Category: Climate Act

Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy Petition

On January 6, 2026 the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy filed a petition with the Public Service Commission (PSC) requesting that “the Commission act expeditiously to hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law § 66-p (4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”  Last August I described a filing and supporting documentation that I prepared with Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (Independent Intervenors) submitted to the same PSC Proceeding (Case 22-M-0149).  Our filing made a similar argument.  This article compares the filings.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. 

Background

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and has two electric sector targets: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

There is a fundamental Climate Act implementation issue.  Clearly there are bounds on what New York State ratepayers can afford and there are limits related to reliability risks for a system reliant on weather-dependent resources.  The problem is that there are no criteria for acceptable bounds and New York energy policy has not openly reassessed where we stand relative to acceptable affordability and reliability risk.

Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy

According to their petition the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy (Coalition) is “a diverse coalition consisting generally of associations, chambers of commerce and other groups representing various businesses, industries, manufacturers and constituencies from across the state, as well as two members of the state’s Climate Action Council”. Clearly, they have a vested interest in affordability because it affects their competitiveness.  Coalition members include:

  • Buffalo Niagara Builders Association
  • Buffalo Niagara Manufacturing Alliance
  • Buffalo Niagara Partnership
  • Builders Exchange of the Southern Tier
  • Business Council of Westchester
  • Capitol Region Chamber of Commerce
  • Center for Economic Growth
  • Commercial Real Estate Development Association – Upstate Chapter
  • Construction Exchange of Buffalo and Western New York
  • Engineers Labor Employer Cooperative 825
  • Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce
  • Greater Rochester Association of REALTORS
  • Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce
  • Manufacturers Alliance of New York
  • Manufacturers Association of Central New York
  • Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier
  • Multiple Intervenors – An unincorporated association of approximately 55 large industrial, commercial, and institutional energy consumers with manufacturing and other facilities located throughout New York State
  • National Federation of Independent Businesses
  • New York State Association of Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors
  • New York State Builders Association
  • New York State Economic Development Council
  • Niagara USA Chamber of Commerce
  • North Country Chamber of Commerce
  • Northeastern Retail Lumber Association
  • Northeast Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association
  • Power for Economic Prosperity – An active coalition of manufacturing companies that depend on low-cost hydropower from the New York Power Authority in order to maintain their operations in the Buffalo/Niagara Region.
  • Rochester Technology and Manufacturing Association
  • The Business Council of New York State – The leading business organization in New York State, representing the interests of large and small firms throughout the state. Its membership is made up of approximately 3,500 member companies, local chambers of commerce and professional and trade associations.
  • The Council of Industry, Manufacturers Association of the Hudson Valley
  • The Manufacturers Alliance of New York
  • Western New York Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Contractors
  • Also included in the Coalition are Donna L. DeCarolis and Dennis W. Elsenbeck, both members of the state’s Climate Action Council established by the CLCPA. 

The Coalition petition provides a description of each of its members

Independent Intervenor Filing

For comparison purposes I will describe the Independent Intervenor filing submitted on August 12, 2025, first.  My first post described our main argument and the second post described the supporting exhibits.  In brief, Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p (4) states: “The commission may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  We argued the hearing was necessary because of the significant increase in arrears threshold has been exceeded.

Independent Intervenors – Affordability 

Exhibit 3 – Affordability-Focused Recommendations documents references to affordability and reliability recommendations in the New York Department of Public Service (DPS) Document and Matter Management (DMM) System.  Rather than wading through the system I acknowledge the use of Perplexity (https://www.perplexity.ai/) to generate summaries and references included in the document.

The Perplexity summary provided the following key takeaway:

Since 2022, at least six concrete safeguards have been proposed in the New York Department of Public Service (DPS) record to keep the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act affordable for households and businesses. They call for (1) rigorous public cost reporting, (2) objective “safety-valve” triggers under Public Service Law §66-p(4), (3) systematic pursuit of alternative funding, (4) expansion of low-income bill-protection programs, (5) transparent data dashboards, and (6) stricter benefit-cost and rate-design standards.

In my opinion, these safeguards haven’t been implemented well enough to ensure affordability.  There has been no DPS staff response to any of the calls to develop affordability triggers.

Independent Intervenors – Reliability

The biggest unresolved reliability risk associated with Climate Act implementation is addressed in Case 15-E-0302 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard.  Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. 

Two exhibits addressed these reliability concerns.  To adequately address the amount of DEFR required it is necessary to determine how much is needed. Exhibit 4 – Resource Gap Characterization describes the challenges of defining the frequency, duration, and intensity of low wind and solar resource availability (known as dark doldrums) events.  One fundamental flaw in the Climate Act is the mistaken belief by the authors of the law that existing wind, solar, and energy storage resources would be sufficient and that no new technology would be required.  Exhibit 5 – Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources explains that this presumption is not correct. There is a need for a resource that is not currently commercially available.  This reliance on unknown solutions risks investments in false solutions and poses significant reliability risks. 

Coalition Filing

The Coalition petition states:

The Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, a diverse coalition consisting generally of associations, chambers of commerce and other groups representing various businesses, industries, manufacturers and constituencies from across the state, as well as two members of the state’s Climate Action Council (hereinafter referred to as the “Coalition”), hereby petitions the New York State Public Service Commission to hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law § 66-p (4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

The preceding statement includes a footnote referencing the Independent Intervenor filing and another regulatory action that argued a heating was appropriate.  The Coalition lays out the basic argument:

 This Petition seeks Commission action authorized by the CLCPA. Recent evidence suggests that the Renewable Energy Program, and its associated renewable energy targets, may impede the provision of safe and adequate electric service and upset the necessary balance of reliable, economic and sustainable energy in New York State. This evidence justifies commencement of the hearing process in PSL § 66-p (4), which will allow the Commission to determine whether the temporary suspension or modification of the Renewable Energy Program obligations is necessary to ensure the continued provision of safe and adequate electric service. Further, the Coalition believes that any hearing held pursuant to PSL § 66-p (4) should examine the relationship between Renewable Energy Program costs and customer arrears.

The Executive Summary provides an excellent overview of the status of Climate Act implementation.

The CLCPA set extraordinarily ambitious targets for renewable energy generation in New York State, requiring that by 2030, 70% of statewide electricity generation be from renewable energy systems and that by 2040, the electric grid be zero emissions. Recent data from the Commission demonstrates that New York will not achieve – or even come close to achieving – the 70% target by 2030. In addition, recent developments at the federal level impacting clean energy are likely to have a negative impact on renewable energy in the near term. With respect to the target of zero emissions by 2040, the necessary emission-free generation resources are not currently available at commercial scale. The inability of New York to develop the amount of renewable energy generation necessary to meet the 70% target by 2030, the increasing retirement of aging fossil-fuel generators due to the CLCPA, and the uncertainty surrounding the development of resources necessary to meet the zero emissions target by 2040, presents a reliability concern.

This concern is exacerbated by the fact that it may take more than two times the amount of certain forms of renewable generation to make up for the loss of one megawatt of fossil-fuel generation, and by expected increases in electric demand driven by the combination of new large loads and electrification.

Pursuant to the PSL, the Commission is required to ensure the provision of “safe and adequate” electric service. Renewable energy development has not kept pace with generator retirements, which has resulted in declining reliability margins across New York, jeopardizing electric reliability and safe and adequate service. In recognition that the Renewable Energy Program might negatively impact electric reliability, the CLCPA includes a safeguard that allows the Commission to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations of the program, after a hearing, if it makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service. Given recent evidence regarding delayed renewable energy generation and risks to reliability, the Commission should hold a hearing pursuant to PSL § 66-p (4) to determine whether safe and adequate electric service in New York is impeded by the Renewable Energy Program and, if so, to appropriately modify or suspend the program’s obligations.

Discussion

Both filings argue that the PSC should convene a hearing to determine whether it is appropriate to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations of the Climate Act.  The Independent Intervenors argued that there was an explicit requirement for the hearing because the customers in arrears threshold has been exceeded.  The Coalition makes a persuasive argument that there are sufficient observed threats to reliability that a hearing is necessary to ensure safe and adequate service.

The other difference is that the Independent Intervenors represent the views of four individuals whose credibility lies in our technical expertise. The Coalition consists primarily of associations, chambers of commerce and other groups representing various businesses, industries, manufacturers and constituencies from across the state whose credibility is based on its political and economic clout. 

Hopefully, the Coalition filing for a hearing will engender a response from the PSC.  There has been no hint of a response to the Independent Intervenor filing.  Perhaps the Coalition represents too big a constituency to ignore.

Some may say that the Coalition position is economically self-interested and therefore should be discounted.  They could also argue that the Independent Intervenors are not qualified to speak.  I think I can speak for both parties when I say we believe our concerns have never been openly discussed and addressed by the Hochul Administration.  All we want is the chance to make our case for the need to define affordability and reliability metrics that ensure safe, affordable, and adequate service.

Conclusion

I am encouraged that there is another group making similar arguments that the time has come to convene a hearing.  All my attempts have failed but maybe the Coalition will succeed in getting the PSC to convene a hearing.

Shortcomings of RGGI Caps and GHG Emissions Reporting in the Electric Sector

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a market-based program to reduce CO2 emissions from electric generating units.  On July 3, 2025, RGGI announced that results of the Third Program Review.  On December 10, 2025 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced amendments to their CO2 Budget Trading Program that would change the rules to be consistent with the RGGI Third Program Review.  This post describes two shortcomings of New York’s GHG emission reduction regulations for the electric sector. 

Dealing with the RGGI regulatory and political landscapes is challenging enough that affected entities seldom see value in speaking out about fundamental issues associated with the program.  I have been involved in the RGGI program process since its inception and have no such restrictions when writing about the details of the RGGI program.  I have worked on every cap-and-trade program affecting electric generating facilities in New York including RGGI, the Acid Rain Program, and several Nitrogen Oxide programs, since the inception of those programs. I also participated in RGGI Auction 41 successfully winning allowances and holding them for several years.   The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

6 NYCRR Part 242 – CO2 Budget Trading Program

The DEC Recently Proposed Regulations web page included the following description (accessed on 1/1/26) of the rulemaking:

The proposed amendments to 6 NYCRR Part 242 CO2 Budget Trading Program would reduce the annual budget of CO2 allowances through 2037, add a second tier of Cost Containment allowances, remove the emissions containment reserve, remove offset projects, remove eligible biomass provisions, increase the minimum reserve price, reduce the number of allowances set-aside for long term contracts and voluntary renewable energy purchases while still maintaining enough allowances to accommodate anticipated demand, and make other improvements and clarifications to the program. The Department is also proposing complementary amendments to listings of related reference material in 6 NYCRR Part 200 General Provisions. Additionally, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is proposing to amend 21 NYCRR Part 507 CO2 Allowance Auction Program to align with the proposed amendments to 6 NYCRR Part 242. Comments on these proposed revisions must be received by February 17, 2026.

This web page also includes the following links to elements of the regulatory package:

I am only going to address emissions contradictions and the proposed reduction in the annual budget of CO2 allowances through 2037 in this post.  Eventually I will describe my comments on the proposed amendments.

NYS Electric Utility Emissions

In a recent post I described the emission reduction performance of RGGI.  In that post I compared New York’s electric generating unit emissions during RGGI to historical information using data from the Clean Air Markets Program Data (CAMPD) database.  For consistency across the entire period, I used the CO2 emissions from all programs in CAMPD.  Table 1 shows that there is an inconsequential difference between that total and emissions from just units affected by RGGI.  RGGI does not include some units that are report for NOx Budget programs and RGGI has a size limitation that excluded small units over much of the program.

Table 1: Comparison of New York State EPA CAMPD CO2 Emissions (Short Tons) for All Programs and RGGI Program

Climate Act Emissions

One point that I want to make in this post is that the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) emissions accounting methodology complicates assessment of the RGGI emission cap and appears to be biased.  A recent post described the latest New York State (NYS) GHG emission inventory report based on Climate Act methodology.  The Climate Act authors mandated that emissions must use a Global Warming Potential (GWP) accounting over 20 years instead of the 100 year accounting used in RGGI.

