Category: Climate Act

Dennis Higgins passes on his commentaries associated with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  I asked his permission to present his analysis of the New York State energy legislation associated with the budget.  This commentary was published in the Oneonta Star.

Dennis taught for just a few years at St Lawrence and Scranton University, but spent most of my career at SUNY Oneonta, teaching Mathematics and Computer Science.  He retired early, several years ago, in order to devote more time to home-schooling his four daughters. (Three will be in college next year and the youngest opted to go to the local public school, so his home schooling is ending this June.) Dennis and his wife run a farm with large vegetable gardens.  They keep horses and raise chickens, goats, and beef.  He has been involved in environmental and energy issues for a decade or more. Although he did work extensively with the ‘Big Greens’ in efforts to stop gas infrastructure, his views on what needs to happen, and his  opinions of Big Green advocacy, have served to separate them.

Nuclear reactors are key to sustainable energy

This year’s late state budget has already been soundly criticized by regional legislators (covered in this paper — “Area reps are critical of state budget,” May 3). Most surprising, though, was that Assembly and Senate criticisms overlooked the biggest blunders in the budget’s small print: Albany has dug its heels in on a bizarre slogan-driven energy plan.

Andrew Cuomo’s last budget instituted accelerated siting of industrial solar and wind projects, enabling the state to ignore both local ordinances and thorough environmental review. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget continues the assault. To speed the bulldozing of farmland and forest, to silence recalcitrant communities, the budget obviated court action by upstate towns against Albany.

The legislature approved and back-dated an appraisal process that robs rural municipalities of fair tax revenue from the sprawling renewable buildout forced upon them. The governor’s budget includes a “Build Public Renewables” component, instructing the New York Power Authority to join the attack on home rule, private property and the environment. Because NYPA is a government entity, it would pay no taxes at all. Using eminent domain, NYPA can seize your property for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles of transmission lines the state’s energy plan will need.

German renewable assets comprise a third of its energy capacity but they have not enabled it to decarbonize. Germany relies on biomass and fossil-fuels, including coal, for half of its electricity. On paper, 30% of California’s capacity is in intermittent resources, but California continues to burn about as much fossil fuel as ever. California imports 30% of its energy from neighbor states, much of it coal-generated. California customers pay near double the U.S. average per kilowatt-hour. Germany’s energy costs are twice those of its neighbor, France. Germany and California have invested decades and billions of dollars in order to show us how to fail calamitously if we follow a nonsensical plan — pretty simple lessons which Albany can’t seem to digest: renewable buildout fails to lower prices, cut fossil-fuel use or ensure reliability.

New York remains determined to forfeit farmland and forest to sprawling solar arrays and gigantic turbines which, mostly, generate nothing. Last year’s wind capacity factor in the state was 22%, so the proposed 10 gigawatts of onshore wind would, on average, generate just over 2 GW. But it could still gobble up a thousand square miles. New York’s solar capacity factor is not much better than Alaska’s. The 60 GW or more of solar the plan projects will generate, on average, about 7 GW, but will require 500 square miles. The state’s energy research and development authority, NYSERDA, suggests that by 2050, New York’s grid might need just 6.8 GW of 8-hour storage. In 27 years, that won’t power New York City for three hours.

Unfortunately, a reliable affordable grid can’t be designed using press releases and Big Green talking points as blueprints. No one applauding the plan seems to have taken the semester of physics or engineering needed to learn that there is a difference between power and energy.

Power is the maximal amount a resource can generate in optimal conditions, instantaneously. But the energy needed to meet demand any time anywhere depends on how many hours those solar panels, wind turbines, hydro or nuclear or gas power plants can keep generating at or near capacity.

Here is a quick lesson: A 2,100 MW nuclear plant such as Indian Point could generate 47,000 megawatt-hours of energy in a day; fully a quarter of what was needed to keep lights, elevators, heat, AC and everything else in New York City running smoothly. Although a 2,100 MW solar farm might reach full capacity for a minute or two at noon during mid-summer, it will generate, on average, only 6,000 MWh daily, possibly none of that when you need it. The nuclear power plant needed 240 acres and supported a thousand skilled workers. The solar farm might need sixty times as much land — about 15,000 acres — and have five permanent employees.

Imagine covering an area the size of Albany or Binghamton in Chinese-made glass panels every single year until 2050, and then discovering that we are still burning as much gas as ever. Backup power for intermittent resources must ramp up faster than combined-cycle gas plants. Lots of simple cycle plants — only half as efficient as combined-cycle — are needed. In fact, the state’s plan requires as much backup capacity as all our current fossil-fuel plants can deliver. The plan triples the state’s required energy imports and exports, so the grid looks reliable on scrap paper.

