Category: Climate Action Council

New York Independent System Operator Information for Policy Makers

I have published three previous articles about New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) analyses related to New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  This post describes their new webpage that summarizes their activities “to design and implement the operations, planning and market enhancements necessary for the grid in transition.”  It does a good job explaining some of the issues associated with a net-zero transition.  The only thing left is to get New York policy makers to listen.

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

Background

The implementation plan for New York’s Climate Act “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 is underway.  At the end of 2022 the Climate Action Council completed a Scoping Plan that makes recommends strategies to meet the targets.   The Hochul Administration is developing regulations and proposing legislation to respond to those recommendations in 2023.

Unfortunately, the Scoping Plan is just a conglomeration of control strategies that are projected to provide the emission reductions required.  The Plan did not do any feasibility analyses or address any “what if” questions raised by the NYISO.  I have written three posts that described issues raised by NYISO,  The first post (New York Climate Act: Is Anyone Listening to the Experts?) described the NYISO 2021-2030 Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP) report (appendices).  The difficulties raised in the report are so large that I raised the question whether any policy maker in New York was listening to this expert opinion.  The second post (New York Climate Act: What the Experts are Saying Now) highlighted results shown in a draft presentation for the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook that all but admitted meeting the net-zero goals of the Climate Act are impossible on the mandated schedule.  The third article described the final version of the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook.  It shows that in order to minimize the storage and renewable over-build requirements that a Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) is needed but goes on to point out that DEFRs such as hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and small modular nuclear reactors are not commercially viable today. “DEFRs will require committed public and private investment in research and development efforts to identify the most efficient and cost-effective technologies with a view towards the development and eventual adoption of commercially viable resources.” 

The NYISO oversees system reliability and the competitive electric market in New York.  They are responsible for “keeping the lights on for New Yorkers by managing today’s energy flows and by planning the grid far into the future.”  Frankly, with regards to the Climate Act transition they are in a very difficult position because New York’s Climate Act was written by climate activists who had a very poor understanding of the challenges of a transition to a zero-emissions grid.  There are two options for the future.  If the State comes to its senses and takes the work done by the NYISO to heart and chooses a path consistent with their recommendations, then NYISO will be characterized as obstructionists who just don’t understand that academics know better than anyone in the industry.  If the State ignores their warnings and there is a catastrophic blackout, then they will be blamed for improperly implementing the vision of the academics.  Either way they will be scapegoats.

Information for Policy Makers

The new website (pdf copy) is obviously designed to try to explain the complexities of electric system operations and planning for a non-technical audience.  The documentation has three main sections: “Planning for Reliability”, “Wholesale Electric Markets”, and “Our Independence and Transparency”.  Because the information is a useful overview, I will summarize each section below.

The Planning for Reliability section explains that the NYISO is responsible not only for the real-time matching of generation with load operations for the electric system, but also “planning far into the future to make sure the electric system and its interrelated components can meet customer demand.”   The introduction concludes: “The acceleration of New York’s transition to a zero-emission grid is creating a system of new, intermittent generation, which benefits the environment but can make it more challenging to keep the system reliable.”  So how does the website describe the challenges?

They explain that wind and solar are not dispatchable resources and are intermittent so energy storage is needed.  They point out that the current energy technology is limited.  The website goes on to explain:

The grid will always need sufficient flexible and dispatchable resources to balance variations in wind and solar resource output. These resources need to be long-duration, dispatchable, and emission-free.  Essentially, they must have the attributes of fossil generators (responding quickly to rapid system changes) without the emissions. Such resources are not currently commercially available and may not be for many years.

This is a wind-up to make the point that:

The retirement of fossil-based resources is outpacing the development of new renewable-based resources and other dispatchable, emissions-free resources. The effect is that reliability margins will thin to concerning levels beginning in 2023, highlighting the need for a careful transition that maintains grid reliability and resilience.

 I am a bit disappointed with this description.  In order to really emphasize the risk involved it is necessary to understand the current reliability standards are the result of decades of experience and evaluation.  The resulting standards have done a good job preventing blackouts.  However, in the future there are potential issues because the standards are based on the presumption that the system is static.  The unprecedented introduction of significant amounts of new intermittent and non-dispatchable resources changes things a lot.  I don’t think this discussion explains how much riskier planning is becoming as a result.

This section also points out the importance of transmission.  The fact is that New York City will never be able to produce enough electricity from in-City wind and solar so the power necessary will have to be transmitted from elsewhere.  They are constraints on this transmission regionally and also locally where upgrades are needed to get the power from newly developed wind and solar projects.  The website explains the transmission planning process and concludes: “A historic level of investment in the transmission system is currently underway, with projects that will deliver more clean energy to consumers while enhancing grid resilience and reliability”. 

The website raises a little discussed aspect of the transition process.  There is an interconnection procedure where the NYISIO determines if a proposed new resource will have reliability issues and whether transmission system upgrades are needed to address them.  The website brags about the transparency of their process but does not bring up another uncertainty.  In particular, the interconnection hardware for intermittent resources must be able to differentiate between power fluctuations caused by variable wind, for example, and transient power changes in the grid.  If they don’t handle this correctly problems ensue.  For example, the 2022 Odessa Texas disturbance illustrates the “need for immediate industry action to ensure reliable operation of the bulk power system with the ever-increasing penetrations of inverter-based resources”.