Emission Inventory Table ES.2 in the Summary Report presents emissions for different sectors and different greenhouse gases.  There are four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sectors and there are four  sectoral reports for energy, industrial processes and product use, agriculture, forestry and land use, and waste.  The table also includes United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) totals that use the “conventional accounting used by other governments, applies a 100-year GWP, omits biogenic CO2, and does not include emissions outside of New York State.” 

For this analysis, Table 2 extracts relevant information for the IPCC Electric Energy Sector from Table ES.2.  The table compares the CLCPA emissions that use GWP-20, includes other GHG gases, and adds non-RGGI stack emissions as well as three additional sources: imported electricity, transmission & distribution, and upstream fuel extraction.  There are two columns added that compare UNFCCC and CLCPA emission.  In 2023, the UNFCC emissions were 26.1 million metric tons (MMT) and the CLCPA emissions were 49.02 MMT.  The table clearly shows that increased emissions were the result of adding CH4 and N2O (0.18 MMT), Electricity T&D (0.12 MMT) and Imported Electricity (9.54 MMT).  The table does not explicitly address upstream fuel extraction emissions, but I estimated that they were 13.09 MMT.  That is approximately half the direct emissions total.

Table 2: ES.2: 2023 New York State GHG Energy Sector Emissions (mmtCO2e GWP20), by IPCC Sector with Comparison of CLCPA and UNFCCC Electric Power Emissions

In my opinion, the claim that fuel extraction emissions are around 50% of the direct stack emissions is extraordinary.  Table ES.2 does not explicitly list the fuel extraction component of electric power emissions.  I assumed that it would be equal to the percentage of electric power emissions to the total fuel combustion emissions.   That seems like a reasonable assumption, but the result is unrealistic. 

Projected Emissions and the RGGI Proposed Cap

The New York State Energy Plan provides the “official” emissions projections for the electric sector.  I have provided background information on my Energy Plan page.  For our purposes the thing to remember is that the Plan projects emissions for five different scenarios.  Table 3 lists projections starting in 2027 that range from 49.3 to 40.3 MMT.  The 2023 observed emissions from RGGI sources was 28.7 MMT.  Table 3 lists the proposed RGGI cap or limit on tons of CO2 permitted.  There is a big difference between the Pathways Analysis projection and the RGGI numbers.  I believe that those differences are explained by the factors affecting emissions in Table 2.

Table 3: Comparison of RGGI Proposed Part 242 Cap and State Energy Plan Pathways Analysis Electric Power Scenario Projections

In my review of the RGGI Third Program Review I explained that the RGGI states determined the proposed cap levels based on state laws like the Climate Act that mandate zero emissions by 2040.  The observed reduction trajectory simply is an extrapolation to zero.  On the other hand, the State Energy Plan modeling represents a fundamental change in official New York projection methodology.  Previously, projections assumed that emissions would get to zero no matter what.  The State Energy Plan is consistent with the estimates of the New York independent System Operator (NYISO) that do not assume zero emissions by 2040.  These estimates clearly show that the RGGI emission caps are unrealistic.

Discussion

This post describes two shortcomings of this component of New York’s GHG emission reduction regulations for the electric sector.  The emissions estimates using the Climate Act accounting fails a common-sense plausibility check.  There is simply no way that New York electric generating units affected by RGGI will be able to achieve the proposed revisions to Part 242.

I do not think that the emissions estimates for the electric sector are credible. These are indirect estimates of emissions using emission factors that project emissions based on fuel use and activity factors.  Emission factor estimates are fundamentally mass balance calculations.  I do not think it is reasonable to assume that extracting natural gas and oil would produce emissions equal to half the direct emissions.  Note that CH4 is the largest component pollutant and, given New York’s irrational obsession with it, that makes me suspect the emission factors used for methane are biased high. 

The 2025 GHG Energy Sectoral Report notes that “DEC has conducted a recalculation of upstream, out-of-state emissions from natural gas imports using a recently released updated methodology” which suggests that they recognize that there is an issue.  The report also states that “DEC continues to welcome feedback on this and any part of the current analysis.”   Given that they blew off my comments about the methane methodology that I submitted in October 2020, I believe that it this is only a gesture and while comments are welcomed making changes based on comments is not on the table.

The second issue discussed is the gap between the RGGI allowance cap trajectory and the State Energy Plan.  It is just not reasonable to think that electric generating unit emissions will be able to achieve those caps in that timeframe.  The RGGI cap on emissions essentially rations energy use because if there are insufficient permits to emit (aka allowances) affected generating units have no other options to reduce emissions so they can only shutdown to comply with the law.  If replacement zero emissions generating resources are unavailable, then the electric grid would be placed in an artificial energy shortage that would lead to blackouts.  This point will be emphasized  when I comment on the DEC Part 242 amendments.

Conclusion

This is my first post of 2026.  Sadly, there is nothing new here.  New York State agencies generate analyses and propose regulations that comply with the Climate Act narrative without considering the real world.  Reality bats last.  Is 2026 the last inning?

RGGI Cap-and-Invest Emission Reduction Performance in New York

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a market-based program to reduce emissions from electric generating units.  On December 18, 2025, New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) hosted a meeting (agenda, recording) to present proposed changes to the RGGI Operating Plan Amendment (“Amendment”) for 2026.  This post describes the trend of New York’s RGGI emissions that I will use as part of my comments on the draft Amendment.

I have been involved in the RGGI program process since it was first proposed prior to 2008.  I blog about the details of the RGGI program because very few provide any criticisms of the program.   There is no upside for companies affected by RGGI to disparage the program because it has become a sacred cow initiative that is treated as beyond criticism by agencies and activists. I have extensive experience with market-based programs because I have worked on analysis, implementation, and evaluation of every  program affecting electric generating facilities in New York including RGGI and several Nitrogen Oxide programs.  The opinions expressed in these comments do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

RGGI is a market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) (Factsheet). It has been a cooperative effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector since 2008.  New Jersey was in at the beginning, dropped out for years, and re-joined in 2020. Virginia joined in 2021 but has since withdrawn and Pennsylvania recently withdrew completely.

According to a RGGI website:

The RGGI states issue CO2 allowances that are distributed almost entirely through regional auctions, resulting in proceeds for reinvestment in strategic energy and consumer programs.

Proceeds were invested in programs including energy efficiency, clean and renewable energy, beneficial electrification, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change adaptation, and direct bill assistance. Energy efficiency continued to receive the largest share of investments.

Proponents of RGGI claim the program has “successfully lowered CO2 emissions intensity and absolute emissions”.  This post will show that this conclusion is not reflected in the New York emissions trends.  In a subsequent post I will explain that ignoring the lessons of the observed reductions is leading to investment strategy decisions in the NY RGGI Operating Plan that will eventually cause serious problems.  Proposed investment descriptions include beneficial electrification, climate change adaptation, and direct bill assistance that do not reduce electric sector emissions.

New York RGGI Emissions

This analysis of annual New York CO2 emissions from electric generating units uses data from the EPA Clean Air Markets Program Data (CAMPD) database.  I downloaded unit-level data for all pollution control programs so that I can compare emissions from the start of RGGI in 2009 to a baseline before the program started.  The data include a record describing the primary fuel type These records are not standardized and include more categories than I need so I consolidated the labels as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Consolidated Primary Fuel Type Labels

Table 2 lists the annual emissions since 2000 through 2024.  Claims that the program has “successfully lowered CO2 emissions intensity and absolute emissions” are debunked in the following table and figure.   This table lists mass CO2 emissions by fuel type along with the emission rate or intensity.  Both absolute and emissions intensity do go down.

Table 2: New York Clean Air Markets Program Data Emissions Data for All Regulatory Programs

Figure 1 clearly shows the role of fuel switching away from coal and oil and the increasing use of natural gas.  I believe that the fuel price differential for natural gas use was much greater than the added cost of RGGI allowances and thus the main driver of the observed reductions is economic fuel switching.   This figure labels the 2006 to 2008 period that I use as the baseline for “before RGGI”, the start of RGGI, and when the possibility of additional fuel switching became impossible.  If RGGI were the primary driver of emission reductions, then emission reductions would have continued to decrease after the lowest emissions in 2019, and they certainly would not have been increasing since then.  The other big takeaway from this is that 2019 was the year that the inane premature retirement of the Indian Point nuclear station began.  New York has not managed to replace generation from this zero emissions resource as emissions continue to rise.

Figure 1: New York Clean Air Markets Program Data Emissions Trend by Fuel Type

Table 3 lists the emissions reductions since the start of the RGGI program.  I included this because it shows that in 2024 CO2 emissions since the start of RGGI are 33% lower.  Also note that in 2019 emissions were 47% lower.  I included the gross load to show that gross load also decreased.  In theory this could represent displacement of fossil fired units because of RGGI investments. In my next post I will update last year’s analysis of the effect of RGGI investments that shows that is not the reason.  NYSERDA program funding status reports estimate the emission savings from their program investments.  Last year I showed that the total cumulative annual emission savings due to NYSERDA program investments through the end of 2023 that directly or indirectly affect electric generating source emissions  is 1,405,513 tons.  That means that emissions from RGGI sources in New York would have been only 3% higher if the NYSERDA program investments did not occur.  I do not expect that this will change using the 2024 data.

Table 3: New York RGGI Emissions and Gross Load Reductions Since Start of RGGI

Discussion

I have two overarching concerns about the implications of RGGI emission reduction performance.  Firstly, the RGGI cap on emissions essentially rations energy use because if there are insufficient permits to emit (aka allowances) affected generating units have no other options to reduce emissions so they can only shutdown to comply with the law.  If replacement zero emissions generating resources are unavailable, then the electric grid would be placed in an artificial energy shortage that would lead to blackouts.  Therefore, in my comments on the NYSERDA operating plan I will argue that programs that lead to emission reductions should be prioritized to prevent energy rationing.

My second concern is that idolatry of the RGGI as a program that should be replicated because of its success was a primary driver of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act’s Scoping Plan recommendation for an economy wide cap-and-invest program.  In my last update on the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) program I explained that there is potential for a judge to order that NYCI be implemented.  These data show that this magical solution will not work as advertised.

Finally, I want to put the historical and projected generating load in perspective relative to RGGI and NYCI.  The New York Independent System Operator(NYISO) annual load and capacity data report universally known as the “Gold Book” provides input for a couple of relevant graphs in NYISO 2025 Gold Book Forecast Graphs.

Figure 2 lists historical and weather normalized annual loads from 2015 to 2024.  These observed loads closely track the RGGI electric generating unit loads.  The scary issue is that NYISO is projecting significant increases in load going forward without the addition of large load facilities.  The load increases are associated with electrification strategies associated with the Climate Act.

Figure 2: NYISO Historical New York Control Area (NYCA) Annual Energy and 10-Year Forecasts (GWh)

Figure 3 also lists historical and weather normalized annual loads from 2015 to 2024 but includes “additional load growth from large loads”.  This increases the 2035 baseline around 17,000 GWh or another 10%.  This would make it all the more difficult to provide sufficient zero-emission generating resources to comply with the Climate Act mandate to have a 100% zero-emission electric grid by 2040.

Figure 3: NYISO Historical New York Control Area (NYCA) Annual Energy and 10-Year Forecasts (GWh)

Conclusion

This analysis clearly shows that the primary driver of observed emission reductions from RGGI electric generating units was fuel switching.  These results are consistent with similar analyses that I have prepared regarding RGGI emission reductions.  I will incorporate these findings in my comments on the 2026 RGGI Operating Plan Amendment stating that this observations should be reflected in the Operating Plan just like I have for the last several years.  I fully expect that NYSERDA will ignore my comments again and will continue to make investments to appease political constituencies.  Political interference in energy policy will eventually fail, it is only a matter of time.

