Climate Act Implementation Components – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

New Yorkers for Clean Power Testimony Ignores the Costs

On October 19, 2026 New Yorkers for Clean Power released a video of testimony it submitted at the Joint Legislative Public Hearing on the 2026 Executive Budget Proposal for Environmental Conservation and Energy held in Albany on January 28, 2026. The testimony summarizes the arguments Climate Act advocates make about affordability, health, funding, building electrification, and distributed solar. This post responds to six claims in that testimony using analyses I have already published. It is a condensed version of the first draft that was too long but I have provided a link to the full version that provides more detail and documentation.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 680 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.

The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries and references included in this document.

Overview

The testimony argues that “affordability is the dominant theme of today’s energy zeitgeist” but that “the fossil fuel industry and their business partners are deceptively exploiting this to stall New York’s progress towards a clean, sustainable, and ultimately more affordable energy future.” It blames high bills on “the fossil fuel status quo and an aging energy infrastructure,” and asks the Legislature to renew the $1 billion Sustainable Future Program, fund building electrification, and lower the hurdles for distributed solar and batteries.

The testimony was given before the FY2027 budget was enacted. The final budget included another $1 billion for the Sustainable Future Program, but it also included major rollbacks to the Climate Act. The advocates got their money, but the Hochul Administration admitted that the original schedule was unaffordable.

What is Affordable?

I agree that affordability is the dominant energy issue. The problem is that the Hochul Administration has never documented the costs of the Climate Act and the State has never defined what is affordable. It is rich to claim critics are exploiting affordability when the State has yet to establish an affordability metric for the Public Service Law (PSL) §66‑p(4) safety valve.

PSL §66‑p(4) allows the Public Service Commission (PSC) to suspend or modify the renewable energy program if it finds “a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections.” As I explained in my Climate Act affordability status article, the PSC has never defined that phrase, and the 2026 Draft Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review does not advance the issue. The only metric in use is the PSC target that the low-income energy burden should be at or below 6 percent of household income, which excludes fuel oil, propane, and transportation costs. I have been unable to find any documentation of how many customers meet this standard.

Meanwhile the evidence of an affordability problem keeps growing. As of December 2025, more than 1.3 million households were at least 60 days behind on their energy bills, owing more than $1.8 billion. The State Energy Plan estimated $120 billion in annual energy-system investments through 2040, or $1,282 per month per household. NYSERDA’s own analysis shows that Climate Act compliant equipment adds about $594 per month for an upstate moderate-income household heating with natural gas. My estimate of the total cost of the Climate Act exceeds $1 trillion through 2050.

I have proposed objective safety valve triggers, such as a low-income energy burden above 8.6 percent or a 15 percent year-over-year increase in arrears or disconnections. Those numbers can be debated, but having no numbers at all cannot be defended. Until the State defines affordability, tracks it, and reports on it, New Yorkers for Clean Power cannot claim that their vision is “ultimately more affordable” because that claim cannot be checked.

Health Benefits Claims Are Weak

The testimony claims that “prolonging our dependence on fossil fuel sets the stage for costlier and more volatile energy, not to mention higher pollution and healthcare costs.” My analysis of the Draft State Energy Plan found that the health benefits claims are not supported by the observed data.

The Draft Energy Plan claimed nearly $65 billion in societal value between 2025 and 2040 from health benefits. If those benefits were substantial, past air quality improvements should show up in the health records. They do not. When I compared observed PM2.5 concentrations with county asthma emergency department visit rates, only two of 16 comparisons showed a positive relationship. Correlation does not prove causation, but no correlation means there cannot be causation.

The projected improvements are also lost in the noise. The largest projected reduction of 3,600 asthma emergency room visits is only 24 percent of the standard deviation and 7.6 percent of the range of observed visits. If the projections are correct, nobody will be able to see the benefit.

I am not saying reducing air pollution has no benefits. However, New York’s air quality has already improved dramatically and the remaining benefits are small relative to natural variation. There are cheaper fixes. NYISO found that old New York City gas turbines produced about 2.5 percent of in-city energy but 28 percent of the NOx emissions during the June 2025 heat wave, and modern combined-cycle replacements would cut those emissions 89 percent. That kind of practical fix is not possible in a policy framework that treats any new fossil investment as off limits.

What Caused the Unaffordability Crisis

The testimony states that “our energy unaffordability crisis is the product of the fossil fuel status quo and an aging energy infrastructure.” Natural gas prices did increase wholesale prices in 2025, and there is an aging infrastructure problem. However, state climate policy is a cause of both.

My article on what Blakeman could do and what Hochul did to New York utility costs documents that the System Benefit Charge and related charges total about $1.3 billion a year, and that total RGGI ratepayer costs are $1.6 to $2.2 billion a year. The RGGI allowance price was $9.30 when Governor Hochul took office and Auction 73 cleared at $37.65. The typical residential RGGI cost is now $91 to $125 a year, nearly quadruple the 2021 level.

The aging infrastructure problem is also a product of state policy. There have been 3.7 GW of fuel-secure retirements since 2019, while the 12 GW of 40-plus-year-old fossil units still in service are being run harder. The testimony notes that “New York has seen little reduction in fossil fuel pollution since the enactment of the CLCPA.” One reason is the decision to close Indian Point. New York RGGI source emissions had been reduced 47 percent until Indian Point closed, and the reduction dropped to 39 percent afterwards.

Sustainable Future Program and Cap-and-Invest

The testimony says “it is absolutely critical that the $1 billion sustainable future program is renewed each year with at least the same level of funding until the cap and invest regulations go into effect.” Where is this money coming from, and why should we expect emission reductions?

The money comes from New Yorkers. The program is a capital appropriation, and State capital spending is funded from bonds, pay-as-you-go taxes and fees, and federal funds. When I reviewed the FY2026 Executive Budget climate funding, there were no specifics about expected results. The second $1 billion installment allocates $500 million to building decarbonization and $300 million to renewables, but there is no accounting of tons reduced or cost per ton.

New York’s experience investing RGGI revenues is not encouraging. In Hochul and RGGI affordability I estimated that RGGI-funded investments cost about $583 per ton reduced and account for only about 4.7 percent of New York electric-sector reductions. Regionally, my June 2026 RGGI investment review found investments accounted for only 8.7 percent of observed reductions. The main reason for the reductions was fuel switching to natural gas that would have happened anyway.

There is no reason to expect New York cap and invest to do better just because it has a declining cap. RGGI’s new trajectory cuts allowances by more than 10 percent of the 2025 budget each year from 2027 through 2033, even though emissions have been flat since 2019, and the allowance bank could run out as early as 2032. A cap does not create zero-emissions alternatives. Without them, it only raises prices until the allowances run out. The NYSERDA memo that led Governor Hochul to postpone cap and invest projected allowance prices of $179.80 per ton in 2031 and upstate household cost increases over $4,000 a year.

Two Million Homes by 2030

The testimony claims that with adequate funding for EmPower+, weatherization, and Clean Heat programs “we can lower energy bills and meet our target of 2 million electric or electric ready homes by around 2030.” This is not a reasonable expectation.

The goal is one million electrified and one million electric-ready homes by 2030, which required increasing heat pump installations from about 20,000 to more than 200,000 units a year. In 2025, the Clean Heat Program and LIPA supported 28,608 heat pump projects. NYSERDA’s own Pathways analysis projects about 1.4 million residential heat pumps in 2040 under current policies. The State’s own planning agency does not think the target will be met.

Heat pumps make sense for homes heated with oil, propane, or electric resistance, and weatherization lowers bills. However, most New York homes heat with natural gas. Converting a home costs $14,600 to $46,200, and Richard Ellenbogen found that downstate heat pump customers pay about 35 percent more per therm than gas customers, and 56 percent more on the coldest days. Subsidies do not change the total cost; they shift it to taxpayers and ratepayers.

Sunshine is Not Free

The testimony claims that lowering hurdles for distributed solar and batteries “will reduce grid strain, unleash much needed new electricity generation fueled by free instate sunshine, and lower electricity costs for all New Yorkers.” Calling sunshine free is misleading, and when all the support costs are included it will not lower costs for everyone.

As I pointed out when NYSERDA used the same argument, sunlight may be “free” but there are costs to collect and use that energy. Someone else pays for the storage and backup needed when the sun does not shine, and those support costs are more than half the total cost of a zero-emissions grid. Ellenbogen showed that solar at $40 to $60 per MWh rises to $110 to $150 per MWh with storage. The claimed $1 billion in annual ASAP Act savings ignores net metering cost shifts to non-participants.

Distributed solar does not reduce grid strain when it matters most. Winter peaks occur after dark. During the January 2026 cold snap, solar produced virtually nothing from January 25 until early February, and wind and solar provided less than 10 percent of total energy for 17 consecutive days. In fairness, rooftop solar on large downstate buildings that use all their output can be cost-effective without subsidies. That is a far cry from lowering costs for all New Yorkers.

Conclusion

What is missing from the testimony is documentation. The concerns I raise come from the State’s own documents. The Comptroller found that PSC and NYSERDA plans did not project costs or assess what ratepayers can bear, the State argued in court that meeting the 2030 target would impose “insurmountable upfront costs”, and the Legislature rolled back Climate Act targets this year.