This section of the website concludes with a description of the planning process and “NYISO’s role in identifying system needs, and finding solutions, is part of the process of planning for the grid of the future.”

The next section, Wholesale Electric Markets, gives an overview of competitive wholesale electric markets.  It is not surprising that they extoll the virtues of market-based solutions including consumer benefits because that is the basis for their existence.  Nevertheless, it also is a useful overview of how the markets work. 

In order to match the generation with the load the NYISO has three markets: the energy market, ancillary service market, and capacity market. 

These three markets work together. In simple terms:

  • Energy markets secure resources to supply the demand on a minute-to-minute basis.
  • Ancillary service markets procure a variety of additional services to protect the electric system and balance supply and demand to meet system needs instantaneously.
  • Capacity markets provide incentives to generation resources to maintain additional energy reserves over a longer period. Through the capacity market, we determine how much capacity is needed to meet the expected peak demand for the year plus a margin of additional resources to call on, if necessary.

According to the NYISO website the wholesale market can support New York’s Climate Act goals. It states:

Competitive, wholesale markets can help with the transition to a zero-emission grid by sending the right economic signals to developers to invest in new technologies in the right geographic area to best serve the grid. These markets leverage competition to keep electricity as cost-effective and efficient for New Yorkers as possible, and to help make sure there are adequate resources in place in the future.

I disagree with the implication of the statements that “Competitive markets have over time created pressure on the generating fleet to switch to newer, more efficient generation plants” and “Since 2000, electric generators that primarily combust natural gas increased from less than 50% to more than 60% of the generating capacity in the state”.   This is the same argument that proponents of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative make when they argue that emissions have come down significantly and insinuate that the emissions trading system was a primary factor in the emission reductions.  The price of natural gas came down so much relative to other fuels that the generating fleet would have switched to newer, more efficient generating plants with or without the RGGI program. I believe that the conversions would have happened even without competitive markets.

I am disappointed with the following explanation how the market can support the Climate Act:

Additionally, the NYISO has implemented market enhancements to support climate goals and to position the NYISO as a national leader in competitive wholesale electricity markets. Through engagement with stakeholders and regulators, new market rules for energy storage integration, participation in our wholesale electricity markets by distributed energy resources, and new ancillary services products support reliability and minimize costs for consumers. Market rules that incentivize investment in resources that can respond rapidly to changing conditions will be essential for maintaining reliability of the grid of the future.

In my opinion, the transformation of the electric system that was built up over decades using dispatchable synchronous generating resources into a system that relies on a significant amount of intermittent, asynchronous generating resources is an enormous challenge.  NYISO planners have to not only attempt to anticipate all the effects of all these changes to the electric grid but also try to design market rules that provide the resources needed.  The addition of the market component should have been highlighted as a significant additional challenge to get a system that works.

The final portion of this section discussed electricity prices in the NYISO region.

The Our Independence and Transparency section explains how the NYISO was formed and how it operates.  It provides a concise overview of the regulatory and reliability organization oversight requirements for any independent system operator.  There is a description of the governance policies and budgeting.

They also emphasize their independence but there is some backstory here.  At one point in the previous Mario Cuomo Administration, the current chairman of the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority, Richard Kauffman was Cuomo’s energy czar.  In a filing to the Public Service Commission, the NYISO noted that in order to meet Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard, a predecessor regulation to the Climate Act, New York would have to install over 1,000 new miles of bulk transmission lines at great cost and effort.  In response, , Richard Kauffman, accused NYISO Director Brad Jones and his NYISO report as “misleading, incomplete, and grossly inaccurate…revealing an alarming lack of developed analysis into the imperative to address climate change…” Kauffman’s letter accused Jones of protecting fossil fuel generators and said that he was “dismayed by [Jones’] public comments. Not long after that Jones left and ever since comments have been much more guarded.  Kaufmann also authored a commentary for The Hill  about a “carbon bubble” that claimed that government intervention will be necessary if the market response to climate change is delayed too long.  In this political climate it is not surprising that all NYISO planning reports are carefully worded to not antagonize the Administration. In my opinion, however, the Administration needs to hear the unvarnished truth.

Discussion

The title for this webpage says it is information for policy makers.  New York climate policy is driven by the Climate Act’s Climate Action Council.  That body consists of 22 members that were chosen by ideology not expertise. Their contribution to the Climate Act implementation was the Scoping Plan that was approved last December.  The Council only paid lip service to any pretense of addressing reliability concerns with the NYISO so even if this document had been available at the start of the Scoping Plan development process I doubt that the majority of the members would have read it, much less acted on the recommendations.

This year the Hochul Administration is pushing to implement the recommendations of the Scoping Plan either by new legislation or by proposing new regulations.   When pressed about the lack of feasibility analyses in the Scoping Plan the Climate Action Council has said those concerns would be addressed in the regulatory process.  I imagine the policy makers who are responsible for the new legislation and regulations are the target audience.  Unfortunately, I fear their minds are already made up and the issues raised here will be ignored.

The summary for policy makers has several key messages that New York policy makers need to consider as they develop legislation and regulations.  The state should not shutdown existing fossil-fuel generators until sufficient clean energy resource are available.  A new resource is needed but is not ready for use and may not be available for “many” years so an emphasis on developing that resource must be a priority.   Because New York’s fossil resources are retiring faster than new resources are coming on line there already are concerns about the reliability margin. Unprecedented upgrades to the transmission system will be required to get the power from wind and solar projects to New York City where it is needed the most.