Climate Change Perceptions

I have been meaning to write this post for a long time because I think there is an important distinction about climate change that could potentially be affected by reducing GHG emissions that is not generally recognized.  I have postponed this article because I did not want to try to explain the driving factor for my concern – ocean and atmospheric oscillations.  Andy May is a petrophysicist who has a climate blog that recently published 14 articles about atmospheric oscillations that I have used in this post.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  Moreover, I take the heretical position that our understanding of the causes of climate change are not understood well enough to support the idea that reducing GHG emissions represents sound policy.  I have been a practicing meteorologist for nearly 50 years, was a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and have B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

Weather and climate are often confused.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service “Weather reflects short-term conditions of the atmosphere while climate is the average daily weather for an extended period of time at a certain location.”  They go on to say: “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” 

The standard climatological average is 30 years.  It is important to understand that programs like the Climate Act’s GHG emission reduction targets are intended to reduce global warming over longer time scales than 30 years.  Statements suggesting that even if aggressive mitigation reduces greenhouse gases  that temperature will still increase for 20-30 years due to inertia in the climate system are based on the premise that CO2 is the control knob for the climate.

I often hear and have noticed myself that “winters aren’t what they used to be” and that leaves are turning color later than the past.  The goal of this article is to show that there are climatic oscillations with time periods greater than 30 years that are likely causing these perceived examples of climate change.  However, I will show there is no connection between those observations and the value of the Climate Act as a potential reason to reduce GHG emissions in hopes of changing those observations.

Climate Oscillation Analysis

Earlier this year Andy May published 14 articles about climate oscillations in the oceans and atmosphere. I think his analysis is notable because it is data driven.  The basis of his analysis is articles describing observed oceanic and atmospheric changes, not modeled simulations.  Given the complexity of the interactions between oceans and the atmosphere and the poor understanding of their relationships, assuming that modeled simulations are credible is not reasonable. 

His articles provide compelling evidence that each of the 14 oscillations is natural.  I believe his work provides sufficient evidence proving that “each oscillation is natural and has been around since the pre-industrial period, or even earlier, and thus is natural and not random variability.”  This is important relative to claims that reducing the GHG emissions will affect global temperatures. 

May’s work consists of a statistical regression analysis of observed features in the oceans and atmospheres that have occurred over many years.  He uses the HadCRUT5  global average temperature data set used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to track global warming in his analyses.  May offers the following caveat about his work.

Finally, this is a regression analysis to predict HadCRUT5 with climate oscillations to try and detect the climate oscillations that best correlate to “global warming.” This is not a climate model, it is not an attempt to make a climate model, it is only a statistical exercise. Statistics and statistical analysis are not proof of anything, it isn’t even scientific analysis, they are just useful tools to sort through datasets. Just as AI is not intelligent, statistics is not science, both are useful tools.

Climate Oscillations

May’s work consisted of the following posts:

In Climate Oscillations 1: The Regression May provides the following table that lists the oceanic and atmospheric oscillations considered in his series of articles.  For each of these oscillations he did a statistical regression analysis.  The first seven of the oscillations correlated with the GMST measured using HadCRUT5.  May points out that “HadCRUT5 is not representative of global climate, it is just an average temperature”.  Nonetheless, it is the primary climate change parameter.  The rationale for the Climate Act uses climate change and global warming interchangeably.

May Table 1. A list of the climate oscillations discussed and analyzed in this series. The first eight oscillations are listed in order of importance in modeling HadCRUT5, the remaining six did not add to the model. The links in this table will not work, to see the list in a spreadsheet with working links, download it here.

I am not going to review each post in this article but will describe several of the oscillations. If you want to review the articles and are content with a summary using Perplexity AI I did get a review of his work.    It notes:

The series begins with a foundational regression analysis that ranks fourteen major climate oscillations by their statistical correlation with HadCRUT5 global surface temperature. May’s analysis reveals that the top three oscillations—the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP) area, and Southern Annular Mode (SAM)—together explain 77% of HadCRUT5 variability since 1950. This finding directly contradicts the IPCC’s characterization of these oscillations as unpredictable “internal variability” with minimal influence beyond a few years.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) has the most significant relationship with global mean surface temperature (GMST).  There are several definitions based on different measurements.  For example, Gray, et al. use detrended raw tree-ring measurements to demonstrate “a strong and regular 60-100 year variability in basin-wide (0-70°N) North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that has been persistent for the past five centuries.”

The general approach used by May is simple.  Figure 4 plots GMST using the HadCRUT 5 data and the AMO parameter using the HadSST 4.1 data.  It is obvious that the two parameters track well.  May used regression analysis to show the strength of the relationship. Note the variation in global temperature since 1850 shown in this graph.  The first challenge for proponents of the idea that CO2 is the driver of climate change is that it is acknowledged that it is only since 1950 that CO2 has affected global warming.  So, what happened in the past to cause the observed variations?   I do not think it is reasonable to claim that all the natural drivers that caused variations before 1950 stopped and global warming became entirely dependent upon CO2 since, but that is the argument used by Climate Act proponents.

May Figure 4. HadSST and HadCRUT detrended temperature anomalies plotted together. Both anomalies are from 1961-1990 originally but are from their respective linear least squares trends. This is updated from figure 2 in (May & Crok, 2024).

May points out:

The reason for the AMO SST 60-70-year pattern is unknown, but according to Gray et al. it extends back to 1567AD, so it is a natural oscillation of some kind. Some have speculated that it is a result of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic or a “combination of natural and anthropogenic forcing during the historical era.” (Mann, Steinman, & Miller, 2020). But while interesting these ideas are speculative. Further if the oscillation has existed since 1567, it seems unlikely that it is caused by human CO2 and aerosol emissions.

The AMO has the best correlation with GMST in all the statistical analyses.  Combined with two other oscillations –  Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP) area, and Southern Annular Mode (SAM) these three  explain 77% of HadCRUT5 variability since 1950.

The Western Hemisphere Warm Pool Area (WHWP) is an area of abnormally warm ocean that extends from the eastern North Pacific (west of Mexico, Central America, and Columbia) to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and well into the Atlantic during the WHWP peak in August and September.  Because this area is important to hurricane formation, the strength and extent of the warm pool is important.  May points out that the WHWP  combined with the Antarctic Oscillation or Southern Annular Mode and the AMO predict GMST well.  He concludes that “This suggests that The North Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere circulation patterns correlate very well with global climate trends, CO2 may fit in there somewhere, but it must share the spotlight with these natural oscillations.”

The Southern Annular Mode/Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) is defined as the difference between the zonal (meaning east-west or circumpolar) sea level air pressure between 40°S and 65°S.  This parameter has a powerful influence on global climate and can affect weather in the Northern Hemisphere (Lin, Yu, & Hall, 2025), in particular the Warm Arctic-Cold Eurasian weather pattern that causes a lot of extreme winter weather. The AAO also affects the Indian summer monsoon and other eastern Asia weather phenomena.

Synthesis

The final article in the series, Climate Oscillations 12: The Causes & Significance, addressed the claim by proponents of the Climate Act that “ocean and atmospheric oscillations are random internal variability, except for volcanic eruptions and human emissions, at climatic time scales.”  May explains:

This is a claim made by the IPCC when they renamed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) to the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) and the PDO to PDV, and so on. AR6 (IPCC, 2021) explicitly states that the AMO (or AMV) and PDO (or PDV) are “unpredictable on time scales longer than a few years” (IPCC, 2021, p. 197). Their main reason for stating this and concluding that these oscillations are not influenced by external “forcings,” other than a small influence from humans and volcanic eruptions, is that they cannot model these oscillations, with the possible exceptions of the NAM and SAM (IPCC, 2021, pp. 113-115). This is, of course, a circular argument since the IPCC models have never been validated by predicting future climate accurately, and they also make some fundamental assumptions that simply aren’t true.

This is a good point to remind readers that little fluctuations in incoming radiation have big impacts on the climate.  The Milankovitch theory is the most widely accepted cause of glaciation.  It states  that variations in earth’s orbit and tilt cause changes in the amount of sunlight that cause climate fluctuations strong enough to trigger continental glaciers. 

May’s analysis finds relationships between similarly small external variations that correlate with global surface temperatures.  Note however that proponents of CO2 as the control knob disregard all climate drivers but the greenhouse effect.    May explains:

Finally, oscillations are inconsistent with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions as a dominant forcing of climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions do not oscillate; recently they have only increased with time. So, we will examine the relationship between solar and orbital cycles and the climate oscillations. As Scafetta and Bianchini (2022) have noted, there are some very interesting correlations between solar activity and planetary orbits, and climate changes on Earth.

May’s final article describes multiple observed oscillations including a period of about ~64 years, ±5 years (Wyatt, et al., 2012), Nathan Mantua and colleagues (Mantua, et al., 1997) identified 20th century “climate shifts” which results in a major multidecadal climate oscillation of 22 to 30 years and there are shorter 2-, 5-, 5-, and 9-year observed oscillations.  Note that there also are other cycles that are longer than these.

The ~64 year oscillation is of particular interest.  Marcia Wyatt’s “stadium wave” hypothesis shows that a suite of global and regional climate indicators vary over roughly the same 64-year period.  Wyatt explains:

“Stadium wave” is an allusive term for a hypothesis of multidecadal climate variability. Sequential propagation of an “audience wave” from one section of sports fans to another in a sports arena – i.e. a “stadium wave” – is analogous to the premise of the climate stadium-wave hypothesis. It, too, involves sequential propagation of a signal. In the case of the climate stadium wave, propagation proceeds sequentially through ocean, ice, and atmospheric systems. Key to signal propagation is network, or collective behavior – a feature ubiquitous throughout natural and man-made systems, a product of time and self-organization.

I think of climate as a product primarily of the climate stadium wave cycle plus contributions from other oscillations.  May explains:

If we define “global climate change” as the observed changes in HadCRUT5 or BEST global mean surface temperature (GMST) as the IPCC does, then the oscillations that correlate best are the AMO and the global mean sea surface temperature (SST) as shown in figure 2. None of the other oscillations correlate well with GMST.

In figure 2, the gray curve is a 64-year cosine function. It fits the 20th century data but departs significantly around 2005 and before 1878. The early departure could be due to poor data, the 19th century temperature data is very bad, see figure 11 in (Kennedy, et al., 2011b & 2011). Data quality problems still exist today, but are much less of a factor and the departure after 2005 is likely real and could be caused by any combination of the of the two following factors:

  1. Human-emitted greenhouse gases.
  2. The full AMO/world SST/GMST period is longer and/or more complex than we can see with only 170 years of data.

It is probably a combination of the two. As discussed by Scafetta and Stefani, climate, orbital, and solar cycles are known to exist that are longer than 170 years. The fact that I had to detrend all the records shown in figure 2 testifies to that. It is also noteworthy that the ENSO ONI trend since 2005 is trending down; as shown in the last post. So is the current PDO trend. All the notable oscillations are not synchronized, teleconnections or not, climate change is not simple. The trends in figure 2 result from complex combinations of gravitational forces and teleconnections (Scafetta, 2010), (Ghil, et al., 2002), and (Stefani, et al., 2021).

Discussion

May gives a concise summary of the potential human influence that has never been considered by the State of New York:

Whether global warming is a problem or not is in dispute, but it is a fact that the world is warming, and some are concerned about it. What is the cause of the warming? Is it natural warming after the cold winters of the Little Ice Age? Is it caused by human emissions of CO2? Most of the natural ocean and atmospheric circulation oscillations examined in this post are not modeled properly (some say not modeled at all) in current global climate models (Eade, et al., 2022). The IPCC AR6 report admits that the AMO (they call it the “AMV”) signal in the CMIP6 climate models is very weak, specifically on page 506:

“However, there is low confidence in the estimated magnitude of the human influence. The limited level of confidence is primarily explained by difficulties in accurately evaluating model performance in simulating AMV.” (IPCC, 2021, p. 504)

In other words, the models that predict gloom and doom that are used as the rationale that we must reduce New York GHG emissions don’t accurately predict the oscillation that correlates best with global temperatures.  If you cannot model this relationship, then the likelihood that future temperature projections are accurate is zero.

