Climate Act Implementation Components – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

Micron Electrical Needs and the Climate Act

One of the few members of the New York State media who has been taking the time to evaluate the potential impacts of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) is Tim Knauss writing for the Syracuse Post Standard. He recently had another good article published that addressed the energy needs of Micron Technology’s planned semiconductor fabrication plant, His takeaway message was that, when fully complete, would consume more energy than the State of Vermont. Richard Ellenbogen frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with New York’s Climate Act. I asked his permission to present his evaluation of this article.

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

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

Micron and the Climate Act

Knauss wrote an article that asked the question: How would Micron’s electricity-hogging plant here live with NY’s war on fossil fuels? He explained:

When fully built, the complex of four chip fabs would use 640 million kilowatt-hours a month, more than enough for 1 million average New York homes.

Micron has promised to buy all that electricity from renewable sources, a promise that reflects New York state’s commitment to have an emission-free electric grid by 2040. But Micron could find it tough to keep that promise unless the floodgates open to new wind and solar farms.

It’s one of the least-discussed challenges of the Micron project, as New York’s signature economic development success story collides with a major environmental aspiration.

Micron announced in October that it planned to invest up to $100 billion building four giant chip fabs at a 1,400-acre site in Clay. The fabs would employ up to 9,000 people directly and could spin off 40,000 more jobs, state officials said.

The development won’t happen all at once. Micron said it plans to start producing chips in 2026 and will fully build the complex within 20 years.

Knauss explained that the construction schedule coincides with implementation of the Climate Act. By 2040 the law mandates the elimination of fossil fuels from the electric system. As part of the plan to eliminate fossil fuel emissions everything possible will be electrified which means that load is going to have to go up:

Even before Micron surfaced, operators of the statewide electric grid were estimating an 8.7% increase in electricity consumption by 2035, according to forecasts by the New York Independent System Operator.

Micron could add another 5%, according to estimates worked up by National Grid and Micron as part of a term sheet agreement with state officials. The documents indicate that Micron could draw an average of 928 megawatts – the output of a large nuclear plant – as soon as 2035.

I have not followed the Micron agreement very closely but it depends a lot upon Federal and State incentives. Those incentives come with strings attached:

Micron’s promise to use all renewable power is more than goodwill. Its ability to collect up to $5.5 billion in state subsidies depends on that pledge.

According to the term sheet Micron signed with economic development officials, the company agreed to use “100% renewable energy for electricity.”

Micron must enter a state-approved sustainability plan in exchange for the billions in aid. The plan has not been finalized yet, but there will be plenty of wiggle room. State economic development officials aren’t likely to box in Micron if it prevents the company from building.

There is a relevant component to the agreement. According to their plans Micron intends to use natural gas for heating. Knauss claims (I have not verified) that “the company also would be exempt, as a manufacturer, from proposed state legislation that would require most buildings eventually to go all-electric.”

Ellenbogen Fact Check and Alternative Approach

Ellenbogen has a number of recipients on his email chain and one of them sent him the link to the Knauss article and asked the following question:

Rich, check out the following article. Micron is making promises about 100% renewable energy that they can’t keep without cheating. Maybe they will buy credits for curtailed electricity that never gets on the grid from solar panels in California. Also note the exceptions they are getting to use gas for heating while everyone else needs to electrify. According to this, Micron will consume more electricity than all of Vermont. If so, they ought to be building their own on-site nuclear plant. (Seriously.) That would actually give them the process heat they need, too.

Ellenbogen responded with the following analysis.

I fact checked his information and the Micron chip factory actually will use more electric energy than the state of Vermont. The factory will use 8.12 Terawatt hours per year and Vermont’s annual electric load is only 5 Terawatt hours, with a Terawatt Hour equaling 1,000 Gigawatt Hours. Wondering how Vermont’s electric load could be so small, I checked and their onsite heating is only 6.26% electrified with the other 93.74% coming from fossil fuels or wood. A pie chart documenting that is below and everything that you might ever want to know about Vermont’s electric utility system is in this pdf.

Ellenbogen hits the nail on the head when he points out that fossil-fired backup is necessary:

What I find interesting is that all companies want to locate in upstate NY and then claim that they are only using “green” energy from Niagara Falls or the upstate nuclear plants, ignoring the fact that all marginal generation in NY State will be provided by fossil fuels for many decades into the future. While the Micron facility justifies the energy expense because of the 9,000 jobs, a realistic analysis has to be done regarding the best way to provide energy for that facility.

A nuclear plant would be a great zero-emissions alternative but the politically driven energy policy of New York would have to change dramatically to address the practical issues he points out:

While the person that sent me the email is correct about the use of a nuclear plant being the most environmentally friendly way to supply this facility, the $15 billion for a one gigawatt nuclear plant would add 15% to the projected $100 billion price tag and might make it non-cost effective. It would also take a very long time to get the approvals and build the facility. Additionally, the words “Nuclear Energy” might be the only words uttered in NY State that are more toxic than the words “Fossil Fuels”. Chip manufacturing facilities use ovens at about 1000 degrees-C to bake the silicon wafers accounting for their enormous energy use. Many processes use high energy lasers and microwaves, as well.

Ellenbogen goes on to evaluate how much solar would be needed. I have some questions about the battery storage requirements and cost numbers but my numbers come to the same conclusion:

If we look at renewable options, to supply the 8.12 Terawatt hours with solar arrays at this facility, accounting for storage losses, would require a 9.28 Gigawatt array. At 7.5 acres per megawatt of solar array would require 69,600 acres or 110 square miles of solar arrays. To acquire farmland upstate to support that at the going rate of $3200 per acre, the land alone would cost about $221 million. The array, at $2/watt would cost $18.56 billion and we haven’t calculated the storage costs or the interconnection costs yet, but 1 Gigawatt of storage for 90 days, which is the minimum that would be needed, would require a 2.16 billion KWh battery. At $500 per KWh, less than last year’s battery cost, the battery would cost $ 1.08 trillion. Coupled with the array cost and the land, the total cost will be $ 1.098 trillion dollars or more than ten times the cost of the fabrication facility. A large percentage of the $1.098 trillion battery packs would have to be replaced every 10 years as the batteries decayed and became unusable.

Even without the battery storage, the 9.3 Gigawatt array would cost more than the nuclear generating plant and would be unable to support the Micron facility (without batteries). It would add almost 20% to the project cost. Renewables are less expensive than fossil fuel generation per kilowatt-hour if the batteries are not included. However, where a fossil fuel or nuclear powered utility system does not need batteries, an intermittent renewable system will and that is where the price comparison collapses as the battery storage makes the renewables non cost competitive.

Ellenbogen also looks at using offshore wind. Importantly he draws on his practical experience with carbon credits to discredit this alternative:

Alternatively, instead of solar the facility would require about 3 GW of the proposed 9 GW of offshore wind but the batteries would still be needed. Either way, the numbers for this are ludicrous and no business will locate to NY State under these conditions. Alternatively, the state is going to require Micron to buy carbon credits which is just putting lipstick on a pig because the emissions will still be there. They will just be gone on paper. I am familiar with carbon credits as I have been selling the credits from my arrays to utilities in Washington DC for 12 years. They are designed as an incentive to make utilities want to install their own renewables rather than purchase the credits. However, if they truly worked as planned, after 12 years the utilities would have installed the renewables and there would be a glut of credits available causing the price to drop. In 2010, I was receiving about $440 per megawatt-hour of solar energy that we generated. Last month, I sold them for $410 per megawatt-hour so the price has only dropped by 7% in 12 years. While renewable generation has been installed to support Washington’s utility system, the credits have not been enough to induce the utilities to invest heavily in renewable construction. If the Washington DC Government raised the price of the credits high enough to induce the utilities to build their own renewables, the utility bills would increase too much and the public would scream at the policy makers.

Recall that Ellenbogen has developed an energy-efficient solution for his manufacturing facility. He explains how that could work for Micron:

A far better solution that would also be cost effective would be to site a 1 Gigawatt combined cycle gas generating facility next to the Micron plant to provide its energy needs without long transmission lines that will increase line losses. By doing that, the Micron facility could also take advantage of the excess thermal energy for its heating and air conditioning needs, which will be substantial. It would be a co-generating plant on steroids and would relieve a lot of stress on the state’s transmission system. A generating plant the size of the recently built Cricket Valley Energy Center (1.1 Gigawatts) would suffice. That only cost $ 1.58 billion which is a small investment of an additional 1.6% compared to the $100 billion facility cost and would save the company money on its energy bills and simultaneously make them more cost competitive. Additionally, the Cricket Valley Energy Center sits on 193 acres, 0.002 or 0.2% of the land area of the equivalent solar array. Micron would recoup the $1.58 billion cost from energy savings.. Rather than the state forcing Micron to pretend to be environmentally friendly, Micron would actually be environmentally friendly. However, the gas bans will preclude using this option all over the state because it doesn’t meet the ideological purity test.

