario if the power went out tonight. Frozen pipes next? I have a backup generator but the thought of going out in the howling cold night, fueling it, hooking it up, starting it, and monitoring the systems wasn’t that appealing.

But LIPA’s tree trimming maintenance and generation/distribution system upkeep allowed the power to stay on through the night and into the next day as I write this. We’re cozy, comfortable and safe.  This kind of cold can kill.

I’m thankful we have a reliable, cost-effective electrical generation and distribution system.  I’m thankful I have a natural gas-fired boiler that works 24/7 keeping me and my family safe and alive.  I am thankful that I don’t rely on intermittent, expensive wind and solar generation as electricity sources that can fail at any time leaving me without power.  I’m grateful I don’t have to rely on “backup” battery power that is grossly inadequate, expensive, highly polluting to manufacture and can cause a non-extinguishable toxic gas fire. I pray it does not change.

What’s Keeping the Heat On – James Hanley

James is a Fellow at the Empire Center.  His post yesterday is a great overview of the problem facing New York as it continues the implementation of the Climate Act.

As another Arctic blast hits the Northeast and temperatures plunge, more energy is needed to keep New Yorkers warm.   Where is that energy coming from? 

A lot of it comes from natural gas, but there’s a big supply problem. Because of the state’s ban on fracking and its refusal to allow new and upgraded natural gas infrastructure, not enough gas can get to power plants to generate the electricity needed to keep the lights and heat on in everyone’s houses during times of extreme demand. 

What gas is available gets bid up to eye-wateringly high prices. It’s hard to speak meaningfully of an average price for natural gas because the market is volatile, but the 2022 high price in Pennsylvania was $12.95 per million British thermal units (mmbtu). According to one energy industry source, during last Christmas’s cold snap, the price in New York hit $100 per mmbtu. 

That translated into an electricity price of nearly 90 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to the average New York price of 19 cents. 

That assumes the power plant can even get the gas it needs to operate. With such severe gas shortages, some natural gas-fired plants had to shut down for lack of fuel. What gets burned to take their place – fuel oil – is not only expensive, but also much dirtier and producing more carbon dioxide than natural gas. 

So, ironically, because New York has limited the supply of the much cleaner burning natural gas in order to prevent pollution and CO2, the power industry has no choice at times but to spew more pollution into disadvantaged communities and add more carbon to the atmosphere. 

The hope is that renewables will one day suffice to supply the electricity we need to heat our homes on a day like this. That hope is irresponsible, because wind and solar aren’t reliable and there is no available “clean” backup power source. 

Below is a graph from the New York Independent System Operator’s (NYISO) real-time dashboard, showing fuel use on February 2 into the early hours of February 3. On what was otherwise a reasonably good day for wind power (the light green line), we can see it declining in the early hours of February 3 as the cold front moved in, while the use of dual fuel generators (the top line), which can burn fuel oil, dramatically increased. Building more wind turbines has limited effect – as the wind drops across the state, all the turbines decrease in output. 

NYISO has repeatedly warned – and the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan admits – that wind and solar will not be sufficient. New York will need between 25 and 45 gigawatts of dispatchable power – power that unlike wind and sun, but like natural gas, fuel oil, and hydro, can be turned on and off at will. 

To comply with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), these sources are supposed to be emissions free, leading NYISO to coin the ugly acronym DEFRs – dispatchable emissions-free resources. But they coined that term because they can’t identify any source that meets that standard and is currently available at utility scale and a commercially competitive price. 

This means that for the foreseeable future, fossil fuels will be the only proven source of dispatchable backup to keep the heat and lights on during weather that is killingly cold. Since New York no longer has any coal plants, that can be oil – which is more polluting and has higher carbon content – or natural gas. 

The CLCPA has a clear goal of eliminating all greenhouse gas emitting power production by 2040, which would mean shutting down all natural gas-fired power plants. But it also provides a path for keeping open those plants that are necessary to ensure a reliable electrical supply. That path, however, faces considerable political opposition. 

New York will soon be forced to make a choice: plunging forward with shutting down natural gas-fired power plants, risking rolling blackouts during extreme cold, or moving forward more slowly on its emissions goals, but keeping the heat on. There is no third way.

The Numbers

The past two days were ideally suited to staying inside.  I am a numbers guy so I spent time the last several days watching the weather and the electric system using two different resources.  The go to resource for weather observations in New York is the NYS Mesonet At UAlbany.  I watched the arctic air come into the region and then tracked the event over time.  The NYISO Real-Time Dashboard is a fascinating link into the New York electricity market.  I suspected correctly that this weather would cause a spike in electric load and I could see that play out over the period.

The weather data presented here is all from the NYS Mesonet at the University of Albany.  The following graph lists the last seven days of temperature, dew point temperature, and solar irradiance data at Elbridge, NY which is near my home.  Note that at the time I write this it is February 5 at 8:00 AM and that corresponds to 05/13 or 1300 universal coordinated time or Greenwich mean time, the standard for meteorological observations.  On the night of February 2 the temperature (red) was around 38oF about 7:00 PM EST or 0000 UTC.  Then the front came through and the temperature plunged overnight and during the day before briefly leveling out a few degrees above zero until nightfall when it dropped down to 7 or so below.

The next graph is for the same time period but shows the wind speed, wind gusts, and pressure.  Frontal passage was accompanied with a dip in the station pressure.  The pressure gradient was strong for most of the period so winds were steady slightly above 10 mph with gusts peaking at 38 mph.

The NYISO Real-Time Dashboard has two relevant graphical displays:  the load and real-time fuel mix. The following graph shows the actual and forecast New York total load on February 3-4 (all times are EST).  It is noteworthy that the actual loads on both days were  significantly higher than forecast loads.  The load peaked on 2/3 at 6:50 PM at 23,447 MW and at 6:10 PM on 2/4 at 21,990 MW. 

The NYISO 2022 Load and Capacity Data report winter peak demand projections are all greater than the observed peak loads so this should not have been a demand response problem with the existing fleet.

The real-time fuel mix data shows how the existing fleet met the peak loads during this weather event.  The following table lists the daily statistics for the different fuel types.  The fuel-mix categories are Nuclear; Hydro, including pumped storage; Dual Fuel, units that burn natural gas and other fossil fuels; Natural Gas only; Other Fossil Fuels, units that burn oil only; Other Renewables are facilities that produce power from solar, energy storage resources, methane, refuse or wood; and Wind (at this time exclusively land-based wind).

The graphs show how important the fossil fuel units are to keeping the lights on.  One notable feature of the fuel type data on 2/3 is that the wind generation was not very high even though winds across the state were quite high.  I believe this is because wind turbines don’t provide optimal power if the winds are too light or too strong.  The strong winds on this date apparently affected the wind production so even on a windy day New York’s land based wind provided only 65% of the maximum potential capability.

On 2/4/2023 the wind resource was affected by light winds.  On this date New York’s land based wind provided only 32% of the maximum potential capability.

Conclusion

Stevens explains how important it is for our safety and well-being to have fossil fuels available during extremely cold weather.  Hanley showed that natural gas played an important role keeping the lights on during this arctic blast and described some of the uncertainty associated with the planned net-zero transition.  My contribution was to provide more documentation for the weather, resulting electric load peak, and the contribution of different fuels to meeting that peak.  I am going to follow up on this post with a deeper dive into the resource availability and implications to the Scoping Plan recommendations for generating resource allocations.

Hanley’s conclusion is spot on:

New York will soon be forced to make a choice: plunging forward with shutting down natural gas-fired power plants, risking rolling blackouts during extreme cold, or moving forward more slowly on its emissions goals, but keeping the heat on. There is no third way.