In addition, NYSERDA presentations at meetings consistently attribute the latest extreme weather events to climate change.  Maybe someday I will explain why I think that is completely divorced from reality and only serves to support the narrative that there is an existential threat.  In the meantime Roger Pielke, Jr. recently eviscerated this line of reasoning and those that continually use it.  He points out that this approach is “counter to the terminology, frameworks, and assessments of the IPCC and the broad base of research on which the work of the IPCC is based upon.”  I strongly recommend his article as definitive proof that the Hochul Administration picks and chooses the “science” to fit their narrative.

Conclusion

The intent of this article was to explain why anecdotal “evidence” of climate change is no more than recognition that there are weather pattern cycles that currently show warming.  It does not mean that there is conclusive evidence that continued GHG emissions will inevitably increase global temperatures.  There is overwhelming evidence that the current warming cycle will eventually reverse.  This does not mean that GHG emissions are not a factor but does mean they are a tweak not the primary driver.  This combined with the fact that New York GHG emissions are so small relative to global emissions that we cannot meaningfully affect global emissions means that GHG emission reductions for the sake of the climate is a useless endeavor.

Failure of the Energy Plan Stakeholder Process

On December 16, 2025 the Energy Planning Board  approved the State Energy Plan. Despite all the talk about public participation the fact is that the stakeholder process was a failure.  It has no credibility because it did not publicly address all stakeholder comments.  At the start of the Draft Energy Plan comment period I published an article expressing my fear that this process would replicate the perfunctory treatment of stakeholder comments in the development of the Scoping Plan.  All my fears came true. 

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Energy Plan

The New York State Energy Plan is billed as a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”. According to the Energy Plan Process webpage:

In September 2009, a law was passed that statutorily establishes the State Energy Planning Board and calls on that Board to launch an energy planning process and to complete a State Energy Plan (opens in new window). The goal of the planning process is to map the state’s energy future by showing how the state can ensure adequate supplies of power, reduce demand through new technologies and energy efficiency, preserve the environment, reduce dependence on imported gas and oil, stimulate economic growth, and preserve the individual welfare of New York citizens and energy users. To support the development of the State Energy Plan, numerous white papers, forecasts, and policy documents are developed based on input from energy experts and concerned citizens. 

I have provided background information and a list of relevant articles including summaries of recent meetings on my Energy Plan page. 

State Energy Plan Stakeholder Process

This description of the process is based on the Summary for Policy Makers Public Input, Section 1.2.  In July 2025, the Energy Planning Board approved the release of the Draft Plan for public comment.  The public comment period ran from July 23, 2025, to October 6, 2025.   Nearly 15,000 written comments on the Draft Plan were submitted, with over 250 from organizations and the balance from individuals (80% of which were through 13 comment campaigns).  A “thematic summary of public comments” was discussed at the November 2025 meeting of the Energy Planning Board.  On December 16, 2025, the Board summarily approved the State Energy Plan.

The process is playacting.  The outcome was never in doubt.  Despite claims about the value of public engagement and input to inform the development of the State Energy Plan there is no record showing that all the input was considered.  On October 7th the Energy Plan comment website promised that “All comments will be posted on the State Energy Plan website as soon as practicable” but they were only posted immediately after the 16 December Planning Board meeting where the Plan was approved.  During the State Energy Planning Board meeting presentation on November 13 Karl Maas stated: “This presentation and its appendix, which includes comments on each plan chapter, will be posted after this meeting.”  I used Perplexity AI to search for the appendix and confirmed that my search of the Energy Plan website had not missed that this was posted.  Perplexity concluded: “The State Energy Planning Board failed to follow through on its commitment to publicly release the detailed comments appendix, despite the explicit promise made during the meeting. This lack of transparency undermines the credibility of the public comment process for the Draft State Energy Plan.”  The only record of the comments received was a list of comments searchable by “comment text, commenter name, group name, etc.”

The bottom line is that the Energy Planning Board members were never given a comprehensive summary of all the comments.  I believe that they were never told anything that negatively reflected on the Administration’s narrative that the Energy Plan represented a comprehensive roadmap to “build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”.

My Stakeholder Process Concerns

In early August I published an article stating that I was worried that the Hochul Administration would just go through the motions of using stakeholder input.  My primary concern was the need for a transparent and comprehensive stakeholder process.  I included two examples of issues that I had highlighted as problems in the Scoping Plan that were also present in the Energy Plan. 

I argued that a credible stakeholder process needs two components. The first is interactive meetings.  In this process NYSERDA read their findings from scripts and gave the Energy Planning Board the opportunity to ask questions but never took questions from the public.  During the public comment meetings, people were given two minutes to speak, no opportunity to ask questions, and NYSERDA staff at the meeting never asked questions.   If the State was serious about considering public input for the energy plan, then they would hold a series of meetings to cover specific technical topics that includes interactive sessions.

The second component of a credible process is a public response to all the substantive comments submitted.  Documentation describing specific comments, responses to the issues raised by comments and the recommendation for resolution in the final Energy Plan should be provided to the Energy Planning Board, the Public Service Commission and the public.  If the State is to have any credibility regarding their Energy plan stakeholder process, then they must provide documentation showing that all the comments were considered and addressed.  To be trustworthy the authors of the documents at the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority should explain why issues raised in comments don’t need to be addressed.  Importantly,  this information was especially necessary for the Energy Planning Board to consider when they voted on accepting the Energy Plan.

Reaction to Stakeholder Process

I searched through the transcript of the statements made at the Energy Planning Board meeting to see how Board members referenced the stakeholder process.  Eight members mentioned the stakeholder process.  Consdider two examples.  Chair Harris claimed, “In the last four months alone, our draft, we have delivered significant ground in terms of updating our draft plan to incorporate thousands of public comments”.  NYSERDA’s Karl Maas said the Energy Plan “represents the work conducted by dozens of State Energy staff and technical experts informed by stakeholders and public commenters and ultimately shaped by members of this Board.”

In reality, the incorporation of comments by stakeholders and public commenters was incomplete. I will show examples where my comments were not acknowledged but had bearing on material presented in the Final Energy Plan and presumably could have influenced votes to approve the Plan.

One of the emphasized points in descriptions of the Plan was that “Implementing New York’s State Energy Plan is projected to improve air quality, resulting in public health benefits for all communities throughout the State, with the greatest benefits realized in disadvantaged communities.”  This point warranted its own Public Health Impacts Fact Sheet.  However, I submitted comments explaining that there were issues with the numbers in the following table from the Fact Sheet.

All these health benefits are based on air quality impacts estimated using a methodology that is based on the premise that air quality improvements associated with reductions in GHG emissions are the driver for these health effects.  My comments raised issue with that presumption. 

NYSERDA tried to determine community-scale impacts with the resolution required to predict impacts to disadvantaged communities.  This is an enormous challenge given the number of emission sources and receptor locations, the characteristics of the pollutants considered, and difficulty projecting future emissions for all of society.  As a result, a “newly developed air quality and health impacts modeling framework—the NY Community-Scale Health and Air Pollution Policy Analysis (NY-CHAPPA) model —rather than using the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) CO-Benefits Risk Assessment Health Impacts Screening and Mapping Tool (COBRA)” was used.  My comments showed that this new model over-simplified the relationship between sources and receptors.  The most important factor affecting pollution impacts is wind direction.  NYSERDA modeling only used four wind directions whereas COBRA uses 16.  They also only used one year of observed data instead of the five typically used.  Using one year of data weakens the estimates but using only four wind directions invalidates the projected estimates.  NYSERDA evaluated model performance to justify using their new model by comparing observed historical concentrations against future predicted concentrations.  That approach is  laughably inappropriate.  I do not deny that reductions in most of the pollutants will improve air quality but assigning quantitative values to the improvements is inappropriate because the modeled numbers are so imprecise.

I also demonstrated that the asthma exacerbation metric was invalid.  This metric claims a reduction in emergency room visits due to asthma is related to reductions in inhalable particulate concentrations.  I demonstrated the the approach used is wrong. I showed that there are environmental, socio-economic, healthcare access, clinical, comorbidity, behavioral, clinical management and psychosocial confounder factors affecting asthma.  Claiming that any one of the factors affecting emergency room visits is the unique cause of observed changes in asthma rates is not likely to represent what is happening.  My comments also documented that the claim that there would 1300 avoided emergency room visits due to reductions in inhalable particulate concentrations were invalid.  I compared the observed inhalable particulate concentrations with the observed emergency room visits and found no correlation.  Correlation does not prove causation, but no correlation means that there cannot be causation.

Discussion

Everyone associated with the Energy Plan process brags about how there is a “robust” stakeholder process that “informed” the process.  This article debunks those claims. 

This article gives two examples of impactful issues that I identified in my comments that were not acknowledged, much less addressed.  With all due respect, no one at NYSERDA has the air pollution meteorology experience that I do.  The failure to act on expert input that impacts the analysis and results means that New York’s energy plan is not as good as it could be. 

NYSERDA notes that “Nearly 15,000 written comments on the Draft Plan were submitted, with over 250 from organizations and the balance from individuals (80% of which were through 13 comment campaigns).”  I acknowledge that sifting through the volume of comments is a challenge.  However, most of the comments from organizations and campaigns are similar so the number of unique comments is much less.  Moreover, comments like that are typically thinly veiled lobbying submittals supporting their vested, and probably, financial interests, instead of comments addressing particular technical issues..  Those comments can be addressed simply an would reduce the total response to muc less than the number of comments submitted. 

I believe that NYSERDA must develop a stakeholder comment process that raises substantive issues to another level of consideration.  For example, there could be technical issue workshops where a dialogue between NYSERDA and stakeholders is encouraged and a resolution to the problem developed.  For example, such a workshop would recommend that in the next edition of Energy Plan that the NY-CHAPPA model be modified to use more wind directions.

The stakeholder process associated with regulations proposed by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) require the agency to respond to all comments.  That addresses one of my recommendations, but DEC also cannot interact with anyone once the regulation has been formally proposed.  That means that my second recommendation that interactive meetings are necessary is not possible.  NYSERDA has no such restriction but refuses to respond to comments in any way.

Finally, there are two other ramifications. First, I gave two examples of many that I found in my evaluation but could have provided many more.  There is no doubt that others raised many other technical issues associated with the Draft Energy Plan that were similarly impactful and not addressed.  The second issue is that this information is especially necessary for the Energy Planning Board to consider when they voted on accepting the Energy Plan.  That they voted with incomplete information is another example of why the New York stakeholder process is simply political theater.

Conclusion

The State Energy Plan is too important for it to be a politicized process.  The flaws in the stakeholder process of the recently approved Energy Plan prove that the process is undeniably politicized.  Selective treatment of stakeholder input does not further the goals of the Hochul Administration to provide a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”.

December Reasons to Pause the CLCPA

I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to amend the law  I believe that there are three general reasons to amend the Climate Act: affordability, reliability, and environmental impacts.  This post highlights recent articles in each category that provide additional reasons to pause.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Affordability

Governor Hochul’s letter announcing the approval of the State Energy Plan states: “If any state can show the nation that a clean energy transition can be reliable, affordable, and achievable, it’s New York.”  Gaslighting involves repeatedly denying, distorting, or contradicting what the target knows or observes so that they begin to question their reality and judgment.  The Hochul Administration is gaslighting us to cover up the fact that the recently approved State Energy Plan analysis shows the clean energy transition costs are anything but affordable.  The analysis of energy affordability with a sensitivity for equipment costs analysis  shows that when the levelized costs of the appliances and vehicles necessary to meet the Climate Act household zero-emissions goals are included energy costs increase $593 month for a moderate Upstate household that uses natural gas and has two gasoline vehicles.  Insufficient information to calculate similar costs for other household profiles was provided.