Albany hopes there will be eager buyers for any renewable energy we can’t use on summer days, and willing sellers for the energy we need all the rest of the time. The grid operator, NYISO, is already projecting an insufficient capacity margin for the metro region. Think for a minute about the expensive, dangerous experiment Albany is undertaking. What happened in Texas when energy failed? People died. How would New York City fare for a week in January with no electricity?

Albany is like an ostrich, head in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that there is a better way. A nuclear power plant can run day and night, generating baseload energy at 90% of capacity. While solar and wind need replacement in two decades, nuclear plants can be licensed for 80 years. According to the UN Economic Commission, “there is no science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies.” Indeed, nuclear has the lowest life cycle environmental impact of any generating source. Further, the UNECE report determined that the “maximum consequences of a single [severe accident] are … still comparable with other electricity production technologies.”

Sweden and France demonstrated in the late 1970s and ’80s that decarbonizing with nuclear power could be done in about 10 years. For less money, much less land, generating hundreds of times more permanent jobs than the state’s plan, we could have reliable affordable carbon-free energy, by replacing our fossil-fuel fleet with next-generation nuclear reactors.

Comment

I think Higgins did a great job summarizing the nonsense in the “bizarre slogan-driven energy plan”.  The distinction between power and energy that he defines is a critical consideration.  Building power capacity is easy but providing energy when it is needed most is a challenge that proponents of the proposed Climate Act net-zero transition plan do not acknowledge adequately even if they understand.  Combined with an insistence that zero is the only acceptable level of pollution the plan is unrealistic for all the reasons he describes and will have many unrecognized impacts that will do more harm than good.  I agree that nuclear generation should be a feature of the future energy system.

In my last post I explained that the New York Public Service Commission has initiated a process to “identify technologies that can close the gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs, and more broadly identify the actions needed to pursue attainment of the Zero Emission by 2040 Target”.  In order to implement the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero transition the Integration Analysis, the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council all agree that a new resource that has all the characteristics of a natural gas fired turbine but no emissions is needed.  This post reviews an article about this topic: New York Begins Exploring Non-Renewable Energy to Meet Climate Target.

I am a retired air pollution meteorologist who specialized in the electric generating sector.  I have been following the Climate Act since it was first proposed. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 300 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and an interim 2030 target of a 40% reduction by 2030. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan.  After a year-long review the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022.  In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.

My previous article described the reason why a new proceeding on this topic is required. The professional staff at the agencies responsible for keeping the lights on in New York and the analysts who developed the Integration Analysis used for the Scoping Plan all believe that a new resource that can be dispatched as necessary but has zero emissions will be needed.   In the discussion section of the order the PSC agrees that efforts to meet the Climate Act targets “must include exploration of technologies that can support reliability once conventional fossil fuel generation has been removed from the system”.  The order states:

We see this exploration as integral to our responsibility under the PSL to ensure reliable electric service as we approach the Zero Emissions by 2040 Target. With this Order, we are initiating process to determine appropriate next steps to address this gap including consideration of whether it is appropriate for the Commission to allocate ratepayer funds to incentivize the deployment of zero-emission technologies.

I concluded that on one hand it is encouraging that there is finally an effort underway to define “zero emissions” resources and there is recognition that new technologies must be evaluated.  On the other hand, this is a recognized problem that should have been the priority of Climate Action Council and the Scoping Plan from the start.  I have always decried the lack of a feasibility analysis of the affordability, reliability, and permitting acceptability of zero emission resource options and the net-zero transition as a whole.  I believe that the Climate Action Council reliance on non-experts is a leading cause for this delay.  I wrote this article because it interviewed some of the non-experts that caused the delay and had some mis-understandings that deserve clarification.

New York Focus

The article was published at the New York Focus website.  According to the about link:

New York Focus is an independent nonprofit newsroom investigating power in the Empire State.  Launched in October 2020, New York Focus publishes in-depth journalism that explains how the state really works.

As the state’s only nonprofit statewide newsroom, our goal is to help rebuild a local news ecosystem that has faced years of relentless cuts: Almost half of New York’s newspapers have died in the last two decades. We focus on decisions made in Albany and how they impact communities around the state; Albany is the state’s center of power but receives a fraction of the scrutiny it warrants.

We’re guided by the belief that politics is not a sport. Decisions made in New York’s executive mansions, legislative chambers, state administrative offices, courts, nonprofits, union halls, and campaign headquarters don’t stay there. They determine how many New Yorkers sleep on the street each night; how large public college classes are; how many hospital beds are available during a pandemic.

The New York Begins Exploring Non-Renewable Energy to Meet Climate Target article was written by Colin Kinniburgh. 