My analyses show the testimony’s claims do not hold up. The State has not defined what is affordable. The health benefits are not supported by observed data. The Climate Act and RGGI have increased costs. Cap-and-invest revenues do little to reduce emissions. The two million homes target will not be met. Sunshine is not free.

Before New Yorkers are asked to spend another dollar on these programs, the PSC should define the PSL §66‑p(4) affordability criteria, the State should publish a full accounting of Climate Act costs, and every program should report verified emission reductions and their cost per ton. Until then, the “clean, sustainable, and ultimately more affordable energy future” promised in this testimony is a slogan, not a plan. More detail is available in the full version.

Grid of the Future Rate Petition

A coalition of environmental organizations wants the Public Service Commission (PSC) to use its upcoming Grid of the Future plan to lower electric delivery rates for customers who heat with electricity. I agree that utility rates should reflect the costs customers impose on the system. However, this petition is a narrowly targeted rate change designed to accelerate heat pump adoption, and it never asks the question that Governor Hochul’s new Energy Infrastructure Development Plan (EIDP) is supposed to answer: what electric system will serve all that new winter load reliably and affordably? This post explains the petition, how it fits with the EIDP, and why I think the order of operations is backwards.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed and have written extensively about New York’s net-zero transition. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy outstrip available technology. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with; these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to research the material summarized in this article and prepare an initial draft.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “net-zero” target (85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and 100% carbon neutral by 2050) and requires a zero-emissions electric system by 2040. Electrifying building heat is central to the state’s strategy, which means the electric system must handle a large new winter heating load. That is why rate design for electric heat customers matters, and why it cannot be separated from the question of what resources will serve that load.

On October 6, a coalition of advocates held a press conference urging the PSC to reform electric rates before the Department of Public Service (DPS) releases its updated Grid of the Future plan. That plan is now due October 30, 2026, after the deadline was extended from June 30. The press conference publicized a May 5 petition filed by the Environmental Defense Fund, Alliance for a Green Economy, Building Decarbonization Coalition, Earthjustice, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Rewiring America, and Sierra Club hat argued that a special electric rate for heat pumps was appropriate.

In May, I published a guest post by Scott Endler that addressed an earlier iteration of the proposal from these organizations. He made a persuasive argument that carving out a special rate class for heat pumps is the wrong fix; a capacity‑based, technology‑neutral delivery charge tied to real‑time grid conditions would be fairer, more durable, and far more honest about who actually drives system costs. I think this issue needs to be addressed again.

What the petition asks for

The supporting filing includes letters from heating equipment and HVAC businesses, including Mitsubishi Electric and Daikin Northeast; a letter signed by 78 advocacy organizations; comments from the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity; and a letter from state legislators led by Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblymember Anna Kelles. The legislators’ letter explicitly ties the request to the state’s electrification goals.

At the press conference, advocates added two more ideas. New Yorkers for Clean Power claimed that virtual power plants (networks of household batteries, smart thermostats, and electric vehicles) could avoid almost $3 billion a year in grid costs, based on a Brattle Group study estimating 8.5 GW of flexible resources by 2040. The Solar and Storage Industries Institute promoted “flexible interconnection,” where solar projects connect without expensive upgrades in exchange for curtailing output when local lines are overloaded. In May I addressed this gimmick. In brief it has no value during extended periods of light winds, low solar availability, and snow-covered solar panels. It simply cannot provide necessary power to replace an existing peaking power plant during these periods. I do not think we cannot afford to invest in these “solutions” that do not work when needed most.The petition’s core claim is based on an analysis by the nonprofit Switchbox. It says that households that heat with heat pumps have an electric delivery cost of service only 2% higher than gas-heated households, but their delivery bills are 109% higher. The result, according to the petitioners, is that heat pump customers overpay about $855 per year and electric resistance customers about $873 per year. Statewide, the petition estimates overpayments of about $170 million for heat pump customers and $570 million for electric resistance customers, or about $740 million per year in total.

Their argument is straightforward. Residential delivery rates recover much of the fixed cost of poles and wires through a flat per-kilowatt-hour charge. Heat pump customers use a lot more electricity in the winter, when the system currently has spare capacity, so they pay more than the costs they cause. The petition asks the PSC to:

Include a directive in the Grid of the Future plan to offer rate options for electric heating customers, followed by a technical workshop within 60 days;
Direct utilities to implement cost-of-service-based delivery rates for electric heating customers by December 31, 2027; and
Require customer outreach and public reporting of rate and participation data.

What the Petition Gets Right

I want to be fair about this. Cost causation is a sound ratemaking principle, and I have consistently argued that policies should be judged by the full costs customers actually pay. If a customer class is paying substantially more than the cost to serve it, that deserves examination. However, ratepayers deserve the full accounting for the future energy system not just cost estimates from organizations with vested interests.

The petition also makes a legitimate equity point. Electric resistance heat is common in older rental units, and those tenants usually have no ability to switch heating systems. If they are overpaying by hundreds of dollars a year, that is a real affordability problem regardless of anyone’s climate goals.

Where the petition falls short

It shifts costs; it does not reduce them

The delivery system costs the same no matter how rates are designed. The petition itself explains that when revenues from electric heat customers exceed their cost of service, the excess is returned to all ratepayers. Lowering rates for electric heat customers therefore means raising them for everyone else. If the $740 million estimate is right, that is the amount that would move onto the bills of gas-heated households and homes that use propane and fuel oil, many of whom are also struggling with affordability. The petition models “other customers on adjusted default rates” but does not commit to a revenue-neutrality test or show the bill impact on the customers who would pay more. Any honest description of this proposal has to say that someone else picks up the tab.

It assumes a winter grid that will not last

The whole overpayment argument depends on the grid being “generally less constrained” in winter. The petition does not discuss what happens when that is no longer true. The news coverage of the press conference itself notes that NYISO expects New York to become a winter-peaking system by the mid-2030s. Heat pump load is the main reason why.

In other words, if the discounted rates succeed in their purpose, they eliminate their own justification. Once winter becomes the peak, cost-based rates for electric heat customers would have to go up, not down. Any discounted rate approved now should include an automatic review tied to the seasonal peak so that customers are not promised savings that cannot be sustained.

It ignores supply and the dark doldrums

The petition addresses delivery rates only and says supply charges are a separate matter. From a reliability standpoint, though, supply is the hard part. As a meteorologist I know that the coldest periods are typically associated with high pressure, light winds, and short days with low sun angles, i.e., dark doldrums. During those conditions heat pump efficiency drops, backup resistance heat kicks in, wind and solar output can be minimal, and natural gas is in highest demand for both heating and power generation. Pushing more heating load onto the electric system without a plan for dependable generation during those periods moves risk from the gas system to the electric system. In my opinion, that increases risk because the gas system is less likely to be impacted by weather related outages.

Virtual power plants do not solve this problem. Shifting a thermostat setting or a battery charge by a few hours helps on a summer afternoon peak. It does not provide energy through a multi-day arctic outbreak. The $3 billion savings figure is a modeled estimate that depends on future customer participation, not a verified result.

The savings claims do include capital costs

The petition says that under its proposed seasonal rate, 72% of gas-heated households would save money by switching to heat pumps, compared with 27% under current rates. As far as I can tell, these are comparisons of annual energy bills. They do not appear to include the installed cost of heat pump equipment, ductwork, electrical service upgrades, or building envelope improvements, which are the major barriers for most homeowners. A rate discount that improves the bill comparison does not make the capital cost go away. It is also worth noting that several supporters of the petition sell the equipment that would benefit.

How this fits with Hochul’s EIDP

Governor Hochul announced the EIDP on September 22 as a state-led integrated planning process to identify the generation, transmission, storage, and distributed resources needed to serve growing load reliably while controlling costs. As I noted in my earlier post, the EIDP is a process, not a plan: an interim plan is due in 2027 and the first comprehensive plan by December 2029.

Issue	Rate Petition	EIDP
Scope	Delivery rates for electric heat customers only	Integrated generation, transmission, storage, and distributed resources
Load growth	Designed to accelerate electrification load	Supposed to plan for that load
Winter peak	Assumes the winter grid has spare capacity	Must plan for a winter-peaking system
Supply and reliability	Not addressed	Central purpose, but firm-capacity needs not yet quantified
Timing	New rates in place by end of 2027	Interim plan 2027, comprehensive plan December 2029

Both efforts fit under the Governor’s affordability-and-electrification messaging, but they pull in different directions. The EIDP is supposed to decide what system New York needs. The petition would lock in rates designed to increase winter demand on that system before the planning is done. That is the same problem I have raised about the Climate Act transition as a whole: New York keeps adopting policies to drive the transition before deciding what energy system it wants and confirming that it can be built and operated reliably.

Recommendations

If the PSC takes up this petition, I recommend the following conditions:

Require revenue neutrality and full disclosure. Any new electric heat rate should come with a public estimate of the bill impact on every other customer class.
Build in a sunset tied to the seasonal peak. Discounted winter delivery rates should be reviewed automatically as the system approaches winter peaking.
Address electric resistance customers on their own merits. The equity case for low-income renters is stronger than the case for subsidizing new heat pump installations and should be considered separately.
Tie electrification incentives to EIDP resource adequacy findings. The state should not use rate design to accelerate winter load growth until the EIDP identifies the dependable resources that will serve it during extended cold weather.

Conclusion

The petition does not address the issues Scott Endler raised last May.