He concludes his writeup:

This is what I was saying regarding the state’s policy actually increasing carbon footprint. NY State’s energy policy may seem environmentally friendly, but it is just the opposite and will increase carbon emissions. The policies don’t make any sense from an economic standpoint or an environmental standpoint.

Conclusion

Tim Knauss continues to impress me. He has done another fine job evaluating a technical issue clearly and accurately devoid.

With regards to the Micron plan – reality is always going to win. The state’s hocus pocus shell game of energy and environmental policies don’t actually decrease costs. Ellenbogen has offered an alternative that has worked for him and will work for Micron. Unfortunately, the ideologues in the State won’t consider his approach. I hope that this does not scuttle the implementation of the Micron plans.

Ellenbogen’s cover email concludes: “This is a classic example of how NY State’s Climate Law is going to raise Carbon Footprint, raise energy costs, and damage the state economy, echoing my remarks at the Capital on Monday.”

Here is What New York Climate Activists Want

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 includes billions of dollars for climate-related funding but climate activists are not satisfied. This post highlights things they want to implement in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I also want to point out that these are only the acknowledged parts of the funding because there are major costs buried in the utility costs that won’t be counted by the Governor.

This is another article about the Climate Act implementation plan that I have written because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget Climate Act – Funding

The impetus for this post was an article in the Gothamist titled Gov. Hochul’s state budget prioritizes climate fixes — but will it be enough? The introduction states:

Even with its billions of dollars in climate-related funding, policy experts said Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 needs more vigor to meet the urgency of the climate emergency.

The article mentioned that the budget package includes specific items that will add costs. There is a proposal for a cap and invest program. To my knowledge the Hochul Administration has not admitted how much this is expected to cost. The Executive Budget would also add 231 new staff positions at the DEC to enact and enforce regulations for climate laws. The article notes that “The budget is sprinkled with incentives such as $200 million to start EmPower Plus, a program from the state’s energy research and development authority that will provide 200,000 low-income residents with free energy-efficiency solutions for their homes, such as insulation, electrification and energy-saving appliances.” I was not surprised by the statement in the introductory paragraph because I think costs will be enormous.

What did catch my attention were the comments by Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters. “We know ultimately it’s going to take a lot more money to do that,” Tighe said. “It’s a good down payment to make sure that we’re starting to take action and helping people who are least able to afford it.” I want readers to know her vision:

The governor’s budget also includes big-ticket items like more than $9 billion for mass transit improvements, a historic amount that’s 10% more than last year. But the state continues to invest record amounts on infrastructure for modes of transportation that are responsible for 28% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, such as roads and bridges. Tighe contends that massive counterinvestments are needed to get New Yorkers to stop driving and use cleaner forms of transportation that are also affordable and viable alternatives.

“We can’t drive our way out of the climate crisis,” Tighe said. “We need people to take mass transit. We need people to be taking e-bikes and walking more and using regular bikes.”

An organization that is located at 30 Broad Street in New York City has mass transit options. For those of us that live in upstate New York public transit options are limited and e-bikes, walking and regular bikes are not a credible option in the winter even if there are no distance limitations.

It has been educational to watch the gas ban messaging unfold. The Gothamist explains:

The executive budget, for example, features a controversial gas ban for new buildings, except it doesn’t go as far as some state legislators and environmental experts think it could. The All-Electric Building Act — a state bill currently stalled in the Senate’s finance committee — would prohibit the use of fossil fuels in newly constructed buildings and require those structures to rely completely on the electrical grid on a faster timeline than the governor is recommending.

Hochul’s version also comes with many exemptions and later deadlines for switching from gas to electric in homes and buildings. Buildings are the state’s largest climate polluters, responsible for 32% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Experts have called the electrification of buildings “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to making an impact in mitigating global warming.

That sums up the climate activist position. But the reality is that they are a small, albeit loud, constituency. I suspect that the majority of those currently using gas want to continue using it. In response to concerns raised by those folks, there also has been a flurry of news articles worried that “misinformation is spreading about Governor Kathy Hochul’s plans with a phase-out of fossil fuel systems.” James Hanley eviscerates the Administration response to the gas stove ban:

As the old Marx Brothers joke goes, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, told lawmakers that she was setting the record straight, and that “We are not taking away gas stoves, as one example of perhaps misinformation we need to correct.”

But the Climate Action Council that she Co-Chaired produced a Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) Scoping Plan – which she voted to approve – that says the state will in fact be taking away gas stoves.

It’s right there on page 190, in the chapter on buildings, for all the world to read.

So where’s the misinformation?

Indeed, where is the misinformation? My position is that much of the misinformation is coming from the Hochul Administration. Most of this is political gamesmanship where the exact wording of the legislative or regulatory proposal allows some wiggle room when confronted with an inconvenient question. In the instance of the gas stove ban she falls back on claiming that she only wants to ban gas in new homes and moves on before the Scoping Plan reference can be brought up. The biggest item of the Administration’s overt misinformation is the ultimate cost to get to the Climate Act target of net-zero by 2050. The Administration claim in the Scoping Plan is that the “costs of inaction are more than the costs of action”. Aside from the biases and exaggerations of the alleged benefits, the official line consistently ignores the caveat that the Scoping Plan costs only include the costs of the Climate Act itself and not the costs of “already implemented” programs that are necessary to get to net-zero by 2050. The already implemented programs include the following:

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

Needless to say when the costs of these programs are added to the Climate Act program costs, the costs of the actions necessary to get to the Climate Act net-zero by 2050 target far exceed the costs of inaction. Nonetheless, the climate activists want more funding:

“The governor’s budget proposal is lacking when it comes to ambitious climate funding,” said Elizabeth Moran, a New York policy advocate with EarthJustice, a nonprofit public interest environmental law organization. “There’s some funding there, but it’s far from what we know is needed.”

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Buildings

The Gothamist article describes proposed policies for buildings:

When it comes to carbon emissions from buildings, Hochul has planted some long-awaited policies in her budget, including a mandate for all-electric new construction that includes a few exemptions, such as commercial kitchens.

But the timeline is delayed relative to other state proposals and some local laws. For smaller buildings, Hochul’s plan would take effect in 2026. That differs from the All-Electric Building Act, which calls for the electrification of new smaller buildings by 2024. Likewise, New York City’s Local Law 97 wants to electrify any new building larger than 25,000 square feet by next year.

Hochul’s plan would delay this regulation for new commercial buildings until 2029. The All-Electric Building Act calls for implementation by July 2027. Facilities such as laundromats and hospitals would not be required to comply. Fossil fuels will continue to be used in backup generators.

I am opposed to any “all-electric” legislation or regulation because of safety: what happens when there is an extended electric outage? The article notes that the Adminstration tries to get around this by saying “fossil fuels will contine to be used in backup generators”. What is the percentage of fossil fuel sales for backup gnerators sold by suppliers? My guess is that it is a small fraction, at most 10%, of their sales. Is there any scenario where those suppliers will be able to remain viable when they lose 90% of their business?

Another example of the desires of climate activists is an accelerated schedule. It can be argued that the state’s leading climate activist is Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University. In his statement supporting his vote to approve the Scoping Plan, he reiterated his claim that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act, developed the irrational methane requirements, and credited one politician for getting the Act passed. The article noted his desire and others that the phase-in should speed up:

Dr. Robert Howarth, a member of the Climate Action Council, said there is no reason to wait to require electric appliances in new construction, especially when they will have to be replaced in the case of heating and hot water, when laws take effect. Howarth said following the new regulations could save homeowners money in the long run while also cutting emissions faster. More than a third of building emissions come directly from natural gas use in cooking, heating and hot water. And a year does make a difference when the total leaks nationwide from turned-off gas stoves add up to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from half a million cars.

To speed up the transition, more incentives and assistance for homeowners in the budget could go a long way, said Dr. Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. Even homeowners who don’t qualify may also switch to electric as a result of wider adoption. The proposed $200 million for the EmPower program is a drop in the bucket when there are more than 7.5 million households in the state, and Tighe said assistance is needed for other homeowners, even large building owners, especially since New York is the country’s No. 1 user of heating oil.

Under Hochul’s proposal, new buildings can’t have cooking appliances that use fossil fuels such as natural gas. Existing buildings won’t be required to swap their gas stoves for electric models, even when purchasing replacements. By 2030, the governor would ban fossil fuel-powered heating or hot water equipment in homes.

