Climate Act – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

Climate Act Blue Ribbon Commission Affordability Politics

I previously described revisions to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) in the New York State budget bill. I believe the budget bill addresses some of the most egregious technical and accounting problems I have criticized since 2019, but it leaves my central concerns about feasibility, affordability, and reliability largely untouched. A key shortcoming in the transition process has been non-existent consideration of input contrary to the political narrative. This post describes a provision in the budget bill for a “blue-ribbon” commission to address ratepayer affordability that I believe will continue that same approach.

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 and references included in this document.

Overview

The Climate Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) created the Climate Action Council and charged it with developing a Scoping Plan that recommends strategies and policies to achieve the statute’s emission-reduction and clean energy mandates. The plan was finalized in December 2022 and outlines how New York proposes to implement the Climate Act across all sectors of the economy.

Under the State Energy Law, the New York State Energy Planning Board—made up of agency heads, gubernatorial and legislative appointees, and the NYISO president—develops and adopts a comprehensive State Energy Plan every four years. The most recent plan explicitly incorporates and advances the Climate Action Council Scoping Plan’s recommendations so that they guide the State’s energy-related decision making through about 2040.

Part TT of the 2026 Budget Bill establishes another appointed group. This legislation establishes a temporary commission to be known as the blue-ribbon commission on residential affordability through energy savings, or RATES commission. The RATES commission will “study the causes and origins of rising utility rates and to recommend any actions or reforms to reduce such rates.”

Because the entire RATES commission is appointed by one party, I believe that the findings are pre-ordained to be whatever is politically convenient. At the top of that list is to claim that the Climate Act has little to do with rising utility rates.

Climate Action Council

The fundamental problem with the Climate Action Council was evident by July 2021, sixteen months after the bylaws were adopted. The statute emphasized climate‑advocacy and social‑justice perspectives over power‑system engineering, economics, or utility operations, so the Council’s recommendations reflected ideological commitments (electrify everything; rapid fossil shutdowns) rather than an honest assessment of feasibility. Decisions were made on the presumption of expertise by some Climate Action Council members who have no relevant background or experience on power-system topics. For example, regarding electric grid reliability, they went so far to state anyone who disagrees with them is a mis-informer. Paul Shepson, Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, stated at the 26 May 2022 Council meeting recording:

Mis-representation I see as on-going. One of you mentioned the word reliability. I think the word reliability is very intentionally presented as a way of expressing the improper idea that renewable energy will not be reliable. I don’t accept that will be the case. In fact, it cannot be the case for the CLCPA that installation of renewable energy, the conversion to renewable energy, will be unreliable. It cannot be.

Another example was Council member Rober Howarth. Howarth claims that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act and his statement at the meeting where the Scoping Plan was approved claims that no new technology is needed:

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 “Highlights from the 2025 State of the Market Report for the NYISO Markets” presentation to the NYISO Management Committee by the NYISO Market Monitoring Unit, Potomac Economics on May 27, 2026 included the following slide documenting issues contradicting Howarth’s statement. The failure of the Climate Action Council to demand a feasibility study and a conditional transition plan because “the conversion to renewable energy would be reliable” has resulted in significant retirements of the resources necessary for reliability and other impacts unacknowledged by ideologues on the Council.

State Energy Planning Board

The same basic problem shows up in the State Energy Planning Board, which is supposed to be the more sober, technocratic body that translates the Climate Action Council’s ambitions into an official State Energy Plan. Under Article 6 of the State Energy Law, the Board is stacked with senior state officials: the heads of ten agencies and authorities, one appointee each from the Governor, the Assembly Speaker, and the Senate Temporary President, and the president of NYSERDA as chair. The only person at the table with direct responsibility for keeping the bulk power system operating, the presiding officer of the federally designated bulk system operator (the NYISO), is there as a non‑voting member.