This is a common feature of all states that have similar ambitions.  Energy Bad Boys Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling released a report this week entitled Blue States, High Rates that Always On Energy Research coauthored with the Institute for Energy Research. You can access the entire report here.

The report includes the following section describing New York:

Federal data show New York’s electricity prices were 58% higher than the national average and 62% higher than Florida’s, based on the average all-sectors rate from January 2025 to August 2025.

Furthermore, a study from the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) found New York has experienced some of the fastest increases in electricity prices in the country. Retail electricity prices for residential customers increased by 36% between 2019 and 2024, nearly three times faster than the national average and the second-fastest increase in the country during this period, after California.

PPI determined that electricity is expensive in New York due to a wide range of factors, but the report clearly explains: “The convergence of shrinking supply and rising demand inevitably leads to upward price pressures for consumers. These costs are compounded by the immense capital investment required to transform the grid and specific policy choices that increase the cost of energy production [emphasis added].”

For example, New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) constitutes a massive renewable energy mandate, requiring the state to produce 70%of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040, which will require substantial capital investments financed by ratepayers.

At the same time, the state’s firm capacity is being diminished by the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, the state’s decision to deny the expansion of needed natural gas pipelines, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s decision to block a number of necessary upgrades for natural gas power plants, which the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warns could cause an increased risk of power shortages over the next five years.

Prices are also rising in response to state policies mandating the electrification of buildings and transportation, which are straining New York’s already overburdened grid and necessitating additional infrastructure buildouts. The state also suffers from natural gas supply issues due to its decision to ban hydraulic fracturing. In addition, ratepayers effectively pay a tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The expenses associated with these policies are projected to be so large that New York Governor Kathy Hochul delayed implementing the state’s cap-and-tax mandates under the 2019 climate law. The state claimed the regulations would be “infeasible” because they would impose “extraordinary and damaging costs upon New Yorkers.” The Governor has approved two natural gas pipelines as part of a rumored deal with the Trump Administration to approve offshore wind facilities.

New York’s attempts to show the nation that a clean energy transition can be reliable, affordable, and achievable will never succeed.

Reliability

Rafe Champion recently described the work of Anton Lang, widely known in the Australian energy discourse by his pseudonym “TonyfromOz.  ”  For over five years he has updated his weekly series of posts that documents data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia. 

His work  highlights a reliability issue that in my opinion, has not been adequately addressed In New York despite my attempts to get the issue considered since September 2020.  Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability.  Case 15-E-0302 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard addresses the fact that there is no commercially available technology for this resource.

Lang’s analysis addressed my ultimate reliability concern.  How much DEFR will be required to keep the lights on when needed most?  Lang documents “wind droughts”.  Champion notes:

Through his analysis of Australian Energy Market Operator records, Lang has identified numerous instances where wind generation across the entire National Electric Market (spanning Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania) has fallen to less than 5% of its installed capacity. He points out that these droughts often coincide with high-pressure systems during winter or summer peaks when demand is at its highest. Lang’s work poses a fundamental challenge to the “the wind is always blowing somewhere” mantra, showing that when a large high-pressure cell sits over the Great Australian Bight, the entire fleet of thousands of turbines can fall silent simultaneously.

These droughts are a global phenomenon and occur in New York.  In my opinion, New York should evaluate data going back to 1950 to determine the worst-case drought.  If those results were available, we could discuss what to do about the likely result.  I suspect that deploying DEFR capacity sufficient to prevent the worst-case blackout will be extremely expensive and will need to use resources with expected lifetimes less than the return period of the worst case.  I believe this is a strong reliability case against relying on weather-dependent resources to the point that DEFR is required.  New York has not determined this renewable capacity decision point.

Environmental Impacts

In my Draft Scoping Plan comments I noted that on September 17, 2020 the Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act was released.  It covered the “environmental impacts of the offshore wind and distributed solar procurement goals, and the estimate of utility-scale solar capacity required to meet the meet the 70 by 30 goal” based on the resources estimated necessary at that time.  Since then, considerably more resources have been projected, but the cumulative assessment has not been updated.

Syracuse.Com recently published an opinion piece submitted by residents living near the planned Liberty Renewables wind farm in the town of Fenner, Madison County.   These people live near 20 250-foot wind turbines that came online in December 2001.  This is the kind of wind resource modeled in the 2020 cumulative analysis and the opinion piece describes the cooperative process that characterized siting those turbines.  That has changed:

Liberty Renewables, representing an international energy company, came to Fenner, Nelson, Smithfield and Eaton; secured leases from some small, and often struggling farms and residents; and developed a large-scale project of 24 700-feet-tall wind turbines. Twelve of these would be sited in Fenner and in the middle of our thriving neighborhood of 230 homes and farms. Liberty Renewable’s tactics in securing leases and in dealing with our objections have been questionable.

They go on to point out that the cooperative siting process is broken:

At one time, state laws gave municipalities a say if New York state had approved hydrofracking. Now these state laws have been set aside, undermining our local town councils. Our town supervisors have been diligent in investigating, attending public hearings and keeping the citizens informed, but have not had a seat at the table and the town’s investigations have been ignored. This is immoral, unethical and cruel. Our state should be protecting its citizens and supporting its local democracies, not punishing us in our very own neighborhoods. We are furious and broken-hearted that, in the name of saving our climate, we would be treated with such disrespect and forced to live with such a massive industrial project.

I conclude that in addition to their concerns, the cumulative impacts of these monstrous wind turbines have not been considered.  To meet the generating capacity needed to fulfill the projections in the State Energy Plan, I expect that all land-based wind facilities will use these turbines that are twice the size of the current 20 turbines and twice the height of the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse.

Conclusion

We cannot afford the Climate Act, the proposed reliance on weather-dependent resources is dangerous, and the environmental impacts being shoved down rural areas is unconscionable.  Please contact your legislators and demand accountability.

Letter to the State Energy Planning Board

The last several weeks I have written multiple articles about the State Energy Plan and the Energy Planning Board.  This post describes a letter I sent to the members of the Energy Planning Board that said that it was premature to approve the Plan at this time.  I wrote this post to document the fact that Board was told that there were issues before they voted to approve the Energy Plan because someday it will be obvious that approving the plan was a mistake.

In short, implementing New York’s net-zero dreams are unaffordable.  The State Energy Plan analysis of total monthly household energy costs estimates that the capital costs  to install replacement appliances and vehicles that can meet the Climate Act zero-emissions mandate is nearly $600 a month more than replacement with conventional household appliances and vehicles even when the savings of more efficient equipment are considered.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Energy Plan

The New York State Energy Plan is billed as a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”. I have provided background information and a list of relevant articles including summaries of recent meetings on my Energy Plan page. My latest article discussed presentations of findings from analyses completed since last summer (presentation and recording) at the December 1 meeting. 

NYSERDA presentations and documentation are carefully curated to amplify the political messaging of the Hochul Administration, so it is necessary to read between the lines and carefully check all the statements that are made.  The most important finding in the presentation on December 1 is what I think is a clear admission of expected unaffordable costs necessary for New York households to achieve the Climate Act mandates for zero emissions.  I have explained how I derived the $600 a monthcost estimates in multiple posts and in a summary description of the Equipment Cost Sensitivity slide in the NYSERDA energy affordability presentation.

This information is not explicitly mentioned in the Energy Affordability Fact Sheet (Fact Sheet).  I recognize that this is an extraordinary claim, so I prepared two articles focusing just on the calculation of that estimate.  The Energy Affordability Initial Thoughts at SEP Board Meeting on 12/1/2025 article was my first attempt to document this finding. My latest article specifically addressed the claims in the Fact Sheet but also documented the location of every value in the Energy Affordability Data Annex spreadsheet published on 4 December 2025 after my first article on this topic. 

State Energy Plan Process

This description of the process is based on the Summary for Policy Makers Public Input, Section 1.2, . On September 9, 2024 the Hochul Administration initiated the development of the State Energy Plan announcing the release of a draft scope of the plan.  The Board solicited written public comment on the Draft Scope from September 9, 2024 to December 16, 2024.  Comments were reviewed and incorporated into the final Scope, which was adopted by the Board in March 2025.  In July 2025, the Board approved the release of the Draft Plan for public comment.  The public comment period ran from July 23, 2025 to October 6, 2025.   Nearly 15,000 written comments on the Draft Plan were submitted, with over 250 from organizations and the balance from individuals (80% of which were through 13 comment campaigns).  A “thematic summary of public comments” was discussed at the November 2025 meeting of the Energy Planning Board.  On December 16, 2025, the final act in the process will occur when the Board summarily approves the State Energy Plan.

The process is playacting.  The outcome was never in doubt.  Despite claims about the value of public engagement and input to inform the development of the State Energy Plan there is no record that all the input was considered.  On October 7th the Energy Plan comment website promised that “All comments will be posted on the State Energy Plan website as soon as practicable” but they still are not posted.  During the State Energy Planning Board meeting presentation on November 13 Karl Maas stated: “This presentation and its appendix, which includes comments on each plan chapter, will be posted after this meeting.”  I used Perplexity AI to search for the appendix and confirmed that my search of the Energy Plan website had not missed that this was posted.  Perplexity concluded: “The State Energy Planning Board appears to have failed to follow through on its commitment to publicly release the detailed comments appendix, despite the explicit promise made during the meeting. This lack of transparency undermines the credibility of the public comment process for the Draft State Energy Plan.”

The bottom line is that the Energy Planning Board was never told anything that negatively reflected on the Administration’s narrative that the Energy Plan implementation meeting the Climate Act mandates would Be a comprehensive roadmap to “build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”.

My Letter

My final effort to reach the Energy Planning Board to reconsider rubber stamping the Administration’s overly optimistic Energy Plan was to send the following letter to the Board.

I am writing to the members of the State Energy Planning Board  to argue that it is premature to consider and act upon a resolution to adopt the State Energy Plan at the Board meeting scheduled for December 16, 2025.  The Energy Plan is supposed to be a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”. The draft documents labeled “pending board decision” show that there are untenable upfront costs that New Yorkers would face if the State follows the existing State Energy Plan roadmap to achieve the Legislature’s aspirational 2030 deadlines.

The State Energy Plan will have no energy affordability credibility if the Energy Planning Board adopts a plan that its analyses show is unaffordable.  The 2025 Energy Plan Data Annex spreadsheet titled Energy Affordability Outputs and Input Data contains unacceptable affordability information.  In the Equipment Cost Sensitivity slide there are monthly total energy costs including levelized equipment costs for a single household profile.  As documented here, the projections for a moderate-income household in Upstate New York that uses natural gas found the difference between replacement of conventional existing equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment necessary for Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) compliance increases monthly average energy expenditures $594 when capital costs are considered.  Only the wealthy could consider that affordable.

The Attorney General’s Office agrees that there are the “insurmountable upfront costs” if the Energy Plan is consistent with the CLCPA as it stands.  Earlier this year there was a court case considering whether the Department of Environmental Conservation had to issue final regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits.   During the case, the Attorney General  submitted a letter that addressed “two categories of new developments: (1) the publication of the 2025 Draft New York State Energy Plan by the New York State Energy Planning Board on July 23, 2025 and (2) additional actions by the federal government that impede New York’s efforts to achieve the CLCPA.”  The letter argued that it was inappropriate to implement regulations that would ensure compliance with the 2030 40% reduction in GHG emissions CLCPA mandate because meeting the target is “currently infeasible”. 

Ordering achievement of the 2030 target would equate to even higher costs than the net zero scenarios and would affect consumers even sooner. Undoubtedly, greenhouse-gas reducing policies can lead to longer-term benefits such as health improvements. This does not, however, offset the insurmountable upfront costs that New Yorkers would face if DEC were forced to try to achieve the Legislature’s aspirational emissions reductions by the 2030 deadline rather than proceeding at an ambitious but sustainable pace.