The author of this article did not pick up on the fact that the Scoping Plan recommends that existing buildings will have to replace any fossil-fired appliance with an electric appliance starting in 2035. By then it will be somebody else’s problem and Hochul will be long gone.

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Energy

The Gothamist article discussed two aspects of the electric energy system. Apparently because there isn’t enough interest by the private sector to build the infrastructure necessary for the net-zero transition, the Executive Budget proposed letting the public power operator get involved:

The Hochul is empowering the New York Power Authority to develop, finance, construct, own, operate and maintain renewable energy projects. This move will ensure that enough zero-emissions power sources are built. The governor is calling for the phaseout of electricity production from gas-fired peaker plants by 2035, and wants to support the training of a green power workforce.

The private sector and customers have traditionally shouldered the cost of renewable energy projects. They’re handled outside of the budget, mostly through renewable energy credits.

I have no opinion on the value of this approach but picking and choosing when the State depends on the market for electricity supply seems to be a slippery slope. The other aspect concerns transmission projects:

“The state budget does not include funding for transmission infrastructure,” said Jason Gough, deputy communications director for the governor’s office. “Utilities typically pay for the cost of power infrastructure, including transmission lines. These costs are passed to utility ratepayers through the delivery charge for electric service.”

Let me translate Gough’s comments. “These costs are passed to utility ratepayers through the delivery charge for electric service” means “The costs of the Administration’s policies that we won’t let the utility companies itemize for their ratepayers, are passed on so that the ratepayers will vent their anger at the utility companies rather than the Administration”. The next press release will say “The utility bill increase is not our fault, it is greedy industry’s fault.”

The article goes on:

But transmission lines and other infrastructure are needed to bring clean power to the downstate grid, which is mostly dependent on fossil fuels. New York City doesn’t have the space, Tighe said, to build enough solar and wind power. The absence of direct funding for this key infrastructure could hinder the city in reaching its goal of a zero-emission grid.

“New York City needs a lot more power lines going toward the city in order to enable the sort of clean energy transition, the rapid transition that is necessary now,” Wagner said. “Transmission is the biggest bottleneck to decarbonize New York state.”

Several days ago, I wrote about the hidden costs for this infrastructure. The New York Public Services Commission recently approved rate increases for this purpose in case 20-E-0197. The transmission upgrade projects will cost $4.4 billion to support 3.5 GW of renewable energy or $1.26 billion per GW. An additional 2.8 GW is expected by 2025 and another 4.1 GW by 2030 according to Scenario 2 of the Scoping Plan. At that rate, ratepayers will be on the hook for a total of $13.05 billion through 2030. It is disappointing to me that Upstate ratepayers are on the hook for bill impacts up to and exceeding twice the bill impacts of Con Ed ratepayers who need Upstate power to reach the goal of a zero-emission grid. If the Hochul Administration would stop pandering to her political base and have the courage to be responsible for these costs then they should be spread equitably over all the state.

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Transportation

The Gothamist article describes proposed policies for transportation:

Public transportation will receive a big boost in the proposed budget. The MTA could get around $8 billion, a 10% increase. The funds will address the revenue deficit incurred as a result of a drop in ridership during the pandemic. But Moran said additional financial support is needed for faster fleet electrification, and more of it.

For individual vehicle electrification, the DOT expects to receive $175 million from the federal government as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over the next five years to build fast charging stations along New York’s interstate highways.

Hochul has also included congestion pricing as a revenue stream to help fund the ailing transportation authority. Tighe applauded the measure as a “good incentive for people to stop driving in Manhattan.”

The governor’s proposal also wants to fund mass transit outside of New York City. It includes nearly $1 billion for non-MTA public transportation, including some bus electrification and rehabilitation of upstate light rail.

Affordability is important in making public transportation a viable alternative to driving, Tighe said.

As noted previously, climate activists are big proponents of public transit. Unfortunately, that is only a solution in urban areas. None of these proposals benefit rural Upstate New York.

Cleaner modes of transportation require more funding to substantially reduce emissions, Wagner said. New bike lanes and the expansion of car-free pedestrian areas would make an impact on reaching goals and encourage these commuting modes, he added. The budget proposal doesn’t specify how much money will go to these environmentally friendly travel alternatives, and there are no direct amounts either. But these projects can be funded through the state DOT’s small umbrella programs such as the Transportation Alternatives Program and clean air funding initiatives.

Other climate activist strategy favorites are bike lanes and pedestrian areas. One of the issues with these green solutions is that they don’t work all the time but the activists demand complete compliance. In the winter bike lanes in many parts of the state are dangerous and pedestrian areas challenging. Winter is also a reason that many Upstaters are reluctant to depend completely on battery electric vehicles.

“Is this [budget] going to set us on a completely different path commensurate with the challenge? No,” said Wagner. “It is doing a lot of good things. Not to be ungrateful, but I thought we all recognized that we are in a climate crisis here.”

New York’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are less than one half one percent of global emissions and since 1990 global GHG emissions have increased by more than one half a percent per year. That does not mean that we should not do something but it does mean that even if there is a climate crisis New York cannot do anything about it alone. We must make sure that we are not doing more harm than good with the net-zero implementation.

Discussion

This is just a part of the legislative initiatives to meet the Climate Act targets. There are many member items also up for consideration. In addition, there are also regulatory initiatives. For example, the Department of Environmental Conservation is promulgating Part 218: Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) as part of the reckless push for all electric transportation. The emergency/proposed rulemaking will incorporate the State of California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulation into New York’s existing rules.

My overarching problem with all these initiatives to meet the recommendations of the Scoping Plan is that the Integration Analysis that provided the background for the Plan did not include a feasibility analysis. The Integration Analysis is simply a list of potential control strategies with estimated emission reductions that when combined together provide the controlled emissions appropriate for the emission targets. There was no consideration of “what if and how about” questions like how are all the people who live in homes that have to park on the street going to be able to charge their cars? What if the magical solution necessary to keep the lights on called dispatchable emissions-free resources is not available on the schedule of the Climate Act. The Hochul Administration has not given consumers the expected costs or addressed the question what happens after everything is electrified and there is an ice storm.

Consider the feasibility of just one control strategy component. The article notes that NYSDOT expects funding of $175 million from the federal government as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over the next five years to build fast charging stations along New York’s interstate highways.. A gas station fuel pump costs about $20,000 and can serve a customer in less than six minutes. A 50-kilowatt fast DC charger costs about $100,000 and can serve an EV customer in about 30 minutes. The gas pump can serve five times as many customers for one-fifth of the capital cost of a high-speed charger. Think about the feasibility issues. The $175 million can only fund 1,750 fast chargers. The closest NYS Thruway service center to my home has ten automotive fuel pumps but is a small service center. Consider what would be needed to maintain the same level of refueling capacity. The service center would need 50 charging stations to provide the same amount of refueling capacity and I suspect that would blow through the $175 million for the 27 service centers on the NYS Thruway. The space available and energy needed for those chargers means physical upgrades are needed at the service centers. Throw in the fact that for a long time it will be necessary to provide gasoline too. Finally, the NYS Thruway is just under 500 miles and the total NYS interstate mileage is 1730 miles so the $175 million would provide recharging support for less than half the interstate mileage. The implementation logistics for this component of the electric vehicle requirement appear unrealistics so the onus should be on the State to prove that this can work. They have not done this for any of the control strategies included in the Scoping Plan.

If any reader has concerns similar to mine, I encourage you to contact your elected officials and demand answers to these “what if” and “how about” questions before they vote on or support any legislation related to the Climate Act. There are opportunities to comment on regulations. A virtual hearing is scheduled for March 1, 2023 at 1 pm for Part 218: Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II). The comment deadline is 5 pm, Monday, March 6, 2023. Written comments may be submitted to NYSDEC, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-3254, ATTN: James Clyne, P.E., or by e-mail to air.regs@dec.ny.gov.

Conclusion

Climate activists like Robert Howarth and Julie Tighe are pushing the state down a road towards a canyon without a bridge. Howarth’s arguments that Mark Jacobson’s academic analysis of wind, water, and solar energy is proof that a net-zero transition is cost-effective and possible is misplaced. The reality is that the Climate Act is promoting a system with less stability, robustness, and reliability that will undoubtedly raise costs a lot.

It is not only the disconnect relative to technical limitations but the attitude of the activists that disappoints. Tighe said: “We can’t drive our way out of the climate crisis” relegating everyone in the State who must rely on driving because they have no viable alternative to second class citizenship. This is no less demeaning than Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake”. Unfortunately, it can only get worse. Now there are climate scientists who are arguing for rationing to fight climate change.