Empire Center Ten Reasons Climate Act May Cost More Than It Is Worth

James Hanley from the Empire Center published Ten Reasons the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act May Cost More than It’s Worth (“Ten Reasons”) that explains why massive political promises like the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) often cost more than they’re worth, wasting taxpayers’ money.  While I agree with his ten reasons, this post explains why the costs are even worse than he describes.

I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 275 articles about New York’s net-zero transition 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 post 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.

Background

The Climate Act established a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for 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 and power the electric gride with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  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 write a Draft Scoping Plan that was revised in 2022 and the Final Scoping Plan  was approved on  December 19, 2022.  In 2023 the plan is to develop regulations and legislation to implement the Scoping Plan recommendations.

In the following section I reproduce Hanley’s post with my bold italicized comments.

Ten Reasons

Over budget, over time, over and over – that’s the iron law of megaprojects.  

Megaprojects are transformational, multi-billion-dollar, multi-year projects involving numerous public and private stakeholders. 90 percent come in over budget, often two, three or even more times over, and they often underdeliver on the promised benefits.  

In short, despite political promises to the contrary, they often cost more than they’re worth, wasting taxpayers’ money. 

Some notable examples of megaproject cost overruns include California’s high speed rail (years behind schedule and at least three times over budget), Boston’s Big Dig (completed five years late and more than five times over budget) and New York’s own Long Island Railroad East Side Access (12 years behind schedule and – with a budget that’s grown from $3.5 billion to between $11 and $15 billion – three to four times over budget). And that’s not New York’s only over-budget transit project. 

Those are all small potatoes compared to New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). The overall benefit-cost analysis for the CLCPA predicts a cost of $280-$340 billion – around 20 times the cost of the East Side Access project – to radically transform New York to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy. The benefit is supposed to be $420-$430 billion, for a net gain of $80-$150 billion.  

The Scoping Plan benefit-cost analysis is a shell game disguising misleading and inaccurate information.  In short, the $280-$340 billion costs only represent the costs of the Climate Act itself and not the total costs to meet the net-zero by 2050 target.  The Scoping Plan costs specifically exclude the costs of “Already Implemented” programs including the following:

  • Growth in housing units, population, commercial square footage, and GDP
  • Federal appliance standards
  • Economic fuel switching
  • New York State bioheat mandate
  • Estimate of New Efficiency, New York Energy Efficiency achieved by funded programs: HCR+NYPA, DPS (IOUs), LIPA, NYSERDA CEF (assumes market transformation maintains level of efficiency and electrification post-2025)
  • Funded building electrification (4% HP stock share by 2030)
  • Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards
  • Zero-emission vehicle mandate (8% LDV ZEV stock share by 2030)
  • Clean Energy Standard (70×30), including technology carveouts: (6 GW of behind-the-meter solar by 2025, 3 GW of battery storage by 2030, 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035, 1.25 GW of Tier 4 renewables by 2030)

The Scoping Plan documentation is not sufficiently detailed to determine the expected costs of these programs or to determine if the benefits calculations included the benefits of the emission reductions from these programs.  I have not doubt, however, that if these costs are included that the total would be greater than the benefits and I suspect very strongly that the benefits from these programs were included even if the costs were not. The shell game definition: “A fraud or deception perpetrated by shifting conspicuous things to hide something else”  is certainly an apt description of the Scoping Plan benefit-cost analysis.

That’s a good deal, if it really works out that way. Unfortunately, based on the history of megaprojects, it’s unlikely to provide so much benefit.  

Based on my evaluation it is not a good deal from the get go.  All of Hanley’s discussion of megaprojects below is in addition to the inaccurate starting point.

If we take the lower end cost estimate and assume the policy only costs half again as much – which would make it a rare megaproject success story – the cost would rise to $420 billion, exactly wiping out the lower end estimate of the gains.  

If it came in at twice the low-end cost estimate – which is common for such big and complex programs – it would cost $560 billion, resulting in a net loss of at least $220 billion. Three times over budget would mean a net loss of at least $410 billion – closing in on half a trillion dollars wasted. 

And if the benefits are less than predicted – which is also common – the outcome gets even worse. 

The issue is not that there aren’t any benefits. At least some of the claimed benefits are real. But just like buying a car or a meal, it’s possible to overpay for what we’re getting.  

Part of the general reason for the predictable cost overruns is that these projects tend to be exceptionally complex and innovative, novel ideas which nobody really knows how to execute well due to lack of experience. New York’s CLCPA-supporting politicians and advocates love to boast about the CLCPA being a nation-leading policy, which is to say it’s something nobody has experience doing. 

Another reason – known both from research and from the mouth of a famous politician – is that advocates sometimes intentionally mislead the public about the costs and benefits of megaprojects. Perhaps no CLCPA supporters are consciously lying about its costs, but it seems evident that it would be uncomfortable for them to dig deeply into the issue of megaproject cost, and whatever doubts they may have they are not voicing them.  

Ultimately the Climate Act is a political initiative designed to appeal to specific constituencies within the state.  In that context the Scoping Plan itself is just a tool to cater to those constituencies.  Authors of the Scoping Plan may not have lied but they did intentionally mislead the public as I have explained in posts and comments.  The response to comments submitted did not address any of the issues I raised.

But we shouldn’t look at the CLCPA as just a single megaproject. It’s actually a large group of them. Among the projects within the CLCPA that are, or may ultimately scale up to the size of, megaprojects are:  

  1. The build-out of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; 
  2. Transitioning the state’s school buses to all electric; 
  3. Transitioning the state’s public transit buses to all-electric; 
  4. Promotion of smart-growth for mobility-oriented (biking and walking) development. 
  5. Electrifying 85 percent of residential/commercial space by 2050; 
  6. Achieving 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030; 
  7. Developing 6 megawatts of battery storage; 
  8. Building 9,000–18,000 megawatts of offshore wind; 
  9. Building the grid for renewable energy transmission; 
  10. The overall agricultural and forestry portion of the CLCPA Scoping Plan; 
  11. Achieving dramatic reductions in the amount of solid waste being produced and disposed of; 
  12. Decarbonizing the statewide natural gas distribution system. 


That comes to at least 12 distinct policy areas within the CLCPA that are each likely to be multi-billion dollar projects on their own. Depending on how one analyzes the Act and its Scoping Plan, this may be an incomplete list. 

Keep in mind the “already implemented program” costs in the $280-$340 billion costs of the Scoping Plan.  Those programs at least include: The build-out of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; transitioning the state’s school buses to all electric; transitioning the state’s public transit buses to all-electric; developing 3 MW of the 6MW of battery storage; and building 9,000 MW of the 18,000 MW of offshore wind.

This means at least 12 opportunities for mega-failure in the CLCPA. And with 90 percent of megaprojects coming in over budget, we should expect at least 10 or 11 of these to experience substantial cost overruns. 

But saying that megaprojects tend to come in over budget and short on benefits is not enough. It’s fair to ask why this particular set of megaprojects that collectively make up the CLCPA are likely to do so. So, in addition to the sheer innovative complexity of the CLCPA’s bid to transition New York to a net zero economy, here are 10 reasons why the Climate Act’s costs may be understated, and its benefits overstated. 

  1. Inflation Bites   
    Projects that take multiple years to complete face the risk of inflation. When the CLCPA’s benefit-cost analysis was conducted, the analysts could not have anticipated that inflation would surge, pushing up the cost of materials and labor. Particularly hard hit so far have been offshore wind projects. 

    Inflation has moderated somewhat lately, but on-going large federal deficits could cause it to remain at higher levels than anticipated.
  1. Cap-and-Invest May Cause Business Flight
    Policies that cap emissions of particular chemicals, then reduce those caps over time and allow trading of emissions allowances, can be the most cost-effective way of reducing emissions when done at the national or multi-national level. Even if businesses move their operations to another country, a tariff on their emissions can be levied to either make businesses pay for those emissions or incentivize firms to reduce them.

