Category: Climate Act

Guest Post – Heat Pump Rate Carveouts

It has been my experience that every aspect of the green energy transition is more complicated than it appears at first.  This is an example of the unintended consequences of a transition component.  I recently met Scott Endler who provided this guest post describing a proposal to change the electric rate structure to support heat pumps.  The proposed solution is not what it seems.

Scott is a self taught efficiency and energy analyst in Central New York.

I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to convert Endler’s study into this post.

Background

On May 5, 2026, “A coalition of environmental groups today filed a petition calling on the New York Public Service Commission to fix electric rate designs that unfairly overcharge households that switch to clean electric heating. The petition was filed by Alliance for a Green Economy, Building Decarbonization Coalition, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Rewiring America, and Sierra Club”. 

The basis for the petition is a report conducted by Switchbox, “Heat Pump Rates in New York State: An Analysis of Cost-Based and Cost-Reflective Rates for Heat Pump Customers.” The report claims that when customers switch from gas heating to heat pumps they dramatically cut their energy use, however, most of these same customers see their bills go up due to outdated electric pricing policies. My initial impression is that if cost savings are only possible by changing policies then the proposed “solution” is not all it is cracked up to be.  Endler explains why this is more complicated below.

Why heat pump carve‑outs are a dead‑end

Advocates like Earthjustice and Switchbox argue that New York utilities are overcharging heat pump customers for delivery service—on the order of hundreds of dollars per year—and propose a dedicated “heat pump rate” to fix the problem. Their basic case rests on two current facts about the New York grid.

  • The system is still summer‑peaking, so much of the winter distribution network is treated as “already paid for,” with plenty of headroom when heat pumps run on cold but not extreme days.
  • A customer who electrifies heat can see roughly a doubling of their kWh volume, so volumetric delivery charges go up even if the utility’s embedded winter distribution costs barely move.

From there, the coalition jumps to a political conclusion: create a boutique, technology‑specific discount so heat pump adopters pay less for winter delivery while everyone else stays on the old schedule. That might satisfy the coalition in this rate case, but it fails three basic tests: fairness, durability, and alignment with the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) long‑term grid trajectory.

The transition paradox: today’s spare winter capacity won’t last

The core problem with the carve‑out logic is that it freezes today’s grid snapshot and pretends it is permanent. CLCPA‑driven electrification of buildings and transportation all but guarantees that New York will flip from a summer‑peaking to a winter‑peaking system sometime in the 2030s, as electric heat and winter peak EV charging push load into the coldest hours.

Under that future paradigm, heat pumps are no longer opportunistic users of “free” winter capacity; they become the main driver of localized peak demand, transformer overloads, and the next round of capital projects. The very customers who are being framed today as victims of an unfair delivery rate will, in a decade or so, be the marginal cost causers when the system is strained on sub‑zero January mornings.

Designing a permanent special discount for a technology that is on track to become the dominant driver of winter peaks is a textbook example of a policy that works only as long as it doesn’t succeed.

Horizontal equity: same wires, same rules

If the wires are a shared public asset, then any consumer who pushes current through those wires at a constrained hour should face the same price signal regardless of what device is on the other end of the cord. I frame this as “horizontal equity”: identical structural rules for every ratepayer.

In a horizontal‑equity framework, a kilowatt‑hour is charged based on the physical state of the network and the prevailing supply price, not on whether it feeds a heat pump, a resistance heater, an EV, or a Bitcoin rig. That approach avoids cross‑subsidies from non‑adopters to relatively affluent early adopters of new technologies, a regressive pattern that is already visible in some rooftop solar and EV incentives.

By contrast, a bespoke “heat pump” class asks a single mom in a gas‑heated apartment to pay higher delivery charges so that a homeowner with a brand‑new variable‑speed HP and smart thermostat can enjoy a tailored discount in the name of climate justice.

A dynamic, capacity‑based delivery price

The counter‑proposal coming out of the feasibility study is a dynamic, capacity‑based delivery tariff that works much more like the wholesale energy market. Instead of a static cents‑per‑kWh delivery rate smeared over all hours, the distribution price would move up and down with remaining localized grid capacity.

  • When local transformers, feeders, and substation capacity are plentiful—say, on a quiet winter night—the marginal cost of using the network is low and the delivery price falls toward zero for everyone.
  • When capacity is tight—say, during a frigid morning when Winter Storm Fern pushed downstate resources to the brink—the delivery component spikes exactly when the system is most stressed.

This preserves cost‑recovery for the utilities over the year while sending a sharp, physics‑based price signal in the hours when grid use is genuinely expensive. Crucially, the signal is identical for any customer whose load shows up in that hour.

Why this beats Straight Fixed‑Variable (SFV)

Some utility economists default to Straight Fixed‑Variable designs—high fixed monthly charges and very low volumetric delivery rates—to stabilize revenue as electrification reshapes load. The problem is that SFV guts the conservation signal: once you’ve paid your hefty monthly fee, each extra kilowatt‑hour costs very little, so the customer’s incentive to invest in efficiency or to shift load out of peak hours is weak.

A capacity‑prorated volumetric charge keeps the usage‑based signal intact. Customers still save real money by using less energy over the billing period, and they get an additional incentive to avoid precisely those hours when both supply and wires are constrained. That is exactly what CLCPA‑era demand management is supposed to reward.

In other words, this is a way to modernize rate design without flattening everything into a subscription fee that severs the link between behavior and system cost.

Behavioral and planning benefits

Under a dynamic distribution price, a heat pump owner is not punished for having electrified; they are only penalized if they insist on running at full load in the same hour that everyone else is trying to do the same thing on a constrained circuit. The rational response is not to rip out the heat pump, but to invest in insulation, envelope upgrades, and smarter controls that quietly shave load exactly when the grid is tight.

This architecture also makes grid planning more honest. When the delivery price spikes repeatedly on a certain circuit, it is a market signal that the wires and transformers there are under‑sized relative to demand, justifying targeted capital upgrades instead of generalized rate hikes. Because every technology sees that same price shape, the planner’s data isn’t distorted by carve‑outs and exemptions.

You can think of it as bringing distributed marginal‑cost pricing down from the wholesale level into the distribution system, instead of trying to fine‑tune social policy via ever more fragmented rate classes.

How this plays out as CLCPA bites

Look at the CLCPA trajectory and the recent Winter Storm Fern emergency order for a preview of the stakes. As more load is pushed into winter mornings and evenings, the occasional near‑miss we saw in January 2026 becomes more common unless billions are poured into wires and flexible resources.

In a world of boutique heat pump discounts, those marginal infrastructure costs get socialized onto everyone else while the prime driver of the peak enjoys a protected class rate. In a capacity‑based, technology‑neutral regime, the households and businesses that draw power at the worst times pay the highest delivery price, regardless of whether they are doing the “right thing” in some broader climate narrative.

That may be politically uncomfortable, but it is honest—and if CLCPA is supposed to be about aligning economic signals with physical reality, it is hard to justify anything else.

Where advocates are right—and what regulators should do instead

The Earthjustice coalition is not wrong to say that current volumetric delivery tariffs can make early electrifiers look like suckers. But the fix should address the structural flaw in the rate design, not just the optics for one favored technology.

Regulators who genuinely care about affordability and equity should focus on:

  • Deploying interval‑capable meters fast enough to make capacity‑based delivery pricing administratively feasible.
  • Phasing in a simple, transparent distribution price that reflects localized capacity conditions, starting with the most constrained circuits.
  • Avoiding the temptation to endorse technology‑specific carve‑outs that will be impossible to unwind once the political beneficiaries are numerous and vocal.

That path doesn’t lend itself to a press release about “fixing heat pump delivery rates,” but it would actually modernize the tariff architecture for a high‑electrification, high‑constraint grid.

Conclusion

New York’s new “heat pump rates” campaign gets one thing right: today’s delivery tariffs are a blunt instrument that can punish electrification. But carving out a special rate class for heat pumps is the wrong fix; a capacity‑based, technology‑neutral delivery charge tied to real‑time grid conditions would be fairer, more durable, and far more honest about who actually drives system costs.

New York State Renewable Permitting Scandal

This article was also posted at Watts Up With That

Paraphrasing the Washington Post “Environmental Protections Die in Darkness”, could be a slogan for New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) monomaniacal emphasis on renewable energy development.  Reasonable limits have never been established on wind and solar projects, so developers have been given free rein to build wherever is most convenient and cheap without regard to the environment.  If a recent article in the New York Post is any indication, however, that may be changing.  I explain the context of solar development in New York in this article.

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

Background

The CLCPA has been an exercise in political pandering to emotion-driven activists convinced that climate change is an existential threat that can be solved by transitioning to an energy system reliant on wind, solar, and energy storage.  I have been writing for years about the lack of a feasibility analysis that demonstrates that relying on renewable energy that does not provide energy all the time, including the times when needed the most, does not work well in New York’s climate and high latitude, and relies on resources that tend to fail at the same time over large areas. Instead of an ordered approach to decarbonization, New York lawmakers enacted a transition plan that consists of building as much wind and solar as possible, as fast as possible, and assumed that it would all work out. 

In the first year after the CLCPA was enacted renewable development did not get permitted as fast as the developers and activists wanted.  In April 2020, New York lawmakers enacted the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act that created the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) to implement a consolidated, expedited siting and permitting process for major renewable energy facilities.  Because New York progressive lawmakers know everything, the idea that there should be conditions on development was not included in the law.  There was no provision to ask the Department of Agriculture and Markets for recommendations on limits for the taking of prime farmland.  The Public Service Commission was not asked if solar developers should have technology mandates like tilting axis solar panels or recommendations not to build solar facilities in the Great Lake snowbelts that get 20 feet of snow a year.   The Department of Health did not establish noise limits to protect industrial neighbors of wind turbines.  In every instance there have been egregious impacts that the ORES permitting process has ignored as they rubber stamped approvals despite the strenuous efforts of local groups concerned with those impacts.  In future articles I will address these impacts.

The more I learn about the permitting process the more I am convinced that most New Yorkers have no clue about these destructive policies.  The local grassroots organizations have been knee-capped by this law and have failed to kill projects that cause what I am sure state agencies would agree are unacceptable impacts.  Publicity is needed to expose this scandal. The grassroots organizations opposed to unfettered renewable development that has no safeguards usually count themselves lucky to get a mention in a local newspaper or TV station, but their reach is limited.  They have not been able to get this issue publicized enough.