If the Hochual Administration wants to solve their alleged climate crisis then they have to come up with a solution that provides the developing world with the prosperity and quality of life that comes with abundant and cheap energy. It is immoral to deny them that right because the best adaptation strategies for extereme weather require prosperous societies. The onus is on New York to provide them with affordable emissions-free energy technology or get out of the way. At home, the only means left to avoid the Climate Act stampede that will destroy our existing reliable and affordable energy system is to speak up now and vote anyone who supports this out of office before the we go over the cliff.

New York Good Intentions Unsullied by Reality

My entire career as an air pollution meteorologist has been devoted to upholding the Clean Air Act (CAA). Several New York initiatives are combining to undermine the very foundation of that law. Furthermore, these initiatives are contrary to the premise of my Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog that practical tradeoffs of environmental risks and societal benefits are necessary for workable solutions. This post describes the initiatives and what I believe will be the inevitable consequence.

I have extensive experience with air pollution control theory, implementation, and evaluation over my entire career. I write about New York energy and environmental issues at the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

It has been over 50 years since Congress established the basic structure of the Clean Air Act in 1970. The EPA summary describes control of common pollutants:

“To protect public health and welfare nationwide, the Clean Air Act requires EPA to establish national ambient air quality standards for certain common and widespread pollutants based on the latest science. EPA has set air quality standards for six common “criteria pollutants“: particulate matter (also known as particle pollution), ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead.”

“States are required to adopt enforceable plans to achieve and maintain air quality meeting the air quality standards. State plans also must control emissions that drift across state lines and harm air quality in downwind states.”

“Other key provisions are designed to minimize pollution increases from growing numbers of motor vehicles, and from new or expanded industrial plants. The law calls for new stationary sources (e.g., power plants and factories) to use the best available technology, and allows less stringent standards for existing sources.”

My first professional job in 1976 was with a consulting company that did contract work for the Environmental Protection Agency developing emission factors that could be used to analyze and project impacts to public health and welfare. Later I worked for other consultants that evaluated the air quality dispersion models to make sure they provided adequate estimates of predicted air quality impacts from polluting sources. Eventually I went to work for an electric utility where I was responsible for maintaining air quality compliance at their facilities. All my work was a tiny part of the national effort to develop a robust methodology to protect public health and welfare nationwide. On behalf of all my colleagues I want to say it is a pretty darn good system.

The goal of the regulatory process is to maintain air quality impacts below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The Clean Air Act established two types of national air quality standards. The primary standards protect public health with an adequate margin for safety. The secondary standards are “designed to protect the public welfare from adverse effects, including those related to effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, man-made (anthropogenic) materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and climate; damage to property; transportation hazards; economic values, and personal comfort and wellbeing”. The entire point of this background section is that United States air quality regulation is built around the concept that there is a threshold for adequate safety and if the measured or projected air quality is below those standards then public health is protected.

New Paradigm

In the past several years the Precautionary Principle, a strategy to cope with possible risks where scientific understanding is incomplete, has led many to rely on the idea that to be safe we have to eliminate all risks as a precaution. At its core that means that there is no such thing as a threshold for adequate public health safety.

David Zaruk has explained that the resulting problem is that policy-makers and politicians have confused this uncertainty management tool with risk management. He authors the Risk Monger blog “meant to challenge simplistic solutions to hard problems on environmental-health risks”. He is a professor at Odisee University College where he lectures on Communications, Marketing, EU Lobbying and Public Relations.

I recently compared his analysis of this approach to risk management in the European Union relative to New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) implementation. He explained that “patronizing activists with special interests solely dedicated to seeing industry and capitalism fail is destroying trust in all industries (excluding them from the policy process and equating the word “industry” with some immoral interpretation of lobbying)”. The activists are using the same tactics that worked with the decline of the tobacco industry: “Using the emerging communications tools to create an atmosphere of fear and hate, these activists have successfully generated a narrative that the only solution to our problems is no risks and no thresholds.” Policymakers, perceiving these loud voices as representative, have adopted the path of virtue politics rather than Realpolitik (that is to say policy by aspiration and ideology rather than practical solutions relying on the best available evidence).

Three Zero-Risk Initiatives

There are three examples of initiatives in New York that rely on the zero-risk approach. The Climate Act has a net-zero by 2050 goal that presumes that all GHG emissions have risks and must be eliminated. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has an Environmental Justice initiative. It includes Commissioner Policy 29 (CP-29) that provides guidance for incorporating environmental justice concerns into DEC environmental permit review process and the DEC application of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR). Finally, in November 2021, New York State passed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the New York constitution. It added a new section to the state constitution that reads: “Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and to a healthful environment. This Amendment will be the focus of this article.

I was prompted to write this article after reading Celebrating the 1-Year Anniversary of the New York Environmental Rights Amendment written by a litigation assistant at Earth Justice. This article includes a link to a webinar: “The environmental rights amendment: by and for New Yorkers” that lays bare the planned use of the Equal Rights Amendment to further the agenda of New York activists who apparently want to see industry fail. I don’t claim that they necessarily want industry to fail but their expectation that aspirational environmental demands based on ideology are compatible with overall societal needs is naïve such that the end result of their vision will be the shutdown of all industry including power generation.

The four webinar speakers were Anthony Rogers-Wright, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest; Rebecca Bratspies, City University of New York School of Law; Maya van Rossum, Green Amendment for the Generations & Delaware Riverkeeper Network; and Michael Youhana, Earthjustice. I am comfortable saying that these folks epitomize the special interest activists described by Zaruk.

I suggest that anyone interested in this issue take the time to listen to the entire webinar. I am not going to dissect every speaker’s presentation, but I do want to highlight the comments of Professor Bratspies starting at 15:46 of the recording. She was asked how the Environmental Rights Amdendment could be used to influence decision making.

Bratspies explained that environmental justice is about “fair treatment and meaningful involvement” of people in decision making that affects them. She believes that the New York regulatory program is about process and not substance. People get to participate but they “have no substantive hook” to affect the outcome. She referred to a Supreme Court decision that “prohibits uninformed rather than unwise decision making.” She said that the Environmental Rights Amendment changes that because it puts fair treatment of how environmental burdens and benefits are distributed on the table: “Now it is not just about process, it is about substance.” She then stated that now there is a substantive right to a clean environment, not just a right to participate in the process.

She went to explain that the Amendment creates new possibilities for challenging “unequal” decisions. As an example, she thinks this can be used when permitting decisions are made. The following is a lightly edited version of her end game explanation starting at 17:55 of the webinar recording:

“All the polluting infrastructure in New York City requires permits from the government in order to operate. Those permits specify levels of pollution that facility is allowed to emit. Those levels of pollution are set based on a pretty complicated formulas about national standards. But now the people who live nearby who have been so long viewed as in energy sacrifice zones can go in and say that I have the right to breathe clean air. You can’t let this facility emit so much pollution that it impacts my ability to breath clean air. My kids have the right to not have asthma. Pollution and asthma are intimately intwined.“

This interpretation of the Environmental Rights Amendment presumes that it is supposed to provide assurance of good health (e.g., no asthma) for all. Individuals in EJ communities near existing sources of air pollution believe that poor health outcomes are attributable to those sources based on environmental activist studies. They do not understand the proven NAAQS protections for the population. Activists have stoked their fears by funding projections that claim there is no threshold for health impacts and that there is a relationship between health impacts and ambient concentrations below the NAAQS standards.

At its core this argument relies on a zero-risk approach. Bratspies espouses the view that the NAAQS are not protective of human health because pollutants are still emitted and present in the air. She believes that asthma observed in EJ neighborhoods must be caused by local facilities. The fact that there are decades of experience that support the ambient air quality standards and the methodologies used to ensure that no one is subjected to air quality over those standards are immaterial. New York City EJ activists, like all the speakers on the webinar, believe the PEAK coalition conclusion that “Fossil peaker plants in New York City are perhaps the most egregious energy-related example of what environmental injustice means today.” Unfortunately, the analysis that forms the basis of that conclusion is flawed. The health impacts claimed are for ozone and inhalable particulates that are secondary pollutants that form far downwind of the adjoining neighborhoods. Bratspies believes that air pollution and asthma are “intimately intwined” but does not acknowledge that ambient air pollution levels have gone down over the same period that asthma rates have gone up.

This approach threatens the viability of any facility that emits pollution From the get go, if clean air is defined as zero then no emissions from power plants are allowed. But where does it end? No emissions from natural gas for heating or cooking? No emissions from the cooking process itself? If you can smell something cooking that is a volatile organic compound pollutant that is a precursor to ozone which is regulated by the Clean Air Act. The intentions of the Environmental Rights Act are good but they are also based on an incomplete understanding of the situation and science.