On paper, the Board is supposed to balance multiple objectives. The statute says the State Energy Plan should improve reliability, protect consumers from price volatility, reduce overall energy costs, and minimize health and environmental impacts. In reality, because the voting members are drawn from the very institutions already committed to the Climate Act agenda, the Board behaves more like an internal ratification committee than an independent check. When NYSERDA announced that the State Energy Planning Board had approved the 2025 State Energy Plan, it emphasized that the Board “comprised of multiple State agency heads, appointees from the Governor, Senate, and Assembly, and the president of the New York Independent System Operator” adopted the plan unanimously and that the Plan explicitly advances the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan recommendations.

Notice what is missing from that description: there is no guaranteed voting seat for a consumer advocate whose job is to push back on bill impacts, no requirement for independent power‑system engineers, and no formal role for utility planners or market economists whose professional obligation is to question whether the numbers add up. The NYISO can raise concerns about reliability, but at the end of the day, the NYISO representative does not get a vote when the Board decides whether to bless a plan that folds in the Climate Action Council’s assumptions and timelines. That structure guarantees that any serious challenge to the political narrative — for example, that the pace of mandated retirements is inconsistent with maintaining reliability at reasonable cost — will be treated as a nuisance rather than a core planning issue.

In other words, the State Energy Planning Board is not a neutral referee standing above the Climate Action Council. It is an extension of the same political narrative, organized to give the appearance of comprehensive, expert‑driven state energy planning while insulating the underlying policy from meaningful technical or economic scrutiny. That helps explain why the 2025 State Energy Plan reads more like a translation of the Scoping Plan into agency task lists than a candid assessment of what is achievable without blowing up reliability and affordability.

RATES Commission

The political sales pitch for the RATES Commission is straightforward. Governor Hochul and the legislature recognize that utility bills are punishing households and are a political liability. In response they want a “blue‑ribbon” panel to get to the bottom of it. The reactions to Part TT, and the way the membership is structured, suggest what the commission is likely to do—and what it will avoid.

On the supportive side, Assembly leadership, AARP, and several majority legislators point to the RATES Commission as proof that this budget delivers “strong utility reforms,” grouping it with one‑time rebate checks and changes in how PSC and NYSERDA assessments show up on bills. Their messaging emphasizes “cracking down” on utility profits, increasing transparency, and protecting working families from “corporate greed,” not reevaluating the Climate Act. The appointment scheme reinforces that emphasis: all members are named by the Governor and legislative majorities, with designated seats for administration officials and majority‑aligned appointees, and no guaranteed voting role for an independent consumer advocate, power‑system engineer, or NYISO representative.

Business‑oriented groups are more conditional. Upstate United, for example, has framed the commission as a potential vehicle to force transparency around what is really driving costs, especially in upstate regions that have seen sharp delivery and supply increases while being told they already live in a “clean energy success story.” Their implicit challenge is that if the commission is serious about affordability, it must finally addres the full cost of CLCPA implementation, NYSERDA surcharges, and transmission and resource‑adequacy investments that flow directly from the Climate Act.

Republican legislators focus on process and composition: every voting appointment is controlled by the Governor and legislative leaders who supported the Climate Act, the Scoping Plan, and the 2025 State Energy Plan. The absence of built‑in representation for independent consumer advocates, utility planners, or market economists, and the lack of a voting role for NYISO, signals that the same political coalition that designed the transition will decide which rate drivers are fair game for criticism.

Given that context, it is not hard to predict how the RATES Commission will treat Climate Act cost drivers and NYISO reliability warnings. It is politically easier for the commission to treat Climate Act‑driven spending as non‑negotiable “public policy costs,” blame rising bills on utility behavior and generic “infrastructure needs,” and recast NYISO’s reliability warnings as implementation problems rather than evidence that the mandates themselves are out of sync with what the power system can safely deliver.