There is another egregious impact. I have no doubts that if the lawmakers had asked the Department of Environmental Conservation to recommend limits on destruction of rare and endangered species habitat, they would certainly have demanded limits on fragmenting habitat.  That did not happen and it has come to the attention of a social media influencer who is articulate, passionate and mad.  She also has a platform.

Alexandra Fasulo

Alexandra Fasulo has a Substack called House of Green with the stated goal “to equip you with the information and stories you need to farm, garden, homestead, futurestead, set up agricultural education businesses, and heal the environment.”   Her overall Substack presence (including House of Green and other titles) is listed as having “53K+ subscribers” and ranked around #13 in the Climate & Environment category.  Her Youtube channel has 384K subscribers and videos routinely get tens of thousands of views.  In her latest endeavor she established  a farm and her followers can monitor her homestead progress. 

When she found out about the nearby planned 100 MW Fort Edward Solar Project she attended a public hearing.  It was a wakeup call.  I think her public reach as social media influencer is going to have an impact as exemplified by the fact that the New York Post reached out to her.  She gave him the overview and connected him with other people in the article.

Fort Edward Solar

Chadwick Moore’s article describes Fasulo’s initial reaction to the Fort Edard Solar Project at a public hearing:

“There was nearly unanimous opposition to this project. So, I thought it wouldn’t go through. That’s how representative democracy works, right? Wrong.”

I had the same reaction about this project.  As shown in the following map that was used in the article, the project is within the Audubon-designated Fort Edward Grasslands Important Bird Area and the NYNHP Raptor Winter Concentration Area.  It also surrounds the NYS DEC Grassland Wildlife Management Area on three sides.  Note that the developer frequently points out that their project does not surround the Wildlife Management Area on all sides. The idea that fields of solar panels could be permitted adjacent to a wildlife management area is beyond my comprehension.

The Fort Edwards site, in red, is in the middle of a state-recognized wildlife sanctuary.

Grassland Bird Trust/ American Land Rescue Fund

I admire Fasulo because she did not take the rejection of her concerns sitting down.  She established a non-profit American Land Rescue Fund to “defend America’s land through law and action.”  Because the permitting documents are heavily redacted, she hired independent consultants to assess the environmental impact.

That report, reviewed by The Post, shows the Fort Edwards site sits inside a NYS Department of Environmental Conservation-managed grassland and bird sanctuary “well known for high species diversity of breeding grassland birds and important numbers of wintering raptors including an Endangered and a Threatened species,” the report stated.

The species impacted by the development include the endangered short-eared owl (fewer than 50 breeding pairs remain in the state, per the Grassland Bird Trust), the threatened northern harrier and 15 species of reptiles and amphibians of “conservation concern,” among many others.

Moore goes on to describe 17 other solar projects in Upstate New York that have their own issues. 

Each of the 18 sites ORES has selected will have a capacity over 25 megawatts. The agency also has an additional dozen wind projects in the works.

Some of the largest projects are the 4,000-acre (6.25-square-mile), 500-megawatt Cider Solar Farm in Genesee County and the 2,000-acre (3.1-square-mile) Ridge View Solar Farm in Niagara County, as shown on The Post’s map.

To add insult to injury, many of the multibillion-dollar solar contracts have been farmed out to foreign companies — including Canada’s Boralex, France’s EDF Renewables, and South Korea’s Cypress Creek Renewables, The Post has found. 

He describes a smaller project in Copake NY. 

A hundred miles south in the bucolic Hudson Valley town of Copake, local resident Sara Traberman has made fighting Big Solar her full-time job. Chicago-based developer Hecate Energy scooped up over 700 acres of productive farmland to install a planned 42-megawatt-capacity solar facility, expected to go online late next year.

Locals were told to expect two years of nonstop construction where 547 dump trucks and 10 pile drivers along with numerous cranes and excavators will swarm the picturesque hamlet from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. — seven days a week.

“It’s about changing the character of this town. It’s a rural, farming community. We just ask that the rules of the town and the view of what the people want for where they live is respected,” Traberman told The Post.

“It’s going to impact tourism, local traffic, the schools. It’s going to be horrible.

Moore also describes a lawsuit against ORES in Montgomery County. 

Developers were permitted to gobble up 6,400 acres (10 square miles) — most of it active farmland — for two massive solar complexes near the towns of Canajoharie and Root.

Montgomery County Attorney Meghan Manion told The Post the litigation challenges “the grossly unlawful actions of ORES,” which “deviated from lawful procedure by choosing not to follow their own regulations in granting these [solar] permits.”

While developers cover the cost of construction, locals have to eat revenue losses on property tax for the sites, Montgomery County lawmaker Michael Muhlebeck told The Post. He also said his constituents, who are “97 percent” opposed to the projects, will likely face higher utility costs due to the increased demand that often follows large industrial projects like this.

Issues

The article describes the futility of changing the climate with solar power and explains that solar resources in New York are not strong.  According to the New York Independent System Operator summary of renewable performance utility-scale solar facilities provided between 16 and 19% of the maximum possible generation over the last four years.   There is a bigger problem.  Electric resource planning must be based on the worst-case event.  During last winter’s extreme winter weather 18-day episode the daily solar capacity available was less than 10% half the time and less than 5% three days.  I also showed that this episode proves that in these events all short-term energy storage would be depleted early, leaving insufficient renewable generation to both meet demand and recharge storage systems. As a result, a new dispatchable emissions-free resource is needed to keep the lights on.

I recommend checking out the article’s map of the 18 solar projects currently under consideration by ORES that extend from far western New York to the Canadian border in the north.  All these projects are needed to provide New York City with zero-emissions electricity as part of the CLCPA.  Because they are so spread-out transmission upgrades will undoubtedly be required, if not for these projects, then surely for all the other renewable projects necessary.

The experiences recounted in the article indicate that unfettered renewable energy development in New York is causing demonstrable environmental impacts.  Given environmental advocacy outrage over environmental impacts of data centers it is disappointing that they have not expressed their concerns over the more extensive impacts of renewable energy development.

At the end of the day this outcome is solely on the lawmakers who supported these laws.  They never enabled state agencies to fulfill their missions, and I think you could say they prevented them from doing so in the process.  The developers cannot be faulted for taking advantage of the situation and ORES staff is simply following the law.  Prior to 2019, the state agencies would have said the environmental impacts f Fort Edward Solar are unacceptable and asked the developer to build their facility somewhere with less impacts.

Conclusion

Montgomery County lawmaker Michael Muhlebeck summed up the scandal:

“New York state has taken more and more from our communities and they’ve literally just shut us down. We no longer have the right to protect our residents.  “But there’s a goal that has to be met. And that goal is bigger than our local communities, our wildlife, our wetlands. And they don’t care,” she added.

Publicity is needed to expose this scandal. I hope that the power of social media exemplified by Alexandra Fasulo can bring this to the attention of enough New Yorkers that the policies can be changed to protect the environment and interests of the local communities impacted by these industrial developments.  The only way this can be fixed is for legislative change.

Budget Bill Revisions to the CLCPA

In late February the Hochul Administration “leaked” a New York Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) memo that said that “full compliance with New York’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act could cost upstate households more than $4,000 a year – on top of what they are already paying today and gas prices could jump over $2 a gallon.”  I believe they recognized that the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) is so expensive that it would be a re-election campaign liability.  Sunce then there have been many hints during budget negotiations but nothing specific in the opaque New York budget process.  I got a copy of the relevant part of the budget bill and this is a summary of what is included.   

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

There are substantive issues that can no longer be ignored. Most targets are behind schedule, and the obvious increased costs of the Climate Act will exacerbate the existing energy affordability crisis.  New York State Department of Environmental Conservation needs to respond to the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) economy wide emission reduction initiative requirements and will have to eventually respond to the litigation saying that the State must implement the regulations or amend the law.  

Budget Bill CLCPA Revisions

The Climate Act revisions are in Part VV of the TED bill. 

The revisions specify specific amendments to Section 1. Subdivisions 2, 8 and 13 of section 75-0101 of the environmental conservation law, as added by chapter 106 of the laws of 2019. 

  • Subdivision 2 changes GHG accounting from 20GWP to 100GWP, making us comparable to everyone else.  This enables us to interact with other jurisdictions seamlessly and reduces impacts of the irrational methane obsession in the 2019 Climate Act.
  • Subdivision 8 changes exclude biogenic (e.g., organic matter like wood, although they don’t add a definition) emissions from our GHG limit (again matching other jurisdictions)
  • Subdivision 13 eliminates out of state extraction and transportation of fossil fuels from our state GHG limit emissions accounting.  It does not revise out of state emissions from generation of electric power imported to NYS as part of our inventory.

The Climate Action Council planning process is revised to modify the charge to the Climate Action Council to developing a plan “toward” rather than “for” achieving  the state’s GHG limits, requires an undated Climate Action Plan in 2008, then updates every six years, rather than an update every five years (under current law, the Plan would have been updated in 2026)

There is a technical correction that requires separate reporting for biogenic emissions “consistent with” treatment by the IPCC.

One of the big changes requires DEC, by 12/31/28 to adopt regulations that “to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective” to achieve a 60% reduction in GHG by 2040, from a 1990 baseline.   The current law requires a 40% reduction by 2030. 

Revisions also require DEC to consider the feasibility of a cap and invest program that could be linked to other jurisdictions, including its affordability for residents, business and other entities, its impact on economic development and energy costs, and other factors. 

There also is a revision that requires evaluation of the reduction measures.  DEC is required to issue a report on recommended GHG reduction measures four years after the adoption of these regulations.

There are changes to the environmental justice mandates. The revisions require that climate-related state funds be spent with a goal of 40% in or for the benefit of disadvantaged communities, with a goal of 45% (up from 30% and 35%, respectively.)

Impression

The budget bill makes several important technical changes to the CLCPA that intersect directly with concerns I have raised over the last few years. First, it finally abandons the outlier 20‑year global warming potential metric and redefines “carbon dioxide equivalent” using a 100‑year time frame, bringing New York’s accounting back in line with IPCC practice and most other jurisdictions.  The bill also narrows the definition of “statewide greenhouse gas emissions” by removing upstream emissions from the extraction and transmission of fossil fuels imported into the state, while continuing to count emissions associated with imported electricity.  Both changes move the law modestly toward a more conventional and transparent accounting framework, which I have argued is a necessary precondition for honest discussion of New York’s role in global emissions.

The revisions also adjust several process and timing provisions without changing the underlying statutory end‑points. The deadline for DEC’s implementing regulations is pushed back to December 31, 2028, and updates to the Climate Action Council plan are now scheduled for 2028 and every six years thereafter, rather than “at least once every five years.”  This effectively concedes that the original schedule was unrealistic but does not revisit the 2040 and 2050 outcome targets or introduce any formal safety valve tied to costs or reliability.  In that sense, the law’s ambition is unchanged; only the official calendar has been stretched.