I agree with the principle behind this petition: customers should pay rates that reflect the costs they cause. However, the petition applies that principle selectively, to a system condition that its own success will change, and only to delivery costs. It shifts hundreds of millions of dollars onto other ratepayers and says nothing about how the electric system will keep the heat on during the coldest days of the year. The Grid of the Future plan should not put rate incentives for electrification ahead of the Energy Infrastructure Development Plan’s job of determining what system New York actually needs. Once again, the state is being asked to accelerate the transition before it has a plan that shows it will work.

Hochul’s Energy Infrastructure Development Plan: Rhetoric, Not a Plan

My most recent post argued that it is time for New York to decide what the future energy system should look like. On September 22, 2026, Governor Hochul announced an Energy Infrastructure Development Plan (EIDP) as part of her Clean, Highly Affordable, Reliable, Grid Expansion (CHARGE) agenda. The announcement says the EIDP will provide “an actionable blueprint” for the infrastructure New York needs to meet surging electricity demand. In this post I describe what was announced and compare it to the recommendations I have made here for a reliability-first, affordability-driven approach to New York energy planning. My bottom line is that the EIDP gets the diagnosis right but, so far, it is more political rhetoric than a possible solution to the unfolding energy crisis.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed and have written extensively about its implementation. I have spent over 50 years in the electric generation industry analyzing the effects of air pollution control policies on operations. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with; these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to research the material summarized in this article and prepare an initial draft.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The 2022 Scoping Plan outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” Since then, the gap between the Climate Act transition and reality has become hard to ignore, and the Hochul Administration has increasingly framed its energy messaging around affordability and reliability. The EIDP is the latest example.

What was Announced

According to the Governor’s press release, the Governor is “directing the New York State Energy Planning Board to engage in comprehensive integrated planning to ensure the State has a clear and actionable perspective on the infrastructure it needs to reliably meet demand.” The release says the plan “will guide the infrastructure investment decisions by the State over the coming decades.”

The announced approach “leverages the tools available to the State including neighborhood-scale alternatives, distributed solar, and energy storage, and coordinates the development of new utility-scale clean generation and transmission.” The stated outcome is that “the EIDP will ensure the lights stay on and that progress towards a zero-emission grid continues all while controlling costs.”

The schedule is the part that caught my attention. The release states that “the EIDP process kicks off this year as part of the State Energy Plan, with an Interim Plan due in 2027 and the first comprehensive plan finalized by December 2029.” The American Public Power Association and Harris Beach Murtha summarized the announcement the same way.

The EIDP builds on the 2025 State Energy Plan that the Energy Planning Board approved on December 16, 2025. That plan provides “broad program and policy development direction” with an outlook through 2040. I see the EIDP as an attempt to add an infrastructure-specific layer to that high-level policy document. Unfortunately it still proposes no feasibility analysis.

What the EIDP Gets Right

I want to give credit where it is due. For years I have argued that New York energy planning is poorly coordinated. Climate Act targets, Scoping Plan implementation strategies, NYISO reliability analyses, utility rate cases, NYSERDA procurements, transmission proceedings, and local siting decisions all proceed on separate tracks with no one responsible for making sure the pieces fit together. The EIDP announcement acknowledges that problem.

There are four points I can support:

The State now accepts that load growth from manufacturing, electrification, and data centers requires a different planning response than the flat-load assumptions of the past.
Generation, storage, transmission, distributed resources, and demand-side alternatives are being considered together in one infrastructure discussion.
The announcement says grid development must address reliable service and customer costs, not just emissions targets.
The state needs to reconcile the work of NYISO, the Public Service Commission, NYSERDA, NYPA, and the utilities.

Those are not trivial changes. The language is closer to the premise of a pragmatic system plan than anything that came out of the Scoping Plan process or the latest Energy Plan.

Where it Falls Short

The problem is that the announcement offers words like “reliably” and “controlling costs” without any commitment to the decision rules that would make those words mean something. The following table compares the EIDP announcement to the recommendations I have made.

Issue	EIDP Announcement	My Recommendation	My Assessment
Planning philosophy	Comprehensive integrated planning by the Energy Planning Board	Replace siloed, target-driven planning with one integrated plan that reconciles load, retirements, generation, transmission, siting, and costs	Strong agreement in principle
Reliability	Promises to “keep the lights on”	Use NYISO and New York State Reliability Council resource adequacy standards, including multi-day wind and solar lulls in winter	No reliability standard is defined
Load growth	Central motivation for the plan	Separate committed load from speculative data center announcements and make new large loads pay for their own infrastructure	Right diagnosis, no cost-allocation commitment
Resource mix	Distributed solar, storage, “utility-scale clean generation,” transmission	Procure enough firm, dispatchable capacity; keep existing reliable units until replacements are proven. This includes repowering existing and building new natural gas generation.	Firm capacity is not mentioned
Dispatchable emissions-free resources (DEFR)	Not mentioned	Quantify the need, set milestones, and identify off-ramps if the technology does not show up	The biggest gap
Nuclear	Not mentioned in the EIDP announcement	Retain and expand nuclear as the proven zero-emissions firm resource	Unresolved
Affordability	“Controlling costs”	Publish full-system costs and customer bill impacts for each pathway	An aspiration, not a test
Siting	“Cut through red tape”	Make land use and community impacts real planning constraints	Potential conflict
Transparency	Not addressed	Publish assumptions, models, and data; provide independent review	Unproven
Schedule	Interim plan 2027, comprehensive plan December 2029	Act now on known reliability risks and economic development risks.	Too slow

The DEFR Problem is Still Being Ignored

Regular readers know that I consider the dispatchable emissions-free resource (DEFR) problem to be the central risk of Climate Act implementation. The NYISO 2023-2042 System & Resource Outlook projects that “at least 20 GW of DEFR capacity would be needed by 2040 to replace the current 25.3 GW of fossil generation,” and that “upwards of 40 GW” could be required. The NYISO lists candidate technologies such as long-duration batteries, small modular nuclear reactors, hydrogen-powered generators, and fuel cells. None of them is commercially available at the scale needed today.

The EIDP announcement does not use the term DEFR. It does not acknowledge that quantifying how much firm capacity New York will need and when it will be needed is an enormous challenge but most of all it does not recognize the Immediate need for an off ramp if it does not arrive on time or the interim need for firm, dispatchable resources that must include natural gas repowering and new builds and fuel delivery pipeline expansion to address observed problems. Any infrastructure plan that leaves those issues out is not addressing the hardest part of the problem. Wind, solar, storage, and transmission do not substitute one-for-one for dependable capacity during an extended winter cold snap with low wind and little sunlight.

Affordability Needs a Number

“Controlling costs” is not a standard anyone can check. If the Administration is serious, the EIDP should publish, for each major pathway, the capital costs, interconnection and transmission costs, backup and balancing costs, distribution upgrades, land requirements, RGGI carbon costs, and resulting customer bill impacts. It should also say how much of the cost of serving new data centers and other large loads will be paid by those customers rather than existing ratepayers. Until those numbers are on the table, affordability claims are just claims.

“Cutting Red Tape” Works Both Ways

I support faster approval of projects that are demonstrably needed. However, the “cut through red tape” language worries me. My work on utility-scale solar projects such as Horseshoe Solar shows that the permitting process is often the only place where local land-use, agricultural, and community impacts get any consideration. Streamlining without siting safeguards could simply accelerate energy sprawl. The EIDP should compare alternatives by energy density and land use, and consider rooftop and parking lot solar, brownfields, existing transmission corridors, repowering, and low-footprint firm generation.

The Schedule Does Not Match the Risk

An interim plan in 2027 and a first comprehensive plan in December 2029 provides little comfort because there are problems now. During January and February 2026, New York energy consumers were forced to bear $800/MW energy prices, Special Case Resource Winter Dispatches, and high system uplift because our aging generation portfolio was stressed. Decisions about retaining existing generation, starting natural gas and nuclear development, adding new natural gas fuel delivery capability and committing to transmission need to be made now, not 2029 if new resources are going to be in service in time to meet growing load requirements and attempt to meet the 2040 zero-emissions mandate.

What a Credible Interim EIDP Should Include

If the EIDP is going to be more than another politically-driven policy document, I believe the 2027 interim plan must include the following:

A reliability-first planning standard based on NYISO and New York State Reliability Council resource adequacy criteria that explicitly addresses extreme winter weather and multi-day renewable lulls.
Load forecasts by location and season that separate existing, committed, probable, and speculative large loads.
An explicit firm-capacity balance by zone and season that does not count wind and solar at nameplate capacity or assume DEFR will arrive on schedule.
A DEFR and nuclear strategy with a definition, capacity targets, in-service milestones, and contingency actions if the technologies do not materialize.
A rule that no dispatchable unit retires until its replacement is operating and has demonstrated dependable performance, not merely been contracted or permitted.
Recognition of the risk of the aging dispatchable units in the system and support to deploy fossil generation resources that can provide firm capacity where needed to bridge the transition until the Nuclear Backbone is deployed.
A full-system affordability test with published customer bill impacts and cost allocation to large loads.
A land-use and siting screen that compares alternatives on their environmental and community impacts.
Strategies must manage economic development, energy needs, and environmental mandates in unison not separate silos.
Transparent governance with published assumptions, models, and data, and formal opportunities for NYISO, consumer advocates, municipalities, and independent analysts to challenge the results.