    But cap-and-invest is ill-suited to the state level. First, it is easier for businesses to move out of state – or refuse to move into the state – than to move out of country. It is likely that other states competing for business investment will use the Empire State’s emissions cap as a way to leverage firms to look to their states for investment rather than to New York.

    This means a state-level cap-and-invest scheme is likely to diminish business investment, reducing the state’s economic growth and therefore tax revenues.

    Second, a state cannot enact an emissions tariff because it would violate the U.S. Constitution’s interstate commerce clause, so there is no cudgel to force emissions reductions on businesses that move operations out of state.  This means less overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because those emissions just occur elsewhere.

    This emissions “leakage,” and loss of tax revenue, can also occur if GHG-emitting in-state businesses become less competitive due to compliance costs and lose market share to out-of-state competitors.

    This kind of leakage has long plagued California’s cap-and-trade program. In New York’s case, because a majority of the CLCPA’s claimed benefits come from greenhouse gas reductions, it means a potentially very large reduction in the benefits of the policy.

    To minimize business flight and emissions leakage, the Climate Action Council proposes giving away emissions allowances to emissions-intensive and trade-exposed businesses – those that are most likely to find it more cost-effective to leave than to buy emissions allowances. But this may only be a temporary reprieve for these industries, as the number of emissions allowances is required to decline over time, and some businesses may never find it more cost-effective to reduce their emissions than to move operations out of state.

    Giving away emissions allowances also means the state will take in less revenue from auctions of emissions permits, having given away many for free, and so will have less money to invest in CLCPA policies, further reducing the law’s benefits.
  1. Union Job Requirements Drive Up Costs
    The Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan – the roadmap for Climate Act implementation – calls for the use of union labor and project-labor agreements. But jobs go on the cost side of the ledger rather than the benefits side, so anything that increases the cost of labor increases the overall cost of the policy.

    How much this will drive up the total cost of the Climate Act has not been analyzed, but past reporting by the Empire Center shows that prevailing wage requirements can add 13 to 25 percent to project costs. And it’s not as though there aren’t New Yorkers willing to give the public a better deal – around two-thirds of workers in New York’s construction sector are non-unionized, but they will be locked out of CLCPA projects.
  2. Overbuilding of Renewable Energy and Building Energy Backup Is Costly
    The most undeniable truth about wind and solar power is that they are unreliable – the wind can fail, the sky can become clouded or night can fall, just when you need the electricity most. According to the New York Independent System Operator, New York must develop 15-45 GW of dispatchable zero-emission electricity generation resources. That’s in comparison to a total of roughly 40 gigawatts of total installed capacity today, and it must be in addition to any new wind and solar power developments.

    At a minimum, this means we have to overbuild solar and wind resources in the hopes that somewhere in the state the wind will be blowing and the sun shining. But because New York is too geographically small to ensure that the wind is always blowing, or the sun always shining, somewhere in the state, New York will also need to build backup energy sources.

    What these greenhouse gas emission-free resources will be – and how much they will cost – is currently unknown, because none are yet commercially available or competitively priced. Hydrogen is a possibility, but the cost will have to fall dramatically and quickly to keep backup power affordable.

    Batteries are also intended to be part of the backup system, although they are only good for meeting peak demand for a few hours. They are currently very expensive, even though – like all technologies – the learning curve continues to push down their price. However, materials costs for batteries may remain high for years, because demand is growing rapidly while supply chains are hindered both by political opposition to minerals mining and geopolitical constraints on mining and refining.
  3. The Cost of Redeveloping the Grid Is Unpredictable
    New York currently has, in effect, two largely – although not completely – separate power grids. One is upstate and draws heavily on hydroelectric and nuclear power. The other is mostly downstate and based on natural gas and dual-fuel power plants. Both are based on controllable and dispatchable forms of electricity production.

    To eliminate fossil fuel electricity generation and rely much more heavily on variable, uncontrollable, sources like wind and solar, New York must expand its transmission grid to move electricity from where it will be produced – primarily upstate and off-shore – to where it is needed. But this grid will have to be built so that energy can be delivered from whichever sources happen to be producing at a given time, which means more miles of high voltage transmission lines than ever before.

    Experts can make a first-pass estimate of the cost of building out all this new transmission, but the complexity of working through multiple political jurisdictions and satisfying numerous stakeholders is one of the leading causes of megaproject cost overruns. Few people want high-voltage transmission lines near their homes, and merely fighting the political battles to site these lines across numerous municipalities and counties could drive up the end cost significantly.

There is another aspect of the transmission system that the Scoping Plan glossed over.  Because wind and solar resources are inverter-based they do not provide ancillary services necessary to keep the transmission system stable.  As far as I can tell this issue was not addressed by the Scoping Plan and that means there are unaddressed technological and cost issues.

  1. The Jones Act Increases Offshore Windpower Costs
    The Jones Act is a law requiring ships moving cargo between U.S. ports to be U.S. built, owned, crewed, and flagged. There are no Jones Act compliant off-shore wind turbine building vessels in the U.S., although at least one is under construction (at an inflated cost because it has to be U.S. built). Because of the Jones Act, the available ships have to operate out of Canada or rely on the more expensive and dangerous process of having Jones Act compliant “feeder barges” bring materials out to the work site.
  2. The True Social Cost of Carbon Is Unknown
    Most of the benefit of the Climate Act doesn’t go to New Yorkers but is a world-wide benefit from the reduction of CO2 emissions. To estimate this benefit, a social cost per ton of CO2 has to be estimated. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) set the cost at $124 per ton for 2022, rising each year.

    But nobody truly knows the social cost of CO2. The number varies wildly between different models used to estimate it. The Biden administration has tentatively set the social cost of CO2 at $51 per ton, while it works to develop a new official estimate. Even if their estimate comes in higher than the tentative setting, it may be considerably lower than what the DEC estimates.

    Even the DEC’s own estimates diverge dependent on the discount rate used, and they chose to use only low discount rates that mathematically increase the social cost of CO2 emissions. There is no expert agreement on what discount rate should be used, and if a higher discount rate was used the social cost of CO2 would be much lower, and therefore the benefit from eliminating it would be much lower.

    While it’s not impossible that the DEC has underestimated the social cost of carbon – which would make the benefits of the CLCPA even larger than estimated – it’s at least as, if not more, likely that they’ve overestimated the social cost for political reasons, meaning the benefits could be far lower than predicted.

The primary driver of the benefits is the social cost of carbon and Hanley’s description of these issues is spot on.  There are other issues associated with social cost of carbon that I discussed in my Draft Scoping Plan comments.  The biggest inaccuracy is that it is inappropriate to claim social cost of carbon benefits of an annual reduction of a ton of greenhouse gas over any lifetime or to compare it with avoided emissions. The Value of Carbon guidance incorrectly calculates benefits by applying the value of an emission reduction multiple times.  Using that trick and the other manipulations results in New York societal benefits more than 21 times higher than benefits using everybody else’s methodology. When just the over-counting error is corrected, the total societal benefits range between negative $74.5 billion and negative $49.5 billion. 

  1. Some Alleged Benefits Are Dubious
    Not all of the claimed benefits in the benefit-cost analysis pass the sniff test. The most dubious of these is the assumption that indoor trip-and-fall hazards will be mitigated while weatherizing homes, producing almost $2 billion in health improvements. But there is no inherent connection between weatherization – replacing old windows adding insulation, sealing drafts – and removing interior trip hazards. It could happen, but to say it will is purely speculative.

    Another dubious assumption is that people will walk and bike significantly more, creating a claimed $40 billion health benefit – nearly 10 percent of all estimated benefits. But this requires major reconstruction of cities and reduced suburbanization, all in less than three decades. If that doesn’t happen and people fail to change their behavior, this benefit will be drastically reduced at best, and quite possibly come in at close to zero.