There is no obvious record of what insurmountable State Energy Plan upfront costs led to that statement in the Attorney General letter, but the statement is consistent with the Equipment Cost Sensitivity analysis.  I find it troubling that this finding received so little attention in the NYSERDA presentations to the Board.  This information is not explicitly mentioned in the Energy Affordability Fact Sheet, in the Volume I: Summary for Policymakers or in the Energy Affordability Impacts Analysis chapter.  The findings were mentioned in a 41 second segment of the December 1 Energy Affordability presentation (Page 8 in the annotated transcript):  “What we can take away is that the net costs for efficient electrification journeys could be thirty five to forty percent higher than conventional replacement when accounting for equipment, reinforcing the importance of action to address upfront equipment costs so that households are able to access the benefits of these systems.” 

In addition, the Pathways Analysis shows that meeting the 2030 CLCPA 40% GHG emission reduction target and electric system 70% renewable energy mandates are impossible.  Those results are consistent with other State agency findings.  I believe that these conclusions and the affordability results clearly show that it is time to amend the CLCPA  consistent with the Ulster County New York Supreme Court decision ordering the Department of Environmental Conservation to issue final regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026 or go to the Legislature and get the Climate Act 2030 GHG reduction mandate schedule changed.   The Hochul Administration and DEC appealed the decision on November 25, 2025 claiming that “it is impossible for the Department to simultaneously comply with both the Court’s order and its substantive statutory obligations.” 

The State Energy Plan for approval on December 16, 2025, does not recognize these findings.  Ignoring them to meet an arbitrary schedule means the Plan will be immediately obsolete.  The Plan must explicitly state that the CLCPA mandates cannot be achieved and are unaffordable so must be amended for a State Energy Plan that ensures a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers.  Failure to do so would be a serious disservice to New Yorkers.

Discussion

I do not expect that there will ever be any acknowledgment of the letter.  This post documents that the State Energy Planning Board was told that total monthly household energy costs estimates for the capital costs  to install replacement appliances and vehicles that can meet the Climate Act zero-emissions mandate are nearly $600 a month more than replacement with conventional household appliances and vehicles even when the savings of more efficient equipment are considered.  Only the wealthy could consider that affordable.  The Energy Plan is supposed to consider affordability so ignoring this finding destroys the credibility of the document.

Conclusion

My hobby of fighting the Climate Act mandates certainly keeps me busy but certainly does not have any effect on New York energy policy.  I hope that someday I will be able to say I told you so.

NYSERDA Energy Plan Affordability Fact Sheet

On December 11, 2025 the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSEDA) announced that “Pre-Decisional Materials are Available” for the next meeting of the Energy Planning Board.  It included a link to the Affordability Analysis Overview Fact Sheet that describes affordability impacts.  This post documents differences between the Fact Sheet key points and recent articles on this blog and at Watts Up With That that argued that the projected costs are so great that it is time to reconsider the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) and premature for the Energy Planning Board to vote on an energy roadmap that purports to support affordability.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

State Energy Plan

The New York State Energy Plan is a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”. I have provided background information and a list of relevant articles including summaries of recent meetings on my Energy Plan page.  NYSERDA released the Draft Energy Plan last summer.  Stakeholder comments were accepted until early October.  The Energy Planning Board has the responsibility to approve the document.  After two recent meetings that described stakeholder comments (presentation and recording) and presented findings from analyses completed since the release of the Draft Energy Plan (presentation and recording) they will meet on December 16, 2025 to “consider and act upon a resolution to adopt the State Energy Plan”.

Overview

In addition to the articles arguing that the Climate Act needs to reconsidered, I also published an article describing my thoughts about the State Energy Planning Board (SEP) meeting on December 1, 2025 that described the NYSERDA energy affordability analysis.   The key point made in my articles is that the projected monthly energy cost increase necessary to convert an Upstate household that uses fossil fuel for the home and transportation to the equipment necessary to comply with the emission reductions necessary to achieve the Climate Act is extraordinary.  The monthly energy expense cost difference to replace existing fossil fuel equipment with new equipment relative to “zero emissions” electrification equipment is $593 a month in 2031, which is 43% more than the cost for conventional equipment replacement.  This article also updates the supporting information used consistent with the Energy Affordability Data Annex spreadsheet published on 4 December 2025.  To forestall any complaints that I am making up numbers this documents the numbers and provide context for NYSERDA claims.

Energy Affordability Fact Sheet

The contents of the Affordability Analysis Overview Fact Sheet are reproduced below.

The Fact Sheet includes the following text including highlighting:

Policy and market solutions that focus on lowering upfront costs and other barriers to adoption for a range of energy-saving choices — such as building envelope efficiency, efficient appliances and equipment, and electric vehicles — can enable households to lower their energy bills. This can help to alleviate energy insecurity and energy burdens.

While New Yorkers on average spend less on utility, heating fuel, and transportation fuel bills combined than the average American, New York households and residents across the country face overarching affordability challenges.

Drivers of household affordability include expenditures in areas such as housing, transportation, food, and healthcare. Energy, as a subset of transportation and housing costs, is an important driver of affordability challenges for many households. Low- and moderate-income households are more likely experience substantial cost burdens related to meeting their energy needs.

Due in part to proactive policies to boost energy efficiency and affordability, average utility, heating fuel, and transportation fuel spending for New York households is $700 less every year compared to the national average. These findings are reinforced by recent analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which finds that New York State has the second lowest per capita energy expenditure in the nation.

There is a stark contrast between the Fact Sheet energy affordability message and mine.  The supporting documentation does support the Fact Sheet takeaway message that  “The energy affordability analysis shows that the use of new, efficient equipment and electrification can cut energy spending by $100 to over $300 every month for many New York households, across energy costs for transportation and heating and utility bills.”  However, the supporting information and a sensitivity analysis  show that the monthly energy expense costs that consider the capital expense (CapEx) for new equipment present a vastly different conclusion.  It is no coincidence that the Fact Sheet emphasizes that “Policy and market solutions that focus on lowering upfront costs” can enable households to lower their energy bills.  Left unsaid is that if upfront capital costs are not lowered that the expected costs are unaffordable.

Energy Affordability Analysis

The December 2025 Energy Affordability Data Annex spreadsheet (Annex Spreadsheet)  and the Energy Affordability Impacts Analysis (Impact Analysis) document provide the supporting documentation for the Fact Sheet. To project potential future costs based on continued use of fossil fuels relative to two levels of electrification and emission reduction, the modelers considered eleven household energy use categories based on location, income levels, and energy equipment.

Figure 3 shows the analysis regions and summarizes household profiles used.  The three income level definitions are:

• Low-income includes households with incomes at or below 60 percent of State Median Income.

• Moderate-income includes households with incomes above 60 percent but below 80 percent of State Median Income or Area Median Income, whichever is higher

• Average income uses the average income of a household in an analysis region to represent households with incomes that fall above the low- or moderate-income range.

Figure 3: Figure 6 from the Impact Analysis

For each of the eleven household profiles four scenarios or journeys were considered:

  • Starting Point using fossil fueled heating and transportation with average existing equipment.
  • Conventional Replacement: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with new, more efficient equipment
  • Moderate Efficient Electrification: Some electrification of heating and transportation, with basic building envelope efficiency measures
  • High Efficient Electrification: More electrification of heating and transportation, with basic or medium building envelope efficiency measures, and efficient electric appliances

Table A-6 in the Impact Analysis document describes the equipment, vehicle, and building shell assumptions by household profile and scenario.  Figure 4 is an excerpt from that table that lists the four Upstate household profiles.  NYSERDA did a sensitivity analysis that included the equipment costs for one household profile: Upstate New York moderate income.  The starting point household for that scenario uses gas space heating with central AC, gas water heating, has two average gasoline vehicles, uses a gas clothes dryer and stove, and has a mixture of incandescent/CFL/LED lighting.  Conventional replacement for that household replaces all these systems with more efficient models.  In the “High Efficient Electrification” scenario existing systems are replaced with a medium building shell, ducted air source heat pump, heat pump water heating, one plugin hybrid electric vehicle and one battery electric vehicle, efficient electric clothes dryer, induction stove, and LED lighting.

Figure 4: Excerpt from Table A6 in the Impact Analysis Document

Energy Affordability Results

The monthly energy costs shown in Figure 1 in the Fact Sheet are derived from the Annex Spreadsheet in tables “Upstate Results” and Downstate Results”. For each of the eleven household profiles, data for the total monthly household energy and expenditures (real 2025 $) breaks down costs by four cost components: household electricity and fuel and vehicle electricity and fuel.  The Fact Sheet simply graphs two examples to illustrate the claim that monthly household expenditures will decrease in 2031 for the four future scenarios.  All the results show the same thing (Table 1).  When an existing household does nothing costs do rise between 2026 and 2031.  If the household upgrades their existing systems with more efficient conventional equipment the monthly energy bills go down.  If the household upgrades with the two electrification scenarios the monthly energy bills go down more.

Table 1: Household Profile Total Monthly Household Energy and Transportation Energy Expenditures (real 2025 $) excluding CapEx

The meeting on December 1 emphasized a similar story.  Figure 5 from that presentation shows the data for the Upstate New York, natural gas, moderate income household using data from Annex Spreadsheet in table “Upstate Results.  The reason for the difference between my work and these NYSERDA results is buried at the bottom of the figure.  There is a notation that states: “Average monthly expenditures. Does not include equipment costs”. 

Figure 5: NYS Energy Planning Board Meeting Presentation Slide 40

It turns out that including equipment costs makes a difference as shown in the Figure 6. This information is in Annex Spreadsheet in table “Equipment Cost Summary”.

Figure 6: NYS Energy Planning Board Meeting Presentation Slide 43

I extracted information from these Annex Spreadsheet “Upstate Results” and “Equipment Cost Summary” tables to prepare Table 2 that was used to prepare these bar chaarts.  Rows 1-4 list the monthly energy expenditures with the total in row 5 from the “Upstate Results” table.  The increase in efficiency decreases monthly energy costs for all three journeys but that changes when CapEx is considered.  The CapEx monthly total costs in rows in row 6-8 are from the “Equipment Cost Summary” table.  Row 9 lists the sum of the total monthly energy costs and rows 6 and 7 the total monthly levelized capital costs for home and vehicle.  The cost of Climate Act compliance is the difference between replacement of conventional equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment.  Row 10 shows this difference.  It lists the $594 increase in costs necessary for Climate Act compliance and row 11 lists the percentage increase as 43%. 

Table 2: Upstate New York Moderate Income Household That Uses Natural Gas for Heat Projected Monthly Costs and Costs Necessary to Comply with the Climate Act

NYSERDA Affordability Messaging

The Energy Affordability Fact Sheet highlights the point that “The energy affordability analysis shows that the use of new, efficient equipment and electrification can cut energy spending by $100 to over $300 every month for many New York households, across energy costs for transportation and heating and utility bills.”  It acknowledges that New Yorkers face “overarching affordability challenges” and that

“Energy, as a subset of transportation and housing costs, is an important driver of affordability challenges for many households.”   However, it does not acknowledge that when the equipment’s capital expense costs necessary to achieve the Climate Act mandates are included in the projected total monthly energy costs that costs are certainly not affordable.

There is another aspect of the NYSERDA messaging.  I prepared an annotated transcript for the energy affordability presentation at the Energy Planning Board meeting on December 1 that includes a heading for questions made during the meeting with a link to each person who commented or asked a question. Chair Doreen Harris of the Energy Planning Board asked NYSERDA presenter James Wilcox about energy price uncertainty.  He admitted that the key driver of change over the next five years is “change in energy price”.  The modeling shows that this could increase household energy spending 3% to 8% in the starting point base case but could go up to as much as 14% to 19% even if they do nothing as shown in the ”Sensitivity” columns under the Starting Point 2026 and 2031 scenarios shown in Table 2.  Chair Harris extracted a response from him that summarizes the second public message: “That is what I was trying to elicit: What does doing nothing get you?”  These data show that even if you do nothing costs could rise as much as 19% if you exclude the CapEx costs of compliant equipment.  That is misleading because the equipment costs are the main cause of future costs and not changes in energy prices.  It is also emblematic of another NYSERDA message that costs are going to go up anyway and that the costs to comply with the Climate Act are less so we can still continue to pursue this initiative.