Conclusion

I think this is a very useful overview of policy issues that the NYISO is considering relative to the implementation of the Climate Act.  However, I am not optimistic that the target audience will consider these issues as implementation proceeds.  In the political climate of Albany it is not clear how to get policy makers to consider the risks of ignoring the issues raised.

The Pied Piper has no Clothes

At the last meeting (presentation and recording) of the Climate Action Council, Dr. Robert Howarth’s statement supporting his vote to approve the Scoping Plan described the genesis of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).   This post uses two children’s tales to illustrate my concerns about his claimed basis for the plan.

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

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act established a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible and power the electric gride with zero-emissions generating resources by 2040.  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021 and approved on   December 19, 2022.

Children’s Stories

I believe that two children’s fables illustrate the false presumptions of the Climate Act.  According to Wikipedia, the Pied Piper of Hamelin is a Middle Ages tale from the town of Hamelin, Germany.  The pied piper, dressed in multicolored (“pied”) clothing, was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizens refuse to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrument’s magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. The phrase “pied piper” has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises. The other fable is the Emperor’s New Clothes.  This Danish fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen was first published in 1837.  In this story, swindlers convince the emperor, who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters, that they can provide magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor and his court don’t see any clothes but pretend otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.  When the emperor marches through the city to show off his new clothes the townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled.  The phrase “The Emperor Has No Clothes” is often used in political and social

contexts for any obvious truth denied by the majority despite the evidence of their eyes, especially when proclaimed by the government. 

The Pied Pipers of the Climate Act

The statement of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University was very illuminating relative to the motives of the Climate Act authors.  He reiterated his claim that he played a key role in the drafting of the Climate Act, developed the irrational methane requirements, and credited one politician for getting the Act passed:

Assembly Person Steven Englebright was hugely instrumental in the passage of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act that established the Climate Action Council. I thank him for his leadership on this, and particularly for his support of the progressive approach on greenhouse gas emissions that is a central part of the CLCPA. I originally proposed this to Assembly Person Englebright in 2016, and he enthusiastically endorsed and supported it through multiple versions of the bill that finally led to passage of the CLCPA in 2019. In this accounting for greenhouse gases, a major government for the first time ever fully endorsed the science demonstrating that methane emissions are a major contributor to global climate change and disruption. Further, in passing the CLCPA New York recognized that consumption of fossil fuels (and not simply geographic boundaries) is what matters in addressing the climate crisis. New York wisely banned the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to develop shale gas in our State. But since the time of that ban, the use of fossil natural gas has risen faster in our State than any other in the Union. Methane emissions from this use of shale gas are high, but much of that occurs outside of our boundaries in the nearby states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Through the CLCPA, the citizens of New York are taking responsibility for these out-of-state emission caused by our use of fossil fuels, particularly for fossil natural gas. The way to reduce these emissions is to rapidly reduce our use of fracked shale gas.

Based on the work of David Zaruk I recently wrote an article describing his analysis of the motives of people like Englebright and Howarth who insist on reducing their perceived priority risks to zero.  One of Zaruk’s articles explained that the use of definite articles is “abused by activists needing definite truths to win policy debates on complex problems.”  Dr. Howarth’s monomaniacal vilification of natural gas is well described by that statement.  During the discussions at the Climate Action Council meetings, he constantly referred to the science and his background as a scientist.  Zaruk writes:

In declaring: “This is the science on XYZ” an activist is attempting to own the issue and shut down any discussion or analysis. In a policy framework where there may be uncertainty or grey areas, imposing a “the” provides a wedge between others’ false opinions and “the” truth.

With all due respect to Dr. Howarth, it is appropriate to consider why a “Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology” is qualified to be an expert on methane emissions from fracking.  In my opinion, scientists getting paid to deliver a specific result from trust fund philanthropic organizations, no matter how noble the perceived motive, is the same as the much vilified “tobacco industry” scientists.  The funding stream ends when the results don’t match the funder’s requirements so their arguments are biased.  They may be right but the arguments must be considered in that context and debated.

As a member of the Climate Action Council, Howarth was considered a saint and most unquestioningly accepted whatever he said as gospel.  This deference to his concerns is also apparent in the Integration Analysis and Scoping Plan.  However, his views are not universally accepted.  For example, the Climate Act requires New York to account for upstream emissions from fossil fuel used in the state because Howarth has claimed in a 2020 paper that “Some evidence indicates that shale-gas development in North America may have contributed one-third of the total global increase in methane emissions from all sources over the past decade (Howarth 2019).”  This paper and other similar papers claim that “methane emissions can contribute significantly to the GHG footprint of natural gas, including shale gas” and form the rationale of the Climate Act vilification of natural gas.

Despite the Climate Act mandate to provide a “detailed explanation of any changes in methodology or analysis, adjustments made to prior estimates, as needed, and any other information necessary to establish a scientifically credible account of change” any contradictory information has been ignored.  No comments on the Integration Analysis numbers that formed the basis for the Scoping Plan were mentioned at any of the Climate Action Council meetings.  For example, I noted that there is a high quality, long-term monitoring network that measures methane (Lan et al., 2019) over the period when Pennsylvania shale-gas production increased tremendously.  According to the plain language summary for the report:

In the past decade, natural gas production in the United States has increased by ~46%. Methane emissions associated with oil and natural gas productions have raised concerns since methane is a potent greenhouse gas with the second largest influence on global warming. Recent studies show conflicting results regarding whether methane emissions from oil and gas operations have been increased in the United States. Based on long‐term and well‐calibrated measurements, we find that (i) there is no large increase of total methane emissions in the United States in the past decade; (ii) there is a modest increase in oil and gas methane emissions, but this increase is much lower than some previous studies suggest; and (iii) the assumption of a time‐constant relationship between methane and ethane emissions has resulted in major overestimation of an oil and gas emissions trend in some previous studies.