Conclusion

The most probable outcome is a final report that acknowledges bills are too high, recommends more rebates and cost‑shifting to taxpayers, proposes tougher oversight of utilities, and treats NYISO reliability concerns as justification for even more spending on renewables, storage, and transmission—not as a warning sign about the CLCPA transition. In other words, given who will sit on it and who won’t, the RATES Commission is unlikely to be the place where New York finally confronts the affordability and reliability consequences of implementing the Climate Act as written; it is more likely to become an additional layer of political insulation around a transition whose costs and technical risks remain off‑limits.

Out of Control New York State Renewable Developers

Fred Stafford has put together a comprehensive look of the New York State (NYS) renewable development process administrated through the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA). He shows how the state’s renewables developers dumped their project risk onto the backs of ratepayers but without the open scrutiny that the state applies to utilities. He also provides a comprehensive look at renewable projects in New York.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. 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

NYSERDA’s renewable procurement role looks like a neutral administrative function on paper, but it has turned into a highly centralized process that papers over the practical risks of New York’s climate agenda while shifting cost and execution risk onto ratepayers. The Clean Energy Standard and subsequent orders anoint NYSERDA as the “central clean energy procurement agency,” steadily increasing its annual targets even as an uncomfortable share of its contracted portfolio never makes it to commercial operation. That structure suits the Hochul Administration and activists because it allows big press releases about “nation‑leading” awards while the messy details of cancellations, repricing, and cost escalation disappear into a complex tangle of Renewable Energy Credits (REC) and Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Credits (OREC} contracts.

To its credit, NYSERDA is fairly candid in some filings and interviews about underlying structural problems. There can be a three‑ to six‑year lag between a bid and the start of a contract during which global cost conditions can swing wildly. A bid that looked “cheapest” in year one can be hopelessly underwater by the time a project is ready to build, at which point everyone faces an ugly choice between swallowing higher costs or losing the project. Instead of rethinking this model, the state has chosen to pile on larger annual procurement targets and give NYSERDA more discretion to tweak terms, hoping better central planning will overcome siting bottlenecks, NYISO interconnection constraints, and macroeconomic headwinds.

While NYSERDA has admitted in some instances that there are issues with renewable procurements, they have not provided a detailed assessment of the programs and their status. Fred Stafford details what has happened to renewable contracts over the last three years. In short the developers threatened to cancel their projects unless NYS coughed up more money. He also has compiled the first comprehensive look at what happened to each of the 86 projects that the renewables industry cited in its threat of cancellation.

Renewable Development Shakedown

Stafford describes what has happened in NYS:

Back in June 2023, the trade group representing New York renewables developers, Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY), warned the state that, due to post-COVID supply chain issues and inflation, their 86 wind and solar projects under development were facing cancellation. That amounted to about 7.5 GW of new power generation at risk.

Each of the projects held a contract with NYSERDA, the state’s energy procurement agency, to receive subsidies in the form of renewable energy certificates (RECs), a project revenue stream on top of the actual sales of power. Having all competed for, and won, these contracts in annual auctions between 2016 and 2021, the developers were concerned the subsidies wouldn’t yield enough return on investment for their shareholders. The developers of four offshore wind projects and the ill-fated Clean Path NY transmission project all followed suit: our competitively won subsidies need to be increased.

To remedy their financial predicament and to save the projects, ACE NY requested that the state renegotiate their contracts by adjusting the REC prices with an inflation index. If the state refused their request then many of the developers would be forced to terminate their projects. But without these projects, ACE NY argued, not only would the state’s statutory climate goals be in jeopardy, so too would its electric reliability. After all, the only significant new power generation winning investment in New York these days is renewable.

The ACE NY petition fleshes out the threat to reliability posed by the cancellation of their projects. Here’s an example: “… [D]elays in renewable energy development would only exacerbate the reliability risk already implicated in recent reports and undercut the State’s commitment to developing the resources necessary to effectively combat climate change.” NYPSC Case 15-E-0302, Petition of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York to Address Post COVID-19 Impacts on Renewable Development Economics and Contract Considerations (filed June 7, 2023, revised June 12, 2023), pp. 34-35.