Discussion

On Oct. 24, 2025, there was an Albany County New York Supreme Court decision ordering the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue final Climate Act implementing regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026 or go to the Legislature and get the Climate Act 2030 GHG reduction mandate schedule changed.   During the legal proceeding the State Attorney General submitted a letter that argued that it was inappropriate to implement regulations that would ensure compliance with the 2030 40% reduction in GHG emissions Climate Act mandate because meeting the target is “currently infeasible”.  That argument was undoubtedly based on the total cost including CapEx for households results of the single equipment cost sensitivity analysis.

The State Energy Planning Board will meet on December 16, 2025 to “consider and act upon a resolution to adopt the State Energy Plan”.  The Energy Plan is a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”.  How can the Energy Planning Board members vote to approve something that will increase monthly energy bills nearly $600 a month and claim any credibility for an affordable energy system?  Clearly the answer is they cannot which means the whole process is only for show.

There is no question in my mind that the total cost, including CapEx results are being downplayed as much as possible.  Nowhere in the supporting quantitative information are results presented for all the households evaluated.  I believe that those results were calculated but not presented because of the affordability implications.  Iin addition, there is insufficient information provided that would enable independent analysis to calculate the CapEx costs for the other scenarios.

New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year since 1990.  The fact that New York cannot solve global warming by itself coupled with these extraordinary costs in the face of an acknowledged energy affordability challenge is a very strong case to reconsider the proposed Energy Plan and rethink the Climate Act.

Conclusion

When I tell people that I have spent a lot of time evaluating the Climate Act they usually ask how much is this going to cost.  When I tell them that that the Scoping Plan comprehensive roadmap to “build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers” estimates that when the cost to buy the necessary infrastructure to meet the Climate Act are included households could see an increase of %594 per month they are shocked.  The Affordability Fact Sheet talks about affordability and gives numbers to the suggest affordability.  However, NYSERDA covered up the finding in the Energy Plan modeling that Climate Act compliance is anything but affordable.   This must be addressed.

Time to Reconsider the Climate Act Press Release

UPDATE: Two weeks after this was published I can safely now say that nobody I contacted responded. I thought that showing that $593 per month in added energy expenses would have prompted some kind of response.

A recent court decision and findings presented at the 1 December 2025 State Energy Planning (SEP) Board meeting present overwhelming evidence that implementing the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act)  as mandated will be unaffordable and the 2030 CLCPA 40% emission reduction target and 70% renewable energy in the electric system mandate will not be achieved.  I don’t think that most New Yorkers are aware of the Climate Act much less its potential impacts, so I prepared a press release that I distributed to various New York press outlets explaining why it is time to reconsider the Climate Act.   This article documents the findings included in the press release and refers to recent articles published on this blog.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and has two interim 2030 targets: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy and GHG emissions must be reduced 40%.  The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” 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.  That material was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan outline of strategies.  After a year-long review, the Scoping Plan was finalized at the end of 2022.  Since then, the State has been trying to implement the Scoping Plan recommendations through regulations, proceedings, and legislation. 

Note there is a second implementation law.  Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-P, Establishment of a renewable energy program, that requires the Public Service Commission to establish a program to ensure the State meets the 2030 and 2040 electric system Climate Act requirements.  

Energy Plan Overview

In 2025 another overarching evaluation of the energy system was initiated.  According to the New York State Energy Plan website (Accessed 3/16/25):

The State Energy Plan is a comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers. The Plan provides broad program and policy development direction to guide energy-related decision-making in the public and private sectors within New York State.

The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) released the Draft Energy Plan last summer.  Stakeholder comments were accepted until early October.  The Energy Planning Board has the responsibility to approve the document. At the November 13, 2025 Board meeting there was a perfunctory description of the comments received.  There was another meeting on December 1 that presented results from additional analyses.  During the wrap up for the latest meeting Chair Doreen Harris said the Board will meet later this month to approve the plan. I have provided background information and a list of relevant articles on my Energy Plan page. 

Court Decision

On Oct. 24, 2025, there was an Albany County New York Supreme Court decision ordering the Department of Environmental Conservation to issue final regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026 or go to the Legislature and get the Climate Act 2030 GHG reduction mandate schedule changed.   On November 3, I published an article providing detailed information about the decision. 

In another article I explained that during the legal process the State submitted a letter that addressed “two categories of new developments: (1) the publication of the 2025 Draft New York State Energy Plan by the New York State Energy Planning Board on July 23, 2025 and (2) additional actions by the federal government that impede New York’s efforts to achieve the Climate Act.”  The letter argued that it was inappropriate to implement regulations that would ensure compliance with the 2030 40% reduction in GHG emissions Climate Act mandate because meeting the target is “currently infeasible”. 

Ordering achievement of the 2030 target would equate to even higher costs than the net zero scenarios and would affect consumers even sooner. Undoubtedly, greenhouse-gas reducing policies can lead to longer-term benefits such as health improvements. This does not, however, offset the insurmountable upfront costs that New Yorkers would face if DEC were forced to try to achieve the Legislature’s aspirational emissions reductions by the 2030 deadline rather than proceeding at an ambitious but sustainable pace.

The letter concluded that the Climate Act is unaffordable:

Petitioners have not shown a plausible scenario where the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction goal can be achieved without inflicting unanticipated and undue harm on New York consumers, and the concrete analysis in the 2025 Draft Energy Plan dispels any uncertainty on the topic: New Yorkers will face alarming financial consequences if speed is given preference over sustainability.

The Judge acknowledged that this information was relevant but ruled that DEC must promulgate regulations implementing a law however persuasive their arguments it is inappropriate are. The Hochul Administration and DEC appealed the decision on November 25, 2025 claiming that “it is impossible for the Department to simultaneously comply with both the Court’s order and its substantive statutory obligations.” 

Energy Affordability

In addition to the Attorney General’s supplemental letter arguing that the Climate Act is unaffordable, there were findings presented at the State Energy Planning (SEP) Board meeting on December 1, 2025 that present extraordinary cost estimates.  My article on the Energy Affordability presentation at the meeting documents the projections for a moderate-income household in Upstate New York that uses natural gas.  My article found the difference between replacement of conventional existing equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment necessary for CLCPA compliance increases monthly average energy expenditures $593 when capital costs are considered. That number was in a slide but there was only passing mention of the cost.

I derived explanatory numbers from information presented at the SEP Board meeting.  The following energy affordability analysis slide summarizes the projection approach.  It explains that for eleven household profiles, NYSERDA evaluated future household and transportation energy expenditures for four cases involving different technology mixes and fuel types.  These “Illustrative Household Journeys” include:

  • Starting Point: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with average existing equipment
  • Conventional Replacement: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with new, more efficient equipment
  • Moderate Efficient Electrification: Some electrification of heating and transportation, with basic building envelope efficiency measures
  • High Efficient Electrification: More electrification of heating and transportation, with basic or medium building envelope efficiency measures, and efficient electric appliances

Slides were presented that describe the four journeys for several profiles.   My numbers were derived from the typical Upstate moderate-income household that uses natural gas for heat household profile.  This was the only profile that included all the information needed to project total cost.  In the following slide,  three projected “household journeys” reduce monthly energy expenditures relative to the current starting point.  However, buried at the bottom of the page is the notation that these values are “Average monthly expenditures. Does not include equipment costs”. 

It turns out that including equipment costs makes a difference as shown in the next slide.

I extracted information from these slides to prepare Table 1.  Rows 1-4 list the monthly energy expenditures with the total in row 5 from the first slide.  The increase in efficiency decreases monthly energy costs for all three journeys but that changes when CapEx is considered.  The CapEx monthly total cost in row 6 is available on the second slide.  However, the breakdown between the costs of a new plugin hybrid electric vehicle (moderate electrification) in row 7 and a battery electric vehicle (high efficiency electrification) relative to home energy electrification row 8 is not listed on the included slides.  I estimated the percentage of home electrification from the size of the blue bars on the right side of the second slide. (Row 10). When the CapEx costs are included all the projected alternative journeys are more expensive.  Row 9 lists the total monthly energy costs including the costs of equipment from the second slide.  The cost of Climate Act compliance is the difference between replacement of conventional equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment.  Row 12 lists the $593 difference  necessary for Climate Act compliance and row 11 lists the 43% increase in energy costs. 

Table 1: Upstate New York Moderate Income Household That Uses Natural Gas for Heat Projected Monthly Costs and Costs Necessary to Comply with the Climate Act

The affordability messaging is embedded in this table.  I prepared an annotated transcript for this presentation that includes a heading for questions made during the meeting with a link to each person who commented or asked a question. I believe that this presentation and the questions asked was scripted to further the messaging of the Administration.  Chair Doreen Harris of the Energy Planning Board asked NYSERDA presenter James Wilcox about energy price uncertainty.  He admitted that the key driver of change over the next five years is “change in energy price”.  The modeling shows that this could increase household energy spending 3% to 8% in the starting point base case but could go up to as much as 14% to 19% even if they do nothing.  Chair Harris elicited a response from him that summarizes the public messaging: “That is what I was trying to elicit: What does doing nothing get you?”  Even if you do nothing costs could rise as much as 19%.  That is misleading because the equipment costs are the main causes of future cost not changes in energy prices.

The presentations emphasized that Climate Act costs are not the primary energy cost increase driver and that multiple factors beyond climate policy contribute to expected costs.  The other implementation cost message in the NYSERDA presentations is that the additional costs to meet the Climate Act mandates are smaller than expected cost increases.  This table quantifies that claim.  If this example household replaces its internal combustion car with another one and replaces household appliances with natural gas appliances total costs will go up $868 from $506 to $1,374.  The cost to meet the Climate Act mandates beyond conventional replacement is “only”  $593 more which is less than the cost of conventional replacement. 

I think the magnitude of these impacts are being downplayed as much as possible.  After I published my analysis I went to the Draft Energy Plan supporting documentation page and reviewed the Energy Affordability Outputs and Input Data spreadsheet.  The equipment costs are only provided as a sensitivity for one household. I think that this is by design because these costs are so extraordinary.  I believe these numbers indicate a serious energy affordability crisis is coming.  In my opinion, including an additional 43% cost increase is unconscionable.  New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year since 1990.  New York cannot solve global warming by itself. 

Implementation Timing

I summarized my initial thoughts about the Pathways Analysis presentation at the December SEP Planning Board meeting.  The presentation found that neither the CLCPA 40% GHG emission reduction target nor the electric system 70% renewable energy mandate would be achieved on time.  The “Key Takeaways (3/3)” Slide (#31) in the meeting presentation states that “the state is currently not on track to meet the 2030 emission limit – Current Policies is estimated to hit 40% reduction in 2038 while Additional Action is estimated to hit 40% reduction in 2037.” 

The Electric Sector Results: Additional Action slide (#21) states that “Pace of additions leads to delayed achievement of 70% renewable to 2036-2040”.

Discussion

The Court Decision and the Energy Plan findings are not the only reasons given by state agencies that it would be appropriate to reconsider the Climate Act.  I described three other findings in an article last month. The New York State Comptroller Office audit of the NYSERDA and PSC  implementation efforts for the Climate Act was an early acknowledgement that the implementation plan needs to be revised.  The Public Service Commission (PSC) compared the renewable energy deployment progress relative to the Climate Act goal to obtain 70% of New York’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The final Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review Report document found that 2030 goal will likely not be achieved until 2033.  Finally, The Second Informational Report prepared by Department of Public Service (DPS) staff described four feasibility concerns: the 2030 renewable energy target is “likely unattainable”, offshore wind faces major obstacles, transmission remains a “critical bottleneck”, and grid reliability challenges are mounting

There have been other recent articles arguing that New York has impossible targets.  David Wojick recently published an article explaining implementation issues that I backed up with observed data.  Tom Shepstone describes a New York Post editorial that cites a Progressive Policy Institute article that calls the Climate Act an “undeniable” failure.