The fact that the relevant high quality, long-term monitoring network does not show a trend consistent with the work of Howarth is a fatal flaw in his claims.  In addition, those measurements unequivocally support another contradictory analysis by Lewan that concludes his ideas, perspectives, and calculations on methane emissions from shale gas are invalid.  The bottom line is that two pied pipers are responsible for the Climate Act’s irrational war on natural gas.   The Climate Act’s elimination of natural gas is based on the false promises of one biased individual supported by one charismatic motivated politician.  These pied pipers are going to lead New York over an energy cliff.

The Climate Act Has No Clothes

Howarth’s statement went on to claim that the Scoping Plan development process ”brought in a large number of experts and key stakeholders who worked diligently to advise the Council on our Scoping Plan”.  After extolling the success of the stakeholder process and the staff members who contributed, he explained why everything will work out:

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

I believe that this is the fundamental basis for the Climate Act’s aggressive schedule.  The Jacobson analysis approach unfortunately is pretty much the same as the Integration Analysis modeling approach for the Scoping Plan.  Both modeling efforts project future load requirements, then list a bunch of control strategies, estimate the energy they could produce, and presume everything will work together if we cross our fingers.  Neither includes a feasibility analysis that considers reliability, affordability, or cumulative environmental impacts.

Howarth appeals to the authority of peer-reviewed science to provide credibility to the Jacobson analysis. However, science is a continuous process where hypotheses are constantly challenged and confirmed.  In this instance Howarth neglects to mention the analyses that discredit the Jacobson work. 

The Jacobson analysis cited was a continuation of previous work.  For example, in a widely publicized November 2009 Scientific American article, Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, suggested all electrical generation and ground transportation internationally could be supplied by wind, water and solar resources as early as 2030. However, other contemporary projections were less optimistic. Two examples: the2015 MIT Energy and Climate Outlook has low carbon sources worldwide as only 25% of primary energy by 2050, and renewables only 16% and the International Energy Agency’s two-degree scenario has renewables, including biomass, as less than 50%.

Howarth’s statement cites a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013) that he and Jacobson laid out a decade ago.  He says that “In that peer- reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro.”   Table 2 from that report follows.  This analysis includes power from exotic resources such as waves, geothermal, tidal turbines, and concentrated solar power but no energy storage.  It is significantly different than the projections in the Integration Analysis and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook that exclude all the exotic renewable generating capacity, contain significant amounts of energy storage, and include a new dispatchable, emissions-free resource for a set of resources that they think can provide sufficient electrical power for the future.  Furthermore, it claims that end-use power demand can be decreased by 37%.   In my opinion, any analysis that suggests that concentrated solar power is a viable source of energy in New York is simply not credible because that resource would never work in New York.  It is too cloudy to operate enough to cover costs and the environmental impacts would be too great.

There was a formal rebuttal paper to this analysis. The rebuttal paper argued that: 

The feasibility analysis performed by Jacobson et al. (2013) is incomplete and scientifically questionable from both the technical and economic perspectives, and it implicitly assumes, without sufficient justification, that social criterion would not produce even larger feasibility barriers.

Jacobson et al. responded to that rebuttal claiming  that “The main limitations are social and political, not technical or economic.”  Given the significant differences between that analysis and the most recent projections by the organization responsible for keeping the lights on, I agree with the conclusion cited above.  I do not believe that the 2013 analysis includes a defensible feasibility analysis.

Using Jacobson as the basis for the Climate Act transition gets worse.  Unmentioned by Dr. Howarth is that in a 2015 article for a different iteration of the wind, water, and solar roadmap Clack et al, 2017 discredited the Jacobson approach:

In this paper, we evaluate that study and find significant shortcomings in the analysis. In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.

In the scientific process, when issues with your work are noted, the proper response is to provide more evidence supporting your modeling tools, explain why the claimed errors are not errors, and defend your assumptions.  Instead, Jacobson filed a lawsuit, demanding $10 million in damages, against the peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the authors for their study showing that Jacobson made improper assumptions in order to make his claims that he (and by extension Howarth) had demonstrated U.S. energy could be provided exclusively by renewable energy, primarily wind, water, and solar. In my opinion this is an appalling attack on free speech and scientific inquiry but want to emphasize that the bad actions by Jacobson in no way should be attributed to Howarth.

In February 2018, following a hearing at which PNAS argued for the case to be dismissed, Jacobson dropped the suit.  The defendants then filed, based on the anti-SLAPP — for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” — statute in Washington, DC, for Jacobson to pay their legal fees. In September 2022, he was ordered to pay the defendants’ legal fees based on a statute “designed to provide for early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for the exercise of First Amendment rights.” 

In my opinion Jacobson’s attempted lawsuit was because his work could not stand on its own.  Therefore, it is unsettling that it is claimed to be the basis of the Climate Act.  Howarth’s statement explicitly lays out his position for the Jacobson analysis:

We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs.