My comments on Scoping Plan benefit claims agreed with these dubious claims and also noted that the if the claims related to air quality improvements were accurate then we should be able to observe improvements due to the sixteen times greater observed air quality improvements than the projected improvements due to the Climate Act.  Until their projections are verified, I do not accept their projections.

  1. Subsidies Will Need to Increase, Creating Deadweight Economic Losses
    The Scoping Plan proposes transitioning most homes to heat pumps. Currently the only subsidies are $5,000 for geothermal systems, which is too small an amount to enable moderate- to low-income homeowners to afford them. To accomplish this goal, subsidies will have to increase substantially. Most likely this subsidy will be paid for by increases in utility rates, a de facto tax increase on ratepayers.

    But both taxes and subsidies create deadweight economic losses, increasing the cost of the policy in ways that were probably not accounted for in the benefit-cost model.

    The loss caused by the subsidy will be at least partially offset by the positive externality of reduced carbon emissions, but how much so is challenging to determine (in part because we don’t know the social cost of CO2). Ultimately, the size of these deadweight costs is unknown – and may remain so – but they are real and potentially significant.
  2. There Is No Focused Benefit-Cost Analysis of Individual Projects
    The benefit-cost analysis is a global analysis of the whole Climate Act, produced before the consultants even knew what specific policies would be proposed. None of the individual policies proposed have received a focused benefit-cost analysis.

    Even getting those right might be challenging, given that so many of these individual projects are megaprojects all on their own. But by focusing on specific policies, there is at least a better chance of achieving accuracy.

    An example of a missed opportunity is the requirement that all school districts shift to electric school buses. This will cost at least $8 – $15 billion – a broad estimate that needs to be narrowed down – but the value of the benefits is unknown. While benefits such as reductions in air pollution and improvements in student health are real, we have no dollar amount estimate of them.

    We do know that much of the benefit could be gained less expensively by shifting to clean fuel vehicles or buying newer – cleaner burning – diesel buses. Which of these approaches would provide the best benefit to cost ratio, making for the best use of taxpayer dollars? We don’t know because no analysis was conducted before creating the policy. 

Conclusion  

Perhaps not all these problems will come to pass. Inflation could moderate and remain low. Business flight and avoidance of New York due to cap-and-invest might be reduced if other states join a regional plan. Supply chain challenges for battery materials might be overcome. But others are sure to play a role, such as unionization of green jobs, the effect of the Jones Act, and the deadweight economic loss from subsidies and taxation. In addition, there could be other issues not addressed here that could cause CLCPA costs to increase. This is not intended to be a complete list.  

For these reasons, as well as the dismal history of such gigantic public ventures, it’s virtually certain that at least some, if not most, of the individual megaprojects within the CLCPA will be over budget. By how much is anyone’s guess, but it takes an unwarranted leap of faith to be confident that this time will be different. And as noted above, all it would take is for the cumulative effect of budget overruns to push the CLCPA’s cost up by half – a far better performance than most megaprojects – to completely wipe out any gains.

When the fact that the Scoping Plan costs do not include the “already implemented” programs are considered this analysis is overly optimistic.  Even without considering all the problems described in this analysis the total costs of all the programs necessart to meet the net-zero by 2050 target are greater than the alleged and impossibly optimistic benefits cited in the Scoping Plan.  Any claims that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of inaction by proponents of the Climate Act are simply wrong.

Climate Act Scoping Plan Toolkit

The Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) website was extensively revised at the start of 2023.  It includes a link for the Scoping Plan Toolkit which is described as “resource to help community and partner organizations” with specific “resources to facilitate conversations about New York’s climate work.”  As I was working on an article about the cap and invest program I noticed that there were two fact sheet pdf files for cap and invest: Cap-and-Invest One Pager [PDF] and Cap-and-Invest vs. Cap-and-Trade vs. Carbon Tax [PDF].  This is a short post about the new format of the website and the cap and invest “toolkits”.

The opinions expressed in this post 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.

Climate Act Website

The Climate Act website was revised at the start of 2023.  Now it is a public relations site to sell the Climate Act.  It has been revised so that it is more accessible to smart phones with large text fonts and splashy graphics.  The main internal links cover “Our Impact”, “Get Involved”, News & Events”, “Resources” and “Partner Toolkit”.  I list the links within each of these categories below:

“Our Impacts”

“Get Involved”

“News & Events”

“Resources”

“Partner Toolkit” Fact Sheets

There is blog post fodder in every one of these links. For example, the lead for the Addressing Energy Affordability Concerns link says “As energy prices rise, we must power our future focused on clean and renewable resources.”  Not included in the platitudes and talking points within the link is a reference to the experience of any jurisdiction that has pushed the use of wind and solar resources over fossil fuel that has actually lowered consumer bills.  It is all flash and style for pushing the narrative without substance. 

Cap and Invest Toolkit Fact Sheets

This post is going to introduce issues associated with the cap and invest toolkits.  There are two fact sheets for the cap and invest program:  Cap-and-Invest One Pager [PDF] and Cap-and-Invest vs. Cap-and-Trade vs. Carbon Tax [PDF].  When I first started looking at these resources. I found that they both linked to the cap and invest program one pager.  I alerted a contact I have known for years because there is no contact on the web pages.  The next morning the link to the Cap-and-Invest vs. Cap-and-Trade vs. Carbon Tax  was changed so someone else caught the problem.  I also question the label of the one pager document. The author’s interpretation is that a one pager means two sides of one page.  I think the generally accepted implication is to condense the summary to a single page.

I am going to do a more detailed post on the cap and invest plan toolkits but for now I just want to make one point.  Both fact sheets extoll the virtues and success of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap and invest program.  New York utilities have been covered by that program since 2009 and New York agencies never lose the opportunity to claim that it has been a success.  I have been involved in the RGGI program process since its inception and have written many articles about the details of the RGGI program.

In early December I evaluated the 2020 RGGI Investment Proceeds report that describes the results of RGGI investments over the entire region.  I found that since the beginning of the RGGI program CO2 emissions have been reduced more than 50% but that RGGI funded control programs have been responsible for only 5.6% of the observed reductions.  The main reason for the reductions has been fuel switching to natural gas.  When the sum of the RGGI investments is divided by the sum of the annual emission reductions the CO2 emission reduction efficiency is $818 per ton of CO2 reduced. 

In late December I did a similar analysis of just the New York investment proceed results.  I found that in New York since the beginning of the RGGI program CO2 emissions have been reduced 39% in 2021 but the reduction was 47% until the State shutdown the Indian Point nuclear station.  The RGGI funded control programs have been responsible for only 16% of the observed reductions.  The main reason for the reductions has been fuel switching to natural gas.  When the sum of the RGGI investments is divided by the sum of the annual emission reductions the CO2 emission reduction efficiency is $565 per ton of CO2 reduced. 

I conclude that RGGI is not an effective CO2 emission reduction program and that because the emission reduction efficiency of the RGGI investments is far greater than any social cost of carbon metric yet proposed that the investments are not cost-effective.  RGGI success is the eye of the beholder.

The Climate Act and Gas Stove Bans

Mention of a ban on gas stoves recently caused a national uproar.   Closer to home the New York State Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) implementation plan calls for zero-emission equipment, including stoves, in new and existing buildings.  When pressed about New York’s plans Governor Hochul said “”I know it’s a concern because a lot of people are misrepresenting what this is all about”.  I think the misrepresentation is on the part of the Hochul Administration,

I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 275 articles about New York’s net-zero transition 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 post 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.

Background

The Climate Act established a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for 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 and power the electric gride with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  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 write a Draft Scoping Plan that was revised in 2022 and the Final Scoping Plan  was approved on  December 19, 2022. 