The other two initiatives have similar issues. New York’s Climate Act has an aggressive schedule that mandates a zero-emissions or zero-risk electric generating sector by 2040. Buried in the law is a requirement that State agencies are supposed to consider the Climate Act requirements in their actions. Late last year the DEC issued a policy document that outlines the requirements for Climate Act analyses as part of the air pollution control permit applications. As part of the zero-risk mindset even the risks of a permitted source somehow affecting Climate Act implementation must be addressed and discussed even though there are no specific promulgating regulations.

Finally, the DEC Environmental Justice initiative includes Commissioner Policy 29 (CP-29) that provides guidance for incorporating environmental justice concerns into DEC environmental permit review process. The guidance explicitly addresses the need for meaningful public participation by minority or low-income communities in the permit process; the availability or accessibility of certain information to the public early in the permit process; and the need for the permit process to address disproportionate adverse environmental impacts on minority and low-income communities. Based on the webinar this is still insufficient for the activists because it does not guarantee the right to clean air and a healthful environment.

Conclusion

However noble the concept of eliminating any risks from any source of pollution, if it is construed to mean that anything that might be contributing to bad health must be prohibited, then there will be massive consequences.

A zero-risk standard sets a high hurdle for permitting a new facility or keeping an existing source in operation. All applicants follow the existing permitting requirements demonstrating that their facility does not exceed the applicable air quality standards. New York’s new permitting guidance then requires public hearings and consultation with stakeholders whose goal is no risk. At the very least the permitting process is slowed down to go through more public stakeholder steps which adds time and expenses for the source owners. When the activists say “It is not just about process, it is about substance” what they mean is we must get the answer we want and if we don’t, it is clear from the webinar that their planned response is to litigate on the grounds of the right to clean air.

Going to court always adds time and expense but could also shut down the state. The court is going to have to decide what clean air means. It is easy to see an argument that a standard must be developed but once that approach is initiated, it is hard to imagine a new standard that is more defensible than the existing NAAQS. We already have a process to evaluate permits relative to those standards so what is the point? Rationally I would hope that the court would decide in favor of the Clean Air Act but who knows. If the definition of clean air and water is zero pollution, then the State might as well shut down now because nothing meets that standard.

There is no question that past inequities in environmental burdens were wrong and should be avoided in the future. Nor is there any question that everyone deserved the right to clean air and water. The problem is that if this good intentioned solution insists on zero risk, then the reality is that it requires no emissions. If no tradeoffs are allowed then the only solution is to shut down or not build.

Thanks to Russell Schussler for comments and the title.

Guest Post – NYS Energy Storage

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

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

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

NY State Energy Storage Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On page 9, it says:

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

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

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

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

That cost increase helps to explain the battery project cancellations.

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Caiazza Closing Thoughts

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

New York State GHG Emissions Update

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

This is another article about Climate Act implementation activities that I have written because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

NYS Electric Generating Unit Emissions

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

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

NYS GHG Emissions

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

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

The 2022 GHG Report includes the following documents:

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

2020 GHG Emissions

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

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

NYS GHG Emissions Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Projected 2021 and 2022 NYS GHG Emissions

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

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

Discussion

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

The Climate Act and Gas Stove Bans

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

I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 275 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

The Climate Act established a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric gride with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was revised in 2022 and the Final Scoping Plan was approved on December 19, 2022.

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

Childhood Asthma and Gas Stoves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He went on to investigate where RMI gets their funding.

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

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

Bryce makes two final points:

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

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

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

The Scoping Plan and All-Electric Homes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

Richard Ellenbogen mentioned some transition issues in a letter:

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

New York Energy Storage Roadmap – Cost Projections Part 2

On December 28, 2022, the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) filed New York’s 6 GW Energy Storage Roadmap (Roadmap) to the Public Service Commission (PSC) for consideration. I previously gave an overview of the Roadmap and looked at the way the costs were projected. In this post I give my estimate of the costs.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 270 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

New York Energy Storage Plan

The NYSERDA Energy Storage in New York web page gives an overview of New York’s plan:

In 2019, New York passed the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), which codified some of the most aggressive energy and climate goals in the country.

6,000 MW of Solar by 2025

70% Renewable Energy by 2030

9,000 MW of Offshore Wind by 2035

100% Carbon-free Electricity by 2040

85% Reduction in GHG Emissions from 1990 levels by 2050

3,000 MW of Energy Storage by 2030, further increased to 6,000 MW of Energy Storage by 2030 by Governor Kathy Hochul

In my previous post I pointed out that the press release for the Roadmap claimed that “the roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion”. The state’s modeling predicts that it will cost $0.46 per month per electricity bill and the trade press has jumped on that cost as less than the cost of a slice of pizza.

I showed that Roadmap costs are misleadingly presented relative to incremental revenues: “For the proposed bulk storage procurement program, program costs are calculated as the incremental revenue, on top of revenue that storage assets can realize through commercial operation in the existing energy markets, that would allow such assets to reach their cost of capital.” If the state were to be open and transparent, the total expected capital costs, the revenue costs, and how they expect energy storage to get paid would be presented so that readers could understand the incremental revenue. I have come to believe that the obfuscation of the actual costs is deliberate because the numbers are so large that the public backlash would be immense.

Cost Estimates

I have written in the past that every aspect of the net-zero transition that I have evaluated has turned out to be more complicated, uncertain, and nuanced than has been portrayed by the proponents of net-zero transitions. This calculation is no different. On the face of it you just figure out the capacity (MW) needed or the energy generation (MWh) needed and the multiply those values by a published cost estimate.

I am not going to discuss all the ambiguities I tried to reconcile but will give an example of one. In order to estimate the electric resources needed to power the zero-emissions electric grid in 2040 sophisticated modeling is required. The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultant provided that evaluation for the Scoping Plan for the net-zero transition plan required by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The New York Independent System Operator did modeling for its 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook evaluation. I looked at five of the scenarios they modeled: NYISO Outlook Scenario 1: Industry data and forecasts, NYISO Outlook Scenario 2: Assumptions aligned with Integration Analysis, Integration Analysis Scenario 2: Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels, Integration Analysis Scenario 3: Accelerated Transition from Combustion, Integration Analysis Scenario 4: Beyond 85% Reduction

There are substantial differences in the methodology used for the energy storage estimates between the two approaches. Table 1 lists the capacity (MW) and generation (GWhr) projections for the present and 2040 for the five scenarios. Note that the storage capacity estimates are roughly the same but the generation estimates are different. The NYISO generation is at least 13,414 GWhr in 2040 but the Integration Analsis generation is negative, so the methodologies are different. Energy storage generation can represent two different things: the amount of electricity stored say over a year or the amount of electricity that can be stored all at once, the storage capacity.

Table 1: NYISO Outlook Study Scenarios and Integration Analysis Mitigation Scenarios

I believe that both analyses use total stored electricity for their energy storage estimates. David Wojick recently used the storage capacity approach to estimate energy storage costs. His approach simply takes:

a reasonable period of no wind and solar, say 3 days or 72 hours, and
a reasonable average demand on renewables over that period, say 35,000 MW, and
multiply them to get 2,520,000 MWh of required storage
which at $700,000 per MWh equals $1,764,000,000,000

Given the issues with the energy storage generation different interpretation, I chose to use Energy Information Administration overnight capital costs (2021$/kW) in the comments I submitted on the Draft Scoping Plan to make a cost estimate. This approach does not include operating and maintenance (O&M) costs, the expected lifetime of the energy storage devices, and how the lifetime would vary depending on how it is used. My estimate of the overnight cost to develop the resources needed to transition to a zero-emissions electric system in 2040 are generally consistent with the Scoping Plan Appendix G Figure 48 net present value of system expenditures. Table 2 lists those costs for all five scenarios. This approach estimates a cost three orders of magnitude less than the costs projected by Wojick. The big difference is that both NYISO and NYSERDA include a zero-carbon firm resource or dispatchable emissions-free resource (DEFR) that can satisfy the need for extended periods of high load and low renewable energy resource availability thereby reducing the energy storage needed.

The NYISO 2021-2040 System Resource Outlook explained that to achieve a zero-emissions grid, DEFRs must be developed and deployed throughout New York. The following Figure 38 from the Roadmap illustrates the problem. The difference between cost estimates emphasizes why this resource is needed. The ultimate problem of any electric system that relies on intermittent wind and solar is that there are periods when they are not available. It turns out that the weather systems that cause light winds are large and affect all of New York at the same time and solar resources are lower in the winter when days are short and the sun is lower in the sky. In other words, all the renewable resources in the state can go very low at the same time. Just figuring out what the worst case of renewable resource availability is a major problem and both modeling groups agree that something besides batteries is needed. The Outlook noted that “While essential to the grid of the future, such DEFR technologies are not commercially viable today” and went on to point that research and development efforts are needed to identify the most efficient and cost-effective technologies that can be deployed. Needless to say, it is risky to depend on a resource that is not currently commercially viable that makes such a difference between costs.