The EIDP is Not Enough

I think that in addition to the EIDP the Hochul Administration must champion legislative and regulatory changes that recognize that reliability is paramount and that affordability controls the rate of spending are required. The EIDP will only be successful with changes to the current rules including revising the Climate Act 2040 zero emission requirement, changing any regulatory limits on deploying dispatchable generation such as natural gas fired units, and expanding the natural gas fuel delivery infrastructure to support them. Anything less is the default to our current death spiral that is impacting every NY consumer and making NY a hard choice for new economic opportunities.

Conclusion

Governor Hochul’s Energy Infrastructure Development Plan is a welcome acknowledgement that New York cannot meet unprecedented load growth, maintain reliable service, pursue its zero-emissions goals, and protect customers from rising costs through disconnected planning and procurement processes. The EIDP could provide the integrated framework New York needs.

But the announcement is a process commitment, not a reliability plan. Moreover, its timing and vagueness reeks of campaign politics. Its value will depend on whether the State identifies firm-capacity requirements, evaluates nuclear and other dispatchable resources honestly, plans generation and transmission against actual rather than aspirational load forecasts, protects communities from unnecessary energy sprawl, and publishes a transparent full-system cost test. If the EIDP relies on hoped-for DEFR technologies, vague affordability claims, and renewable nameplate capacity instead of demonstrated dependable resources, it will simply repackage the existing planning deficiencies under a new name. Done incorrectly risks continuing consumer affordability concerns, and missed “economic opportunities” especially for upstate New York.

I support the integrated-planning premise. I will be watching to see whether the interim plan becomes an engineering-based resource adequacy and affordability plan or just another document that assumes the Climate Act schedule can be met without saying how and delays reality through rhetoric vs actionable and timely steps forward.

Terra Praxis Says Repower New York with Nuclear — I Mostly Agree

Update 9/14/26 – I changed the link to the discussion paper to the final version. At the end of the document I also have added a response to this article by Isuru Seneviratne, Director, Lucid Catalyst who alerted me to the document in the first place.

Terra Praxis, a nonprofit focused on accelerating advanced nuclear deployment, has published a discussion paper called “REPOWER New York.” This post summarizes what the paper argues, what I found when I used Perplexity AI to check its numbers, and where I agree and disagree with its bottom line.

What the paper argues

The core idea is straightforward: instead of building new nuclear plants one at a time as tailored, site-specific projects — which is how the U.S. nuclear industry has approached every reactor built in the last twenty years — New York should commit to a repeat-build program that puts the same reactor design on multiple sites in sequence. The paper argues the best sites are New York’s retired and at-risk fossil and industrial locations: former coal and oil plant sites and the state’s remaining single-unit nuclear plants, where transmission interconnections, water rights, and a trained workforce already exist. Reusing that infrastructure, the paper argues, avoids years of new transmission siting and permitting that a greenfield project would need.

The paper’s other central argument is about what it calls “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources,” or DEFRs — a term NYSERDA’s own Zero by 40 study uses for resources that produce no emissions, can be dispatched on demand, and can operate reliably through extended periods of low wind and solar output. The Zero by 40 study evaluated seven DEFR candidates: hydrogen combustion, renewable natural gas, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, geothermal, long-duration storage, and virtual power plants. The paper’s argument, and one that I have long also argued, is that nuclear is the only one of those seven that is commercially proven at scale, can be built to a firm schedule once a design is chosen, and does not depend on a fuel supply chain, storage duration breakthrough, or geologic accident of location the way the other six do. Hydrogen and RNG combustion depend on fuel volumes and delivery infrastructure that don’t yet exist at the needed scale. Geothermal in New York is site-limited. Long-duration storage and carbon capture are not commercially deployed at the scale this problem requires. Nuclear is the one DEFR you can actually plan to build, in a specific quantity, on a specific schedule, if you’re willing to pay for it and manage the program well.

That is the paper’s real argument, and it is the argument I want to spend the rest of this post on, because I think it is largely right, with one important caveat.

Where I agree: nuclear power is the DEFR you can develo as needed

New York’s own planning documents already say we need a lot more dispatchable, emissions-free capacity than we currently have. The Joint Utilities’ CGPP Cycle 1 Report filed with the PSC models a scenario with roughly 5.5 GW of nuclear-like DEFR capacity available by 2042 against a scenario without it, and finds the difference is stark: total system capacity of about 100,000 MW with that DEFR resource in the mix, versus about 130,000 MW without it, to serve the identical peak load. Put another way: every megawatt of firm, dispatchable capacity you don’t build gets replaced by roughly five to six megawatts of wind, solar, and storage nameplate capacity, because those resources aren’t available when you need them most. That 30,000 MW gap is the entire argument for DEFRs in one number, and it is New York’s own modeling, not Terra Praxis’s.

The Options Paper adds the piece that actually matters for a decision-maker: it prices out what that capacity costs to build. Under NYSERDA’s own analysis, a repeat-build fleet — its “Option 3: Multiple Sequential Pipeline Procurements” — carries an all-in price of roughly $12,800 to $13,400 per kilowatt in the Base Case, once the state provides financing support that gets private capital comfortable with the schedule risk. That is a real number I would not have expected NYSERDA to publish so plainly, and it is meaningfully lower than what the same paper shows for financing the same reactors with no state support at all — where the price nearly doubles, largely because private capital demands a much higher return to bear all the construction schedule risk itself. The point the paper is making, correctly, is that most of what makes nuclear expensive in the U.S. is not the reactor hardware. It is financing risk stacked on top of one-off procurement. That is consistent with what happened at Vogtle, where a program that started at roughly $14 billion for two units ended up above $30 billion, largely from schedule slip rather than design changes.

I have spent years arguing that New York’s decarbonization mandates keep underpricing the cost of firm capacity and overselling the reliability of wind and solar. If the state is serious about replacing fossil generation without wrecking reliability, a resource you can order in a known quantity, on a plannable schedule, at a knowable cost — using a design that has already been licensed and built elsewhere — is the only thing on that list of seven DEFRs that meets that bar today. I support developing enough nuclear capacity to cover the state’s baseload needs precisely because it is the viable alternative to the current plan, which is to keep building utility-scale wind and solar and hope storage and transmission catch up in time. They haven’t, and there’s no evidence in the state’s own filings that they will on the current timeline. A large, planned nuclear buildout is the one path I’ve seen that gets New York to a genuinely low-emissions grid without requiring tens of thousands of additional acres of utility-scale renewables and the transmission to move that power from where the wind blows to where the load is. Moreover, the cumulative environmental impact of that development is frightening.

Where I part ways with the paper: nuclear powr is a baseload solution, not an everything solution

Here is where I think the paper, and a lot of nuclear advocacy generally, overreaches. Nuclear is excellent at running flat out, all the time, for decades. That is exactly what baseload means, and it’s exactly why it’s the right tool for the DEFR problem: New York needs a large, firm floor of generation that doesn’t disappear when the wind stops or the sun sets. But the state’s electricity demand isn’t flat. There’s a large gap between the baseload floor and the peak load on the hottest afternoon of the summer, and that gap changes hour to hour and season to season. Nuclear plants are not economical, and are not designed, to ramp up and down to chase that kind of load — you don’t want a billion-dollar asset with decade-long payback economics cycling on and off to follow a few hours of afternoon peak demand a few dozen days a year.

That’s the role I think natural gas still should play, and I don’t think the paper’s framing — where the endgame is nuclear covering essentially all of the state’s electric energy — grapples with this. Peaking capacity and some intermediate load are jobs gas turbines already do well, at low capital cost, with fast start times, exactly because they only need to run a fraction of the year. Trying to cover that same peaking and intermediate role with more nuclear capacity means building reactors sized for the worst afternoon of the year and then running them well below capacity factor the rest of the time — which is the opposite of the economics that make repeat-build nuclear affordable in the first place. The paper’s own numbers show why: the value of a nuclear asset comes from running it as close to full output as possible for as many hours as possible. Ask it to load-follow like a gas peaker and you’ve thrown away the cost advantage the whole paper is built around.

Where I’d like to see more natural gas going forward isn’t in new electric generation, though — it’s in two other uses the paper doesn’t mention at all. The first is transportation combustion substitution: natural gas in place of diesel in trucks and other heavy vehicles does something wind, solar, and battery storage cannot do on any realistic timeline, which is cut inhalable particulate emissions from diesel exhaust at the tailpipe, immediately, in the communities where those trucks operate. That’s a real, measurable air-quality benefit — the kind I spent a career studying — and it doesn’t show up in the grid-decarbonization accounting either the state’s Energy Plan or this paper cares about, because it isn’t a grid benefit at all. The second is on-site use in homes and businesses, where high-efficiency gas furnaces and other direct-combustion appliances remain the cheapest and most energy-efficient option for space heating and process heat, out-performing electric-resistance and heat-pump alternatives on delivered cost and, in cold-climate operation, on efficiency as well. There is one other advantage of residential gas use – resiliency. I have lived in my home for 45 years and survived two major electric blackouts related to weather in no small part because natural gas provided heat, hot water, and cooking support during the multi-day electrical outage. I have never had a natural gas service outage.

A serious New York energy strategy should treat nuclear and gas as doing different jobs for different reasons: nuclear for the emissions-free baseload floor so we don’t have to keep chasing utility-scale renewable buildout, and gas for electric grid support, the transportation and on-site combustion roles where it beats the alternatives on cost, efficiency, or public health today. Trying to make nuclear substitute for those roles, or forcing electrification onto them by mandate, is asking one resource to solve problems it wasn’t built to solve, at a cost the repeat-build economics in this paper’s own tables were never meant to carry.