There are multiple aspects of a ban on gas stoves that I have wanted to address.  Fortunately, most of the points I wanted to make have already been made so this post is more of an overview of other work than original effort on my part.

Childhood Asthma and Gas Stoves

The initial reason for the recent uproar about gas stoves was a study published in an open-source journal called Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States (Gruenwald et al., 2022).  The sound bite takeaway from the study was that gas stoves are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma in the US.  I don’t have a lot of faith in any study that claims an air pollution association with asthma rates but was not relishing trying to develop an analysis.

Blair King writing on his blog did a masterful job eviscerating the claims in the paper.  In brief, the study was based upon a 2013 paper that used old data from the 1980’s and 1990’s.  The analysis was done using a 70-year-old statistical tool called PAF which is widely used in epidemiological studies.  However, the tool breaks down when multiple risk factors (confounding variables) are present.  For asthma, there are no fewer than seven risk factors so the analytical tool becomes useless.  I recommend reading his article but the conclusion nails the issue:

To conclude, I can only restate that the Gruenwald et al paper seems to have some clear challenges that would typically preclude it from consideration in a policy-making process.

  • Its underlying data is of low statistical power.
  • Its conclusion is directly contradicted by more recent studies with significantly greater statistical power. and
  • It relies on a statistical tool that is considered invalid in situations with confounding variables yet it is being used to analyze an association that is absolutely rife with confounding variables.

Put simply, this is not the study I would rely on to make a major policy change that will affect millions of people and will cost billions to implement. As to its conclusion: are 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the US attributable to cooking with natural gas? Based on the points above, that conclusion is almost certainly not the case.

This isn’t the first time that a study that is weak science is used as an argument for sweeping policy changes.  What did surprise me is how quickly the story raced through the media.  Robert Bryce explained how that happened in his post The billionaires behind the gas bans.  I highly recommend that you read the whole thing but I present some highlights below.

He explained that he started looking into a new organization called the Climate Imperative Foundation in late 2021 when he read a story that the new group has a planned budget of $180 million annually over five years for a total of $900 million.  When he investigated the source of the money, he discovered that two of the  most recognizable names on the six-person board are Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Forbes magazine estimates that Doerr has a net worth of $12.7 billion. Forbes puts Jobs’ net worth at $17.7 billion. Unsurprisingly Bryce found that most of the money is coming from Doerr and Jobs.

His article explains why the emergence of the Climate Imperative Foundation is important:

First, it shows that the effort to “electrify everything” and ban the use of natural gas in homes and businesses – and that includes gas stoves — is part of a years-long, lavishly funded campaign that is being bankrolled by some of the world’s richest people.

Second, despite numerous claims about how nefarious actors are blocking the much-hyped “energy transition,” the size of Climate Imperative’s budget provides more evidence that the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex has far more money than the pro-hydrocarbon and pro-nuclear groups. Indeed, the anti-hydrocarbon NGOs (most of which are also stridently anti-nuclear) have loads of money, media backing, and momentum. As can be seen in the graphic below, the five biggest anti-hydrocarbon NGOs are now collecting about $1.5 billion per year from their donors. (All data is from Guidestar.) That sum is roughly three times more than the amount being collected by the top five non-profit associations that are either pro-hydrocarbon or pro-nuclear.

Third, banning the direct use of natural gas in homes and businesses may be worse for the climate. You read that right. Burning gas directly allows consumers to use about 90% of the energy contained in the fuel. Using gas indirectly — by converting it into electricity and then using that juice to power a heat pump, stove, or water heater — wastes more than half of the energy in the fuel. That point was made by Glenn Ducat, in his excellent new book, Blue Oasis No More: Why We’re Not Going to “Beat” Global Warming and What We Need To Do About It. Ducat is a Ph.D. nuclear engineer who worked at Argonne National Lab, as well as at two electric utilities. He explains “Burning natural gas by residential commercial and industrial customers is at least twice as efficient and emits about half as much CO2 as processes that use electricity produced from fossil fuels. Converting process-heat applications to electricity before the electricity grid is completely carbon-free will increase CO2 emissions.” (Emphasis in the original.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I note that the New York plan is to eventually use electricity from zero-emissions sources.  However, there are life-cycle energy use issues with wind, solar and energy storage that mean the Climate Act transition does not reduces CO2 as much as it claims because of the efficiency of burning  natural gas directly for heating, cooking and hot water.

Bryce documents how the efforts to demonize gas stoves has rolled out since 2020.  One of the authors of the 12.7% asthma paper is employed by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) which has published other articles that make the same claims.  He provides other evidence that this paper doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. 

He went on to investigate where RMI gets their funding. 

Some of it is coming from Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. In 2020, the Bezos Earth Fund gave RMI $10 million, which the group said will be used to “reduce GHG emissions from homes, commercial structures, and other buildings, enabling RMI to increase its current work with a coalition of partners in key states. The project will focus on making all U.S. buildings carbon-free by 2040 by advocating for all-electric new construction…”

Bezos also has provided $100 million grant to the National Resources Defense Council.  The Sierra Club is getting funds from Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, including $500 million to the Beyond Carbon project.  His article clearly shows that the narrative that the fossil and nuclear industries are providing massive money to funding disinformation while the noble NGOs struggle to find enough money to counter their claims is false. 

Bryce makes two final points:

The first is the hypocrisy of billionaires funding efforts to slash hydrocarbon use while they are consuming staggering amounts of hydrocarbons. According to a 2020 article in Vanity Fair, Michael Bloomberg owns eight houses in New York state alone, and “he also reportedly owns several properties in London, Florida, Colorado, and Bermuda.” Thus, Bloomberg may own a dozen houses. How many of those houses have gas stoves? I’ll make a wild guess and bet that it’s more than one. Oh, and according to Vanity Fair, while he was mayor of New York, Bloomberg “was known to spend weekends” at his house in Bermuda, “traveling back and forth on private jets.” And what is fueling those private jets? I’m guessing here, but it’s probably not organic quinoa.

The final bit of hypocrisy at work here is the regressive nature of the gas bans. Indeed, it’s clear that banning natural gas will mean higher costs for consumers. Last March, in the Federal Register, the Department of Energy published its annual estimate for residential energy costs. It found that on a per-BTU basis, electricity costs about 3.5 times more than natural gas. It also found that gas was, by far, the cheapest form of in-home energy, costing less than half as much as fuels like kerosene, propane, and heating oil.

That means that efforts to ban natural gas are, in practice, an energy tax on the poor and the middle class. During a recent interview, Jennifer Hernandez, a California-based lawyer who represents The 200, a coalition of Latino groups that has sued the state over its climate policies, told me that “Natural gas is the last source of in-home affordable energy. And these climate extremists can’t stand it.”

The Scoping Plan and All-Electric Homes

Governor Hochul has been pushing back on the notion that her Administration is coming after residential gas stoves.  The final thing I wanted to address was the Scoping Plan strategies for buildings particularly as they relate to electric appliances.  Table 11 (page 183) from the Scoping Plan Chapter on Buildings explicitly says adopt standards for zero-emission equipment.  Clearly that precludes gas stoves at some point.

James Hanley from the Empire Center wrote a great explanation of the truths of the Scoping Plan and the gas stove ban.  I reproduce his post in its entirety below:

Governor Hochul is pushing back against the fear that she’s coming after homeowners’ gas stoves. She insists that she’s not, and that she’d “like to deal in the truth here because a lot of that isn’t getting out.”  

Fair enough, so let’s deal with that truth. 

First, it’s true that Hochul didn’t recommend a gas stove ban in her 2023 State of the State address. While she did say she wants to “prohibit the sale of any new fossil fuel heating equipment by no later than 2030 for smaller buildings, and no later than 2035 for larger buildings,” she made no mention of prohibiting the sale of other fossil fuel appliances – stoves, hot water heaters, and clothes dryers. 