On the regulatory design side, the bill adds more explicit direction around issues I have frequently highlighted—affordability, leakage, economic competitiveness, and the potential role of a cap‑and‑invest program. DEC is instructed to design rules that minimize costs and maximize benefits, ensure reductions are “real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable,” incorporate measures to minimize leakage, and consider options such as an economy‑wide, market‑based cap‑and‑invest system that may include linkages and cost‑containment features.  However, all of this remains in the language of “considerations” and broad objectives; there are no hard affordability limits, no explicit reliability criteria, and no defined thresholds at which the state must slow down or change course if costs, leakage, or reliability impacts become unacceptable.

Finally, the bill strengthens the statutory commitment to disadvantaged communities by raising both the goal and minimum share of “overall benefits” that must accrue to those communities, from 40 to 45 percent (goal) and from 35 to 40 percent (floor) of spending on clean energy and energy efficiency programs.  As with the original CLCPA, these percentages are defined in terms of “benefits,” not costs, and the bill does not resolve the practical questions of how those benefits are measured or how these distributional targets interact with least‑cost system planning. 

Reliability Problem

I am particularly concerned that the revisions do not address the reliability issues associated with the Renewable Energy Program.  There is nothing included that addresses what happens to the emissions free generation sector by 2040. This might be a portent that this issue will be addressed by the safety valve hearing in New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p.  That would certainly be a political maneuver whereby they could get the necessary result but not take the blame for having to do it.

Unfortunately, this approach does not provide real solutions to the unfolding crisis.  The necessary technology to transition off fossil fuel generating resources is not available to address the extreme market events experienced during last winter’s cold snap.  At the same time,  the existing fossil resources that ensured the lights did not go out are aging and need to be replaced.  The business case for a developers to build new facilities and recover their costs with the existing timeline for zero emissions electric generation is very weak. The Governor needs to enact an interim solution that builds natural gas plants across the state until the ultimate future energy system is in place. 

Conclusion

Overall, the budget bill addresses some of the most egregious technical and accounting problems I have criticized, but it leaves my central concerns about feasibility, affordability, and reliability largely untouched.  Not surprisingly, the primary changes extend the deadlines for accountability beyond the election and avoids the hard decisions about the future of New York’s energy system untouched.

Public Power New York on NYPA Renewables Plans

Post updated on 5/21/2026 to revise quotes from Keith Schue

Public Power New York recently released a notice that the New York Power Authority (NYPA) is reviewing 5GW of new public renewables.  However, when I tried to find a reference to a NYPA announcement I could not find anything.  This post addresses some of the potshots included in their notice and the spin of the announcement.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (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. At the same time the environmental permitting for the renewables buildout has is causing unacceptable environmental impacts. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.  I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries and references included in this document. 

Background

Keith Schue sent me a copy of an email from Public Power NY. Information on the organization’s website reveals that Public Power NY is a coalition formed by several organizations including nine New York chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America. The group’s about page notes:

Public Power NY is a statewide, grassroots movement of New Yorkers who know the truth about our energy system: that to build a future we can be proud of, we must take our power back from corporate control, and put it in the hands of the people.

To make it happen, we passed the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), the biggest climate and green jobs bill in the nation. The BPRA unleashed the power of New York State to build publicly owned, 100% renewable energy, create a new era of green union jobs, slash rising energy bills for those who need it most, and make New York a national leader in the fight to build a future we’d be proud to pass on to those to come. Now we’re fighting to make sure our full vision for a Green New Deal in New York becomes a reality.

Our movement is made up of over 20 of New York’s most effective climate, community, and advocacy organizations, and thousands of volunteers who have taken action everywhere from Brooklyn to Buffalo. Our campaign is also endorsed by labor unions representing over one million members in New York, including 1199SEIU, NYSUT, UUP, PSC-CUNY, and UAW 9A.

Build Public Renewables Act

The BPRA requires NYPA to build renewables to backstop private developments.  When it passed in May 2023 advocates claimed NYPA can build “more quickly, affordably, and democratically than private developers,” largely because it can issue low‑cost bonds and can tap into the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA is no longer in play and Schue points that it now more about subsidizing the projects of private foreign and out-of-state solar/wind developers.   The fact is that the same problems facing private developers also limit what NYPA can do.  Those problems include:

Capital cost vs. total system cost: Low borrowing rates do not solve interconnection queues, supply chain constraints, transmission limitations, or local opposition, all of which dominate project timelines today.

Execution risk: Scaling up development is a problem for private developers because there are not that  many people with appropriate backgrounds.  NYPA has not been a greenfield utility‑scale developer on this scale; it is being asked to stand up a quasi‑developer arm while simultaneously managing its legacy hydro fleet and transmission assets.

Labor and procurement constraints: Strong prevailing wage, PLAs, buy‑American and just transition provisions may be politically desirable, but they also raise project costs and reduce vendor flexibility, which undermines claims that public projects will automatically be cheaper than private ones.

Academic work by Matthew Huber has argued that much of the BPRA rhetoric obscures the difficulty of actually organizing the existing utility workforce and overstates the extent to which a political win on statute translates into a practical Green New Deal‑style industrial program. 

PPNY Criticisms of Nuclear

The email states “This is a hopeful step in a dark time for New York as Governor Kathy Hochul works hard to dismantle New York’s world-leading climate law in favor of deadly fracked gas and expensive nuclear.”  Schue points out that this potshot at “expensive” nuclear in their materials is unwarranted:

This ignores the fact that system level costs actually make a predominantly solar/wind grid most expensive due to the need for massive amounts of battery storage, far more transmission infrastructure, grid-stabilizing equipment, and backup generation–plus the fact that those solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries require frequent replacement. DOE analysis supported by both the Trump and former Biden administrations confirm this. Even NYSERDA’s own analysis indicates that adding more nuclear capacity would save the state billions over attempting to do it all with a gargantuan amount of solar, wind, batteries, etc.  Yes, a robust, reliable nuclear power plant that produces continuous electricity has a higher up-front cost than intermittent, sprawling weather-dependent solar panels made mostly in China where environmental and worker protections are miserable). But that plant will last eighty years or more, and does not force you to reinvent the entire grid. 

There is an old adage that you get what you pay for. Nuclear is an investment in the future that conserves rural land. A grid without it destroys both.

Keith and I commiserated that this logical approach is being ignored by most climate advocates. 

Huber’s article discussed the DSA focus on worker benefits of the transition.  He explained that there is a disconnect between the DSA insistence on renewables and union worker preferences.  He noted that “it’s worth noting that industrial/electricity unions also promote a much broader vision of decarbonization beyond just renewables and explicitly promote nuclear power (and this aligns with the state of the art models on what is required as well).”  Huber concludes:

Even before such a transformation, public power advocates must stop basing their organizing and coalition building on Green NGOs and their narrow, infeasible technical visions of decarbonization, and start listening to what the actual skilled workers in this sector see as a viable path to good union jobs, reliable electricity, and decarbonization.

Announcement Spin

When I tried to find a reference to a NYPA announcement related to the PPNY claim “This week, the NYPA board met and discussed building 4.8GW of new public renewable projects in addition to the 5.5 GW they already have planned. I could not find anything.  My initial search could not find any such announcement, so I asked Perplexity AI to look.  The Perplexity response said nothing was released that matched that claim.  then I asked Perplexity AI to comment on the PPNY notice relative to what was available.  In the interest of time, I am just going to quote the response.

They’re spinning routine NYPA planning numbers into a political “we’re winning” story about BPRA-style public power, while glossing over how contingent and preliminary most of this capacity actually is.

What the 5 GW claim actually refers to

  • Public Power NY’s teaser text says NYPA is “reviewing nearly 5 GW of new public renewables as it implements the Build Public Renewables Act.” [publicpowerny](https://publicpowerny.org)
  • That number is basically NYPA’s internal *pipeline* of potential solar, wind, and storage projects under its Renewables Strategic Plan, not 5 GW of shovel‑ready, financed projects NYPA is about to build as a Soviet‑style green TVA. [nypa](https://www.nypa.gov/News/Press-Releases/2025/20250729-strategic-plan)
  • The updated NYPA Renewables Strategic Plan approved in December 2025 talks about a total of ~5.5 GW of capacity in its portfolio (39 solar, 3 wind, 149 storage, and associated low‑income/REACH projects), which lines up with the “nearly 5 GW” talking point once you account for rounding and how they slice “new” versus existing efforts.

How this fits with BPRA and NYPA’s legal mandate

  • Under the Build Public Renewables framework, NYPA was authorized and directed to plan, own, and operate large‑scale renewables to help meet CLCPA’s 70% by 2030 target, and to phase out its small fossil peaker fleet subject to NYISO reliability findings. [
  • NYPA responded first with a 3.3 GW draft renewables plan in early 2025, then—after a wave of criticism from BPRA advocates—came back with an updated plan that roughly doubled the target to 7 GW in drafts and ultimately landed at 5.5 GW in the approved version.
  • -The coalition is seizing on “nearly 5 GW of new public renewables under review” as evidence that their campaign forced NYPA to scale up, even though NYPA is still operating within conventional utility planning constraints (transmission, NYISO interconnection, capital limits, bond ratings, etc.).

What’s being glossed over

  • “Reviewing” means these projects are in various stages: some are just concepts or early‑stage site screens, some are contingent on developer responses to NYPA’s RFQ, and many will be pruned or delayed by NYISO studies, local opposition, or cost escalations.
  • NYPA must keep a majority stake in projects but is heavily reliant on private developers and EPCs from its RFQ list (about 90‑plus prequalified firms) – this is not a pure state‑builds‑everything model that BPRA rhetoric implies.
  • None of this solves the underlying NYISO reliability concerns around downstate gas plants, transmission bottlenecks, or the economics of long‑duration storage; the press‑release framing makes it sound like “5 GW of public renewables” is a done deal that will cleanly displace fossil capacity on a political timetable, which is very different from what NYISO and NYPA actually state in their own documents.

Conclusion

Reality is catching up the DSA BPRA vision, and its adherents have not figured that out yet.  The BPRA is not going to accelerate the transition to renewables.  The union workers that the PPNY claims to represent have figured out that the real decarbonization job jackpot would be nuclear development but their notice downplays the value of nuclear.  Characterizing the NYPA planning process as evidence that there are substantial resources in the pipeline is flawed on every level.  All those beliefs are incorrect. 