Unfortunately, Howarth’s technology demonstration is not supportable.  Nonetheless, it forms the basis for the Climate Act schedule and zero-emission electric system by 2040 mandate.  The Climate Action Council has embraced it despite the projections in the Integration Analysis and the NYISO Resource Outlook that reject it.  The Council is denying the majority opinion despite the evidence presented in their own analysis.  The Climate Act has no clothes. 

Conclusion

Pied piper Dr. Robert Howarth stated that “Our final Scoping Plan from the Climate Action implicitly endorses the vision of the Jacobson et al. paper and is quite clear: we can meet the goals of the CLCPA and we can and will do so in way that is affordable and that will benefit all New Yorkers.”  Unfortunately, that vision has no clothes.  The implementing regulations and additional legislation necessary to implement this vision must include independent, unbiased feasibility analyses to determine if the proposed plans can maintain current standards of reliability, will preserve the affordability of energy, and not create environmental impacts to New York State that are greater than the alleged impacts of climate change.  Failure to do so will ensure that the state ends up as badly as the children’s stories.

Update 1/5/2023

I highly recommend the post by Russel Schussler Academics and the Grid because it does a good job explaining why academic studies of the energy system (like the work of Jacobson and Howarth) need to be considered carefully.  It concludes:

Academic research that promotes improvements to the power greed needs to be evaluated carefully with the understanding that the grid is a complex system full of interactions. Changes to the grid involve numerous hurdles. Language is often imprecise. For instance, when readers see a statement stating “Solar and wind could attain penetration levels of X”. What the statement really means is “Based on the factors I looked at and ignoring a vast number of critical requirements I have not looked at, solar and wind may be able to replace fossil resources at a level of X. But probably not.”    Unfortunately, the statement is often interpreted as “Solar and wind can attain penetration levels of X with no significant concerns.”

New York Climate Act Scoping Plan Approved

First published at Watts Up With That

The New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) Scoping Plan framework for the net-zero by 2050 transition plan was approved by the Climate Action Council on December 19, 2022.  This is follow to my earlier description of the process explains some of the rationale for that decision.

Background

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

The December 19, 2022 meeting materials are available at the New York Climate meetings page including the meeting presentation and the meeting recording.  In my previous article I noted that the it was unlikely that the Climate Action Council would not vote to approve the Scoping Plan because all but two of the 22 members were picked by the Democrats who passed the legislation   I wondered if anyone would cast a symbolic “no” vote and was surprised that three members voted against approval.  After the formal vote each member of the Council gave a statement supporting their decision.  This post summarizes those statements in three categories: the Hochul Administration’s position, the at-large members who supported it and the three members who voted against approval.  I am not going to provide any commentary on these summaries.

New York State Leadership Statement

Co-chair of the Climate Action Council and President & CEO of the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority Doreen M. Harris summed up the position of the Hochul Administration.  Her statement said the plan “upholds three main principles of the work that we have advanced throughout this almost three-year process”:

Principle 1: Climate Action

This plan demonstrates that climate action is not only necessary, but that delay is to be avoided. Delaying climate action has been shown to cost New Yorkers more. Therefore, I am in favor of undertaking this action now so that we may begin delivering additional benefits to the New Yorkers we are acting on behalf of.

As we implement our climate actions, certainly we will consider the on-the-ground issues and immediate costs and concerns of citizens and businesses. This is how we implement policy in New York every day and will continue to do so.

But our eye is on the prize and we in New York are wise to take climate action and have it serve as a model to the rest of the country.

Principle 2: Climate Justice

We have a plan that demonstrates how success can only be claimed when we have been able to advance and implement our climate action in a manner that addresses the issues of past decisions.

Historically, underserved communities have not been included in the dialogue and that must change. Underserved communities have also not had sufficient access to clean energy in housing, education and career opportunities and that must also change.

This plan is demonstrating how all disciplines around this table – Energy, Environment, Education, Transportation, Labor, Health, Housing, Industry, Agriculture – have responsibilities to make sure that justice is an equal outcome to the changes in our day-in, day-out business operations.

To put it simply, business as usual is no longer an option.

Principle 3: Climate Economy

I do agree with comments made at previous meetings that the economic opportunities we are looking to create through our climate planning have often been an unspoken undercurrent in this process.

We simply do not succeed if our state economy is not better off for our activities in advancing this plan. I am beyond enthusiastic about the new industries and career opportunities that we are creating in New York. And, as a product of Upstate New York myself I have never seen the level of opportunity that is at our doorstep in all parts of the state.

But that is not to discount the attention that must be paid to New Yorkers – particularly my energy colleagues and workers – that will need to find their new opportunities in our decarbonizing economy. I pledge that I will do what I can to make sure we create all those opportunities and more so that you too can become part of the more than 200,000 jobs that we stand to gain.

At Large Member Supporters of the Scoping Plan

Four Council Members chosen for their ideology and not their energy system expertise all voted to approve the Scoping Plan.  Their comments beg for responses but that will have to wait until another time. 