But the Governor’s silence on those appliances doesn’t settle the issue, and any suggestion that it does violates her urging that we “deal in the truth.” 

The truth is that the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan explicitly recommends banning sales of fossil-fuel fired hot water heaters in 2030 and fossil-fuel fired clothes dryers and stoves in 2035.  

The truth is that this Scoping Plan is the roadmap that the state legislature and all state agencies are supposed to follow to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). 

The truth is that the Governor or her successor(s) could follow up this year’s recommendations for action in future years, or the legislature could on its own. 

The truth is that the Department of Environmental Conservation is supposed to make rules implementing the CLCPA and could begin the regulatory rule-making process to ban these appliances without the Governor’s direct prompting. 

And the truth is that advocates of eliminating all fossil-fuel equipment from New York’s economy are not going to give up in despair just because the Governor didn’t – at least not yet – advocate every recommendation from the Scoping Plan. 

There’s another, less visible truth, as well. The goal of anti-fossil fuel activists is to continually reduce the use of natural gas until the pipeline distribution system becomes economically unsustainable. The Scoping Plan has a whole chapter discussing the “strategic downsizing” of the gas system. And while the goal of making it economically unsustainable is not made explicit, it is the foreseeable result of this downsizing strategy.  

The more homes that are forced or incentivized to switch to all-electric, the fewer gas customers there are left to cover the cost of maintaining this large distribution system. That will put cost pressure on those remaining gas customers, forcing more of them to switch to electricity. That puts further cost pressure on the remaining customers, and so on, until maintaining the system is no longer financially sustainable. 

With this long-range strategy, no explicit ban is even necessary.  

This will not affect propane stoves and appliances, of course, because they are not fed by a pipeline system. So they may get at least a temporary reprieve. But they are clearly targeted by the Scoping Plan and anti-fossil fuel activists as well.  

In brief, while it’s true that Hochul did not propose a ban on replacement fossil fuel-powered appliances in this year’s State of the State address, there is plenty of time between now and 2035 for her, a successor, or the DEC to act in conformity to the recommendations set out in the state’s CLCPA Scoping Plan. Even if they don’t act to enact an explicit ban, the Scoping Plan lays out of goal of diminishing the infrastructure for gas delivery.  

So don’t believe those who are now naysaying the idea of a gas appliance ban. Gas and propane users will need to organize effectively to make their voices heard if they are to prevent a forced transition to electric appliances. 

For the record the Scoping Plan Chapter on Buildings on page 190 states the following for residential applications:

These zero-emission standards across a range of equipment types should apply starting in the years noted below.

2030: Adopt zero-emission standards that prohibit replacements (at end of useful life) of residential-sized equipment used for the combustion of fossil fuels for heating and cooling and hot water. The standards beginning in 2030 should regulate equipment sized to typically serve single-family homes and low-rise residential buildings with up to 49 housing units.

2035: Adopt zero-emission standards that prohibit replacements (at end of useful life) of fossil fuel appliances for cooking and clothes drying.

Discussion

It has been said of the Scoping Plan that “The plan is a true masterpiece in how to hide what is important under an avalanche of words designed to make people never want to read it”.   I have spent most of last year trying to interpret what is important and can confirm that statement.  It is a political document intended to push the agenda of the Hochul Administration which is apparently to pander to the emotional needs of the constituency that believes that there is a climate crisis and an easy and painless solution.  There are enormous ignored tradeoffs associated with the complete transformation of the energy system that has been built up over one hundred years to one with zero-emissions in the 27 years to 2050.  Nothing is as simple as portrayed in the Plan or the politician’s descriptions of what is going to happen. 

The biggest problem with the Scoping Plan is that it does not address any of the many “what if?” questions.  Consider the electrification of home cooking appliances in this regard.  I believe that the overarching what if question related to all-electric homes is what if there is an ice storm.  During an extended wintertime blackout, a gas or propane stove can be used for cooking and for limited heating.  An all-electric home without electricity has nothing. Those differences could mean a life or death situation.

Richard Ellenbogen mentioned some transition issues in a letter:

Additionally, if you ban the sale of gas ranges, what happens if your existing gas range breaks.  Do you have to rewire your home to install a new stove and then buy all new pots to work with an inductive cook top?  What are you supposed to do for cooking while you wait a month for an electrician to install a service that can cost thousands of dollars depending on the existing service?  I have a breaker panel within thirty feet of the stove in my house and my house has an existing 400 amp service which is far larger than most will.  Even if I had to switch ranges, it would cost at least $2000 for the electrical work, excluding patching and painting of the holes needed to run the cable, just to run the service.  That is beyond the cost of the range.  Inductive cook tops, which are safer and use less energy, are three times the cost of a gas range, independent of the $400 set of pots and pans that will work with it.   If the existing service and breaker panels were inadequate, you can add $6000 to that figure, at least.  What if you live in a high-rise apartment and the board or building management doesn’t have the funds to rewire the entire building when your stove breaks?  The gas range in my daughter’s apartment needed replacing.  We had a new one installed for $750, delivered.  Not that we could have installed an electric range anyway because the electrical service wasn’t there, but an equivalent inductive range started at $2000 and went up from there.  $2400 with pots and pans.  That was two years ago.

Finally, the effect of the billionaire funding sources should not be ignored.  Anyone associated in any way with the fossil fuel industry is portrayed as a shill such that their work should be disregarded as propaganda.  Because funding sources are a legitimate concern, I maintain that it is important to understand the source of anyone’s funding.  To say that an organization that gets its funding from a donor with a specific agenda is not exactly the same situation as a fossil fuel shill is naïve.  In both cases it does not mean that the results are wrong but that they must stand up on their merits.  (By the way that is the reason that my posts typically include references.)  In this instance the claims of significant health impacts of gas stoves do not withstand scrutiny so the publicized studies do not warrant banning their future use.

Conclusion

The Hochul Administration’s war on natural gas and propane is irrational.  While methane does have a more potent impact on the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide in a molecular comparison, in the atmosphere methane does not have anywhere near the effect of carbon dioxide.  The atmospheric residence time is on the order of 12 years so methane does not build up in the atmosphere.  Furthermore, there is a large body of evidence showing that the claimed health impacts of methane combustion are weak.  Those fundamental flaws destroy the rationale to eliminate the use of natural gas and propane as planned in the Scoping Plan. 

On the other hand, there are significant benefits for the use of natural gas and propane. It is cheaper.  It is energy dense and can be transported easily so when it is combusted in a modern high efficiency appliance you get a lot of bang for the buck with relatively small impacts.  I suspect that many New Yorkers appreciate its dependability relative to electricity.  It allowed my family to survive two extended blackouts and I am not sure what we would have done without it.

I have found that New York’s emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and that the average increase in global emissions is greater than one half of one percent.  In other words, even if we eliminate our emissions, the increase in global emissions will replace our reductions in less than a year.  That does not mean we should not do something but it does mean that we can and should take the time to be sure that the things we mandate do not do more harm than good.  Until such time that the Hochul Administration is held accountable to answer the what if questions not addressed in the Scoping Plan it is likely that the transition to net-zero will do more harm than good.

The politicians who are downplaying the idea of a gas appliance ban are just kicking the can down the road to be somebody else’s problem.  Someway or somehow every building in New York State is going to be electrified to the maximum extent possible according to the Scoping Plan.  Gas and propane users must make their voices heard if they are to prevent a forced transition to electric appliances. Please contact your elected officials and tell them we must have full accountability before a mandated transition.

Guest Post: South Shore Long Island Whale Die Off

This is a guest post by Mark Stevens, a regular reader at this blog.  Mark is a retired science and technology teacher from Long Island.  I have been meaning to do a post on whales and the offshore wind industry so this was timely.