He is a reporter at New York Focus, covering the state’s climate and environmental politics. Over a decade in media, he has worked in print, television, audio, and online news, and participated in fellowship programs at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Metcalf Institute. His reporting has appeared in outlets including France 24, Grist, Dissent, and The Nation.

New York Begins Exploring Non-Renewable Energy to Meet Climate Target

I have annotated the article in this section. 

Biofuels, hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear: These are some of the technologies that will be on the table as New York weighs how to clean up its grid over the next 17 years.

When New York passed its climate law four years ago, it declared wind, solar, and battery storage to be the energy sources of the future. The law not only required the state to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030, but set precise benchmarks for technologies like offshore wind.

As I have written before, the Climate Act is a political statement.  The implication here is that the Legislature developed a plan that was based on an understanding of the power system and developed schedules based on evaluation of technology.  That was not the case.

That riled power companies, who have long argued that picking technologies in advance will stifle innovation needed for the energy transition. There was still an opening for them to make their case. New York’s climate law requires the state to produce 100 percent of its energy from “zero emissions” sources by 2040, but what exactly that means is still up for debate.

Power plant operators’ lead trade group, the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY), have spent years pushing the state to focus on that more distant goal. The group’s president, Gavin Donohue, pressed the legislature, the Public Service Commission, and the Climate Action Council to back a new subsidy for technologies that will close the gap in New York’s energy supply when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Those could include hydrogen; nuclear; alternative fuels like waste products from agriculture; or carbon capture and storage, which could allow plants to keep burning fossil fuels as long as they keep emissions out of the air.

Donohue wasn’t alone in this effort. Along the way he won support from the AFL-CIO, the leading voice of organized labor in the state.

The reference to new technologies that will close the gap in energy supply refers to the Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR). The article does not recognize that the professional staff at the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council  who are responsible for keeping the lights on in New York and the analysts who developed the Integration Analysis used for the Scoping Plan all believe that DEFR will be needed to keep the lights on. 

But environmentalists pushed back, arguing that the effort was a ploy to keep polluting plants open with the help of expensive technologies that have yet to be proven commercially. For much of the last two years, they’ve maintained the upper hand: the IPPNY-backed bill died in committee last session, and the state’s climate plan de-emphasized the kinds of alternative fuels the power industry says will be needed.

The environmentalist push back is rooted in a mis-understanding of the way the electric system works and an overly optimistic expectation for wind and solar resource availability.  I have given a presentation explaining my skepticism of the Climate Act benefits relative to its risks.  My article describing that presentation focused on electric grid reliability risks that environmentalists do not consider.

Now, state regulators are signaling that the issue deserves a fresh look. On Thursday, the Public Service Commission ordered the state to begin studying which new technologies — beyond renewables — it will need to meet its climate targets.

Announcing the decision at a Public Service Commission meeting on Thursday, chair Rory Christian called it an important step. “If we’re successful, this will give us the tools to address many of the emerging issues that we’re seeing, and help us hit our various reliability needs and long-term goals,” Christian said.

State officials have stressed that the effort is intended to complement, not supplant, the central role of renewables. New York is already planning a massive buildout of wind, solar, and transmission lines: To meet the climate law’s requirements, it will need to build 100 times as much large-scale solar in the next five years as it did in the last ten, for example.

Yet even that explosion of renewables won’t be enough to ensure reliable energy while phasing out fossil fuels, studies by the state energy authority NYSERDA and the New York Independent System Operator have found. New York will also need to build new clean energy systems that don’t rely on the weather, and can be turned on at a moment’s notice.

As is the case with many of the green technology solutions advocated by proponents of the Climate Act, the idea that just existing wind and solar technology is all that is needed for the electric grid is flawed.  The general green technology problem is that the technologies do not work all the time.  For the electric system the issue is that there can be extended wind lulls in the winter when solar resources are inherently low is exacerbated because those periods coincide with the coldest weather and thus the highest loads.  The professionals responsible for reliability all conclude that DEFR is necessary for those periods.

The state’s climate plan asks the PSC, along with NYSERDA , to draw up the final criteria for those “firm” or “dispatchable” resources, and that’s what it started doing on Thursday. Like many regulatory decisions, the order published on Thursday is only the start of a lengthy process. It kicks off a two-month public comment period, which will be followed by a technical conference — likely in the fall — to decide what kinds of technologies qualify as “zero emissions” under state law.

Donohue, the head of the power plant lobby, said the move was a long time coming.  “The fact that the commission has finally said, ‘We need these technologies,’ and the fact that they did not limit technologies in this order, is a positive thing,” Donohue said. Still, he called it “incremental progress,” coming nearly two years after IPPNY petitioned the state to take the issue on.