Compliance Impacts of Virginia Joining RGGI – When will the Allowances Run Out

On April 29, 2026, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) states released a statement that Virginia was rejoining the program. On May 8, the RGGI states issued a notice that they were monitoring the allowance market in response to a sharp increase in the secondary futures market price. In a recent article I described the financial impact.  This article addresses compliance.

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.

Background

RGGI is a market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. It has been a cooperative effort among Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont since 2008, with New Jersey rejoining in 2020 and Virginia scheduled to rejoin beginning July 1, 2026; Pennsylvania recently decided not to join.

According to the RGGI program description, the states issue permits to emit a ton of CO₂ or allowances that are distributed almost entirely through regional auctions, and the proceeds are then reinvested in strategic energy and consumer programs. Those investments include energy efficiency, clean and renewable energy, beneficial electrification, greenhouse gas abatement and climate adaptation, and direct bill assistance, with energy efficiency receiving the largest share.

In a recent article I explained that the cost of RGGI allowances obtained at auction is not the only cost to consumers.  In New York’s de-regulated market, the cost to purchase the allowances is embedded in the  price bid by RGGI program fossil-fired power plants in the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) energy auction.  The NYISO chooses the power plants that will run based on the economic dispatch clearing price.  When a RGGI-affected generating unit sets the price, all the generating units providing power get paid for the added cost of RGGI even though many do not have compliance obligations.  I showed that this more than doubles the cost of compliance or more depending on the cost of allowances, making the cost an important affordability consideration.

RGGI allowance costs are driven by basic economic considerations. When there is scarcity, prices increase; when there is uncertainty about scarcity, costs also go up. The difference is that price increases associated with uncertainty can drop when more information is available, whereas if the RGGI plans for reducing the emission cap are unrealistic that bakes in scarcity so prices will increase structurally. When RGGI announced that Virginia was going to rejoin the program there was a market price spike based on a lack of information. 

RGGI Cap Trajectory

The RGGI webpage describing last summer’s changes to the program included a graph that compares the current regional base cap (light blue) with the updated cap trajectory (dark blue). The orange and yellow lines display the total updated regional cap if all allowances are released from the updated first and second Cost Containment Reserve (CCR)  tiers, respectively.  The CCR tiers were added to reduce allowance costs.  The bottom line is that the changes reduce the regional emissions cap in 2027 to 69,806,919 tons of CO2 from 75,717,784 tons under the previous Model Rule and then reduces allowances  Allowances decline by approximately 10.5% of the 2025 budget, thereafter through 2033.

The RGGI emission cap trajectory was designed to be consistent with state net-zero targets.  However, that trajectory is unrealistic.  Figure 2 plots CO₂ emissions by fuel type across all eleven states from 2006 to 2025.  What you see is fuel switching caused the reductions and that there are only minor opportunities for future fuel switching.  When I analyzed the 2023 RGGI investment proceeds report, I estimated that only about 7.6% of observed emission reductions could be attributed to RGGI‑funded projects despite RGGI auction proceeds of over $7 billion since 2021.  Changes to Federal policy, supply chain issues, and inflation coupled with load growth all indicate that reductions from other programs are unlikely as well.  The cap trajectory is simply incompatible with reality.

Figure 2: Eleven State RGGI CO₂ Emissions (short tons) for all Programs 2006–2025

To determine when the allowances will run out it is necessary to consider emissions and the allowance trajectory.  For this analysis I assume that future emissions equal the average of the last three years.  In Figure 3, I plotted the updated cap trajectory (orange), total updated regional cap if all allowances are released from CCR Tier 1 (purple), CCR Tier 2 (green) and emissions in grey.  I assume that allowance prices will exceed the trigger for the CCR allowance release every year.  Note that in 2028 the emissions become greater than the allowances added to the market without Virginia in RGGI.

Figure 3: RGGI Emissions and Cap Trajectories for RGGI States Without Virginia

Figure 4 provides similar information with Virginia added to RGGI.  There is no appreciable change to the time when the allowance allocations are less than the emissions so I believe that the addition of Virginia will not affect impacts.

Figure 4: RGGI Emissions and Cap Trajectories for RGGI States With Virginia

Allowance Bank

Comparing the allowance allocations to the emissions does not consider the allowances already in the system.  The “allowance bank” is the aggregate number of allowances in circulation that have been issued but not yet surrendered for compliance (i.e., held in accounts or set‑asides). The original distribution of  RGGI allowances was before the fracking revolution made natural gas a cost-effective substitute for replacing oil and coal generating units.  When power plants switched to lower-emitting  natural gas, much larger reductions in emissions than expected occurred and the allowance bank grew so large that the RGGI States implemented several adjustments to the allowances allocated to reduce the bank.  These adjustments ended in 2025.

To refine when emissions could exceed the allowances available it is necessary to account for the allowance bank.  RGGI does not provide a report that describes the status of the allowance bank, so I had to develop my own estimate.

Potomac Economics provides independent market monitoring analysis of RGGI that provide the information needed to estimate the bank.  The Quarterly Reports on the Secondary Market are released several week after the end of a quarter.  The Quarter 4 2025 report includes a description of CO2 allowance holdings:

CO2 Allowance Holdings – At the end of the fourth quarter of 2025:

  • There were 175 million CO2 allowances in circulation.
  • Compliance-oriented entities held approximately 125 million of the allowances in circulation (71 percent).
  • Approximately 142 million of the allowances in circulation (81 percent) are believed to be held for compliance purposes.

Quarterly Allowance Status

The allowance bank is simply the difference between allowances being added and emissions that subtract allowances.  Allowance transactions occur on a quarterly basis.  Allowances are added at each auction and the annual true-up when allowances are surrendered to account for emissions occurs in the first quarter following the end of the year.

Emissions are used to reduce the allowance bank.  Historical quarterly emissions are available on the RGGI COATS platform.  Table 1 lists historical and projected CO2 emissions by state starting in quarter 4 2021 and ending in 2029.  Historical emissions are not highlighted.  For the second quarter of 2026 (highlighted in blue) I assumed that emissions would equal the average of the last two years.  Starting in the third quarter of 2026 I assumed that emissions would equal the average of the three years when Virginia was part of RGGI.  This is supported by Figure 2 that shows emissions have been relatively level since 2019 for the eleven states now in RGGI.  The annual emissions are simply the sum of the four quarters.  The 2026 total highlighted because it represents a mix of observed and projected emissions.

Table 1: RGGI Quarterly CO2 Mass Emissions (short tons)

The allowance bank is the balance of allowances awarded and surrendered.  Figure 4 described the projected allowance distribution that was used to project future annual allowance distributions.  I assume that all the CCR Tier 1 and Tier 2 allocations will be awarded in the first quarter and the remaining allowances distributed by the same amount each quarter.  The Virginia allowance distribution has not been announced so I assume that they will be awarded in proportion to the control period when Virginia was a member. 

The purpose of this analysis is to determine when the allowances in circulation are less than the emissions.  The quarterly number of  allowances in circulation is equal to the sum of the previous quarter allowances in circulation and the allowances awarded with allowances surrendered subtracted.  Allowances are surrendered annually but I subtracted the emissions on a quarterly basis to get finer resolution.

Figure 5 plots the quarterly emissions (green), allowance cap (dark blue), added allowances (light blue) and allowance balance (orange).  This analysis assumes that emissions remain constant and shows that as the allowance cap is reduced the bank of allowances eventually is exhausted.  When the allowance balance is less than zero there are no longer sufficient permits to emit CO2 and affected units must shut down or end up out of compliance.  Table 2 lists the balances and shows that during the third quarter of 2032 there are insufficient allowances. 

Figure 5:  Quarterly RGGI Allowance Balance, Emissions and Allowance Cap

Table 2: Quarterly RGGI Allowance Balance, Added Allowances and Emissions

Discussion

To sum up, RGGI allowances necessary for facilities to operate will run out in the third quarter of 2033 if emissions remain constant and that the share of Virginia allowance allocations remains proportional to the period when Virginia was in RGGI.  Note, however, that the market will be so tight in 2033 that some facilities will run out sooner.  I would like to think that Virginia will remain consistent, but it is worrisome that Virginia decided to rejoin before the end of the current compliance period that ends this year.  In the past states entered and left the program consistent with the three-year compliance period.  If that decision was driven by an ideological desire to save the planet there is the possibility that a different allowance allotment will be used.  If the Virginia allocations are proportional to the past the addition of the state will not markedly affect when the allowances run out.

This analysis does not try to distinguish between allowances held by compliance entities and those without compliance obligations.  At the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 the Quarter 4 2025 report on the secondary market stated that “Approximately 142 million of the allowances in circulation (81 percent) are believed to be held for compliance purposes.”  There are two implications.  RGGI states have always assumed that the remaining 19% of the allowances are held for investment purposes and would eventually be used for compliance.  Given that facilities need those allowances to operate it will be a seller’s market and prices should skyrocket when they are needed.  There is another possibility.  Some of those allowances could be held by organizations that want to prevent CO2 emissions and may not sell them at any price.  In that case, the market will run out of allowances sooner.

On May 8, the RGGI states announced that they were aware of the short-term volatility associated with the announcement that Virginia would rejoin RGGI:

Recent futures prices are above thresholds established to automatically mitigate price growth by releasing additional allowances at auctions for cost containment. RGGI has a long history of stability. Regular program reviews have made adjustments to align the program with policy objectives of a reliable, affordable, and clean electricity supply. A sustained period of elevated auction prices would not meet these objectives and may require renewed consideration of improvements.

These results indicate that renewed consideration of the program design is necessary now to prevent sustained elevated auction prices. 

Conclusion

For years the sources affected by RGGI and me have been warning that RGGI is headed to the point where there are  insufficient allowances to enable sources to run and remain in compliance.  If left unchecked this will lead to an artificial energy storage,  The allowance cap trajectory is simply incompatible with observed and likely generating resource development that can displace existing resources.  When RGGI announced that Virginia would rejoin the program, futures prices nearly doubled and the spot market price also spiked.  Cost impacts will be evident before the allowances run out because scarcity will drive allowance prices higher because the present regulations bake in scarcity.

All politicians in RGGI states who are worried about energy affordability should seriously consider dropping out of the program because it is simply unaffordable and risky without major changes.

New York Grid Inertia Past and Present

I believe that it is necessary to reconsider 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.  Grid Inertia support is another example illustrating reliability and affordability concerns.

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 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

I am currently overwhelmed with blog posts that I want to write, regulatory submittals I should submit, and it is spring so my life outside of this blog demands time too.  As a result, I unapologetically acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to produce this post because it would not have been written were it not for its support.  I edited the output, checked references and added my own references.