Discussion

The Hochul Administration claims that “the roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion”. The key point is that nowhere does the Roadmap document total costs. The fair question is what are the projected future statewide electric system costs? Moreover, I showed previously that Roadmap costs are presented relative to incremental revenues: “For the proposed bulk storage procurement program, program costs are calculated as the incremental revenue, on top of revenue that storage assets can realize through commercial operation in the existing energy markets, that would allow such assets to reach their cost of capital.” It is impossible to check the validity of that statement without full disclosure of all these cost components.

This analysis compares future statewide electric system costs for energy storage. The simplest approach estimates that energy storage necessary to provide electricity when wind and solar resources are unavailable could be as much as $1.7 trillion. NYISO and NYSERDA used more sophisticated analyses to refine how much backup was needed. The overnight capital costs for the batteries, and only the batteries, for five different scenarios ranges from $13 to $15 billion. There are a host of other factors that could raise those estimates. The approach used by NYSERDA and NYISO relies on DEFR technologies that increase the cost to provide backup when wind and solar resources are unavailable totals between billion $187 and $349 billion but provide massive savings relative to any approach that does not include that kind of resource. It is clear that whatever approach is used, that the Hochul Administration claim of “savings” of $2 billion is insignificant relative to the total costs which are at least two orders of magnitude larger.

Conclusion

The Roadmap has been presented to the Citizens of New York as a sales spiel. The public heard that the costs of energy storage were only $2 billion and that the cost to ratepayers would be less than the cost of a slice of pizza. The costs that ratepayers will ultimately pay is much, much higher. The shell game manipulation of costs demonstrates that the Hochul Administration goal is hide the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars under so many different programs and subsidies to make it intentionally impossible to capture the total costs to consumers. The true “Total Cost” of the Climate Act will be hidden forever from the public by design.

My thanks to David Wojick for his review and comments. Any errors in this analysis are my responsibility.

New York Energy Storage Roadmap – Cost Projections

On December 28, 2022, the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) filed New York’s 6 GW Energy Storage Roadmap to the Public Service Commission (PSC) for consideration. This post gives an overview of the roadmap and an initial assessment of the cost assessment methodology.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 250 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

New York Energy Storage Plan

The NYSERDA Energy Storage in New York web page gives an overview of New York’s plan:

In 2019, New York passed the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), which codified some of the most aggressive energy and climate goals in the country.

6,000 MW of Solar by 2025
70% Renewable Energy by 2030
9,000 MW of Offshore Wind by 2035
100% Carbon-free Electricity by 2040
85% Reduction in GHG Emissions from 1990 levels by 2050
3,000 MW of Energy Storage by 2030, further increased to 6,000 MW of Energy Storage by 2030 by Governor Kathy Hochul

Energy storage will play a crucial role in meeting our State’s ambitious goals. Storage will help to integrate clean energy into the grid, reduce costs associated with meeting peak electric demands, and increase efficiency. Additionally, energy storage can stabilize supply during peak electric usage and help keep critical systems online during an outage.

The Roadmap proposes a comprehensive set of recommendations to expand New York’s energy storage programs to cost-effectively unlock the rapid growth of renewable energy across the State and bolster grid reliability and customer resilience. If approved, the Roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion, in addition to further benefits in the form of improved public health as a result of reduced exposure to harmful fossil fuel pollutants.

The Roadmap proposes the implementation of NYSERDA-led programs towards procuring an additional 4.7 GW of new storage projects across the bulk (large-scale), retail (community, commercial and industrial), and residential energy storage sectors in New York State. These future procurements, combined with the existing energy storage already under contract with the State and moving towards commercial operation, will allow the State to achieve the 6 GW goal by 2030.

Keep in mind that New York’s net-zero by 2050 plan is and always has been a political initiative developed by a small group and foisted upon the state by the emotion-driven innumerates of the New York Legislature. Accordingly, the release of the Energy Storage roadmap warranted a press release from the Governor:

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced a new framework for the State to achieve a nation-leading six gigawatts of energy storage by 2030, which represents at least 20 percent of the peak electricity load of New York State. The roadmap, submitted by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the New York State Department of Public Service to the Public Service Commission for consideration, proposes a comprehensive set of recommendations to expand New York’s energy storage programs to cost-effectively unlock the rapid growth of renewable energy across the state and bolster grid reliability and customer resilience. If approved, the roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion, in addition to further benefits in the form of improved public health because of reduced exposure to harmful fossil fuel pollutants. Today’s announcement supports the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goals to generate 70 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent zero-emission electricity by 2040.

One phrase in this paragraph is the reason I wrote this post. It says “the roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion”. I will show that what it really means is that we think we can claim that the costs will be nearly $2 billion dollars less than the astronomical total cost that we don’t admit to the public because it won’t reflect well on the narrative of the state’s Climate Act.

Chapter 3: Role of Storage Targets

New York’s 6 GW Energy Storage Roadmap (Roadmap) explains that “energy storage has the potential to play a critical role in supporting a deeply decarbonized New York electricity grid, through its ability to integrate large quantities of variable renewable energy and provide reliable capacity to meet growing peak demand”.

The document describes the role of energy storage. Note that the emphasis is on short-term storage for intra-day requirements for the 6 GW by 2030 target.

Figure 5 illustrates the role of energy storage in shifting generation to meet load, based on Roadmap analysis of the New York electricity system under portfolios consistent with the Climate Act. On days with excess solar, the modeled battery storage system charges from excess solar power concentrated in the middle of the day. Battery storage then helps the system to maintain reliability in events when load is high, and overnight when wind generation is low. Alternately, on low renewable output days, storage can charge from other resources, including imports, and reduce the need for more expensive firm resources.

Figure 5. Energy Value: Storage Dispatch in Modeled Analysis of the New York Electric System in 2040

The Roadmap document claims that it is appropriate to increase the energy storage deployment target of 3 GW by 2030 to 6 GW. It states:

The analysis performed for this Roadmap (see Section A.1 in Appendix A) estimates that deployment of 6 GW of storage by 2030 will yield an estimated $1.94 billion (net present value) in net societal benefits to New York, due to increased delivery of renewable energy and reduced reliance on other more expensive firm capacity resources. These benefits reflect the value of avoided electricity system expenditures. Further societal benefits, not quantified here, would include improved air quality in communities impacted by fossil generation.

Furthermore, the analysis highlights the opportunity to leverage federal incentives to build out most of the expected 2040 storage deployments earlier, given that these credits could phase down as early as 2032. This Roadmap analysis finds that nearly all the 12 GW of storage chosen in the modeling is deployed by 2035, to meet system needs and maximize cost-effectiveness by capturing the federal Investment Tax Credit. Figure 6 illustrates these analytical findings, indicating that the projected 2040 quantity of 12 GW could be fully deployed as early as 2035 in order to maximize this opportunity. This context underscores the importance of an increased 2030 target of 6 GW in order to position New York to pursue such an accelerated opportunity.

Figure 6. Statewide Battery Storage Capacity Targets and Storage Deployment to Meet System Needs

Appendix A Storage Capacity Expansion Analysis

Appendix A documents the analysis conducted for the Roadmap. It turns out that the analysis is basically the 2022 updated Integration Analysis for the revisions to the Scoping Plan. The Appendix summarizes the approach but often refers to the Appendix G Scoping Plan documentation for specifics. My experience with that reference information is that it is not nearly as comprehensive as implied by this document.

NYSERDA relies on Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) for the modeling analyses that provide the basis for the Roadmap. E3 has a capacity expansion model, RESOLVE, and loss of load probability model, RECAP. RESOLVE “optimizes long-term generation and transmission investments subject to reliability, technical, and policy constraints.” RECAP performs “loss-of-load probability simulations to determine the reliability of resource portfolios and the contribution from each resource within it.” The models “develop least-cost electricity generation portfolios that achieved New York’s Climate Act goals with the new 6 GW storage by 2030 target and meet New York’s long term energy needs.” However, note that these models simplify the New York generating system so they do not do as good a job projecting the future system as the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) models.

The E3 modeling for the Integration Analysis was used to estimate loads and costs starting in 2020. That means that it is possible to check the model predictions against observations. The Roadmap states: “Current costs are about 10% higher than those assumed in the 2018 Storage Roadmap and about 40% higher than that assumed in the 2021 Integration Analysis”. In my opinion a 40% difference in cost over a few years does not lend any credibility to costs out to 2050.