The PSC’s order, which responds explicitly to IPPNY’s petition, meets the group halfway. It stops short of creating a state-backed market for the technologies that ultimately meet the criteria, as IPPNY has sought. The state currently has such markets for wind, solar, and other renewables: Through a mechanism known as the Clean Energy Standard, the state signs contracts for qualifying renewable energy projects, guaranteeing a buyer for the power they generate. The cost of underwriting those contracts trickles down to New Yorkers through their utility bills.

No such guarantees exist for technologies like hydrogen, making them a riskier bet to develop. That isn’t changing for now. But IPPNY hopes the PSC decision will pave the way toward such a subsidy before long.

Setting up a subsidy for these technologies is putting the cart before the horse.  They must find something that might possibly work before they can consider how much it might cost.  Getting something that will work may well be impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I do not consider myself an electric system expert but I have talked to experts and they all say this is a challenge because of physics.

The effort’s most vocal backer among state regulators is Commissioner Diane Burman, who was appointed by then–Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2013 and is PSC’s longest-serving member.

“​​We need all the tools in the toolkit to help us achieve our clean energy goals,” she said on Thursday, echoing longstanding talking points from the power industry. “To do that, we need to not be so focused on picking winners and losers, in that we are actually going to chill the opportunities that may be there.”

A week earlier, Burman spoke at IPPNY’s annual conference, where Donohue called her a “good friend.” The conference dedicated a 90-minute session to the issue of dispatchable resources, featuring a program manager at NYSERDA, a chemical engineer, an executive at a fuel cell company, and a pipefitters’ union leader.

“We don’t have to displace middle-class union jobs to achieve our goals,” said John Murphy, the pipe trades union representative. “Intermittent renewables can’t do it alone.”

Speaking to New York Focus on Thursday, Donohue said the PSC’s expected decision on IPPNY’s petition shaped the conference lineup.

“I didn’t do this in the dark,” he said, adding that the PSC’s decision was a sign of regulators warming up to IPPNY’s agenda.

Given the expert concern about this technology it is encouraging that it is finally being addressed.  I worry that it will become politicized with environmental groups disparaging the very idea that it is needed.  The next section in the article, Environmental Groups Wary, confirmed my suspicions.

Environmentalists, who came out in uniform opposition last year to IPPNY’s push, remain wary. Environmental justice advocates in particular have condemned biofuels and hydrogen as “false solutions” that would roll back hard-fought commitments in the state’s climate law.

The “false solution” slogan is the mantra of environmental activists.  To date they have been very successful pushing their emotion-laden agenda that the only acceptable pollution burden is zero based on a selective science.  Anything that is inconsistent with that is labeled as a “false solution”.  See, for example, my work on the peaker power plant issue that discusses tradeoffs.

“If the intention is to have an honest discussion about what actually is zero emissions, and what’s industry hype and… gaslighting, then that’s one thing,” said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. “However, a lot of us are skeptical and worried because of actions that we’ve seen of late by the Hochul administration themselves, looking to potentially undermine the climate law.”

Bautista pointed to the sudden proposal from Hochul’s office in late March, just days before the state’s budget deadline, to overhaul how New York counts carbon emissions. The shift could have allowed polluters to continue burning gas and other fuels for longer, and could have opened the door to more fuels derived from biological sources like wood, or methane gas captured from farms or landfills. Hochul dropped the proposal from budget talks following an uproar from climate groups, but officials have said they intend to revisit it.

Bautista is referring to a proposed change in the emissions accounting proposed earlier this year.  I don’t think very many people understand the actual ramifications to the Climate Act targets.  I don’t agree that it would have “allowed polluters to continue burning gas and other fuels for longer”.  They only proposed to change the accounting label.  The actions necessary to meet the percentage reductions don’t care whether the starting number is 200 and the 2030 40% emissions limit is 120 or the starting number is 100 and the 2030 40% reduction emission limit is 60.  The control strategies still have to get a 40% reduction.  The environmental community is wound up about bio-fuels but ignore the fact that most other jurisdictions with similar programs enable their use.

The plan adopted by the state’s Climate Action Council in December rejected most uses of alternative fuels, to the relief of environmental justice advocates — and the dismay of the three industry-aligned members, including Donohue, who voted against. Now, Bautista is nervous that Hochul might be wavering on the council’s recommendations.  “It’s hard not to see signs of the Hochul administration not fully embracing the plan,” he said.