Grid Inertia Past

I started working for Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation (NMPC) in 1981.  At the time it was a vertically integrated utility responsible for generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity.  The importance of reliability was an all-encompassing driver at the company.  Since then, much has changed and, in my opinion, not for the better.  NMPC proudly described their generation mix of coal, oil, nuclear, and hydro as resilient and reliable. 

The emphasis on reliability took many forms but there was an explicit mandate to support the ancillary gird services needed to keep the lights on.  Grid inertia is one example ancillary service that helps keep the power system frequency stable by using the stored kinetic energy in large rotating machines, such as synchronous generators or synchronous condensers, that are physically spinning in sync with the grid. When there is a sudden mismatch between supply and demand—like a generator trip—this rotating mass resists the change in speed, slowing the rate at which grid frequency deviates and buying operators time to respond.

When NMPC was responsible for providing electricity to consumers the system was built around large rotating machines synchronized with all the other generators in New York and beyond.  NMPC owned and operated many hydro-electric units that provided additional grid inertia support.  For example, the hydro plants on the Black River could provide grid inertia and did so for 70 years until sold about 30 years ago when New York politicians demanded a de-regulated electric system.  At that time NMPC had to sell all their generating plants and got out of the power management business.

Grid Inertia Present

In today’s electric system the New York System Operator (NYISO) runs the system: “NYISO-administered markets send price signals designed to attract and retain investment in the types of flexible, firm, cleaner, dispatchable resources essential for efficiently maintaining system adequacy into the future.”  The design of the market establishes price signals necessary to provide the services needed keep the lights on.  However, The Climate Act is shutting down traditional plants faster than we can replace all the resources they provided so the grid loses the resilience that NMPC provided. Eventually, NYISO system operators will need to procure inertia explicitly as an ancillary service, either from remaining synchronous machines or from technologies that can emulate inertial response.

NYISO does not have a standalone “inertia” market today.  Instead, synchronous generators, synchronous condensers, and certain non‑generator devices can be paid  when this resource is needed.  This is insufficient in my opinion.  As evidence the current owner of NMPC, National Grid is building synchronous condensers because they must think they are necessary for reliability.

In June 2024, GE Vernova announced that it would build two turnkey synchronous condenser sites for National Grid at the Coffeen and Taylorville 115 kV substations. Each site will include three synchronous condenser units and associated transformers, with the stated purpose of improving grid stability as the resource mix shifts under New York’s Climate Act decarbonization policies.

Market Failure

I think the construction of the these plants represents  market failure. The Coffeen St substation used to serve the Black River hydro plants.  Now these plants are paid only when they produce power.  I have heard from NMPC retirees that said it t was hard to believe that you can contract for power and and not contract for the inertial support and other ancillary services.  He said It would take less than 24 hours to bring this back to how it was run before if there was a suitable market.

New York already had synchronous resources that historically supplied many of the services necessary to support the electric system. New York is not simply adapting to a new grid. It is paying to replace a reliability function that legacy hydro plants once provided. That should raise a basic question for both the Public Service Commission and NYISO: why are customers paying for new synchronous condensers instead of first determining whether existing hydro facilities could be contracted or compensated to provide comparable system-strength services?

The fact that there is a market gap matters. If the only straightforward compensation mechanism is for dedicated voltage support equipment, then utilities and regulators will naturally gravitate toward building new rate-based infrastructure. Existing hydro resources may be physically capable of helping, but unless there is a contract or explicit market design to value those services, they will be overlooked. The losers are New York ratepayers.

Discussion

This is why the Coffeen and Taylorville projects are more than a local transmission story. They are evidence that the Climate Act is driving a second layer of costs that is rarely acknowledged in public debates. New York is not just paying for renewable generation. It is also paying for replacement grid services that were once provided by conventional and hydroelectric units as part of ordinary operations.

That fact alone should change how New Yorkers think about the claimed cost of the energy transition. Wind and solar developers may claim that their projects are cheap, but that comparison often ignores the system cost of all the additional equipment needed to keep the grid operating reliably once conventional generators are retired or used less often. The Coffeen and Taylorville projects are a clear example of those hidden costs now being imposed on upstate ratepayers.  The observed increases in recent utility rate cases are not caused exclusively by the Climate Act but there is no question that buried costs like this are exacerbating costs at the time there is an affordability crisis.

Before more synchronous condenser projects are approved, state regulators should require a transparent comparison of alternatives. That analysis should evaluate whether existing hydro units, especially those historically operated by Niagara Mohawk, could be returned to ancillary support service through contracts, tariff changes, or operating modifications. If that can be done at lower cost, then building new synchronous condensers should be the last resort, not the default option.

Conclusion

The larger lesson is straightforward. The Climate Act does not merely require more wind, solar, and batteries. It also requires an electric system strong enough to survive with fewer conventional synchronous machines. When policymakers ignore that reality, ratepayers end up paying twice: once for the new intermittent resources, and again for the equipment needed to compensate for what those resources do not provide.  Implementation of the Climate Act Renewable Energy Program needs to be paused to address this hidden affordability burden.

PSL 66-P Petition Filing – Analysis of Future Utility Rates

The comment period for comments regarding the safety valve provision in New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p for the Renewable Energy Program in the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) recently ended.  I published a series of posts describing this process that was summarized in my most recent post.  Independent Intervenors Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, Francis Menton, and myself explained why we thought it would be appropriate to hold a hearing addressing the safety valve provisions in our filing.  We agreed that we would not submit technical arguments from all of us but we are all driven by a common motivator that when we see something outlandish, we have to respond.  Richard Ellenbogen’s filing describing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis impact of the Climate Act on utility rates was initiated by such a trigger.

Richard Ellenbogen has been speaking to lawmakers, policy makers and regulators since 2019 regarding the deficiencies inherent in New York State (NYS) energy policy.  He has a proven record implementing carbon reduction programs at his own manufacturing business in Westchester County where it has reduced its electric utility load by 80% while reducing its carbon footprint by 30% – 40% below that of the downstate system.  I have previously published other articles by Ellenbogen including a summary description of his issues with the Climate Act.

Background

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy. 

In response to the PSL 66-P safety valve, Ellenbogen filed a description of his analysis of the results of other jurisdiction’s attempts to implement energy policies like the Climate Act.  His filing was titled: “An AI Analysis of the CLCPA that Shows it will raise Utility rates between 50% and 150% over the Next 40 years with no rate relief appearing for between 100 – 150 years, IF EVER” and was described:

“Prejudices Inherent in the drafting of the CLCPA Introduced a rigid framework, unsupported by scientific facts, that preclude better long-term solutions from both a carbon emissions standpoint and an economic frame of reference”.  He also submitted a spreadsheet that was developed by Perplexity in response to his queries.

This post is based on the filing and his email description circulated to his mailing list.  I have lightly edited his work for consistency.

AI Analysis Background

Both Ellenbogen and I have been using Perplexity AI more as a research tool and we are just starting to realize the potential of its use.  He explains how he used it for this analysis:

For the past three weeks, i have been sitting and asking energy related questions of Perplexity AI.  The questions were asked without bias and conditions were only added based upon responses from prior questions, although as I learned over time, the AI algorithm remembered all of the conditions without my asking and applied those to subsequent questions.

The paper covers everything that I could think of.  It has AI answers to the major problems facing NY State.  I added context to the answers to help people understand them and explain how we got here.

The questions were asked in plain English.  Some of the AI responses can be technical in places. 

The first 23 pages tell most of the story with the 50 pages of appendices adding context.  AI has become a frighteningly powerful tool.  Watching it generate code to answer some of the questions was comparable to what an incredibly fast human would do that could access information at a pace that no human could possibly do, let alone think of all the parameters needed. When I was building the spreadsheet, the second query was to add BESS to the calculation to make the wind dispatchable so that it would be more of an “apples to apples” comparison to the retooled gas plants.  I didn’t specify how much but the AI algorithm automatically researched it and found NYISO requirements and pulled those into the calculation.  It also was telling me what it was doing as it did it.

An experienced utility analyst looked at the spreadsheet and said, “That’s exactly what I used to do for the utility companies, except that would take at least a week.”  It took me an hour.  It was built from three queries and the AI wrote code,  produced results, checked conformity, found its errors, redid the code and checked conformity again until the results made numerical sense.  It took about 20 minutes for each question.  It then added the additional questions to the same spreadsheet and suggested more related questions to research. It could turn into an infinitely long research rabbit hole. When I asked about natural gas prices, it had remembered my questions about the LI gas plants and automatically related the pricing questions to those without my asking.  It inferred that was why I was asking.

I spent time checking the answers which accounted for much of the time writing the document.  I knew the answers to many of the questions before I asked them based upon extensive reading and almost fifty years of experience dealing with energy systems.  I am hoping that AI confirmation of the answers will make people realize that this is not ideological.

On a final note, I’m a tech geek and this technology is very useful but a little creepy.   When I was doing this, I felt like I was dealing with “Skynet”.  The rate of evolution of the technology is breathtaking, and I don’t think that I could have generated this report six months ago.

Ellenbogen’s Filing

Consistent with Ellenbogen’s use of AI, I submitted the following question to Perplexity: “Provide an overview summary of Ellenbogen’s filing that I can incorporate into a blog post. “ The following is the response:

Core thesis

Ellenbogen’s filing argues that New York’s CLCPA will drive very large, long‑lasting rate increases and will not deliver genuine rate relief for at least 100–150 years, if ever, under anything resembling realistic assumptions. He frames CLCPA as a capital‑heavy, prejudiced policy design that blocks cheaper and faster emission‑reduction options (notably repowered gas and nuclear), locking customers into a multi‑generation cost burden for modest climate benefits.

Australia as the warning case

A central plank is a detailed Australia comparison, which he uses as a “best possible” renewable case study to bound what New York can realistically expect. Australia has six times New York’s solar capacity, far higher solar capacity factors, far more land at a fraction of New York’s cost, and far lower heating loads, yet wholesale prices only clearly began trending down in 2024–2025 after roughly 20 years of policy implementation, and even then retail bills are only expected to fall about 5 percent over the next five years.

He then scales this experience to New York’s much worse fundamentals: four times the per‑capita heating load, roughly half the solar capacity factor, far less developable land, and much higher land and interconnection costs. On that basis, he argues New York would need 80–150 years before seeing durable rate relief, with residential rates rising on the order of 50–150 percent over the next 30–40 years and upstate households facing bill increases of 2,000–5,000 dollars per year at the peak of the transition.