New York needed the developers’ projects and therefore needed to increase their subsidies beyond the competitively determined contractual prices. The developers had the state under their thumbs and both sides knew it. Other trade groups and nonprofits that push renewable energy even backed them up in demanding inflation adjustments, as did labor unions, whose members’ livelihoods were predicated in part on building the projects.

In October 2023 the state’s Public Services Commission nonetheless voted unanimously to refuse the request for inflation adjustment to existing contracts. In a statement, ACE NY’s director Anne Reynolds painted a picture of doom and gloom. “Unfortunately, today’s action by New York is not a sign that our state is really committed to the climate change action mandates that exist in law, and it is not a day that has moved us forward in giving future generations of New Yorkers a healthier and safer environment,” she said.

But the state wanted to preserve competitive procurement as the way to develop new electricity resources at lowest cost to ratepayers. “By rejecting this relief, we signal to every vendor that our contracts, our commitments are worth the paper they are written on,” PSC Chair Rory Christian stated at the time. “We signal that ratepayer funds are not an unlimited piggy bank for anyone’s disposal.”

Instead, the PSC ordered a new, expedited 2023 auction for renewables subsidies, held shortly before the regularly scheduled 2024 auction. The new auctions also included an optional inflation adjustment index that would apply to the final strike price once the project was finished with construction. This was a major ask from the ACE NY petition, and they largely got it. Any of those 86 projects that wouldn’t pencil for their investors under existing contracts could be cancelled, and developers could simply re-bid for subsidies in the new auction. Since they’re organized politically into a trade group that presses the state on the need for higher subsidies, they could be sure that the subsidies in the new auctions, a result of all their competitive bids, would be higher.

And that’s exactly what happened: a majority of these projects’ developers ultimately cancelled their contracts, re-bid in the subsequent auctions, won even higher subsidies from ratepayers, and continued with the projects.

The fate of the offshore wind projects that issued the same demand is better understood, given the smaller count. Each of the four cancelled their contracts and two of them won contracts for higher prices than what they’d won back in the 2018 auction. Empire Wind 1 gained a 27% increase in its subsidy, while Sunrise Wind scored a 32% increase. See Table 5 in this research on offshore wind for a clear presentation of the New York offshore wind solicitations timeline and increase in strike prices. Hansen, Tyler A., et al. “Institutional learning in the energy transition: The case of offshore wind in the United States.”

Contract Tracking Analysis

As is the case with anything associated with NYSERDA documentation for the Climate Act there is NYSERDA data available but getting it all together is not straight forward. I cannot over-emphasize my admiration of the work Stafford did to put together a spreadsheet documenting the fate of the 86 projects. He explains:

Projects show up with slightly different names, perhaps different developers, in periodic reports. One must use their NYISO interconnection queue positions and their state siting cases, both of which are included in state data, to track their progression over time.

Even determining the actual list of 86 projects requires some footwork, as ACE NY’s petition didn’t list them out.⁴ ACE NY characterized the 86 projects as the subset of the 117 Tier 1 land-based wind and solar contracts, from 2016 to 2021 procurements, that were considered “Under Development” as of June 2023. See Table 14, NYPSC Case 15-E-0302, Petition of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York to Address Post COVID-19 Impacts on Renewable Development Economics and Contract Considerations (filed June 7, 2023, revised June 12, 2023), Attachment A, pp. 23.Because NYSERDA’s data hides earlier snapshots, I had to rely on lucky Archive.org snapshots of it to reconstruct that list. They’re all the land-based wine and solar Tier 1 projects from 2016 through 2021 auctions that were, at the time of the June 2023 petition, still listed as under development. See the “project roster” tab in my spreadsheet.