The statement of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University was very illuminating relative to the motives of the supporters.  It is also very difficult to quote this without responding.  For starters, Dr. Howarth basically takes credit for the law:

Assembly Person Steven Englebright was hugely instrumental in the passage of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act that established the Climate Action Council. I thank him for his leadership on this, and particularly for his support of the progressive approach on greenhouse gas emissions that is a central part of the CLCPA. I originally proposed this to Assembly Person Englebright in 2016, and he enthusiastically endorsed and supported it through multiple versions of the bill that finally led to passage of the CLCPA in 2019. In this accounting for greenhouse gases, a major government for the first time ever fully endorsed the science demonstrating that methane emissions are a major contributor to global climate change and disruption. Further, in passing the CLCPA New York recognized that consumption of fossil fuels (and not simply geographic boundaries) is what matters in addressing the climate crisis. New York wisely banned the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to develop shale gas in our State. But since the time of that ban, the use of fossil natural gas has risen faster in our State than any other in the Union. Methane emissions from this use of shale gas are high, but much of that occurs outside of our boundaries in the nearby states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Through the CLCPA, the citizens of New York are taking responsibility for these out-of-state emission caused by our use of fossil fuels, particularly for fossil natural gas. The way to reduce these emissions is to rapidly reduce our use of fracked shale gas.

He went to claim that the Scoping Plan development process ” brought in a large number of experts and key stakeholders who worked diligently to advise the Council on our Scoping Plan”.  After extolling the success of the stakeholder process and the staff members who contributed he explained why everything will work out:

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

Our final Scoping Plan from the Climate Action implicitly endorses the vision of the Jacobson et al. paper and is quite clear: we can meet the goals of the CLCPA and we can and will do so in way that is affordable and that will benefit all New Yorkers. Our State will be stronger as this plan is implemented, the health and well being of our citizens improved. Economic uncertainties and vulnerabilities will be reduced. Energy security will be enhanced. Our plan is also clear that the #1 priorities are to continue to move towards wind, solar, and hydro as our source of electricity; to move rapidly towards beneficial electrification as a source of heating and cooling in our homes and commercial buildings; and to move rapidly towards beneficial electrification in our personal and commercial vehicles.

Peter Iwanowicz is Executive Director, Environmental Advocates of New York.  His statement included the following comments:

When it was passed by the Legislature, The New York Times called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) “One of the world’s most ambitious climate plans.”  While a bold pronouncement and attention-grabbing headline, it was by any measure an accurate depiction of the legislation. For the CLCPA is legislation written by those on the frontlines of the climate crisis for the benefit of those on frontlines of the climate crisis. At the time a novel approach and a testament to how policy should work.

The CLCPA provided us the promise and—through multiple provisions in the law—the guidance to make the right decisions on the pace and scale of the change needed.  At its core, the CLCPA is about establishing standards into law so that New York does its share to create a planet that is healthy enough for humans to inhabit.  What we learned through our process is that zeroing out all greenhouse gas emissions through a massive transformation of our economy is the only viable and certain path.

What truly makes the CLCPA the most ambitious of plans is the legal assurance that those disproportionately impacted by climate change and poor air quality will have their needs, health, and communities prioritized. That, and we will not leave any worker behind as the transition unfolds. 

What we have developed is a solid blueprint to guide the public and lawmakers on how to secure the promises of our climate law.

The plan shows the pathway forward to provide big benefits, including:

Reducing energy bills

Improving our health and lowering health care costs

Reversing decades of environmental injustice that has caused such harm to those who live, work, and play in our state’s disadvantaged communities.

The costs of acting are not trivial, but the analysis that the council has agreed to revealed that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of acting.  Our plan shows that the quicker the public, the Governor and Legislature move to electrify all sectors, the faster we’ll realize the benefits.

Raya Salter Esq., Principal, Imagine Power LLC is “an attorney, consultant, educator and clean energy law and policy expert with a focus on energy and climate justice.”  Highlights from her statement reflected her background:

The true credit for this Plan belongs to the thousands of activists across New York who have rallied, marched, wrote letters and demanded that this be the people’s plan. In 2019 I stood with activists not far from where we sit now, who shut down then-Governor Cuomo’s office in an action to demand the passage of what ultimately became the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. It is that law that required this process and plan.

The release of this final Scoping Plan is a landmark moment for climate action in New York State. The Plan, if implemented, will guide New York towards a just energy transition and away from fossil fuels.

I was a member of the Council’s Gas Transition Subgroup and worked on the Scoping Plan’s vision to retire fossil fuel plants and decarbonize the buildings sector. It includes a blueprint for the retirement of New York City’s most-polluting fossil fuel plants and their sites by 2030 that will inform broader planning to retire fossil fuel plants throughout the State. This is a win for environmental justice.

The Plan is not perfect. Ideas for market-based “cap and invest,” and biofuels schemes should be rejected if they can’t overcome design flaws and stakeholder concerns. While the state’s climate law should ultimately prohibit the use of most “alternative fuels,” like “renewable natural gas” and hydrogen for use in pipelines on an emissions basis, the Plan is wrong to contemplate these false solutions. Likewise, looks into so-called “advanced-nuclear” are a dangerous distraction.

The Scoping Plan, however, provides a comprehensive approach to reaching the state’s nation-leading climate goals with a focus on justice and equity. The next step is to see it fully implemented.