Grid, labor, and supply‑chain constraints

The filing emphasizes that official NYSERDA/CLCPA planning assumes “ideal” supply chains and grid conditions that do not exist. He cites transformer shortages with multi‑year lead times, insufficient trained labor to electrify buildings and upgrade panels and substations, and local grid stress already appearing as “blue sky blackouts” in electrified pockets like the Albany area.

Because load from electrification is ramping faster than new dispatchable capacity and network reinforcements, he argues New York is replicating Victoria’s mistakes in Australia: voltage problems, constrained substations, and reliability risks driven by “electrify first, supply later” policy sequencing. His bottom line is that these constraints stretch the transition into a 40‑year or longer construction effort, add huge cost premiums, and push any hypothetical “payoff” far into the next century.

Cost comparisons: offshore wind, storage, and gas repowering

A major section uses an Excel LCOE framework, fed by AI‑generated parameter sets, to compare offshore wind plus batteries against repowered combined‑cycle gas at Long Island sites like Northport, Barrett, and Port Jefferson. Across a wide range of gas prices (current Henry Hub and 2–4× that level), the model shows that offshore wind plus 4–8 hours of battery storage remains substantially more expensive than repowered gas over 20‑ and 40‑year horizons, even after layering in a state carbon tax on gas.

He also notes that the wind‑plus‑storage cost stack in his base case does not include synchronous condensers and other stability equipment required in a heavily inverter‑based system, which would drive the renewable system cost even higher relative to combined‑cycle plants. In his framing, the oft‑repeated “renewables are cheaper” line collapses once you include the full system cost of firming, transmission, and stability equipment in a New York context, as opposed to Texas or Australia with far better wind and solar resource.

Nuclear and statute‑driven “prejudice”

Ellenbogen then asks, via AI prompts, what an unconstrained least‑cost, low‑carbon system for New York would look like over a 60‑year horizon. When the CLCPA’s statutory renewable carve‑outs and timelines are removed, the response (which he quotes extensively) favors a nuclear‑heavy system, with long‑life reactors providing 60–100 years of output at high capacity factors and lower firm system LCOE than “firmed renewables” once overbuild, storage cycling, replacements, and grid expansions are included.

He uses that to argue that the CLCPA embeds an explicit prejudice against nuclear and gas repowering by design, because it hard‑codes high penetrations of wind and solar irrespective of system cost, reliability, or practical feasibility. In his conclusions, he characterizes the CLCPA as an ideologically driven statute that overrides physics and engineering judgment, and he urges the PSC to invoke its PSL‑66 powers to pivot toward a combination of repowered gas as an interim 40–60‑year bridge and nuclear as the primary long‑term zero‑carbon backbone, with hydrogen‑fueled peakers using excess nuclear output as a complement.

Discussion

Ellenbogen’s email concludes that the analysis shows a very grim future for NY State if there is not a course correction.  He notes:

Hopefully, an impartial question and answer session with the world’s computer systems will alter the discussion and make people realize that if we proceed down this path, we will be increasing emissions while needlessly increasing costs in search of a holy grail that is not feasibly attainable in NY State’s climate.  As I have written on several occasions, the CLCPA was a college thought experiment about what could be done if there were no limitations on money, labor, supply chains, land, and if there was no public resistance to having large renewable installations located near their homes.  Unfortunately, our state government, and particularly Andrew Cuomo,  turned that thought experiment into public policy.  While the authors of the thought experiment considered it attainable, engineers in the energy industry understood that the concept was preposterous in NYS.

Conclusion

I have a great deal of respect for Ellenbogen because he has personally approached the challenge of decarbonization as an experiment.  His home and manufacturing facility were the subjects and included data monitoring systems for the test.  He knows what will work and his opposition to the Climate Act technology transition plan is based on what his experiment shows will not work. 

His use of AI is based on his experience and the results are consistent with what he has learned.  I recommend his entire analysis for the unconvinced.  This analysis is another great example why New York should conduct a PSL 66-P hearing to determine if renewable energy can provide safe, adequate, and affordable electricity in New York.

Filings Opposed to the PSL 66-P Safety Valve

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) and includes a safety valve provision.  In recently  published posts I provided a status update that provides extensive background information, a description of the Independent Intervenor (Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, Francis Menton, and myself) filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled, described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations, and finally described the Independent Intervenor filing.  This post describes comments opposing the petition from parties to the cases.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.  I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries included in this document. 

Background

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy. 

Party Comments Opposing the Petition

There were ten submittals that opposed the petition:

In response to a query to summarize and critique these comments Perplexity AI responded.

The opposing party comments generally argue that a PSL §66‑p(4) hearing is unnecessary, legally unwarranted, and contrary to the CLCPA’s purposes; however, across the various filings there is a recurring tendency to conflate “opposition to the program” with “request for oversight,” to rely on policy aspirations more than record evidence on reliability and costs, and to treat §66‑p’s hearing provision as effectively formally in effect but no longer necessary.

The Perplexity response addressed each of the comments.  The following are the highlights.

The “Green Energy Developers” coalition (Advanced Energy United, ACE NY, CCSA, NY‑BEST, SEIA) positions the petition as a broadside against the CLCPA and the clean‑energy transition rather than as a procedural request to use §66‑p(4). In other words, they do not want anything to get in the way of their revenue stream.  They argue that granting a hearing would increase investor uncertainty, slow project development, and jeopardize achievement of the 70‑by‑30 and 100‑by‑40 mandates. Their comments emphasize sunk costs, signed contracts, and an existing “orderly” procurement framework, and they tend to characterize reliability and bill‑impact concerns as either already addressed in prior Commission orders or overstated by petitioners.

New York State Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSSEIA) has similar interests as the Green Energy Developers coalition, but their comments focused on small developers and customer-sited projects.  They made the same arguments that the act of holding a hearing is tantamount to rolling back the Climate Act and their desire for investor certainty and program continuity are more important than reliability and cost impacts.

The “Green Energy Advocates” group (Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthjustice, NRDC, NYLCV, Sierra Club, etc.) generally frames the petition as an attempt to “roll back” CLCPA mandates and to “suspend” the renewable program, emphasizing the urgency of climate action, public‑health co‑benefits, and environmental‑justice goals. They argue that any delay or reconsideration via a §66‑p(4) hearing would violate the CLCPA’s spirit, exacerbate climate risk, and perpetuate fossil‑fuel pollution in disadvantaged communities. The comments rely heavily on broad climate‑science consensus and statewide emissions‑reduction imperatives rather than on the specific evidentiary record on reliability, costs, or implementation feasibility.

Consolidated Edison and Orange & Rockland’s joint comments oppose the petition for a hearing but do so in a more procedural and incremental tone. They emphasize that reliability is being managed through existing NYISO and DPS processes, that the Commission has previously reviewed and adjusted the Clean Energy Standard and related programs, and that another formal §66‑p(4) hearing could be duplicative or disruptive. Note as rate‑regulated entities with pass‑through cost recovery, these utilities have a structural incentive to avoid procedural steps that might slow capital deployment or introduce new prudence reviews, a factor not fully acknowledged in their arguments.

Other opposing commenters include Environmental Defense Fund, the First Unitarian Church Environmental Justice Ministry, Public Utility Law Project (PULP), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Third Act Upstate New York, and the PEAK Coalition. EDF and the Sabin Center focus on the legal structure, arguing that §66‑p(4) gives the Commission discretion (“may”) and that existing orders, impact analyses, and ongoing CLCPA implementation proceedings already satisfy any implied need for review. They argue that the petitioners have not met the burden to show that safe and adequate service or just‑and‑reasonable rates are at risk.  PULP and EJ‑oriented commenters stress that low‑income and disadvantaged communities stand to benefit from the CLCPA and that a hearing framed around costs and reliability could be used to justify delaying those benefits.  This is frustrating because it does not recognize their benefits are societal but the cost and reliability impacts personally affect low-income and disadvantaged community members.  The PEAK Coalition emphasizes the point that delays are unacceptable because local public health impacts improvements and peaker plant retirements would be delayed.  All these commenters do not recognize the risk that reliability events or bill spikes could politically endanger the very Environmental Justice‑oriented clean‑energy policies they want to protect.

Perplexity Summary

•            Most opposing parties reframe the petition as an attack on the CLCPA itself, not as an effort to use a statutory safeguard that the Legislature expressly included. This framing lets them avoid a granular debate over NYISO reliability indicators, actual bill trajectories, and implementation challenges.

•            There is heavy reliance on prior Commission orders and broad policy goals instead of a acknowledging the observed evidence of impacts on system reliability, project attrition, cost escalation, and deliverability constraints that have emerged since 2019.

•            Several commenters implicitly treat §66‑p(4) as a purely discretionary “safety valve” never actually meant to be opened, which risks reducing a substantive statute to symbolic surplusage.

•            Investor confidence, climate urgency, and EJ goals are repeatedly invoked as reasons not to hold a hearing but rarely balanced against the statutory obligation to ensure safe and adequate service and just and reasonable rates. A more balanced approach would treat a narrowly focused, evidence‑driven hearing as a way to protect those goals from backlash driven by reliability events or bill shocks.

Public Comments

In addition to the comments filed by parties to the cases, the PSC accepted public comments. In a previous post I described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments opposing the petition.  From the very first comments submitted about the petition in early March until May 1, 2026, there were 3,789 public comments submitted in Case 15-E-0302 and 2,516 comments submitted in Case 22-M-0149.  Case 15-E-0302 covers a wide range of topics and there were some public comments submitted in this time frame addressing other topics.  Nonetheless there are thousands of comments that were essentially identical.  As described in the previous article, the arguments made do not warrant rejecting the petition or make a convincing argument that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program obligations may not need to be temporarily suspended or modified to ensure safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.

Steve Helmin pointed out that there is a pattern to these nearly identical comments that suggests the use of automation in submitting to the DMM site.  This pattern and what has been observed in other proceedings suggests that advocacy organizations are collecting comments on their own servers and then pushing them to the PSC, as opposed to requiring commenters to navigate the DMM interface to submit comments.  This enables a “Click Button” knee jerk reaction that insulates commenters from any potential independent review of the case materials and enables an unrivaled single point of context for commenters as they never even see the DMM website.  This automation reinforces my opinion that State Agencies should not be swayed by the number of comments but judge each different opinion on its merits.  The stakeholder process in the Scoping Plan and the Energy Plan did not respond to comments in this manner.  This must change.