The Roadmap notes reasons for the energy storage cost projection differences:

Over the past year, supply chain constraints, material price increases, and increased competition for battery cells have driven up the cost of energy storage technologies, particularly lithium-ion batteries. Many of the drivers of cost increases are expected to persist until at least 2025. These cost increases may impact the cost of any new programs designed to procure storage to be installed by 2030. In addition to cost increases, difficulties in the timely completion of interconnection processes, high interconnection costs, and downward pressure on capacity revenue create a challenging environment through the development and operational lifecycle of a storage project. Financial support will therefore be crucial for the state to achieve the 3 GW and 6 GW deployment goals.

One of my major concerns with the Scoping Plan projections was the overly optimistic projections of energy cost reductions which I believe were used to claim lower costs of the net-zero transition. Despite the failure to project current costs in the 2021 Integration Analysis, the Roadmap doubles down saying that “Cost declines are assumed to begin in 2025 as manufacturing capacity expands, and benefits of scale and innovation are realized”. The document does not explain why the concerns noted above are going to turn around so quickly or, for that matter, why given global competition for the same rare earth metals necessary for the energy storage won’t see those conditions persist for many years.

Appendix B: Storage Program Cost Analysis

This Appendix “summarizes the inputs, assumptions, and analysis methodology underpinning the estimates of incremental program costs associated with achieving the proposed 2030 target of 6 GW of short-duration storage”. The Roadmap states:

The total cost of these proposed procurement programs is estimated at between $1.0 billion and $1.7 billion. This equates to an estimated increase in customer electric bills of 0.32% – 0.54% (or $0.34 – $0.58 per month for the average residential customer) on average across New York for the 22-year period during which these programs would make payments to awarded projects. The range of these projections reflects future uncertainties, most notably those associated with energy and capacity prices.

The way this is written it suggests that the energy storage costs will be manageable because it will only be at most $0.58 per month. However, Appendix B states:

For the proposed bulk storage procurement program, program costs are calculated as the incremental revenue, on top of revenue that storage assets can realize through commercial operation in the existing energy markets, that would allow such assets to reach their cost of capital. This methodology is broadly consistent with that applied to cost studies under the Clean Energy Standard.66 Key assumptions and inputs include the costs of storage projects, the estimates of market revenue available to them, available federal incentives and the cost of capital.

This approach is disingenuous at best. They are not providing all the program costs only the costs above what they think an energy storage owner will have above the expected “incremental” revenue. That incremental revenue has to be paid by someone and that someone is the ratepayers of the state. As I understand it the “incremental revenues” are composed of at least the subsidies that are being proposed for energy storage that are like renewable energy credits. Those subsidies are not paid for in the NYISO’s wholesale energy market but are buried in utility rate cases. Moreover, it is not clear if the Roadmap includes energy storage specific wholesale energy market payments as other “incremental” revenue. In any event, the insinuation that the energy storage cost is only going to be “between $1.0 billion and $1.7 billion” is clearly misleading and inaccurate.

Conclusion

There is a lot to unpack in the Roadmap and I will follow up with future posts. Even at first glance there are issues. Not only does the study rely on the poorly documented Integration Analysis as its basis but it also replicates its shell game con for hiding the true costs. In the Scoping Plan costs are compared to a Reference Case that includes already “incremented programs” and in this Roadmap costs are presented relative to “incremental revenues”. In both instances the result is a deceptive cost estimate that does not include all the costs for the citizens of New York.

It gets worse. The continued increase in subsidized resources in the NYISO’s wholesale energy market will on average suppress market prices which will result in the need for larger subsidies to make renewable developments viable. Gresham’s Law of Green Energy is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a 16th-century British financier who observed that “bad money drives out the good.”. In this context subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, reduce economic growth, and likely lead to the need to subsidize competitive generators who provide critical resources but are no longer viable. Finally, keep in mind that almost all project development costs are funded through NYSERDA non-recourse loans. In open capital markets that is the most expensive money there is to finance.

The Roadmap claims “the roadmap will support a buildout of storage deployments estimated to reduce projected future statewide electric system costs by nearly $2 billion”. The only reductions are relative to very high projected costs. It appears that the Hochul Administration goal is hide the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars under hundreds of programs and subsidies making it intentionally impossible to capture the total costs to consumers. The true “Total Cost” of the Climate Act will be hidden forever from the public by design.

New York’s Climate Act Scoping Plan Process Template

This post was first published at Watts Up With That.

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) Scoping Plan framework for the net-zero by 2050 transition plan has been under development for the last two years. A meeting of the Climate Action Council to vote on the Draft Final New York State Climate Action Council Scoping Plan

will be held on Monday, December 19, 2022, at 1:00 p.m. This post describes my overview impression of the process and the likely outcome of the vote. I think it is relevant outside of New York because it gives a template for implementing a net-zero transition program.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will outline how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric grid with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used by staff from various State agencies to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council is required to finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the 2022 so this meeting will meet that requirement. If anyone has a masochistic desire to view the meeting, details are available at the Climate Act meetings and events page.

Legislation enacting net-zero targets by 2050 are political ploys catering to specific constituencies. The prime narrative of the Climate Act is featured on their web page:

Our Future is at stake and that’s why New York State is committed to the most aggressive clean energy and climate plan in the country. Each of us has a role in protecting our communities and ensuring a sustainable future for every New Yorker. If we each do our part, we’ll lower harmful emissions in the air we breathe while transforming New York’s economy, creating new jobs, and building more resilient communities.

The authors of the Climate Act legislation believed that meeting the net-zero target was only a matter of political will. I believe that any similar legislation will follow the script used in New York. Despite the apparent objectivity of the implementation framework, it is just is a façade. The Climate Act established the Climate Action Council to direct the development of the Scoping Plan. It consists of 22 members that were chosen by ideology not expertise. There are 12 agency members: all appointed by the Governor, and 10 at-large members: two non-agency representatives appointed by the Governor, three representatives appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly, one representative appointed by the minority leader of the Assembly, three representatives appointed by the Temporary President of the Senate, and one representative appointed by the minority leader of the Senate. Not surprisingly, the legislation passed when both the Senate and Assembly were controlled by the Democratic party so all but two Council members are slanted one way. The upcoming vote on the Scoping Plan must pass by a super majority of 15 votes but it is purely a formality because of the makeup of the Council. The only question is whether anyone will cast a symbolic “no” vote for approval.

Public Comments

Similar programs will make a big deal about public participation. The Council has bragged about their stakeholder process noting that the comment period was longer than required. The Climate Act public comment period covered six months and included eleven Public Hearings where 700 people spoke. Approximately 35,000 comments were received but around 25,000 comments were “potentially the same or substantially similar”, i.e., form letters. That left on the order of 10,000 unique comments. It was obviously impossible for the Council members to read them all so agency staff had to read, categorize, and summarize all the comments. That filter certainly shaped the response to the comments because they got to pick and choose which comments received attention.

Agency staff presentations to the Council described themes of the comments with very little specificity. There was clear bias in the theme presentations – anything inconsistent with the narrative was disparaged, downplayed, or ignored. I recently noted that the Climate Action Council treatment of stakeholder comments basically ignored anything that conflicted with the narrative of the Climate Act. I suspect that any similar program will also have a phony public participation process.

There is another problem I believe will be common with other initiatives. The Council emphasis was on the language in the Draft Scoping Plan and not on any technical issues. I spent an inordinate amount of time evaluating technical issues associated with the Integration Analysis this year and prepared a summary that described all my comments. No comments associated with Integration Analysis technical methodology or errors were discussed at any of the Climate Action Council meetings and it is not clear that the Council members are even aware that specific integration analysis issues were raised. I have no illusions that my comments were necessarily important but the fact that technical comments from organizations responsible for the New York electric grid were also ignored is beyond troubling.

What’s Next

The political motivation for the Climate Act was we must do something to address the existential threat of climate change. In the political calculus the important thing was to establish a politically correct target and ignore implementation details. In New York the biggest missing piece was how to fund all the necessary components of the net-zero transition. When something similar comes to your state watch the bait and switch between supporting legislation that is subject to voter disapproval and agency regulation which is more or less at the whim of the Administration.

Next year the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will promulgate enforceable regulations to ensure achievement of the Statewide GHG emission limits. The regulations will be based on the Scoping Plan framework. The Plan does not include a feasibility analysis so it is not clear how regulations can be promulgated when the implementation risks to reliability, affordability, and the environment are unknown. When questions arose about those nasty little details came up at Council meetings the response by the leadership was that the Scoping Plan was just an outline and those issues would be addressed later. I fully expect that when the regulations are discussed in the public consultatin process the nasty little details will be ignored because the Hochul Administration will say the Scoping Plan is a mandate of the legislation. The circular argument can only end badly.