The fine print: what I’d flag on the numbers

I did not have time to check all the numbers in the report, so I used Perplexity AI for that purpose. With the caveat that I did not check all the Perplexity results I agree with the AI response that did not find anything fabricated in the paper — every figure checked traces back to a real NYSERDA filing, PSC proceeding, DOE study, or nuclear project cost record, and in most cases to the specific page or table cited. That’s a high bar for a 32-page advocacy paper with 94 endnotes to clear, and it did.

Bottom Line

New York’s own modeling says the state needs a large amount of dispatchable, emissions-free capacity that wind, solar, and storage cannot reliably provide, and nuclear is the only one of the seven DEFR candidates NYSERDA itself evaluated that is proven, buildable at scale, and priceable today. I support building enough nuclear power to cover the state’s baseload precisely because it is the one path that lets New York stop chasing an ever-larger buildout of utility-scale renewables and the transmission needed to move that power around. But baseload is not the whole grid, and it’s certainly not the whole energy economy.

Natural gas should still have a legitimate future role in peaking and intermediate generation that nuclear economics were never designed to serve. I believe that it is even more valuable to directly displace diesel in vehicle applications, where it cuts the inhalable particulate emissions that diesel exhaust puts directly into the air people breathe. In addition, I think natural gas provides on-site services cheaper and with better resiliency than electric alternatives so it should remain an acceptable option. A nuclear buildout that solves the baseload problem, alongside a gas fleet doing the jobs it’s actually good at, is a more honest — and more affordable — energy strategy than relying on wind, solar, and energy storage to provide electricity to do everything.

Response 9/14/26: Isuru Seneviratne, Director, Lucid Catalyst

There’s one place where I think the paper is being read as saying the opposite of what it argues, and one place where you’re simply right.

We don’t argue for low-capacity-factor nuclear. It’s the reverse, and it’s the core of the siting case: our analysis of a thirteen-site, 24 GW coal fleet running at just 10–17% capacity factor found that repowering it to 95% would raise that country’s entire electricity generation by over 170%. Low capacity factor is the problem REPOWER NY is trying to solve, not a duty cycle it proposes. A retired plant’s interconnection is permitted and sized for continuous output, which is exactly why it suits a machine that runs flat out.

Where we do argue for expanding nuclear’s role is not sideways into peaking but outward into industrial heat and power. Roughly four-fifths of New York’s final energy demand sits outside the power sector — process heat, fuels, industrial loads — and those emissions cannot be abated by cleaning up the grid, because the fuel is burned on site. A repowered site can deliver electricity and process heat, hydrogen, and district heating from the same asset. That’s a higher-utilization use, not a lower one, and it’s a large market.

The paper’s focus is narrower, and addresses an issue where New York needs help: how to make nuclear commercially financeable through rational industrial policy. Costs, time, and the uncertainties of both fall with a standardized repeat-build order book at the fewest viable sites, and further as delivery moves off bespoke site construction — the difference between a program that needs permanent subsidy and one that doesn’t. Expanding nuclear’s use case to industrial energy enables the supply chain, labor, and industrial capacity investments necessary to make nuclear cheaper.

I do agree that one sentence in “the carbon case” implies “nuclear can do it all”: “Firm nuclear capacity sited at a retired fossil plant can displace natural gas plants otherwise needed to fill in when output from variable renewables drops.”

Your criticism is fair since REPOWER NY asserts the capability without naming the machines. Nuclear is already a dispatchable energy source in practice, not just in theory (“Nuclear is a Dispatchable Electricity Source” by Nuclear New York, filed with the Department of Public Service in November 2023). See also the “Nuclear Energy” section here (Nuclear New York filing with the DPS, March 2024).

I’d push back on the premise that dispatchability and high capacity factor are in tension. For several of the technologies now in operation or under construction, they aren’t. Take Natrium, which TerraPower is building at a retiring coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, for 2031. Its reactor is sized to run continuously at 345 MW and does exactly that; the plant stores the heat in a nitrate salt tank and the turbine draws on it to deliver anywhere from 100 to 500 MW, ramping at 40 MW a minute and holding full output for five and a half hours. The reactor never cycles. The salt tank does the following. You get the peaking service without touching the capacity factor that the economics depend on — which is why PacifiCorp is contracting for the 500 MW Kemmerer output and, in its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, continues to evaluate two further Natrium units in Utah by 2035. See PacifiCorp and TerraPower on the additional units and the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (Utah, Volume I).

On gas keeping the peaker role, I largely agree with you, and REPOWER NY doesn’t say otherwise — it doesn’t say anything. The words “peaking”, “peaker” and “load-following” appear nowhere in it. Fast-start plant covering a few hundred hours a year is a job gas does well, and the case for siting nuclear at retired (and operating) fossil and industrial sites does not rest on it.

Implications of the NYISO 2025-2044 System & Resource Outlook

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) has released its 2025-2044 System & Resource Outlook (Outlook). It’s a long-term planning assessment that finds New York will need “substantial new investment in reliable generation and transmission infrastructure to serve growing electricity demand and state policy targets.” The report supports my contention that the rapid electric system transition to a zero‑emissions grid mandated by New York politicians is technically and institutionally constrained, and that reliability can be put at risk if policy timelines outrun feasible infrastructure and resource development.

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

Background

The NYISO is responsible for electric resource planning for New York State. The Comprehensive System Planning Process (CSPP) consists of four components: the Local Transmission Planning Process (LTPP), the Reliability Planning Process (RPP), the Economic Planning Process, and the Public Policy Transmission Planning Process. My particular interest is the RPP.

Last December a NYISO update on the CSPP described the Reliability Planning Process. It is a two‑year process that starts in even years and has two components. The Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) “evaluates the adequacy and security of the Bulk Power Transmission Facilities (BPTF)

over a seven-year Study Period (years four through ten of the next ten years) and identifies Reliability Needs defined as violations of Reliability Criteria” established by regulatory authorities. The second component is the System & Resource Outlook that is developed in the years between RNA.s It includes the following:

20-year study of system and congestion
Identifies, ranks, and groups congested elements
Assesses the potential benefits of addressing the identified congestion
Provides information to developers and marketplace regarding future challenges in the New York power system

The current analysis covers 2025 to 2044, so it must consider the transition requirements of the Climate Act. NYISO’s long‑term scenarios show that reaching very high levels of zero‑emissions generation is a serious challenge. This post is an overview of the Outlook emphasizing key insights and recommendations.

NYISO Summary and Key Findings

The press release provides a good overview of the Outlook.

The Outlook is a scenario-based planning study intended to help policymakers, regulators, market participants, and developers understand how different policy choices can shape New York’s future resource mix, transmission needs, system costs, and reliability risks over the next 20 years.

Key findings from the Outlook include:

New York’s electricity demand is expected to grow over the next two decades, driven by electrification and emerging large loads that increase total energy needs and reshape when and where demand occurs.

All scenarios require significant new generation, and policy-driven scenarios require far more installed capacity than exists today to reliably meet demand.

Transmission capability is increasingly central to system performance, public policy achievement, congestion reduction, and the ability of new resources to serve consumers.

The Outlook also shows that the final increments of emissions reductions carry the greatest infrastructure challenges. Scenarios that move from 95 percent to 100 percent emissions-free electricity require substantially more investment in replacement resources and anticipate technologies not yet available at commercial scale. By comparison, other scenarios that also lower emissions significantly do so with much lesser investment in generation and transmission.

These analyses compare alternate projections of policy mandates against a business as usual or base case. NYISO describes the modeling scenarios:

The Outlook is structured around three groups of scenarios that represent the various futures evaluated in the Outlook. The Base Case is a reference future that aligns with the NYISO’s Reliability Planning Process assumptions1 to define the load, generation, and transmission assumptions. The Contract Case builds on the Base Case by adding generation projects with financial commitments (e.g., NYSERDA and offshore wind REC contracts) and approved transmission projects, as well as incorporating projected fossil retirements, to evaluate near-term system conditions as renewables come online and aging thermal units exit. The Policy Case, which includes eighteen scenarios, reflects relevant state policy targets by modeling pathways to meet (existing or delayed) targets like 70% renewables and 100% zero-emissions electricity and evaluates alternative resource mixes—including potential new nuclear and/or fossil—to assess progress toward policy achievement and resulting system conditions.

The Outlook selects two core policy scenarios for detailed production‑cost analysis: one “Higher” pathway that reaches a fully zero‑emissions grid by 2044 and one “Baseline/Policy‑limited” pathway that only achieves roughly mid‑90s percent zero‑emissions by 2044.

Resource Planning

My primary Climate Act implementation concern is the disconnect between the naïve presumption of Climate Act authors that the zero emissions electric system transition was only a matter of political will because the technical, logistical, and economic challenges were small and the reality that those challenges are enormous. I do concede that at the time the Climate Act was written there was no expectation of significant load growth but that is only one aspect of the problem The Outlook outlines the real challenges and the approach:

Meeting New York’s future electricity needs will require a significant transformation of the generation fleet, driven by rising demand, evolving policy requirements, and the retirement of existing fossil generation. As conditions evolve, ensuring that sufficient energy and capacity resources are available to serve load becomes increasingly complex. In particular, tradeoffs emerge between the pace, scale, and timing of new resource development, the types of resources available, and the ability of those resources to meet both energy needs and firm capacity requirements across the system.