Discussion

Consider this quote from the PEAK Coalition comment:

The Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy (“Petitioner”)—solely representing business interests—has requested a hearing to permanently suspend or modify the Renewable Energy Program pursuant to PSL § 66-p(4), alleging that the program and its associated CLCPA targets “might negatively impact electric reliability” (emphasis added) and may subsequently impede the Commission’s duty of ensuring safe and adequate electric service.

This illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding in common with many other opposition comments.  The petition is only requesting a hearing to determine if the Renewable Energy Program “impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  If the hearing finds that there are problems, then the PSC “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations” of the Renewable Energy Program.  In my opinion, the most likely outcome, given all the renewable energy deployment problems observed since 2019, is some modification to the schedule for renewable energy deployment. 

Opponents who demand that the request for the hearing consistent with PSL 66-P be denied suggests that they are not confident that renewable energy programs can provide safe and adequate electricity.  Given that there has never been a feasibility analysis confirming that the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act are possible and the fact that no jurisdiction has successfully implemented an electric system totally consistent with the Climate Act should be red flags.  Don’t forget that the Climate Act was passed during the 2019 budget process without the opportunity for the public to weigh in.  It is long past time that New Yorkers are given a complete accounting of what will be needed, what it will cost and how it will risk safe and adequate energy supply.  I naively hope that if there is a hearing that those issues will be addressed for the renewable energy system.

Conclusion

Opponents of the petition to hold a hearing to consider whether the Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable energy do not have strong arguments against holding a hearing.  I also believe that they oppose the hearing so much because they know that their support of the Program cannot be defended.  Finally, a hearing would expose the impacts of the Climate Act to many New Yorkers who are unaware of it.  I think those are three good reasons to hold the hearing.

Independent Intervenor Filing in Support of PSL 66-P Safety Valve

Update: 5/3/2026

Here are the links in the DPS DMM System for our filing and the three exhibits

  • Filing in support of petition
  • Exhibit 1 documents the trend of New York customers in arrears
  • Exhibit 2 is the spreadsheet with the calculations and data for the results in Exhibit 1. 
  • Exhibit 3 responds to a public comment submitted by hundreds of individuals to illustrate why the stakeholder process must change for the hearing from that used in the Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan.

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) and includes a safety valve provision.  In posts published this week I provided a status update that provides extensive background information, a description of the Independent Intervenor filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled, and described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations.  This post describes the filing the Independent Intervenors submitted in support of the petition for a safety valve hearing.

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 nearly 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that the Commission “may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates. 

I have joined Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (“Independent Intervenors”) submitting comments in a few Public Service Commission proceedings.  I am a retired utility meteorologist, with extensive electric energy and environmental regulatory analysis experience.   Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles on his Manhattan Contrarian blog that analyze New York’s energy transition.  We have no financial interest in Climate Act policy, have received no funding from any outside interests for our filings, and have invested thousands of hours of our time in efforts to explain why physics, engineering and economics prevent a Renewable Energy Program that powers a safe, adequate, and affordable electric system in New York State.

Petition Support

The Independent Intervenor filing argued that the Legislature included this safety valve precisely for the circumstances New York now faces.  Proponents of the Climate Act argue that the transition strategies must be implemented to meet the net-zero mandates regardless of affordability or reliability constraints. However, PSL § 66-p is also a legal requirement, and it charges the PSC with implementing the Renewable Energy Program subject to feasibility safety valve conditions for affordability and reliability. We described four lines of evidence that support the need for the hearing.

Safe and Adequate Service Is Imperiled by Declining Reliability Margins

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) has documented a systematic deterioration of grid reliability since the Climate Act was enacted. NYISO data show a net loss of 2,041 MW of dispatchable capacity (4,315 MW retired versus 2,274 MW added). Fossil retirements are outpacing new supply additions, with additions largely consisting of intermittent renewables and limited-duration storage that cannot provide the firm, dispatchable capacity the grid requires.

NYISO’s 2024 Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) identifies an actionable reliability need in New York City beginning in 2033, with deficiencies ranging from 17 to 97 MW, and high-risk scenarios show the deficiency could begin as early as 2025 and grow to over 1,000 MW by 2034.  The “high‑risk scenarios” are from the RNA’s High Demand Forecast Scenario and related NYC risk scenarios documented in the 2024 RNA report’s “Exploring Uncertainty: Scenarios and Risks” section and detailed in Appendix E/F scenario figures and text. The 2025 Q3 Short-Term Assessment of Reliability (STAR) Report identifies a Zone J (NYC) summer 2027 reliability need requiring retention of peaker units scheduled for retirement. Statewide, NYISO projects that by 2034 there will be no surplus power without further development of reliable sources of electricity.

NYISO has officially stated that the dispatchable emission-free (DEFR) technologies needed to replace fossil generation “are not yet available on a commercial scale”. The CLCPA and Scoping Plan implicitly assume large volumes of firm zero-emission resources will be available, cost-effective, and sited in New York by 2040, but there is no clear procurement or market framework to ensure they materialize. This represents a technology and market design gap between what the CLCPA requires and what is under contract or in interconnection queues today.

The Renewable Energy Program depends heavily on transmission infrastructure that either does not exist, has been terminated, or faces severe uncertainty:

  • Clean Path NY terminated: NYSERDA and developers mutually agreed to suspend the Tier 4 REC Purchase and Sale Agreement in late November 2024 due to cost escalation. The PSC subsequently denied NYPA’s petition for Priority Transmission Project designation in August 2025. There are no plans to revive Clean Path NY.
  • Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) winter limitations: Although CHPE is in late-stage construction, NYISO’s Short-Term Reliability Process Report states that “the facility is not expected to provide any capacity in the winter.” The New England Clean Energy Connect experience during the January 2026 cold snap, where power flows from Québec largely collapsed, foreshadows this vulnerability. This is a serious failure of planning given the prospect that New York grid demand will peak in the winter rather than, as now, in the summer, if building and transportation electrification advances. 
  • Offshore wind transmission withdrawn: The PSC voted to withdraw the NYC Public Policy Transmission Need determination in July 2025, cancelling the process for delivering 4,770 to 8,000 MW of offshore wind into New York City. Proposal costs ranged from $7.9 billion to $23.9 billion.
  • Federal disruptions to offshore wind: The Trump administration’s stop-work orders on offshore wind projects and suspension of leasing have further compromised the transmission pathway for the mandated 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035.

NYISO has warned that without major transmission project completion, NYC reliability margins will become deficient. NYISO has concluded that cumulative factors — retirements, electrification, and delays — risk creating reliability metric violations incompatible with safe and adequate electric service.

The Affordability Crisis Demands a Hearing

The affordability evidence satisfies the PSL 66-p(4) threshold of “a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections.” As of December 2024, over 1.3 million New York households were behind on their energy bills by sixty days or more, collectively owing more than $1.8 billion. Independent Intervenors have demonstrated that the increase in the number of accounts in arrears from 2019 before enactment of the CLCPA and 2024 are statistically significant for statewide totals and four of ten utilities.  We filed exhibits that updated the analysis through 2025. We found the same results.

The cost trajectory is alarming. The recently completed New York State Energy Plan found that Climate Act costs are expected to require $120 billion in annual energy system investments through 2040, equivalent to over $1,200 per month per household. NYSERDA’s own Energy Affordability analysis shows that Climate Act compliance adds approximately $594 per month (a 43% increase) for an upstate moderate-income household that fully electrifies.

Recent rate cases approved by the PSC between March 2025 and January 2026 for five major utilities have markedly increased residential electric bills, and as Kris Martin of NY Solar Divide has noted only “a small fraction of Climate Act expenses” have been incurred to date — the bulk will hit ratepayers in the next 5-10 years as onshore and offshore wind, grid-scale solar, and electrification mandates ramp up.

The State’s own Attorney General has acknowledged that achieving the 2030 target is “currently infeasible” and that “New Yorkers will face alarming financial consequences if speed is given preference over sustainability”. DPS staff estimates that Climate Act residential impacts range from 4.6% to 10.3% of 2023 monthly electric bills, and these estimates are widely considered conservative.

The PSC’s existing 6% energy burden target for low-income households lacks any tracking or compliance reporting mechanism. Despite the urgent need for clear affordability metrics, the Hochul Administration and Legislature have not adopted transparent tracking systems or mandatory corrective actions when affordability thresholds are exceeded.

Multiple Independent Sources Confirm the Need for a Hearing

The case for a hearing is supported by multiple independent, authoritative analyses:

  • NYISO: Reliability Needs Assessments, STAR Reports, and Power Trends documents consistently identify declining margins, capacity shortfalls, and transmission dependencies.
  • New York State Comptroller: The July 2024 audit found that PSC and NYSERDA plans “did not comprise all essential components, including assessing risks to meeting goals and projecting costs”.
  • DPS Biennial Review: Concluded that the 70% renewable target by 2030 “will likely not be achieved until 2033” and that a delay “may be unavoidable”.
  • State Energy Plan: Acknowledged that “current renewable deployment trajectories are insufficient to meet statutory targets”.
  • DPS Second Informational Report: Identified four feasibility concerns, including that the 2030 target is “likely unattainable,” offshore wind faces “major obstacles,” transmission remains a “critical bottleneck,” and grid reliability challenges are “mounting”.
  • State Attorney General: Acknowledged on the record that the current implementation schedule creates unacceptable affordability liabilities.

Responding to Opposition Arguments

ACE NY and WE ACT have urged the Commission to reject this petition, suggesting that all progress would stop if a hearing were held. This characterization is inaccurate. PSL 66-p(4) authorizes temporary suspension or modification — not abandonment — of Climate Act obligations. A hearing represents pragmatic management to ensure safe, adequate, and affordable service while the clean energy transition continues. Refusing to invoke the safety valve does not eliminate the underlying reliability and affordability problems; it simply ensures they go unaddressed until a crisis forces emergency action.

The Commission Should Proceed Directly to a Hearing

The evidence presented by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, the Independent Intervenors, NYISO, the State Comptroller, and the State’s own agencies demonstrates that the statutory criteria for a PSL 66-p(4) hearing have been met. Our filing recommended that rather than further delaying action through an extended review period, the Commission should proceed expeditiously to conduct the hearing that the law contemplates.