Raya Salter, an environmental justice advocate and lawyer who sat on the Climate Action Council, was not surprised to see the state moving forward with IPPNY’s petition. She said it was up to climate groups to “hold the line” against any move that would “increase costs to New Yorkers and put disadvantaged communities at risk.”  “We set the bar high in New York, in terms of what any technology that will be used in our state will do in terms of affordability, health, cost, etc.,” she said. “Through the fog, we’re talking about emerging technologies that are unproven and really have a long way to go before clearing any bar.”

The rhetoric of these two ideologues is frightening.  Neither has ever acknowledged the concerns of the agencies responsible for electric system reliability.  I suspect that they would prefer to risk the current standards for reliability and affordability than concede that some of their aspirational goals are threats to them.

The PSC’s order acknowledges some uncertainties around new nuclear, biofuels, and hydrogen, but it doesn’t rule any technologies out. Aside from possible pollution, critics worry that many of these technologies remain prohibitively expensive — though new federal funding, mostly from the Inflation Reduction Act, could change the economics.

Critics of the technologies are worried about the costs of these technologies.  They should be but apparently do not understand that the potential risks of not having this technology dwarf those costs.  In February 2021, the Texas electric grid failed to provide sufficient energy when it was needed.  As a result, over 4.5 million homes and residences were without power, at least 246 people died, and total damages were at least $195 billion.  Those are real costs and deaths not some contrived benefits and projected health impacts associated with GHG emissions. 

It is hypocritical to worry about the DEFR costs but ignore the costs of the rest of the net-zero transition.  Both Bautista and Salter support the narrative that the costs of inaction for the net zero Climate Act transition outweigh the costs of action.  That too is nothing more than a slogan.  It is misleading, because the costs in the Scoping Plan do not include the costs of “already implemented” programs.  In other words, it does not cover the costs to get to net-zero only the costs of the Climate Act itself.  My analyses of costs found that there are significant “already implemented” program costs that likely would make the statement false.  It gets worse because as far as I can tell the Integration Analysis does include the benefits of already implemented programs while it excludes the costs.  My analysis of the benefits shows that they over-estimated the benefits in any event.

Officials say some state investment is necessary to bring emerging, zero-emissions resources to market, just like the technologies that came before them.  “All of our energy infrastructure, at some point, was built with public injection of funds,” said NYSERDA operations manager Richard Bourgeois at the IPPNY conference.

There is one difference overlooked by proponents however.  In the past there was an end to the public injection of funds.  The public injection of subsidies for wind and solar have been on-going for decades.  Given the technological risk of DEFR it is likely that similar on-going subsidies will be required.  There is likely no end for the new “zero-emissions” technologies.

The state will need at least 17 gigawatts’ worth of these clean, “firm,” systems by 2040, NYSERDA estimates — about two-thirds the capacity of all the fossil fuel plants that serve New York today.  Those dispatchable systems will run very rarely, generating only about 1 percent of the power New Yorkers actually end up using, according to a recent presentation by Vlad Gutman-Britten, assistant director of policy and markets at NYSERDA.

The current business model for peaking generation resources is to use the cheapest technology available (simple cycle natural gas turbines) because cost recovery for a facility that only runs 5% or less of the time for the rare conditions is challenging.  It seems unrealistic to expect that any of the new DEFR technologies will be cheaper than a gas turbine which means that cost recovery will be much more difficult.  Somebody, somewhere is going to have to pick up that tab.

Bautista says that limited role means there’s no need for the state to rush into supporting these technologies, particularly given advances in battery storage. “Their solution is always shooting an elephant gun to kill a fly,” he said. “They can’t say in 10 years where battery technology is going to be.”

Gutman-Britten sees things differently.  “That resource is really going to carry New York through some of the most difficult weeks of every year, when renewables are not generating at the times when demand is highest,” he said.

Gutman-Britten has it right.  Without this resource there will be serious reliability problems.  In my opinion failure to provide DEFR will inevitably result in a Texas February 2021 blackout disaster.  Bautista’s naïve position is dangerously wrong.

Conclusion

The Hochul Administration’s deference to a few naïve individuals is increasing the threat to reliable and affordable electricity in New York.  The responsible experts all say that this new resource that can be dispatched as needed without any emissions is necessary for the net-zero transition.  Instead of confronting the discrepancy between the activists who believe that existing technology is sufficient and the Integration Analysis that said that this new technology was needed, the Climate Action Council frittered away a couple of years arguing semantics and nomenclature on less critical issues.

Even if the technologies necessary for the transition turn out to be affordable and work as necessary, the arbitrary schedule of the Climate Act is a problem.  The proposed cap and invest program promises compliance certainty with respect to the mandated schedule.  What is missing is implementation certainty.  There are a whole host of reasons (e.g., funding, supply chain issues, and lack of trained workers) why the generating resources necessary to meet the mandates might not get built as fast necessary.  If that happens the final compliance option is to shut down when the cap is reached.  I do not think that an artificial energy shortage to meet the targets is in the best interest of anyone.  Are the climate activists so naïve as to believe that rationing gasoline, heating fuels and electricity will be selling points for their vision of the future?