Results Overview

Stafford summarizes the results:

Of the 86 wind and solar projects that ACE NY demanded higher subsidies for, totaling 7.5 GW, a majority of that capacity, 4.1 GW, consisted of projects that eventually re-bid and won contracts in the subsequent auctions that NYSERDA ran.

20 of them (2.0 GW) won contracts, at much higher prices (see next section), in the late 2023 auction.

18 of them (2.1 GW) won contracts in the 2024 auction, whose price outcomes are not yet public.

8 of them (650 MW) submitted bids for contracts in the 2025 auction, which is still being evaluated.

6 of them (357 MW) continued to completion on their original NYSERDA contracts.

34 of them (2.4 GW) were simply abandoned by their developers, so far.

The ones that won contracts in 2023 scored subsidies that were 20 to 64% higher

He explains that the project status is still evolving:

Note that we can’t argue yet that a majority of the 86 projects won contracts after rebidding. The 2025 procurement auction is currently ongoing, so we don’t know which of the 8 projects from the petition set will actually win contracts based on their bids. In the 2023 auction, 48 of the 86 submitted bids but only 20 won, and in the 2024 auction, 25 of the remaining 86 submitted bids but only 18 won.

Discussion

The NYSERDA bidding process is rigged against consumers. While PSC Chair Rory Christian said that “We signal that ratepayer funds are not an unlimited piggy bank for anyone’s disposal.” The facts show that the renewable energy lobby led by ACE-NY blackmailed NYS into re-bidding renewable energy contracts and that when the contracts were re-bid the piggy bank was cracked open. The lawmaker advocates for the Climate Act did not require a feasibility analysis to determine whether an electric system that relies on wind, solar, and energy storage can maintain current reliability and affordability standards. Instead they opened up NYS to renewable developers to build as much as they can, as fast as they can and in the process documented By Stafford essentially guaranteed rates of return that represent a regressive tax on all utility bills.

NYSERDA’s procurement responsibilities are not a neutral back‑office function; they define how risk, cost, and accountability are distributed across the entire Climate Act build‑out. By keeping so much of the action behind the curtain of complex contracts, the current setup enables a steady stream of “bold” announcements about new renewable and offshore wind awards, even as the roster of operating projects grows more slowly and the affordability and reliability implications become harder to ignore. That gap between promises and projects is not a surprise failure of an otherwise sound system; it is an entirely predictable outcome of a procurement model that prioritizes optics and statutory compliance over realistic timelines, durable contracts, and transparent evaluation of costs and benefits.

Conclusion

Stafford concludes:

The whole point of moving from utility monopoly to competitive markets for electricity generation was to lower costs by putting project risk onto investors and not onto ratepayers. Here we have a fully competitive procurement system and yet the investors managed to collectively exert some political pressure and shift the project risk back onto ratepayers. All it took was canceling their contracts, waiting for later auction processes, and acting collectively to bid much higher prices for those subsidies.

That’s because New York’s electricity system is not some testbed of pure competition, pure price signals, and autonomous, uncoordinated agents. The state has a grid that desperately needs new generation and it has climate goals that desperately need new renewable projects. The renewables developers have demonstrated their capacity to work collectively, through ACE NY, to push a narrative about their common industrial and financial situation. Of course it’s in large part true: COVID did create major new supply chain snarls and inflationary pressures.

But unlike in the old electricity market, where investment in generation came from the state’s utilities, the New York Public Services Commission has no corporate books to look at, no ability to regulate profits to ensure that investors aren’t making out like bandits. Instead, they can only trust the developers and read the tea leaves of the market, and hope that these iterations of competitive procurement aren’t producing huge windfalls for the projects’ ultimate investors. Maybe there was something important lost in that old way of doing things.