At minimum, a hearing should:

  1. Establish clear affordability metrics — Define “safe and adequate electric service” and “significant increase in arrears” with specific, measurable criteria so that the safety valve operates as the Legislature intended.
  2. Evaluate reliability margins — Examine NYISO’s documented capacity shortfalls, transmission deficiencies, and the gap between policy assumptions and physical grid reality.
  3. Assess the technology gap — Determine whether the firm, zero-emission resources assumed by the CLCPA will be available on the timelines required.
  4. Review transmission status — Evaluate whether the termination of Clean Path NY, the winter limitations of CHPE, the withdrawal of the offshore wind PPTN, and federal disruptions collectively impede the ability to provide safe and adequate service.
  5. Require transparent cost reporting — Mandate that DPS and NYSERDA provide comprehensive, auditable cost projections covering all CLCPA implementation costs, not just utility rate case impacts.  NYSERDA should be instructed to develop comprehensive cost projections that reflect the total expense of meeting CLCPA mandates, rather than limiting estimates to individual CLCPA program elements.

On April 17, 2026, we filed a recommendation regarding the stakeholder process.  Our filing recommended that once everyone has had an equal chance to raise their concerns that the Commission categorize and prioritize the technical issues submitted and convene a technical hearing conference that resolves the substantive issues raised in comments.  Resolution of issues is necessary to assure New Yorkers that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.

Conclusion

The Legislature included Section 66-p(4) precisely to address the situation New York now faces: implementation challenges that threaten reliability and affordability as the aggressive timelines and technology requirements of the Climate Act confront real-world constraints. The Commission has both the authority and the obligation to act. I am relatively optimistic that the Commission will call for a hearing, but I am 100% sure that any decisions regarding the need to temporarily delay or modify the Renewable Energy Program obligations will not occur until after the election.

Climate Act Budget Status and Cap-and-Invest Program

This year’s New York budget negotiations include significant changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  One of the contentious issues is implementation of the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) program.  This post addresses a misleading opinion piece published in the Albany Times Union by environmental organizations.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate an outline and draft for sections of this post.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

In a recent post I described several initiatives that have led Governor Hochul to suggest that the timeline for the Climate Act electric sector goals needs to be revised. Legislative leaders and Hochul have not yet announced a final climate plan deal.  Reporting as of April 19–21 describes a stalemate with ongoing behind‑closed‑doors talks rather than agreed‑upon bill text.  Environmental groups have rejected the proposed revisions to the Climate Act.

I believe that opinion pieces published in the Albany Times Union have an out-sized impact on negotiations in Albany simply because everyone sees what is published.  I also believe that the Times Union is biased towards the environmentalist side.  This post addresses the Governor Hochul is mispresenting our CLCPA lawsuit (“TU Letter”) piece published this week written by Josh Berman, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program and Eric Walker, energy justice senior policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice.  I do not think that the Times Union will publish a response to  the op-ed that is long enough to rebut what I think is a misleading opinion.

NYCI Lawsuit

The first argument in the TU Letter describes the author’s rationale for the lawsuit.  I will only address the claims associated with NYCI. The letter states:

The governor asserts that only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost will satisfy the law and litigants. This is false.

The Preliminary Statement in the litigation Petition filed by the authors clearly states that they wanted to ensure that the emission reduction requirements were achieved. 

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 10 states that

DEC’s abdication of its statutory duties is unlawful and critically threatens the state’s ability to achieve the emissions reductions requirements of the CLCPA. DEC’s failure to implement the Legislature’s directive is also endangering Petitioners’ members who continue to breathe dirty air, suffer from pollution-related illnesses, and face economic barriers in their efforts to protect themselves and their communities by replacing fossil fuel-burning equipment with clean new technology. The state must not be allowed to continue to violate the law by withholding a climate solution that it has deemed necessary to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the climate law and that it estimates will prevent many premature deaths and asthma-related emergency room visits each year.

The litigation clearly states that they sued to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

The petition also describes the timeline of the regulatory process.  It started in 2023 with the release of draft regulations and public meetings.  Of particular interest was the June 1, 2023 pre-proposal Cap-and-Invest overview session because DEC requested feedback on the Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) program stability mechanism.  As described in the NYCI Second Stage Outreach: Preliminary Analysis Overview Preliminary Analysis on January 26, 2024, the CCR is a price control mechanism.  If the bidding price reaches a preset trigger limit, additional allowances would be released to the market.  That results in lower prices.  However, the CCR is a pool of extra allowances that is only used if the trigger price is exceeded and that means that the cap will be exceeded if used.  I

I always felt that this was an inconsistency that would eventually cause problems.  Proponents of the economy-wide cap-and-invest approach presumed compliance with the Climate Act mandates, but this affordability mechanism would cause non-compliance.  Frankly, I do not think that the litigants understood that this provision was inconsistent with their desire to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

As the petition notes everyone understood at the end of 2024 that the regulations were ready and would be released in January 2025.  That did not happen.  The only regulation released was the greenhouse gas emission reporting rule and that was months later.  The cap-and-invest rule regulation was put on hold and on March 31, 2025 the litigants filed the petition demanding that the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issue the draft regulations.

In October 2025, the New York Supreme Court issued a decision ordering the DEC to either issue the regulations or revise the regulations.  DEC appealed the decision, a hearing was held in the last month, but no decision has been made. 

However, this is an election year and the Governor is pushing an affordability agenda.  David Caralfamo described the political theater that preceded the budget deliberations:  “Two days after Governor Hochul’s own budget director stood up at a hearing and all but announced that CLCPA rollbacks were coming, a conveniently alarming memo from NYSERDA — dated the very same day — found its way into the press.”  The NYSERDA memo was allegedly a new analysis, but I believe that these numbers have been available since early 2024 and were the driver for the recommendation to include the CCR mechanism.  That is the key.  These are the cost estimates for NYCI without the CCR which will necessarily increase the costs but is also the only way to ensure compliance.

NYCI Affordability

The TU Letter addresses Hochul’s affordability arguments:

Hochul appears to have forgotten that many of our groups had expressed support for a program that controlled for cost and would have lowered energy bills by over $1,000 a year for families making under $200,000. That’s not our number; it’s based on two independent research reports. There is no reason such a program cannot move forward now.

I addressed those “independent research reports” when they came out.  I believe they are referring to a January 2025 report titled New York’s Affordable Energy Future and a January 2026 report titled Investments for New York’s Future.  In my opinion described research reports as “independent” when they were sponsored by the authors’ organizations is misrepresentation.  The 2025 report was funded in part by WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the 2026 report was funded by EDF.  Moreover, there was no independent peer review of the reports so they are not unbiased independent analyses.

I raised a number of concerns with the 2025 analysis by Switchbox. I found that while the report does acknowledge that cap-and-invest alone won’t achieve the 2050 goals (which is honest), it doesn’t adequately address a critical problem: the proposed investments cannot achieve the required annual emission reduction rates to meet 2030 targets. I showed that under Scenario C (lower revenue), the program falls short of the 2030 goal entirely, and neither scenario achieves the 2050 target.

The bigger problem, and one that exemplifies the authors’ presumptions about NYCI, is that fundamental feasibility problems are not addressed.  The authors assume compliance as a matter of faith and ignore reality. There are no add-on controls that achieve zero emissions for any sector. The only strategy is to convert to different energy sources, which takes time and is partially outside the control of compliance entities.  The political timeline of the Climate Act has never been evaluated for feasibility and the record since 2019 proves that it is impossible. 

Another feasibility aspect is the cost-effectiveness of controls.  I showed that using New York’s experience with Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative proceeds that the proposed spending allocations will not provide meaningful reductions.  Furthermore, in the book Making Climate Policy Work, the authors argue that the level of expenditures needed to implement the net-zero transition vastly exceeds the “funds that can be readily appropriated from market mechanisms”. 

The TU Letter and this report don’t acknowledge what happens if the program fails to meet emission reduction targets. Organizations don’t voluntarily violate compliance requirements, and the penalties are severe. If the schedule or technologies aren’t feasible, the only remaining option is to simply stop selling fuel or generating power.  This could create an artificial energy shortage with serious consequences as the only way to comply with the regulations.

I concluded that while Switchbox is more transparent than some analyses in acknowledging price ceiling limitations, it remains advocacy research designed to support a predetermined conclusion. It overstates benefits while downplaying the fundamental feasibility challenges of meeting Climate Act targets, and it doesn’t adequately address whether the proposed investments can actually deliver the emission reductions needed—especially by 2030.

I also reviewed the2026 EDF Investments for New York’s Future report and found that it was advocacy research, not independent analysis. I showed that:

  • Greenline Insights explicitly states they “develop compelling research questions and build the right mix of tools to answer them” – which I interpret as getting the results clients want
  • EDF has been actively lobbying for cap-and-invest since 2023 and has a vested interest in the program’s success
  • They strategically rebranded the program as the “Clean Air Initiative” (CAI) instead of using the official “New York Cap-and-Invest” (NYCI) terminology – a deliberate messaging strategy

I also explained that the methodology has serious flaws:

  • The analysis doesn’t account for opportunity costs—what else could be done with those resources
  • It assumes idle economic resources, which is unrealistic in a full employment economy
  • It measures “gross economic activity” without subtracting displaced economic activity elsewhere
  • It’s missing “the Missing Peter Problem”—robbing Peter (existing economy) to pay Paul (clean energy sector) while claiming total growth

I also showed that the economic projections are questionable and concluded that the report is simply a lobbying presentation that was commissioned by EDF. The benefits are overstated, the costs are minimized, if not ignored, and the methodology is sketchy.

Discussion

The TU Letter was published without qualification at a critical time in the Climate Act revision negotiations by the organizations that sued the DEC to release the NYCI regulations.  It is ironic that the unintended consequence of their successful lawsuit turned into political cover for the Governor to argue that NYCI would be unaffordable.  However, the TU Letter attempt to resolve the perverse result of their actions is flawed and their arguments that the Climate Act does not need to be changed are without merit.

Their lawsuit explicitly demanded NYCI regulations that “ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates”.  The authors of the TU Letter disagree with the presumption that “only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost” will satisfy the law and their litigation.  However, I showed that the CCR checks on cost mechanism in the pre-proposal documents was incompatible with ensuring compliance with the reduction mandates. 

The two reports referenced in the TU Letter do not provide credible affordability mechanisms.  Moreover, the reports do not acknowledge that the CCR mechanism is necessary to keep the costs palatable.  The NYSERDA memo with the high costs that Hochul cites as the reason that revisions to the rule are necessary simply shows costs for NYCI without the CCR mechanism.

Conclusion

This opinion piece offers no credible reasons why New York State should not be considering revisions to the Climate Act but got published in Albany while negotiations are underway.   I plan to submit a letter to the editor of the Times Union summarizing this post.  Unfortunately, a word limited summary could not incorporate the explanations why this letter was flawed even if it was accepted.  This is a perfect example of the BS Asymmetry Principle: Alberto Brandolini: “The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”