These findings should inspire the Hochul Administration to amend the  Climate Act.  It is troubling that the SEP Board meeting presentations did not mention these ramifications in the presentation.  Furthermore, there has been no sign that the Hochul Administration or the majority leadership in the Legislature are amenable to considering amendments to the Climate Act.

Conclusion

I was motivated to publish this and distribute it to the media because these findings have significant implications for the future New York energy system.  In the near term, something must be done to reconcile the reality that the CLCPA schedule is too ambitious to have any hope of compliance.  More importantly, the findings described should become the basis for a discussion of more New Yorkers.  As it stands now New York energy policy is being guided by a small but extremely vocal and motivated constituency that does not understand the physics of the energy system.  Thomas Sowell has been quoted as saying: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong”.  In this instance, there is nothing more stupid or dangerous than ignoring the people who will pay the price if there are problems with the energy system.

Energy Affordability at Energy Planning Board Meeting on 12/1/2025

On December 6, 2025, I published an article describing my initial thoughts about the State Energy Planning Board (SEP) meeting on December 1 that discussed updated Pathways modeling for the State Energy Plan.  This post describes the presentations at the meeting that covered energy affordability.  I will cover the health benefits and employment analysis in another post.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Energy Plan Overview

According to the New York State Energy Plan website (Accessed 3/16/25):

The State Energy Plan is a comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers. The Plan provides broad program and policy development direction to guide energy-related decision-making in the public and private sectors within New York State.

The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) prepared the Draft Energy Plan last summer.  Stakeholder comments were accepted until early October.  The Energy Planning Board has the responsibility to approve the document. At the November 13, 2025 Board meeting there was a perfunctory description of the comments received.  During the wrap up for this meeting Chair Doreen Harris said the Board will meet later this month to approve the plan before the end of the year. I have provided background information and a list of previous articles on my Energy Plan page. 

Meeting Overview

There were three items on the agenda: approval of last meeting minutes, discuss analyses conducted for the Energy Plan, and consider any new business.  The recording of the meeting available here included a transcript.  I created an edited transcript for the Pathways Analysis presentation and a separate transcript for the energy affordability, health benefits, and employment presentations. These annotated versions include tables and headings.

In this meeting NYSERDA described the updated Pathways Analysis—the modeling exercise that underpins New York’s triennial State Energy Plan. In my opinion, the entire Energy Planning Board process is political theater.  The members of the Board were chosen mostly for political reasons and not technical expertise.  Everyone involved is going through the motions. 

My last post explained that the updated Pathways Analysis described in the first part of this meeting found that the 2030 Climate Act goals will not be achieved on time.  The aspirational schedule of the Climate Act was never realistic, and these results are simply acknowledgement of that fact.  The topics featured in the remaining sessions support the positive spin narrative that the Hochul administration is trying to convey to the public to save some face regarding Climate Act implementation.  This post will highlight key points of the narrative.  I want to emphasize that this narrative is based mostly on political messaging, so it is appropriate to assume that every NYSERDA point has been approved by the Hochul Administration.

Energy Affordability

James Wilcox presented the Household Energy Affordability Analysis Update. He said that NYSERDA “reviewed key analysis structure and assumptions based on stakeholder feedback and new data availability”.  The claim regarding review of stakeholder feedback is the first narrative speaking point.  There will be a subsequent post detailing how New York State agency claim that all stakeholder feedback was considered is unsupported by evidence.  While there are indications that some feedback from outside NYSERDA was incorporated in the updated analyses, later I will detail instances where comments inconsistent with the intended story line were ignored.

Wilcox summarized the updates:

  • For Base Case, moved to an electric and gas price forecast based on the trend of total bills from bill history
  • Added a higher energy price growth sensitivity based on the trend of total bills from recent bill history combined with recent DPS/utility projections
  • Although numbers have shifted, key takeaways remain the same
  • Net result from changes is a higher growth rate for electricity and gas rates

The affordability messaging has been consistent.  NYSERDA acknowledges that there are energy affordability challenges.  The Climate Act embeds environmental justice principles throughout its implementation framework, so descriptions include low- and moderate- income household impacts that are consistent with this narrative talking point,  Unsurprisingly, those households are “more likely to experience energy affordability challenges”.

The following energy affordability analysis slide explains that for eleven household profiles, NYSERDA evaluated future household and transportation energy expenditures for four cases involving different technology mixes and fuel types.  These “Illustrative Household Journeys” include:

  • Starting Point: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with average existing equipment
  • Conventional Replacement: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with new, more efficient equipment
  • Moderate Efficient Electrification: Some electrification of heating and transportation, with basic building envelope efficiency measures
  • High Efficient Electrification: More electrification of heating and transportation, with basic or medium building envelope efficiency measures, and efficient electric appliances

Slides were presented that describe the four journeys for several profiles.   The following example describes monthly expenditures for a typical Upstate moderate-income household that uses natural gas for heat.  Relative to the current starting point all three projected “household journeys” reduce monthly energy expenditures.  However, buried at the bottom of the page is the notation that these values are “Average monthly expenditures. Does not include equipment costs”. 

It turns out that including equipment costs makes a difference as shown in the next slide.

The Hochul/NYSERDA story is that monthly energy expenditures will go down when investments in moderate electrification or high efficiency electrification necessary for Climate Act compliance are made.  The public release sound bite press releases will emphasize that point and barely acknowledge that the costs that include the capital expenses (CapEx) for the equipment costs tell a different story.  I summarized all this information in Table 1.  The first four rows list the monthly energy expenditures with the total in the fifth line.  The CapEx monthly total cost is listed but the breakdown between the costs of a new plugin hybrid electric vehicle (moderate electrification) and a battery electric vehicle (high efficiency electrification) relative to home energy electrification is not provided.  I estimated the percentage of home electrification from the bars in the previous figure.  When those CapEx costs are included all the projected alternative journeys are more expensive.  Note that the difference between replacement of conventional equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment necessary for Climate Act compliance increases monthly average energy expenditures $593, a whopping 43% increase in energy costs.  That is the cost of Climate Act compliance.

Table 1: Upstate New York Moderate Income Household That Uses Natural Gas for Heat Projected Monthly Costs and Costs Necessary to Comply with the Climate Act

The following key takeaways slide summarizes the messages that NYSERDA and Hochul want the Energy Planning Board and public to accept.  The first statement suggests that if households continue to use existing equipment that energy spending will increase.  But households “see gradually declining rates of energy consumption and total energy spending as more efficient equipment is adopted” then that “can help to offset energy price increases”.  That advocates going forward despite a tacit acknowledgement that it may not save money, just reduce the increase.  The final takeaway points out that according to their numbers transportation energy spending could offset incremental cost increases for home heating.  I cannot overemphasize enough that results from this kind of modeling are completely dependent upon input assumptions.  That means that the modelers can get any answer they want.  It is therefore very telling that these takeaways cannot avoid the conclusion that the transition will incur significant costs. The modelers could not completely avoid reality.

Ultimately, the question is how much will all this cost. During his presentation Wilcox stated: “What we can take away is that the net costs for efficient electrification journeys could be 35% to 40% higher than conventional replacement when accounting for equipment, reinforcing the importance of action to address upfront equipment costs so that households are able to access the benefits of these systems.”   NYSERDA is left hoping that there will be a magical solution that will reduce upfront costs so that the projections might be palatable.

The conclusions sums up the energy affordability messaging.  There is an energy affordability problem that impacts low- and moderate-income households more with the implication that focus on those households will improve the situation.  Energy costs impact both household and transportation spending.  This needs to be emphasized because NYSERDA cannot claim monthly energy benefits for many household profiles if transportation costs are not included.  Wilcox concludes the obvious point that “expected increases in energy prices highlight the importance of actions that can lower energy costs”.  In my opinion the point that doing nothing is the least impactful action is not acknowledged.  The importance of energy savings measures is highlighted.  However, I don’t think this will provide as many benefits as they do because this has been emphasized for decades so the simple fixes and obvious solutions have already been implemented.  It is easy to say that “Policy and market solutions that focus on lowering up-front costs” may make this more affordable, but no suggestions how that can be done or why anyone would expect that this may happen are offered.  Finally, there is the recommendation of all analysts that have no clue how to get the preferred answer to “do further research”.

Presentation Discussion Topics

The annotated transcript for this presentation includes a heading for questions made during the meeting with a link to each person who commented or asked a question. 

Chair Doreen Harris asked about the differences between Upstate and Downstate.  Wilcox explained that there are climatic differences, transportation patterns are different, and the predominant type of housing is different.  Harris followed up stating:

I think that’s important because that’s one of the reasons why we had to produce so many variations, right? Like, it reflects the diversity of our state in a way that means that the answer isn’t the same for everyone, depending on their own experience and the way they live.

Because I believe that this presentation was scripted to further the messaging of the Administration, I think it is telling that she wanted to emphasize impacts are not the same for everyone.  I am not sure why, however. 

The rationale for her second question about what happens if households do not upgrade is obvious.  The projections show that all replacement scenarios doubles costs so doing nothing is an attractive option.  Not only is that a great argument against an implementation schedule, but it establishes a significant public acceptance hurdle.  Wilcox admitted that the key driver of change over the next five years is “change in energy price”.  The modeling shows that this will increase household energy spending 3% to 8% in the starting point base case but could go up to as much as 14% to 19% even if they do nothing. 

The questions and answers went on:

Harris: “And then, James, maybe to kind of take those percentages in context, was it in that higher price sensitivity, a household that did nothing could see as much as one hundred dollars a month increased costs. Is that about right?

Wilcox: “Yeah. That’s correct.”

Harris: “So there’s a substantial increase with these energy prices for folks who don’t take any action. Thank you. That is what I was trying to elicit: What does doing nothing get you?

To summarize, the Chair of the Energy Planning Board was trying to elicit a specific point from her staff that there will be a substantial increase in energy prices even if people don’t take any action.  Her staff person Wilcox could have destroyed his career if he had pointed out that the minimum increase in any of the scenarios that replaced household and transportation equipment is 1.7 times greater than current costs which is far greater than the greatest impact of doing nothing which was 0.19 times greater.

After that the rest of the questions were a comedown.  There were suggestions that the new technologies might offer new opportunities that might somehow, someway, mitigate the cold equations that show this is unaffordable.  There was also a suggestion made that all would work out if New Yorkers used public transit.

Discussion

Presumably the Attorney General Office supplemental letter  that argued that promulgating regulations for the Climate Act target would cause “undue harm” used in the New York Supreme Court litigation was developed with the assistance of NYSERDA.  That letter claimed that the Climate Act mandates are infeasible due to excessive costs that are “unaffordable for consumers”.  All these numbers confirm that there are affordability issues.

This finding sums up Climate Act affordability.  For a moderate-income household in Upstate New York that uses natural gas the difference between replacement of conventional equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment necessary for Climate Act compliance increases monthly average energy expenditures $593, a whopping 43% increase in energy costs. 

There are ten other household profiles.  The presentation did not provide sufficient information for a similar assessment of any of those other profiles.  The State Energy Plan document web page does not list any updates to the draft materials from last summer so I am not able to develop an overview of all the household profile results.  Also note that the documentation does not provide backup to the graphs and tables presented in the Energy Plan reports so this is no small task.

Conclusion

Any argument that the Climate Act transition will not be extraordinarily expensive can be refuted by using the data included in this presentation.  Coupled with the Pathways Analysis presentation described previously that found that neither 2030 Climate Act target will be met before 2036, the only appropriate course of action is to reconsider the Climate Act.  Given that it will require accountability by the politicians who got New York into this mess I am not optimistic.