In order to implement the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero transition the Integration Analysis, the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council all agree that a new resource that has all the characteristics of a natural gas fired turbine but no emissions is needed.  The New York Public Service Commission has initiated a process to “identify technologies that can close the gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs, and more broadly identify the actions needed to pursue attainment of the Zero Emission by 2040 Target” for New York electric generating sources intended to address that need.  This is an overview of the proceeding.

I have been following the Climate Act since it was first proposed. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 300 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and an interim 2030 target of a 40% reduction by 2030. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan.  After a year-long review the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022.  In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.

Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources

The Integration Analysis, the New York Independent System Operator, and the New York State Reliability Council all agree that a new resource that provides all the services of existing natural gas fired generating units without emissions is needed because of the reliability problem illustrated in the following figure.  This graph illustrates the long-duration wind lull problem from an early presentation to the Climate Action Council.  It explicitly points out that emissions-free firm capacity or dispatchable emissions free resources (DEFR) is needed to meet multi-day periods of low wind and solar resource availability.  The thing to remember is that in order to prevent catastrophic blackouts caused because intermittent wind and solar resources are not able to support expected loads, all three groups are banking on DEFR capacity.  Using wind, solar and storage exclusively makes meeting the worst-case renewable resource gap much more difficult, if not impossible, to address.

I compared the state’s scoping plan resource estimates and the New York Independent System Operator analysis that both projected how much more energy (MWh would be needed when everything is electrified and what resources would be needed to provide them.  The issues are summarized in the New York State Reliability Council Draft Scoping Plan comments.  They made the point that the new resources required are enormous and also raised other concerns:

Practical considerations affecting the availability, schedule and operability for new interconnections include: interconnection standards; site availability; permitting; resource equipment availability; regulatory approval; large volume of projects in NYISO queue and study process; scalability of long-term battery storage and other technologies; operational control; impact of extreme weather; consideration of a must- run reliability need for legacy resources. In addition, the pace of transportation and building electrification, the timing of any natural gas phase-out and their impact on the electric T&D system must also be carefully studied from technical, economic and environmental perspectives. Together, these practical considerations require the development of reliable zero emission resources to be conscientiously sequenced and timed in the near term (through 2030) to ensure broader GHG reductions in all sectors beyond 2030.

It all boils down to the fact that a reliable zero emission resource that can backup intermittent renewable energy does not exist.  The NYISO and NYSRC both waffle around saying that such a magical resource must be developed and tested but they have not admitted publicly the possibility that such a resource may well be impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  The Scoping Plan chose green hydrogen as its candidate resource and in order to prove that it can work a comprehensive feasibility analysis is required. 

Scoping Plan and DEFR

In my opinion the Hochul Administration lost track of the plot regarding the Climate Action Council’s handling of the Scoping Plan.  In particular, the Council managed to get bogged down into technical details that were outside the expertise of the membership but forged ahead anyway.  I believe they went off in the wrong direction. 

At the meeting where the Climate Action Council approved the Scoping Plan Council members gave statements.  The statement of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University illustrates my concern.  He claimed that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act and summarized his position regarding the transition of the electric grid:

I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.

The professional staff at the agencies responsible for keeping the lights on in New York and the analysts who developed the Integration Analysis used for the Scoping Plan all believe that DEFR will be needed to keep the lights on.  Their position is at odds with Howarth’s assertion that the existing technologies for wind, sun, and hydro generating resources are all that is necessary for a reliable electric system.  The failure of the Hochul Administration to make it clear that Dr. Howarth’s opinion cannot be the basis of New York policy has resulted in unacceptable delays in the development of a feasibility analysis for this resource.

Public Service Commission DEFR

On May 18, 2023 the Public Service Commission (PSC) announced that a process has been started to “examine the need for resources to ensure the reliability of the 2040 zero-emissions electric grid mandated by the Climate Act”.  The press release went on:

The Climate Act, passed by the State Legislature in 2019, directs the Commission to establish, among other things, a program to ensure that by 2030, at least 70 percent of electric load is served by renewable energy, and that by 2040, there are zero emissions associated with electrical demand in the State. The initiative will help deliver on the Climate Act zero-emissions electric grid mandate and will enable the necessary types of clean energy to reach all New Yorkers. The Commission’s decision follows a substantial climate package announced by Governor Kathy Hochul in the FY24 enacted State Budget that will advance sustainable buildings, clean energy, and an affordable Cap-and-Invest program.