Conclusion

The New York Scoping Plan approval vote will be on December 19. I predict that the vote will be overwhelmingly in favor of approving the Plan. Each council member will be given the opportunity to make a statement when they vote. I predict those statements will be laden with emotion and likely fact-free. I also predict that if the ideologues continue control the implementation process then costs will sky rocket, that there will be a catastrophic blackout that causes death and destruction, and that blanketing the state with wind mills and solar panels will cause significant environmental harm.

I will publish an update with the highlights of the meeting when they post the link to the meeting recording.

Champlain Hudson Power Express Construction Begins

Richard Ellenbogen and I have been corresponding about Governor Hochul’s announcement that the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission project has started construction. According to the press release this “accelerates progress to achieve New York’s goal of 70 percent of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030 on path to a zero-emission grid”. Unfortunately, Richard and I agree that there is more to the story than appears on the surface.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 250 articles about New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that it will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the control strategies. That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council states that it will finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the year. I maintain that there are two underlying issues with the Climate Action Council approach for the transition plan: the Draft Scoping Plan does not include a feasibility analysis and the Council has not developed an implementation plan.

The ultimate problem for the future electric grid that is dependent upon wind and solar are weak when the load peaks in the winter because space heating is electrified. Wind lulls can reduce wind resources for days and solar resources are inherently low availability because the days are shorter, the sun is lower in the sky, and areas downwind of the Great Lakes are obscured with lake-effect clouds. The experts responsible for electric system reliability at the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) and the New York State Reliability Council (NYSRC) both highlighted (here and here) the importance of Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR) to address future winter-time wind lulls in their Draft Scoping Plan comments. The Draft Scoping Plan also includes DEFR as a necessary component of the future grid to address this problem. I am particularly concerned that the Hochul Administration has not confronted the feasibility of DEFR. What options are there, how likely are they to be available when needed to meet the schedule of the Climate Act and how much will they cost should be a priority but the Council has essentially ignored the challenge and has not responded to NYISO and NYSRC comments. Furthermore, if an implementation plan was in place, it could encourage zero-emissions resources availability during future winter-time wind lulls, for example by discouraging utility-scale solar development where lake-effect snow is heavy.

Champlain Hudson Power Express

The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) project is a 339-mile underground transmission line capable of bringing 1,250 MW from the Province of Quebec to Astoria Queens in New York City. According to the press release it “accelerates progress to achieve New York’s goal of 70 percent of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030 on path to a zero-emission grid. It also is touted as bringing zero-emissions hydro electricity from Hydro Quebec directly into New York City so it can displace fossil-fired generating units.

I have published two previous articles about the project. The first described the residential cost impacts of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) contracts with H.Q. Energy Services (U.S.) Inc. (HQUS) for the CHPE project. A year ago on November 30, 2021 Governor Hochul announced that the finalized contract for CHPE was awarded as part of the Tier 4 Clean Energy Standard that is intended to increase the penetration of renewable energy into New York City. My focus was on Department of Public Service petition: “The costs of program payments for the purchase of Tier 4 Renewable Energy Credits from the projects are projected as $5.9 – $11.6 billion, equating to an estimated increase in customer electric bills of 2.1 – 4.1% (or $2.08 – $4.08 per month for the average residential customer) on average across the State for the 25-year period of the Tier 4 contracts.” This is one of the few admissions of potential costs by the Hochul Administration. I estimated that if those costs represent subsidies needed for all the Integration Analysis renewable resources that the annual ratepayer cost increase range would between $168 and $359 for the average residential customer.

The second article described the comments submitted by Nuclear New York to the Department of Public Service on the Tier 4 contracts. Their comments pointed out that the contract payment formula treats CHPE like baseload power sources but without actually getting baseload service:

Quebec and NYC often experience the same weather. Consequently, CHPE will deliver electricity during low or moderate demand periods. But Hydro Quebec will keep all power at home during grim winter weeks, such as on January 22 of this year: Exports to ISO-NE (the New England grid) were reduced to the contracted minimum, and, instead of exporting power to New York, Quebec needed to import power from New York. On really cold days in the Northeast, NYC will get no power via CHPE and will again rely on fossil-fueled “peaker plants”. Yes, CHPE will get paid little for their electricity in the wholesale market if they fail to serve NYC in times of most desperate need. However, New Yorkers are still going to pay plenty for the Renewable Energy Credits generated during “nice weather” hours.

The lack of an implementation plan directly relates to this problem. As noted above the ultimate problem is getting as much zero-emissions electric energy as possible in order during the low renewable resource periods that are also expected to the highest load periods. Without an implementation plan in place, New York State committed to paying CHPE for capacity that is not guaranteed when we need it the most.

Implementation Issues

Three implementation issues concern me: the schedule, the costs, and jobs.

One of the most challenging aspects of the Climate Act is the schedule. As part of their planning responsibilities the New York State Independent System Operator (NYISO) recently released the 2022 Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) that highlighted this concern concluding “while there is not an immediate reliability need, changes in the economy, new generation technology, extreme weather and policy drivers are creating challenges for the future grid that may require actions to avoid interruptions in electric service.” NYISO specifically referenced the CHPE project in the RNA findings:

The summer reliability margins improve in 2026 with the scheduled addition of the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) connection from Hydro Quebec to New York City but reduce through time as demand grows within New York City. While CHPE will contribute to reliability in the summer, the facility is not obligated to provide any capacity in the winter. The NYISO is expected to be a winter peaking system in the next decade as vehicle fleets and buildings electrify.

While transmission security within New York City is maintained through the ten-year period in accordance with current design criteria, the margins are very tight and decrease to approximately 50 MW by 2025. With the addition of CHPE project in 2026, the margin improves but reduces to near 100 MW by 2032.

The reliability margins within New York City may not be sufficient even for expected weather if the CHPE project experiences a significant delay.

Richard Ellenbogen and I share this concern. Richard described the project timeline. The project was proposed in 2011 and the PSC authorized it on 4/18/13. It has been 11.5 years since it was proposed, 9.5 years since it was authorized, and construction just started a year after the funding contract was signed. The likelihood of additional delays seems high.

The Draft Scoping Plan does not include detailed control strategy costs but from what I have been able to ascertain, it is clear that the potential costs are minimized. The record of this project reinforces my concerns. Ellenbogen points out that the CHPE website has an entry from 11/1 noting that financing for the $6 billion project had been obtained but it was originally $2 billion when it was proposed ($2.65 billion in 2022 dollars). That cost is 2.3 times the original cost. We agree that these projects are rarely ever completed on budget and with all the issues with supply chains and worldwide inflation I think this one will not be completed anywhere near the budgeted cost.

The Hochul press release said “the clean energy line is an example of how officials in the state are working to “confront climate change challenges and energy challenges together, in the meantime, creating great jobs for a cleaner, healthier New York.” It is notable that the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority press release for the construction start announcement emphasized a “major project labor agreement”:

The construction of this green infrastructure project, which begins following the execution of a major union labor agreement between the developer and New York State Building and Construction Trades, is expected to bring $3.5 billion in economic benefits to New Yorkers while creating nearly 1,400 family-sustaining union jobs during construction.

I recently addressed the State’s Clean Energy Industry Report and its handling of these “great” jobs. One point overlooked by Hochul is that while there may be “1,400 family-sustaining union jobs during construction” the number of permanent jobs is miniscule. Furthermore, the project will provide 1,250 MW of power to New York City but this is a fraction of 2,000 MW of power lost due to the shutdown of Indian Point. That shutdown meant the loss of over 1,000 permanent union jobs. While this project may “confront climate change challenges and energy challenges together” it does not replace the loss of Indian Point that was more effective in that regard.

Conclusion

I agree that this line is needed to maintain New York’s electric grid reliability and that the start of construction is encouraging. However, there are associated reliability and affordability feasibility concerns. The latest NYISO RNA report emphasizes that there could be reliability problems if there are further delays to completion of this project. The Climate Act transition plan schedule is ambitious and the Council has not considered a “Plan B” if there are unavoidable implementation delays for any of the components of the plan. This project is expensive equating to an estimated increase in customer electric bills of 2.1 – 4.1% (or $2.08 – $4.08 per month for the average residential customer) for just one component of the total resources needed. The Climate Action Council has not disclosed the total expected costs of the Integration Analysis transition plan or expected ratepayer impacts.

In addition to the feasibility issues this project exposes failures of the state’s lack of an implementation plan. The biggest challenge for the future zero-emissions electric grid is the winter-time lull when renewable resources are low. This project is not obligated to provide any capacity during those periods. Consequently, it is likely that more DEFR will be required. Unless the Hochul Administration comes to its senses and starts encouraging the development of the only scalable proven dispatchable emissions-free resource, nuclear power, this increases the risk that DEFR won’t be available as planned because the alternative technologies are speculative at this time.