To explore these dynamics, the Outlook evaluates a range of potential resource pathways that reflect differing assumptions about policy achievement, development pace, and system conditions. These scenarios are not intended to predict a single outcome but rather to illustrate how different combinations of demand, policy, and resource availability can produce materially different system outcomes—and to highlight the implications of those differences for future grid planning.

NYISO explicitly uses alternative futures (including “Higher Demand” and scenarios with advanced nuclear) to highlight that different combinations of resources can hit similar CO₂ outcomes but with very different reliability and feasibility profiles. That is an important distinction. The statute and agency rhetoric treat “100% zero emissions” as a single, deterministic path in their plans. In practice resource mix and infrastructure choices matter enormously.

Resource adequacy and reliability risk

The Outlook focuses heavily on resource adequacy through 2044 and shows that preserving reliability under Climate Act‑consistent trajectories depends on how quickly firm capacity is replaced as fossil units retire. NYISO’s analysis indicates that without sufficient dispatchable zero‑emissions resources and/or substantial new nuclear or long‑duration storage, the system faces tighter margins and greater risk, especially under higher load or stressed conditions.

NYISO also examines scenarios where demand is higher and weather or electrification trends deviate from planning baselines, and under those cases the resource and infrastructure requirements to keep reliability within criteria become much more challenging. A long‑standing theme of this blog is that “electrify everything” plus aggressive fossil retirements is a reliability problem, not merely an emissions accounting problem. Electric systems must be built around reliability during peak demand. One of my primary concerns with the Climate Act renewable energy mandates is weather variability because the conditions that characterize the highest loads also have the weakest expected wind resource availability. The Hochul Administration’s planning has emphasized central forecasts and has yet to grapple with the specific challenges associated with extreme cases.

Limits of “100% zero emissions” portfolios

The document notes that alternate scenarios can achieve CO₂ reductions comparable to “100% zero emissions” portfolios while using different mixes of nuclear, storage, and renewables. NYISO explicitly discusses an “Alternate” path and advanced nuclear build‑out with up to 5 GW, limited to Zones A, B, C, and E (Figure 1) as ways to provide firm, clean capacity that ease system stress compared to strictly constrained portfolios.

Figure 1: NYISO New York Control Area Load Zones

Source: NYISO 2025-2044 System & Resource Outlook

Those scenario results essentially validate my arguments that insisting on specific technologies (or excluding others) is a policy choice layered on top of the emissions objective, and that some technology‑constrained paths are significantly more brittle from a reliability and cost perspective. The Outlook’s willingness to model advanced nuclear as a serious resource option contrasts with the Climate Act mandate and lends technical credibility to my arguments about the need for firm zero‑emissions capacity beyond intermittent renewables.

The Outlook finds that “policy design significantly impacts the scale of new resource development”. For example. “Outlook scenarios without clean energy targets require approximately ~10–35 GW, scenarios with relaxed or partial zero-emissions scenarios require ~30–60 GW, and scenarios targeting a fully zero-emissions system require substantially higher additions— approaching ~105 GW of new resources by 2044 under higher demand conditions. The difference in costs for all the new resources necessary for zero emissions versus costs for the relaxed emission scenarios relative to the differences in emissions should be an energy policy discussion point. Furthermore, relaxed emission scenarios eliminate the need for developing hydrogen-fueled generation capacity and infrastructure development that the Outlook estimates at upwards of 30 GW.

Infrastructure, siting, and transmission constraints

NYISO’s long‑range analysis implicitly underscores how much new transmission and bulk infrastructure is required to move large quantities of upstate renewable and nuclear output to downstate loads, and to integrate storage at scale. The scenarios with substantial new nuclear and renewables in upstate zones make clear that geography, siting limits, and zonal restrictions are binding constraints, not footnotes.

By identifying zonal limits NYISO is effectively quantifying some of the siting and societal impacts that disproportionately impact Upstate New York. The Outlook notes:

Downstate capacity requirements continue to shape where firm resources are needed. Because the highest and most constrained load centers remain in downstate New York, locational capacity requirements continue to drive firm and dispatchable resources near those areas. Even in futures with substantial upstate renewable development, additional firm capacity is often needed closer to load centers to satisfy capacity requirements that cannot be met through statewide totals alone.

Resource availability assumptions create a persistent tension between where clean energy is most developable and where it is most needed. Land-based wind and utility-scale solar are more available in upstate zones, while demand remains concentrated downstate. This creates a recurring planning challenge. The system may have strong opportunities to add clean energy where development potential is greatest, but it still requires transmission capability and additional downstate resources to ensure that energy and capacity can serve load.

This supports my concerns that Climate Act implementation treats land use, transmission corridors, and community opposition as solvable details, whereas the system modeling shows they materially shape feasible resource portfolios.

Recommendations

NYISO finds that growing demand and planned fossil retirements mean the system needs “substantial new investment in reliable generation and transmission infrastructure” across all futures. They recommend prioritizing timely development of new resources, especially in policy driven scenarios that require much more installed capacity than exists today.

A central recommendation is to “establish a viable path for the development of resources capable of providing firm capacity and operational flexibility as the generation mix evolves,” explicitly recognizing the need for dispatchable, firm resources even in highly decarbonized futures. NYISO also calls for coordinating the timing of resource additions, repowering, and retirements to reduce transition risk and avoid tightening system conditions during the Climate Act transition.

On the transmission side, the Outlook urges targeted enhancements to increase transfer capability across the Central East interface (e.g., dynamic voltage support) and bulk transmission upgrades to support zero emissions generation development in Northern New York. These are framed as necessary to reduce congestion, improve deliverability, and allow new renewables and firm resources to actually serve downstate load.

Conclusion

The NYISO recommendations address my concerns that: (1) reliability requires firm capacity (DEFRs or equivalent), not just wind/solar/storage; (2) the timing of retirements versus new builds is critical; and (3) transmission constraints are central to Climate Act implementation feasibility, and (4) it is long past time that a feasibility analysis be completed to define New York’s energy future. NYISO’s call for “a viable path” for firm resources and its acknowledgment that policy driven zero emissions futures demand far more capacity than today are similar to my warnings about the DEFR gap and the risk of retiring peakers without firm backup. Until Climate Act implementation policy aligns with the NYISO Outlook the risks of reliability problems is a serious concern. The difference in costs for all the new resources necessary for zero emissions versus costs for the relaxed emission scenarios relative to the differences in emissions for the two approaches should be an energy policy discussion point.

2026 Draft CES Biennial Review: How It Addresses Prior Concerns

The New York State Department of Public Service and NYSERDA released the Draft 2026 Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review (Report) on July 1, 2026. This is the third biennial review since the Clean Energy Standard was established in 2016. Having submitted comments on the 2024 draft and the related Affordability Standard proceeding, I reviewed this latest document to see whether the Commission has responded to the fundamental concerns raised in previous comment cycles. The short answer is that the report documents worsening conditions but stops short of the structural reforms that have been repeatedly called for.

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

Overview

The Report includes a comprehensive summary of the clean energy policy and regulatory background in the first chapter that I recommend if you are interested in comprehensive background information. The Introduction also describes the requirements for the Report:

Public Service Law section 66-p requires that the Public Service Commission (PSC or Commission) issues a review for notice and comment that considers “(a) progress in meeting the overall targets for deployment of renewable energy systems and zero emission sources, including factors that will or are likely to frustrate progress toward the targets; (b) distribution of systems by size and load zone; and (c) annual funding commitments and expenditures.” This Report serves to inform the Commission’s review. It summarizes the progress made toward the renewable energy and zero emission goals since the establishment of New York State’s Clean Energy Standard (CES) as set in Public Service Law section 66-p, assesses what remains to be done to achieve those goals, and invites comments from stakeholders and the public on these or any other matters raised in this Report. As part of the assessment, this Report also addresses how changes in federal energy and trade policy have impacted State progress, including forecasted deployment of additional offshore wind resources. This Report also identifies available clean energy solutions that can be incorporated within reliability planning processes to meet State reliability needs, particularly in New York City, per directive from the Commission in the Order Adopting Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review as Final and Making Other Findings (2025 CES Biennial Review Order) and the Order Withdrawing Public Policy Transmission Need.

2024 Biennial Review

In my prior comments on the 2024 CES Biennial Review and the Affordability Standard proceeding, I raised fundamental concerns.

The 2024 review acknowledged the 70% by 2030 goal was unlikely to be met but offered no realistic revised schedule.
The state has no credible plan to ensure reliable electricity generation given new large loads and electrification goals. The transition to a weather-dependent grid introduces significant reliability risks, particularly the correlated intermittency of wind and solar across New York.
New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) modeling obscures true incremental costs and fails to disaggregate CLCPA-related costs from pre-existing programs.
I have long argued that the State needs to formally define the safety valve criteria — what constitutes a “significant increase in arrears” or threat to “safe and adequate electric service” that would warrant suspending or modifying programs.
I also believe that the stakeholder process used in the last version was broken because impactful issues were never acknowledged or addressed.

My initial impression is that this edition of New York Agency rhetoric does not align well with reality or my previous concerns;

The 70% by 2030 Goal Is Even Further Out of Reach, but…..