Dr. Paul Shepson, Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University only offered a short statement:

I will start by noting and asking us to remember that people around the world have not been paying the actual costs of burning fossil fuels to meet our energy needs; and so it is exciting and just and honorable that we are now embarking on a better way, with far fewer collateral costs to the environment, in support of ALL living things on the planet. And so, I enthusiastically endorse the December 19, 2022 final version of the New York State Climate Action Council Scoping Plan. While the Scoping Plan incorporates multiple compromises in wording and orientation, given the diverse and sometimes divergent interests of components of the CAC membership, it is nonetheless a great statement of New York State’s commitment to national and global leadership in the effort to achieve climate stabilization. The Scoping Plan, which supports the implementation of the CLCPA, is a document of which I am proud, and feel fortunate to have been able to contribute to its completion. I am impressed by and grateful for the hard work and dedication of the agency staff members who worked to bring this effort to completion, and the fantastic leadership of our co-chairs and of Sarah Osgood, and want to thank my fellow CAC members for helping to make this process enjoyable, and successful.

Council Members who Voted Against the Scoping Plan

I don’t think it is a coincidence that three members of the Climate Action Council with the most energy system practical experience voted against approval of the Scoping Plan.

Donna L. DeCarolis, President, National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation explained that she supported many aspects of the Scoping Plan.  However her statement described why she voted against it:

Throughout my tenure on the Council, and from my perspective as the President of a utility in western New York serving communities with more than 1.6 million people, I have continued to express concerns about the Scoping Plan’s consumer impacts – for residential homeowners, small businesses and industrial interests in the state – and to offer perspectives and alternatives that will allow us to meet the requirements of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) while preserving reliability (at both the wholesale power generation level and for homes and businesses), energy system resiliency and an affordable transition for consumers. I find the final Scoping Plan falls short in this regard, and there remain significant concerns that could jeopardize the reliable, resilient and affordable provision of energy for the state’s residents and businesses. Specifically, the Scoping Plan:

•             Fails to adequately ensure grid reliability for consumers;

•             Relies too heavily on a single energy source that is prone to weather-related disruption; and,

•             Does not include a full assessment of impacts on consumer energy affordability.

Gavin Donohue, President and CEO, Independent Power Producers of New York also voted against approving the Scoping Plan.  His statement overview is a good summary of his position:

Two years ago, I was appointed to the State’s Climate Action Council. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“CLCPA”) requires an economy-wide approach to addressing climate change and decarbonization, coupled with mandates to deliver 70% of New York’s energy from renewable resources by 2030 and 100% emissions-free electricity supply by 2040 (“100 by 40 target”). The Scoping Plan (“Plan”) was intended to inform New York residents and businesses about measures necessary to meet the requirements of the CLCPA. While the Council is required to update the Plan at least once every five years, it is essential that the inaugural Plan is practical, comprehensive, and contains provisions that send investment signals necessary to achieve the CLCPA’s requirements in a reliable and cost-effective manner. There is no backup plan to this one, and the manner in which the document is structured does not achieve the expectations set two years ago.

I am voting against the final Plan since it remains significantly lacking in these core areas, with additional concerns as discussed below:

Reliability is inadequately addressed, putting New York at risk for economy crushing blackouts and potential public safety risks.

High energy costs for energy consumers and the impact on their cost of living and on the competitiveness of New York businesses.

Insufficient programs to keep benefits of existing renewable facilities in this state.

Leaping to moratoriums and bans instead of developing innovative technologies.

Undefined wording and the lack of a glossary of terms creates ambiguity in some of the Plan’s language.

To help raise awareness for these concerns and ensure that New York’s clean energy transition is done in a more responsible manner, IPPNY, along with the New York State AFL-CIO, the New York State Building & Construction Trades Council, and Business Council of New York State, formed a unique coalition to develop a set of seven principles1 to advance New York’s clean energy goals and establish the criteria to be met by the Plan. This coalition put productive and positive ideas on the table to make the Plan better. Unfortunately, these principles were insufficiently addressed by the Council and the Plan.

Dennis Elsenbeck, Head of Energy and Sustainability, Phillips Lytle was the final Council member to vote against the Scoping Plan.  He explained that he voted against the Plan because “we have fundamentally missed the mark on balancing environmental and economic sustainability, choosing one over the other, thereby limiting the potential to achieve either goal.”  His statement included five key concerns that led to that decision.  The first two concerns are:

Limiting our solutions by losing sight of our climate challenges

We must not lose sight of the challenges we are working to solve. The CLCPA set ambitious climate and clean energy goals to safeguard our state’s resources for future generations while reinvesting in disadvantaged communities. Much of our discussions appeared to be more about shutting down the natural gas transmission and distribution network than on achieving the 85% Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction by 2050. Although they may appear similar, shutting down the natural gas network and achieving the CLCPA’s GHG goals are separate objectives requiring different technical paths. Our focus should be meeting our GHG reduction goals. Any discussions surrounding the natural gas transition should explore, with equal weight, what we are transitioning from and what we may be transitioning to. In my experience, limiting options also decreases the probability of meeting aggressive goals, such as our GHG objective.