NYISO 2026 Power Trends – Reality is Catching Up

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) prepares an annual report on “forces shaping the electric grid and wholesale electricity markets.” NYISO’s Power Trends 2026 is a notable document because it says many of the right things, even if it still does not say them quite as bluntly as the situation deserves. The report acknowledges that electrification, large new energy-intensive loads, retirement of conventional resources, and weather-dependent generation are combining to make the system more uncertain and more fragile. It also says reliability margins are shrinking and that winter conditions are becoming a defining challenge. That is an important step forward, but it is also an implicit admission that the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) implementation process has been pushing the grid toward a level of risk that the state has not honestly grappled with.

I have written over 650 articles about the Climate Act and 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. The opinions expressed in this post and in my filing do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization with which I have been associated; these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to outline this post and draft the text used in this document.

Power Trends 2026

The Executive Summary states:

Power Trends explores the issues shaping New York’s electric system as it undergoes a historic transformation driven by simultaneous changes in supply, demand, and infrastructure.

The report highlights increasing and more uncertain electricity demand, a changing generation mix, and a system that is more geographically dispersed, weather‑dependent, and operationally complex. Maintaining reliability depends on disciplined planning, timely investment, and market structures that align investment with system needs and value operational performance during stressed conditions.

NYISO provides the report, a key trends fact sheet, a note from the NYISO president and CEO, and report figures and resources.

Key Findings

The report highlights five big trends: declining reliability margins, rapid and uncertain load growth, shifting seasonal risks, a changing resource mix, and expanding system uncertainty. That is a polite way of saying the grid is getting harder to run while the policy environment keeps adding complexity. NYISO is also explicit that the system needs generation, storage, transmission, and demand-side solutions that can perform during extended periods of high demand.

The press release makes one point especially clear: NYISO wants an “all-of-the-above” investment approach supported by competitive markets. In plain English, that means New York cannot afford to bet the system on a single preferred technology or an aspiration about how fast a transformation will happen. It needs resources that are available when needed, not just resources that look good in a policy presentation.

Where this fits my concerns

My long-running concern with Climate Act implementation has been that the process has treated emissions targets as if they were operational plans. The result has been an unfortunate habit of confusing policy preference with system capability. NYISO’s report does not use that language, but it does describe the consequences: less margin for error, greater weather dependence, more uncertainty, and increasing pressure on winter operations.

That is exactly the kind of caution that should have been part of the implementation process from the beginning. Instead, the state has often acted as though the answer to every reliability question was “more renewables, more quickly,” with insufficient attention to the timing and performance of the resources that keep the lights on. NYISO now says the system needs disciplined planning and timely investment, which is a far cry from the casual optimism that has often accompanied Climate Act roll-out discussions. I remain concerned that there still are unresolved differences between the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) implementation descriptions of the transition in the Scoping Plan and the State Energy Plan and NYISO planning reports.

The report also reinforces a point that has been obvious for years: load growth is not a static assumption anymore. Electrification, data centers, and other large projects are changing demand in ways that can swamp neat planning narratives. The idea that energy efficiency and energy conservation efforts will prevent load growth is also no longer valid. That means the state’s implementation process should be more conservative, not less, because uncertainty is rising on both the supply and demand sides.

Not so Independent NYISO

One reason NYISO’s documents are often carefully crafted to not contradict NYSERDA’s transition planning documents is that they must operate in a political environment where outright candor can be punished. That does not mean the report is wrong; it means the language is often muted. In my view, that restraint is not accidental. It reflects years of pressure on NYISO to avoid sounding too skeptical about the transition path the state has chosen.

“Energy Czar” Richard Kauffman’s role in that pressure campaign should not be forgotten. In 2016 NYISO filed comments with the state saying its goal to power the state with 50 percent renewable energy by 2030 was unrealistic unless a massive investment in new transmission lines were undertaken. Kauffman sent a letter saying it was misleading, incomplete, and grossly inaccurate. Even though the NYISO filing has since proven to be correct NYISO has every incentive to soften language that might be interpreted as resistance. I believe that dynamic has contributed to NYISO documents pulling their punches when discussing the risks of the zero-emissions transition and the practical limits of the Climate Act pathway.