The 2024 Biennial Review already acknowledged that the 70% renewable energy by 2030 target was unlikely to be met, projecting 41% renewable coverage. The 2026 draft revises the 2030 load forecast upward again — from 164,915 GWh to 171,050 GWh — driven largely by large loads (data centers, manufacturing) that were not anticipated when the CES was created. With attrition applied, currently operational and contracted renewables are now projected to deliver only 40% of the 2030 load forecast, down from 41% in the 2024 review and 45% in the original 2020 CES Order.

The report acknowledges that large loads are adding approximately 21.4 TWh of demand that was not envisioned when the CES was established. Yet it does not propose a realistic revised schedule or a feasibility-based reassessment of the timeline. The 70% target remains legally mandated but functionally unachievable on the current trajectory.

When I said this report does not align with reality I was thinking of this issue. The original statutory requirement for a 40% statewide GHG reduction by 2030 is effectively displaced by a new mandate to achieve a 60% reduction by 2040, “to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective,” using 1990 as the baseline. The 2026 Enacted Budget (Part VV of the TED bill) made several significant amendments to the CLCPA, including: replacing the 40% by 2030 GHG reduction target with a 60% by 2040 target, changing the GHG accounting methodology from a 20-year GWP to a 100-year GWP, excluding biogenic CO2 and out-of-state fossil fuel extraction emissions from the state inventory, extending the DEC regulatory deadline to December 31, 2028, and changing the Climate Action Council plan update cycle from every five years to every six years.

The 2026 Draft Biennial Review, dated July 1, 2026 — after the budget was enacted — makes no mention of any of these statutory changes. The report continues to reference the original CLCPA targets (70% renewables by 2030, 9 GW offshore wind by 2035, zero emissions by 2040) without acknowledging that the 2030 interim target has been formally replaced by a 2040 target. This is a significant omission. The budget bill’s relaxation of the 2030 interim target fundamentally changes the regulatory landscape that the Biennial Review is supposed to assess. By continuing to frame the analysis around the original 2030 deadline and the original GHG accounting methodology, the report is evaluating progress against a standard that no longer exists in statute.

This is particularly striking given that the report was prepared and filed after the budget was enacted. The omission suggests either a deliberate decision to avoid acknowledging the statutory relaxation, or a failure to integrate the most recent legislative changes into the review. Either way, it undermines the credibility of the review as an honest assessment of the state’s clean energy progress.

Reliability Concerns Are Acknowledged — But Not Resolved

The 2026 draft includes a new Section 6 on Reliability Concerns, which is a step forward from the 2024 version. It acknowledges that the NYISO’s Q3 2025 STAR Report identified generator deactivation reliability needs as early as summer 2026 in New York City and Long Island. It also notes the Commission’s December 2025 order opening a proceeding to address NYC reliability needs.

However, the report does not address the fundamental reliability risk of a grid increasingly dependent on weather-dependent resources. It does not address the correlated intermittency of wind and solar across the state, nor does it propose robust criteria for what constitutes “safe and adequate electric service” under the statute. The reliability concern is acknowledged but not resolved.

Affordability and Cost Transparency Remain Absent

The affordability and cost transparency issues raised in the Affordability Standard proceeding remain entirely unaddressed in this document. The draft explicitly defers forward-looking cost estimates to the separate DPS Annual CLCPA Report. It contains no affordability metrics, no discussion of arrears or service disconnections, and no connection between CES program costs and ratepayer impacts.

The core affordability concerns — that CLCPA implementation is a significant driver of rate increases, that the Reference Case modeling obscures true incremental costs, and that the state has failed to provide comprehensive cost accounting — remain unaddressed.

Safety Valve Criteria Still Undefined

The safety valve mechanism under New York Public Service Law § 66-p allows the PSC to delay Climate Act targets when safety and affordability concerns arise. The definition of “safe and adequate electric service” and what constitutes a “significant increase in arrears” remain undefined. The 2025 Biennial Review Order did not define these criteria, and the 2026 draft does not advance this issue.

This is a critical gap. Without defined criteria, the safety valve is effectively a theoretical option that cannot be triggered in practice. Ratepayers are left with no clear mechanism to pause or modify programs when they demonstrably harm consumers.

Load Growth and Interconnection Challenges Worsen

The draft documents a significant upward revision in load forecasts. NYISO’s 2030 load forecast increased by 16 TWh (10%) between 2020 and 2026, and the 2040 baseline forecast increased by more than 23 TWh (13%). The interconnection process continues to be a bottleneck, with the NYISO’s new Cluster Study Process expected to take approximately two years to complete for each cluster.

The report acknowledges that the interconnection process has been a major factor in project delays, with many projects experiencing three- to four-year timelines. The new Cluster Study enhancements are described as incremental improvements rather than fundamental reforms.

The Stakeholder Process Remains Broken

The draft invites comments from stakeholders and the public, but it does not demonstrate any systematic response to prior comments. The fundamental concern that impactful issues are never acknowledged or addressed in the regulatory process remains unchanged.

Positive Developments

The report does document some positive developments, including the extension of the Zero Emission Credit (ZEC) program through 2049, the approval of the Offshore Wind Implementation Plan, and the establishment of the Nuclear Reliability Backbone proceeding. These are meaningful steps, but they do not address the fundamental feasibility and affordability concerns.

Conclusion

The 2026 Draft CES Biennial Review is a thorough documentation of the state of New York’s clean energy transition, but it does not address the fundamental structural issues that have been raised in prior comment cycles. The report documents a transition that is falling further behind schedule, facing increasing reliability risks, and imposing significant costs on ratepayers — but it does not propose the structural changes necessary to address these problems. Moreover, the failure to include the Budget Bill revisions to the Climate Act undermines the credibility of the review as an honest assessment of the state’s clean energy progress.

The Commission has an opportunity to address these concerns in the final order. The questions raised in prior comments remain open:

What is the realistic timeline for achieving the 70% renewable energy goal?
What are the criteria for invoking the §66-p safety valve?
What is the comprehensive cost of the transition, and how will it be allocated?
How will the state ensure reliability during the transition?

These questions deserve answers before the Commission adopts the final order.

Climate Act Status – June 2026

New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) is now driving every major energy and climate decision in the state. I’ve grown increasingly concerned that the transition plan built around this law is not affordable, is risky for reliability, and will not deliver the environmental benefits people assume. This post provides an overview of my concerns.

As a retired air‑pollution meteorologist who has spent a career worrying about both the air people breathe and whether the lights stay on, I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries and references included in this document.

Climate Act Requirements

The Climate Act is often described in broad, aspirational terms, but its mandates are very specific. Public Service Law Section 66‑p requires the Public Service Commission, by June 30, 2021, to establish a program ensuring that at least 70% of statewide electric generation secured by jurisdictional load-serving entities in 2030 comes from “renewable energy systems” and that by 2040 the statewide electrical demand system is zero emissions. These statutory “targets” are the Climate Act’s headline electric-sector mandates translated into binding obligations on utilities and other load-serving entities, rather than being left as generalized policy goals. On top of that, it sets a net‑zero statewide emissions target by mid‑century and directs a large share of climate and energy spending to “disadvantaged communities.”

To push enough wind, solar, and transmission projects through the pipeline to meet those dates, the state created new fast‑track siting regimes: first the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES), and more recently the Renewable Action through Project Interconnection and Deployment (RAPID) Act, which folds big renewables and major transmission lines into a single accelerated process. In short, the law is not just a statement of long‑term goals; it has spawned a whole machinery of timelines, mandates, and permitting shortcuts to force the system in one direction.

My over-riding concern is that the Climate Act set very aggressive goals without a realistic, step-by-step plan to get there. We don’t have a plan; we have a wish list. The law sets big targets for cutting emissions, but there’s no practical roadmap that says who builds what, by when, and how we keep the lights on and bills affordable along the way. This is declaring we’ll rebuild the whole electric system in 15 years without a construction schedule or budget.”

The law assumes everything will work out—technology, costs, and reliability—without proving it. No conditions have been defined. There are no clear affordability limits, no defined reliability safeguards, and no trigger points where the state must slow down or change course if things start to go wrong. I’m used to testing assumptions. Here, the assumptions are treated as facts.

The law ignores permitting reality. We make it harder and slower to permit both existing plants and new infrastructure, while at the same time assuming we can build massive amounts of renewables, storage, and transmission on a tight deadline. The timelines and the permitting system just don’t match. It can take many years to permit a single transmission line. The law acts as if we can permit and build dozens on a political timetable.

Affordability: what it looks like at the household level

From the beginning, the Climate Act’s architects asserted that the transition would be cost‑effective and could be done using technologies available a decade ago. In practice, when I look at the numbers through the lens of a typical upstate household, that claim is hard to square with the evidence.[

NYSERDA’s modeling and public messaging emphasize long‑term fuel and operating savings from electrification, but I believe they understate or obscure the full capital and retrofit costs that real people will face. A gas‑heated home in upstate New York is not starting from a blank slate; to electrify heat it may need a heat pump, electric panel upgrades, new wiring, backup systems, and often building shell improvements. When those costs are levelized over realistic lifetimes and added to electric bills that must also carry the cost of massive new generation, storage, and transmission, NYSERDA’s own calculations show annual costs rising by thousands of dollars compared to staying on gas.