Today’s action recognizes that as renewable resources and storage facilities are added to the State’s energy supply, additional clean-energy resources capable of responding to fluctuating conditions might be needed to maintain the reliability of the electric grid. The Commission’s work to meet the Climate Act targets must include exploration of technologies that can support reliability once fossil generation has been removed from the system.

The order initiates a process to identify technologies that can close the anticipated gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs. Within the order, the Commission asks stakeholders a series of important questions, including how to define ‘zero-emissions’ for purposes of the zero emissions by 2040 target, and whether that definition should include cutting edge technologies such as advanced nuclear, long duration energy storage, green hydrogen, and demand response. The order further elicits feedback from stakeholders on how to best design a zero-emissions by 2040 program, consistent with the Climate Act’s requirement of delivering substantial benefits to disadvantaged communities and New York State’s electric grid reliability rules, while also leveraging other state and federal efforts to research, develop, and deploy zero-emission resources.

After a 60-day public comment period, Commission staff will convene at least one technical conference to examine a series of issues and questions raised in this important proceeding. The Commission may take additional actions on zero-emission resources based on the information obtained through those processes.

The order provided more background and rationale.  When the Climate Act was passed the PSC modified the Clean Energy Standard (DES) to align with its requirements.  The order explains:

The pathway established by the CES Modification Order focuses on options for procuring sufficient renewable energy resources to meet CLCPA requirements. However, several studies indicate that renewable energy resources may not be capable of meeting the full range of electric system reliability needs that will arise as fossil generation is replaced. These studies suggest that there is a gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technology and expected future system reliability requirements.

On August 18, 2021 the Independent Power Producers of New York, Inc., New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, and New York State AFL-CIO (Petitioners) filed a Zero Emissions Petition that also raised this issue. The proceeding notes:

This Order responds to the Petition and initiates a process to identify technologies that can close the gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs, and more broadly identify the actions needed to pursue attainment of the Zero Emission by 2040 Target. As a first step, rather than adopting a new CES tier as requested in the Zero Emissions Petition, this Order seeks input from stakeholders on options for addressing that gap. In particular, the Commission welcomes responses to the questions posed in the body of this Order and directs the Department of Public Service staff (Staff), in consultation with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), to convene a technical conference that addresses the same list of questions.

In the discussion section of the order the PSC admits that efforts to meet the Climate Act targets “must include exploration of technologies that can support reliability once conventional fossil fuel generation has been removed from the system”.  The order states:

We see this exploration as integral to our responsibility under the PSL to ensure reliable electric service as we approach the Zero Emissions by 2040 Target.²⁵ With this Order, we are initiating process to determine appropriate next steps to address this gap including consideration of whether it is appropriate for the Commission to allocate ratepayer funds to incentivize the deployment of zero-emission technologies.

The order goes on to seek comment on related topics and asks specific questions.

I find it particularly enlightening as an example of poor planning that the one of the topics relates to the term “zero emissions”.  It turns out nobody has bothered to define what technologies qualify as “zero emissions”:

Many of the questions posed below relate to how the term “zero emissions” should be defined. This is a particularly important issue given that neither PSL §66-p(2)(b) nor any other provision of the CLCPA defines the technologies that should be considered “zero emissions.” Section 66-p(2) (b) simply states that “by the year [2040] the statewide electrical demand system will be zero emissions.” The CES Modification Order established that the technologies defined as “renewable energy systems” under PSL §66-p(l)(a) are de facto “zero emissions” for purposes of meeting the 2040 target.26 Additionally, the Commission recognized existing nuclear generation as a zero-emission technology in its 2016 CES Framework Order, which created the ZEC program.27 However, PSL §66-p(2) (b) does not say more about what is meant by “zero emissions,” leaving it to the Commission to define the term.

Notice Soliciting Public Comments

The order asks for comments on the following questions.