That matters because the public needs more than carefully crafted phrases about “uncertainty” and “scenario-based planning.” It needs a frank explanation that the current policy path creates real reliability risks unless the state changes course on pace, technology assumptions, and resource adequacy. NYISO is getting closer to that point, but it is still speaking in institutional code.

What the report gets right

To NYISO’s credit, Power Trends 2026 is not a celebratory document. It acknowledges declining reliability margins and says retirements and performance problems are outpacing additions to supply. It recognizes that winter is becoming a defining reliability season. It also states that a diverse resource mix is necessary, including generation, storage, transmission, and demand-side measures.

That is a welcome correction to the oversimplified narrative that has dominated much of Albany’s energy policymaking. The report’s emphasis on competitive wholesale markets is also important because markets are where resource adequacy should be tested in practice, not in press releases. If policymakers want reliable electricity, they should listen carefully when the grid operator says performance under stress matters. It would also be appropriate for the press to qualify any transition story lauding renewables with the concerns described in this report.

What it leaves unsaid

Even so, the report still avoids saying the most uncomfortable thing plainly: Climate Act implementation has been moving faster in policy than in infrastructure. That gap is the heart of the problem. You can mandate a future, but you cannot mandate transmission buildout, generator construction, interconnection readiness, or seasonal fuel security on a slogan-driven schedule. This means that the transition schedule must be reconsidered.

The report also does not dwell on the institutional failure implied by repeated assurances that the transition is manageable without significant tradeoffs. NYISO is now warning that the system’s margin for error is shrinking. That should be read as a warning not just about the grid, but about the policy process that created these pressures in the first place.

A better reading of the outlook

The right takeaway from Power Trends 2026 is not that New York should abandon decarbonization. It is that the future electric system must be treated as an engineering problem, not a moral assertion. Reliability, affordability, and emissions all matter, but they do not obey the same timeline, and they certainly do not respond well to wishful thinking.

Nowhere is this more evident than the undeniable need for Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR). Power Trends 2026 defines this as:

A resource designed to provide reliable, on-demand electricity without emitting carbon. Unlike intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar, DEFRs can be dispatched as needed to meet demand. Many of the potential technologies are still in development and may face challenges in terms of economic viability and scalability

My concern is that DEFR is indispensable for a wind an solar dependent system, yet there is still no concrete plan to commercialize and deploy any DEFR technology at the scale required. Significant technical, economic, and regulatory uncertainties remain for all proposed DEFR options, so assuming a viable solution will simply emerge when needed amounts to taking an extraordinary reliability risk with the bulk power system. If nuclear ultimately proves to be the only practical DEFR candidate, then a grid architecture centered on wind, solar, and short duration storage cannot be implemented reliably without large scale nuclear generation. However, nuclear power is best suited to continuous, high-capacity factor operation, so holding it in reserve as an infrequently used DEFR “backup” misuses the technology and wastes its economic advantages. This problem should be resolved sooner than later.

If the Climate Act implementation process is to become credible, it needs a more honest accounting of resource availability, winter performance, the lead times for transmission and generation, and DEFR technology. NYISO’s latest outlook is useful because it points in that direction, even if cautiously. The report should be read as a signal that reality is asserting itself over rhetoric.

Conclusion

The most important thing about Power Trends 2026 is that it reflects a system under stress and a planning environment that has grown much more complicated than policymakers seem willing to admit. NYISO is telling us that New York needs a broad, reliable, market-based resource buildout, not a narrow ideology dressed up as planning. That is exactly the direction the state should have taken from the start. Instead, it is now being forced to catch up with the consequences of the flawed Climate Act and State Energy Plan implementation process. New York policy has talked as though ambitious emissions targets could be translated into real-world electric system performance simply by declaring them so. NYISO’s latest power trends report is a reminder that physics, infrastructure lead times, fuel availability, and operating reserves do not care about slogans.

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.