What’s Going On

The NY Post reported a 7th dead whale washed up on the Jersey shore. A humpback washed up on the Amagansett shore in December. Eight dead whales in two months?  Moreover, David Wojick recently reported that on January 18, 2023 there was a NOAA fisheries media teleconference that noted:

Since January 2016, NOAA Fisheries has been monitoring an Unusual Mortality Event for humpback whales with elevated strandings along the entire East Coast. There are currently 178 humpback whales included in the unusual mortality event.  Partial or full necropsy examinations were conducted on approximately half of the whales. Of the whales examined, about 40% had evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement. And to date, no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities.

The transcript makes for fascinating reading.  The Fisheries spokespersons went to great lengths to make the point that no whale mortalities have been directly linked to offshore wind development.  But there were notable conditions in those statements: “We do not have evidence that would support the connection between the survey work and these recent stranding events or any stranding events in the last several years.”  The other key condition is that the offshore wind development is doing survey work now and not construction.  The open question is whether or not offshore wind development could kill whales.

Bloomberg reports that planned wind projects off the New England coast threaten to harm the region’s dwindling population of endangered right whales, according to a US government marine scientist.  The warning from a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, obtained by Bloomberg under a Freedom of Information Act request, underscores the potential legal and environmental perils of offshore wind development along the coast.  Both initial construction of wind projects and decades of expected operation threaten to imperil right whales in southern New England waters, Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at NOAA’s National Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in a May 13 letter to Interior Department officials.  The department is weighing at least 10 proposals to install wind turbines in shallow Atlantic waters — projects key to fulfilling Biden’s 2030 goal.

The NOAA fisheries media teleconference claimed that survey work had not been linked to  whale strandings.  Surveys entail prolonged use of “machine gun sonar” emits an incredibly loud noise several times a second, often for hours at a time, as the ship slowly maps the sea floor.Mapping often takes many days to complete. A blaster can log hundreds of miles surveying a 10-by-10 mile site.

There are lots of ways this sonar blasting might cause whales to die. Simply fleeing the incredible noise could cause ship strikes or fish gear entanglements, the two leading causes of whale deaths. Or the whales could be deafened, increasing their chances of being struck by a ship later on. Direct bleeding injury, like getting their ears damaged, is another known risk, possibly leading to death from infection. So there can be a big time difference between blasting and death.  Sonar blasting in one place could easily lead to multiple whale deaths hundreds of miles away. If one of these blasters suddenly goes off near a group of whales they might go off in different directions, then slowly die.  It is not guaranteed that the dead whales will wash up on shore.

The NOAA fisheries media teleconference did not address construction impacts.  Sound travels 5 times faster in water and humpback whale sounds can travel thousands of miles according to Scientific American.  Pile driving the hundreds of enormous monopiles that hold up the turbine towers and blades will be far louder than the sonic blasters, especially with eight sites going at once. These construction sites range from Virginia to Massachusetts, with a concentration off New Jersey and Long Island.  This is shown to cause whale mortality.

The impetus for the The NOAA fisheries media teleconference was related to humpback whales strandings. However, some of the dead whales off New Jersey are endangered sperm whales. And there are the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whales throughout the area where offshore wind developments are planned.

Offshore Wind and the Climate Act

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) established a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Act requires that by 2030, 70% of electricity will be generated from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind and calls for the development of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035.

According to the New York State Offshore Wind Overview five projects have been procured: South Fork (132 MW), Empire Wind  1&2 (816 MW and 1,260 MW), Sunrise Wind (924 MW), and Beacon Wind https://www.beaconwind.com/about/(1,230 MW).  Unfortunately, the websites do not provide consistent information but the best guess number of turbines is 316 for a total of 4,362 MW.  At that rate, the 9,000 MW target will require 652 turbines with capacities between 11 and 15 MW.  On January 26, 2023 bids were due for another round of Climate Act offshore wind development.

Is it time to re-think offshore wind?

In order to do the offshore wind development site surveys an incidental harassment authorization is required.  The first  fact is that the huge 2016 jump in annual humpback mortality coincides with the huge jump in NOAA Incidental Harassment Authorizations.  The second fact is that this is just the start of whale harassment when hundreds of enormous monopiles are driven into the seabed for the massive deployment of offshore wind.  When construction gets into full swing there will be multiple pile drivers hammering away which can only result in impacts beyond incidental harassment.

In addition to the hundreds of bird strikes including bald eagles and others, wind turbines are massive killing machines here and around the world.  And the fact that they produce energy about ¼ of their nameplate capacity, cost hundreds of billions of dollars with huge taxpayer subsidies, are intermittent and still need fossil generation backup when the wind stops, require 10s of thousands of acres, have shortened life in the harsh marine environment; require more steel, concrete, copper, and materials than conventional generation of the same output; have monstrous fiberglass blades which are not recyclable, why are we blindly building them?  In addition, most wind projects are built by foreign companies. Do we want billions of ratepayer dollars and taxpayer subsidies going overseas?

According to a study by the Center For Management Analysis of CW Post/LIU, Dr. Matt Cordero determined repowering the Northport Power Station alone with state-of-the-art technology will produce 3500+ MW (more than Empire Wind), cut emissions over 90%, cost less than Empire, use fewer materials, use a fraction of the area that ALREADY EXISTS with a power station and in-place infrastructure, will have zero bird strikes and whale deaths, provide tax benefits for the community, will last decades longer and is on call 24/7 vs. intermittent (20% of the time) wind. 

Furthermore, intermittent wind and solar need massive battery backup and storage with huge costs, land requirements, massive pollution and greenhouse gas emissions for ore extraction and fabrication, and pose a deadly hazard to the region if it catches on an unextinguishable fire that emits deadly gasses.

Emission reduction by NYS will have an undetectable effect on global emissions, especially with China, Russia, India and others building dozens of coal power plants.  They will have reliable, life-saving, cost-effective electricity generation.  States with a large portion of renewables like California, Texas, North Carolina have high rates, power failures, rolling blackouts and a restricted weather operating range, and they IMPORT reliable power from other states, thus relocating emissions to surrounding states. Tesla and others left California for those reasons.  Are they really cutting emissions?

Finally,   the European Union, especially Germany and the UK have shuttered nuclear and fossil generation, relying on unreliable wind and solar sources.  Costs are so high, people must decide whether to buy electric heat or food, and  industries are leaving for other countries with cheaper and more reliable electricity, resulting in unemployment, poverty and economic collapse.

We currently have a reliable, cost-effective generation mix of fossil, wind, solar, hydro and nuclear.  New York State must seriously rethink replacing that generation with intermittent wind and solar.  Our survival and economy depend on it.

500 Posts

I wanted to mark the occasion of this, my 500th post, with a bit of retrospective since I started posting on this blog on January 11, 2017.  I did something similar on July 29, 2021 when I reached 300 posts.

The goal in my blog is to describe environmental issues from a pragmatic viewpoint.  Pragmatic environmentalism is all about balancing the risks and benefits of both sides of issues.  Unfortunately, public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided sound bites that must be rebutted by getting into details.  I have tried to show the complicated “other” side of environmental issues that gets overlooked during policy discussions. My background as a scientist and my earlier responsibilities to provide technical comments on new or revised regulations means that I tend to get bogged down in technical details that are, too be kind, wonky.  I have tried to tone down the technical aspects but have not been entirely successful.

Although my posts cover a wide range of topics that interest me there are two primary topics covered.  At the time of my 300th post, the Climate Act implementation process accounted for 109 articles.  Since then, 169 of the 200 latest published articles have addressed it for a total of 278 out of the 500 articles. I truly believe that the Climate Act “solution” will be far worse than the impacts of the problem they are trying to address and that does not consider the enormous costs.  I also have also written numerous articles on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).  This greenhouse gas control program is frequently described as a success but I have not been able to resist pointing out the flaws in that belief.