1. How should the term “zero emissions,” as used under PSL §66-p(2)(b), be defined?
2. Should the term “zero emissions” be construed to include some or all of the following types of resources, such as advanced nuclear (Gen III+ or Gen IV), long-duration storage, green hydrogen, renewable natural gas, carbon capture and sequestration, virtual power plants, distributed energy resources, or demand response resources? What other resource types should
   be included?
3. How should a program to achieve the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target address existing and newly constructed nuclear energy resources. Should the program be limited to specific types of nuclear energy technologies and exclude others?
4. Should new measures adopted to pursue compliance with the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target focus exclusively on generation and resource adequacy, or should they also encompass a broader set of technologies that could be integrated into the transmission or distribution
   system segments, or installed and operated behind-the-meter?
5. Should any program to achieve the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target specify subcategories of energy resources based on particular characteristics, such as ramp rates, the duration of their operational availability, or their emissions profile with respect to local pollutants?
6. What role does technology innovation need to play to meet the CLCPA’s Zero-Emission by 2040 Target?
7. Should life cycle emissions impacts be considered when characterizing energy resources? If so, how?
8. Given that the feedstocks and other resources required to produce renewable natural gas are limited and will be in demand in other sectors of New York’s economy, how should this fuel be considered in the context of this proceeding?
9. In what ways might a program to meet the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target require reexamination and possibly revision of different tiers of the Clean Energy Standard? Should one or more of the policy approaches that have been used to implement the CES be considered to meet the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target?
10. What is necessary to align a program to meet the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target with the priority of just transition embedded within the CLCPA?
11. How might the benefits of a program to meet the Zero-Emission by 2040 Target be measured for the purpose of ensuring that, consistent with PSL §66-p(7), it delivers “substantial benefits” to Disadvantaged Communities?
12. NYISO has adopted an effective load carrying capacity (ELCC) rubric and treatment of Zones J and K as load pockets with special resource adequacy requirements. How should these constructs and other NYISO market rules inform design of a program meant to support the development and deployment of resources capable of achieving a zero emissions grid?
13. What additional studies, if any, should the Commission undertake with respect to the development and deployment of resources capable of achieving a zero emissions grid?
14. Given that New York is not the only jurisdiction investigating options and opportunities for the research, development, and deployment of new technologies capable of achieving a zero emissions grid, how should the State seek to coordinate with and otherwise draw upon efforts that are underway elsewhere?

Conclusion

On one hand it is encouraging that there is finally an effort underway to define “zero emissions” resources and there is recognition that new technologies must be evaluated.  On the other hand, this is a recognized problem that should have been the priority of Climate Action Council and the Scoping Plan.  It has been 21 months since the Zero Emissions Petition was filed and they are just starting to address the problem.  I have always decried the lack of a feasibility analysis of the affordability, reliability, and permitting acceptability of zero emission resource options.  I believe that the Climate Action Council reliance on non-experts is a leading cause for this delay.

My other concern is that this could become politicized.  I expect massive pushback from Climate Act proponents if the proceeding finds that the only proven option available for affordable “zero emissions” resources that must be included in the future energy system mix to maintain reliability is nuclear.  If New York truly wants to reduce GHG emissions to the extent proposed nuclear must be in the mix but the entrenched anti-nuclear sentiment likely precludes that rational approach.  Furthermore, all the other options may well be impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics   If the analysis determines that the other options are technologically infeasible or too expensive in the mandated Climate Act schedule, the only rational approach would be to adjust the schedule.  That would cause a meltdown for all the Climate Activists. The Hochul Administration has painted itself into a corner because I think the most likely result of this proceeding is inconsistent with the Scoping Plan.  They will have to either admit that the Scoping Plan schedule is untenable or modify the results to fit the political narrative.

Update

As I was getting ready to publish this I heard the Susan Arbetter on Spectrum News Capital Tonight had interviewed Dr. Howarth.  She had two members of the Climate Action Council on her show to discuss Climate Act Implementation: Howarth and Gavin Donohue of the Independent Power Producers of New York. I generally agree with Donohue’s description of the current status. At 7:20 of the interview video she talked to Howarth.  Her last question (13:12 of the video) was: “What is the greatest obstacle to meeting the goals of the Climate Act”.  Howarth’s response was completely consistent with his earlier statements:

Well, they are not technical.  We know how to move the state to a 100% fossil free future.  The technology has been around for more than a decade to do that. And it is actually cost-effective.  The Scoping Plan and the Climate Action Council lays that out in great detail.  The cost of inaction is more than the cost of moving forward with this plan, which is why 19 out of 22 of us voted for it.  Gavin is only one of three people who voted against it

Arbetter had to ask him at this point to answer the question.  He responded:

The challenges are political and educational.  Letting people know why it is good for the state.  Letting them know why they can afford it.  Counter-acting some of the misinformation and fear mongering that is out there.

If I was not clear enough in this post let me reiterate my concern.  The Integration Analysis that was used to develop the Scoping Plan; the organizations responsible for providing reliable electric energy -New York Independent System Operator and New York State Reliability Council, and by way of this proceeding, the Public Service Commission all agree that we do not know how to move the state to a 100% fossil free future because meeting that target requires dispatchable emissions free resources that do not presently exist.  Dr. Howarth claims that education is necessary to counter-act misinformation and fear-mongering but given that his technology position directly contradicts the state experts on electric system reliability I conclude he is the one guilty of misinformation.