That’s before we talk about vehicle electrification and the additional load that puts on both household budgets and local distribution systems. For low‑ and middle‑income families, especially in older housing stock, the up‑front burden is steep, and the promised payback periods are long and uncertain. The latest budget language envisions a cap‑and‑invest system that would raise revenue and then “share” proceeds with New Yorkers to offset bills, but that still means raising the underlying cost of energy to generate those funds in the first place.

Previous energy transitions, for example, from coal town gas to natural gas, or from inefficient oil burners to modern gas boilers, succeeded because they saved consumers money and improved convenience. The Climate Act’s transition is different: it is enforced by law and regulation rather than emerging organically from better economics, and that is why I keep coming back to affordability as a core concern.

Reliability: weather‑dependent supply on a tight grid

My second major concern is reliability. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) prepares an annual report on “forces shaping the electric grid and wholesale electricity markets.” NYISO’s Power Trends 2026 is a notable document because it acknowledges that Climate Act related initiatives such as electrification, retirement of conventional resources, and weather-dependent generation combined with large new energy-intensive loads are making the system more uncertain and more fragile. It also says reliability margins are shrinking and that winter conditions are becoming a defining challenge.

The Climate Act’s targets effectively assume that New York can completely revamp the electric system to run largely on wind, solar, and storage, with something called “Dispatchable Emissions‑Free Resources” (DEFRs) appearing down the road to back them up. In the Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan, those DEFRs are more of a placeholder than a commercially available option today.

As a meteorologist, I am very aware that wind and solar are controlled by the weather, not by grid operators. They are intermittent, they don’t work all the time; they are diffuse, they require large land areas and new transmission to deliver the same energy as a single conventional plant; and their output is correlated over large regions due to large‑scale weather systems. That means a cold, calm high‑pressure system can reduce wind output over the whole Northeast just when electric heating demand is highest, and clouds can reduce solar output across a broad swath of the state at the same time. The Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan acknowledge that DEFR is necessary for this situation but there is no proposal how to address this requirement.

Batteries are valuable for smoothing and short‑duration balancing, but they become very expensive very quickly if you try to size them to cover multi‑day or seasonal shortfalls. Studies that look at the cost of backing up long, widespread wind lulls strictly with storage point to staggering cost numbers and large amounts of capacity that would sit idle much of the time. Despite repeated warnings from the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) about resource adequacy and the risks of retiring fossil capacity faster than firm replacements are available, I don’t see those concerns fully reflected in the state’s official transition roadmap.

My worry is that we are treating weather‑dependent megawatt‑hours as if they are interchangeable with firm capacity on peak and in worst‑case conditions and filling the gap with optimistic assumptions about future technologies. That may look fine in a model, but on a winter evening with a regional cold snap and limited imports, the real‑world consequences of getting it wrong would be very serious.

Environmental impact and local siting

People understandably assume that a climate law must be environmentally beneficial. My view, informed by decades of air‑quality work, is that the answer depends on how we define and measure “benefit,” and on the local impacts of the projects required to meet statewide targets.

On the accounting side, the statute originally used 20‑year global warming potentials (GWP20) and included out‑of‑state, upstream emissions from fossil fuel production in New York’s inventory. That approach gave very high weight to methane and made New York’s near‑term targets particularly difficult to meet compared to jurisdictions using 100‑year GWPs and more conventional boundaries. I have long argued that this approach magnified the appearance of urgency without changing global physics and raised the risk that New York would push expensive policies for relatively modest climate impact while encouraging emissions to “leak” to other regions.

The 2026 budget revisions change that accounting. They move to 100‑year GWPs, drop out‑of‑state upstream emissions, and exclude biogenic CO₂. Those moves align New York’s bookkeeping more closely with federal and international practice and immediately reduce reported statewide emissions—without any physical change in the atmosphere. The new law also softens the near‑term target, replacing the 40 percent‑below‑1990 mandate for 2030 with a 60 percent reduction by 2040, qualified by “to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective,” and pushes the deadline for DEC regulations out to the end of 2028. The changes simply push the inevitable reckoning down the road.

At the same time, ORES and the RAPID Act change how projects are sited on the ground. These frameworks centralize permitting for large renewables and major transmission in Albany, set tight timelines, and include “deemed complete” and “deemed approved” provisions if agencies miss deadlines. Town associations, landowners, and even some developers have flagged that combination as a problem: local governments lose leverage, procedural timelines are very tight, and the opportunity to raise and adjudicate substantive issues is narrow.

From an environmental perspective, I worry that we are trading thorough site‑specific review and local consent for speed, especially in rural upstate communities being asked to host industrial‑scale projects for benefits that are mostly diffuse and global. That doesn’t mean every project is harmful or that renewables have no place, but it does mean we should be honest about the trade‑offs and the cumulative impacts of covering large areas of the landscape with energy infrastructure.

In my opinion, the biggest flaw with ORES and the RAPID Act is that they do not include specific conditions for developers. Because there are no specific limitations for prime farmland protections, wildlife habitat, noise, or technology constraints, projects are being approved that will have long lasting adverse environmental impacts, health effects, and will require even more development. For example, utility-scale solar development should use tilting axis panels that maximize solar collection and should not be sited in areas severely affected by lake-effect snow.

The 2026 “Reset”

One reason I am skeptical that these trade‑offs are being weighed objectively is the way the Climate Action Council and Energy Planning Board were put together. A clear majority of Climate Action Council members were appointed by the Governor and legislative leaders, and only a minority have deep energy‑sector experience, particularly in utility operations and reliability. The Energy Planning Board had one non-voting industry expert. Given the obvious affordability problems, the 2026 budget revisions included a “blue-ribbon” commission on affordability that will have the same makeup. I think the most probable outcome is a final report that acknowledges bills are too high, recommends more rebates and cost‑shifting to taxpayers, proposes tougher oversight of utilities, and treats NYISO reliability concerns as justification for even more spending on renewables, storage, and transmission—not as a warning sign about the Climate Act transition.

In my comments and blog posts, I’ve argued that this structure makes it unlikely that the Council would squarely confront feasibility and cost issues raised by NYISO and others. Instead, the Scoping Plan tends to assume that technologies and projects will appear when needed, and that equity goals can be layered on top of mitigation without exploding costs.

The 2026 budget changes are, in a sense, an indirect admission that the original timelines and accounting structure were not realistic. They soften near‑term targets, adjust the emissions inventory in ways that make the numbers easier to hit, and give regulators several more years before binding rules must be in place. To me, that looks less like a fundamental reexamination of the transition plan and more like a political‑relief valve designed to avoid an imminent collision between statutory deadlines, litigation, and physical reality.

Discussion

I think we are at a crucial crossroads for New York energy policy. Advocates have demanded that the future energy system reduce GHG emissions to zero citing major co-benefits from improved air quality. Over my career I have seen enormous improvements in air quality, but there have not been corresponding health benefits that are consistent with the co-benefit claims in the Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan from the small incremental improvements from further reductions .

What I want from New York’s energy policy is something more pragmatic: a plan that starts from reliability and affordability constraints, acknowledges technology and permitting limits, and is transparent about both costs and benefits. That would mean putting independent technical experts, especially from NYISO and utility engineers—at the center of planning, not at the margins. It would mean evaluating wind, solar, storage, nuclear, and cleaner fossil technologies on a level playing field based on reliability contribution and life‑cycle cost, rather than committing in advance to a narrow renewable energy portfolio. And it would mean being honest with the public about what this transition will cost households, businesses, and communities, rather than leading with best‑case scenarios and hidden caveats.

Conclusion

The existing transition plan built around the Climate Act is not affordable, is risky for reliability, and will not deliver the environmental benefits people assume. I’m not saying, ‘do nothing.’ I’m saying: be honest with people. We need a realistic, engineering‑grade plan that respects reliability, affordability, and permitting realities, instead of pretending they’ll take care of themselves. We must concede that we are not ready to rely completely on zero-emission renewable resources today. We must act now to develop natural gas infrastructure to ensure that we have a reliable electric system that can be used as a bridge to the future. When full system costs and infrastructure life expectancy are considered I expect that nuclear power should be used as the backbone of the electric system.

Out of Control New York State Renewable Developers

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

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

Background

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

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

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

Renewable Development Shakedown

Stafford describes what has happened in NYS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contract Tracking Analysis

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

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

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

Results Overview

Stafford summarizes the results:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He explains that the project status is still evolving:

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

Discussion

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

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

Conclusion

Stafford concludes:

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

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

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

NYISO 2026 Power Trends – Reality is Catching Up

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

I have written over 650 articles about the Climate Act and I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. The opinions expressed in this post and in my filing do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization with which I have been associated; these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to outline this post and draft the text used in this document.

Power Trends 2026

The Executive Summary states:

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

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

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

Key Findings

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

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

Where this fits my concerns

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

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

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

Not so Independent NYISO

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

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

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

What the report gets right

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

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

What it leaves unsaid

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

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

A better reading of the outlook

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Guest Post – Heat Pump Rate Carveouts

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

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

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

Background

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

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

Why heat pump carve‑outs are a dead‑end

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horizontal equity: same wires, same rules

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

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

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

A dynamic, capacity‑based delivery price

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

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

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

Why this beats Straight Fixed‑Variable (SFV)

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

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

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

Behavioral and planning benefits

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

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

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

How this plays out as CLCPA bites

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

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

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

Where advocates are right—and what regulators should do instead

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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