The final question I have asked myself is whether my obsession with this blog has been a success and to me success is having people read the blog.  According to the WordPress statistics, the views of the blog have been steadily increasing and there have been over 28,775 visitors.  There is an option for people to like a post and those have been going up.  Comments have been a bit of a disappointment especially because many of the comments are simply approvals of references to previous posts. 

So where are the people coming from to find the blog.  Very early on Judith Curry included this blog on her blogroll and a large percentage of the visitors visited since then.  Tom Shepstone started reposting my articles at his Natural Gas Now blog starting 12/28/18 and he has spread my message in many reposts.  My thanks to both of them for bringing visitors.

I have also done blog posts for Judith’s site and Watts Up With That and there usually is a flurry of visitors after those posts.  Francis Menton has posted blog articles on my articles about the CLCPA implementation process which get re-printed on Watts Up With That.  The comments on my work in those posts dwarf the responses on the blog itself and I am sure the total views were larger too.  Recently the editor of the GreenCarJournal contacted me and asked if I would like to share my perspective but that did not result in a spike of visitors.

Most gratifying is the occasional contact from people whose work I respect offering advice, encouragement, and praise.  I have also heard that there are industry people who follow the blog. 

Another measure of personal satisfaction are the contact emails.  I get pleasure whenever I get something like this:

We are soul brothers. My background is in the green industry – Horticulture, arboriculture, landscaping, etc. I got into the world of pesticides because I really was convinced all pesticides were bad. Guess what… they’re not. If you read the label and do as you’re supposed to…

I feel obligated to do our part to reduce pollution, and waste but there are many who don’t know or care to know what the trade-offs are. There are way too many pushing change without considering all the ramifications.


Keep preaching brother and if I can be of help at any point, give me a shout.

The blog statistics describe what visitors are reading.  It is not a good sign that nearly half the viewers look at the home page, about page or menu. It appears that many viewers see what the page is about and have no interest to continue on. The most popular article by far is one on the proposed rebuilding of Interstate 81 through Syracuse.  I presume that the title matched some trending internet search term and they ended up at the site. Early on I did a post on the Paris climate agreement costs that also got a lot of views. I suspect it is a source of frustration to the state that when searching for specific Climate Act items my posts generally turn up.

Finally, it is a source of amusement to me that people from all over the world have visited the site.  Someone has visited the site from every country that is highlighted in the following map.  I also have listed the number of visitors from the more popular countries below that.

In conclusion this has been a rewarding experience for me.  I devoutly believe that it is important to keep busy during retirement and this blog keeps me busy.  Just when I get discouraged and think about quitting, some insane proposal or article comes up that provides more than enough incentive to keep writing.  My thanks to everyone who has read my work.

No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Question

I recently got an email from Ronald Stein that raised an energy literacy issue that has been something I wanted to write about for some time.  New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act  (Climate Act) mandates a transition of the energy system to one with no fossil fuel infrastructure.  What about the 6,000 products that are manufactured using fossil fuel feedstocks?

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies.  Unfortunately, looking solely at fossil fuels as evil and not considering the enormous benefits of fossil fuel as an energy source and as the material used to manufacture so many items used by society is misplaced.   I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 275 articles about New York’s net-zero transition 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 post 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.

Energy Literacy

In this section I quote and paraphrase the material from the email.

Ronald Stein is a professional engineer, energy advisor, and national TV commentator, Ron has spent much of his life trying to get more people to truly understand energy – where it comes from, how it works, and what we can expect in the future. After starting off his career as a project manager for refineries and chemical plants, Ron later did a stint at Universal Studios where he oversaw the building of the Jaws ride. Eventually, he would start his own company, PTS Advance, which partners with engineering firms and refineries to augment their core staff when excess needs arise. The family-owned business now has locations across the country, with over 1000 contractors staffing various energy infrastructure projects.

His email explained:

Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from weather dependent breezes and sunshine. For the 8 billion on this planet, wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture any of the 6,000 products in our daily lives, nor any of the fuels for ships, planes, militaries, and space programs.

It went on to provide a few takeaways on energy literacy, i.e., the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about:

The potential for nuclear fusion for unlimited zero-emission electricity is exciting. It has the potential, in the decades ahead, to wean the world from coal and natural gas for electricity generation.

Facing reality, fusion, like wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro, ONLY generate electricity. None can manufacture any products, or fuels for transportation infrastructures needed by the 8 billion on this planet.

On the other hand, we have crude oil that is never used for generating electricity, AND is virtually useless until its manufactured into usable products via the 700 refineries around the world.

Today, the world’s 8 billion are dependent on more than 6,000 products made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, and the 50,000-merchant ships and 50,000 jets, and militaries, and space programs are based on the fuels manufactured from crude oil.

We may have long-range plans to generate electricity from wind, solar, and nuclear fusion, but no plans to replace crude oil that is manufactured into everything in our daily lives.

Energy literacy will enhance one’s comprehension that the cost of energy affects everything, from the food we eat, the clothes we wear, transportation, communications, housing, healthcare, and the leisurely living made possible by energy.

The world needs to comprehend that energy is more than intermittent electricity from wind and solar. Ever since the discovery of the versatility of products available from petroleum derivatives, and the beginning of manufacturing and assembly of cars, truck, airplanes, and military equipment, the world has had almost 200 years to develop clones or generics to replace the crude oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products we use such as: medications, electronics, communications, tires, asphalt, and fertilizers.

The social needs of our materialistic societies are most likely going to remain for continuous, uninterruptable, and reliable electricity from coal, natural gas, or nuclear electricity generation backup, and for all those chemicals derivatives that get manufactured out of crude oil, that makes everything else that’s part of our daily lifestyles and economies.

The purpose of the email was to announce a podcast posted January 14, 2023 at Energy Media about the elephant in the room, the products manufactured from fossil fuels that built the world from 1 to 8 billion in less than 200 years, beginning right after the discovery of oil.  Ron explains:

There’s no doubt about it, our entire modern society – from medication to food to infrastructure and beyond – all was made possible thanks to the discovery of oil. When talking about the energy transition, Ron cautions dropping oil and gas before reliable alternatives are readily available. To him, that’s like “jumping out of a plane without a parachute.”

For more, check out Ron’s interview with The Epoch Times  for a video that has already been viewed more than 200,000 times! “The 35-minute YouTube video is a conversation about the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about: the lack of energy literacy in the bizarre California energy policies.”  The emphasis on the video is on California’s policies.  It is entirely relevant to New York’s Climate Act.

Climate Act Implications Conclusion

One of the talking points of proponents of the Climate Act is that many clean energy jobs will be created.  Stein’s work makes the point that the clean energy jobs are only associated with making electricity.  In addition, most of the clean energy jobs are construction jobs and not associated with operating the generating resources.  New York’s over-riding emphasis on reducing GHG emissions means that fossil fuels that can be used to make electricity but also provide fuel for heating and transportation and support manufacturing will be prohibited.  I am pretty sure that is going to lead to a net loss of jobs.

The other relevant point is that the Climate Act fails to consider any positive impacts of fossil fuels.  Eliminating fossil fuel infrastructure in the state means that no manufacturing that uses fossil fuels as feed stock will be welcome in the state.  I also find it hypocritical that there is no backup plan for the replacing fossil fuel feedstocks used to make the products in the following figure.

Stein makes the important point that today’s society requires not only reliable electricity but all the chemicals derivatives that get manufactured out of crude oil and natural gas.  Failure to consider the value of 6,000 products that are manufactured using fossil fuel feedstocks under values fossil fuel benefits to society in the Climate Act.