Readiness of our Electric System

Much of the CLCPA outlines a transition from a fossil fuel to an all-electric economy. In my opinion, New York’s current electric distribution infrastructure cannot handle the projected 50% increase in demand. I have been adamant throughout Council discussions that without action, such as a PSC Order requiring utilities to respond, the electric distribution system is not equipped to accommodate such a transition without major investment-the cost, timing and implementability of which is yet to be determined. The Scoping Document begins to frame this challenge but falls short on how to resolve the matter_ As with most states and countries, climate initiatives begin on the supply side of the electric system. Large scale renewable energy projects appear to be focused on land (and water) availability and not as much on proximity to load centers resulting ina need for additional transmission investment; we must anticipate the impact of electrification on the distribution system to fully explore non-traditional utility investment by engaging market participants. Subject matter experts such as regulatory agencies, the NYISO, NERC and the electric utilities must be given the opportunity to respond to the Scoping Document before it reaches the Governor’s desk. We should have a more balanced and mandated planning strategy that aligns supply, demand and delivery and advances the CLCPA’s goals and our state’s economic development aspirations for business expansion, attraction and site readiness. We need to resolve the issue of dispatchable supply through continued exploration of the role of long duration storage, nuclear, hydrogen, renewable natural gas and other non-fossil-based approaches to ensure that we have a stable electric system in concert with how we progress with any gas transition strategy.

Conclusion

These statements give a good overview of the positions and motivations of Council membership.  Needless to say, I strongly endorse the statements of the three members who voted against the Scoping Plan.  When I find time I intend to address some of the more egregious claims of the proponents.

The Plan is just a framework that does not include a feasibility analysis to ensure the strategies proposed will maintain current standards of electric system reliability or the reliability of any other energy system components for that matter.  Readers of this blog are well aware of the affordability crises that similar programs at other jurisdictions that are further along are experiencing this winter.  The statements presented include a couple of references to a claim that the costs of inaction are greater than the cost of action.  Earlier this year I posted an article describing the machinations used to make that misleading and inaccurate claim.  I made those arguments to the Council in my verbal comments and followed up with detailed written comments but there was no acknowledgement of them by the Council.  This whole process has been rigged from the start to get the pre-ordained answer.

The proponents of the Climate Act Scoping Plan are bound and determined to dive into this net-zero transition plan.  Unfortunately, they don’t want to check to see if there is any water in the pool.

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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of over 250 articles about the Climate Act is also available.   This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.

New York’s Climate Act Scoping Plan Process Template

This post was first published at Watts Up With That.

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

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

Climate Act Background

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

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

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

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

Public Comments

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

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

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

What’s Next

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Climate Action Council Lost Opportunities

The last several years I have spent an inordinate amount of time evaluating the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) and its legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  Over the past two years I have watched with disbelief as the folks charged with developing the framework for the transition used their positions to push their personal agendas at the expense of the people of New York.  Rather than addressing fundamental overarching issues, the Council has been bogged down arguing about emotional issues and details.  This post describes the lost opportunities for the Council to improve, correct, or clarify the Scoping Plan so that the transition to net-zero will result in an affordable and reliable energy system with minimal adverse environmental impacts.

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

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will outline how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.”  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council is required to finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the 2022. 

The meeting presentation for the 5 December 2022 Climate Action Council meeting described the remaining steps for 2022.  The meeting discussed any final desired revisions to the draft of the Final Scoping Plan.  One slide notes that the “Co-Chairs of the Council may make non-substantive, editorial or grammatical changes deemed necessary for clarity or accuracy of the Scoping Plan (e.g., correcting footnotes) prior to its publication”.  They plan to share the Executive Summary the week of December 5 and the final version of the Scoping Plan for voting will be circulated the week of December 12.  Voting is scheduled for December 19, 2022.  The final Scoping Plan will be submitted to the Governor, the speaker of the Assembly, and the Temporary President of the Senate and made available to the public shortly after the voting meeting on December 19 on the Climate Act website.

In 2023 the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will promulgate enforceable regulations by the end of the year to ensure achievement of the Statewide GHG emission limits. That process will include public workshops and consultation with the Climate Action Council, the Environmental Justice Advisory Group, the Climate Justice Working Group, representatives of regulated entities, community organizations, environmental groups, health professionals, labor unions, municipal corporations, trade associations and other stakeholders.  At least two public hearings and a 120-day public comment period must be provided. Only after this extensive stakeholder process concludes is DEC authorized to propose the 2024 Implementing Regulations.

This is a very ambitious schedule and it will be hampered by the fact that the Scoping Plan is only a framework.  It does not include a feasibility analysis so it is not clear how regulations can be promulgated when the risks to reliability, affordability, and the environment are unknown.  Without that information a regulated schedule for transition components runs the risk of unacceptable impacts.  There are already obvious issues associated with the lack of an implementation plan.  Finally, the cumulative environmental impact statement mandated by state law has not been updated to incorporate the latest estimates of the resources necessary for the net-zero transition.  This post will address these three lost overarching opportunities for the Climate Action Council.

Climate Action Council

The Climate Act established the Climate Action Council to develop the Scoping Plan.  It consists of 22 members that were chosen by ideology not expertise.  There are 12 agency members and 10 at-large members: two non-agency representatives appointed by the Governor, three representatives appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly, one representative appointed by the minority leader of the Assembly, three representatives appointed by the Temporary President of the Senate, and one representative appointed by the minority leader of the Senate.  The upcoming vote on the Scoping Plan must pass by a super majority of 15 votes.  Note that the Governor has 14 appointees on the Council: all the agency heads and two direct picks.

I am very disappointed by the response to comments.  The comment period ran from the beginning of the year to early July, but it was treated as an obligation not as an opportunity to improve, correct, or clarify the Scoping Plan.  If they were serious about addressing comments then the process would have been on-going from the start of the year.  Staff should have been reviewing comments as they came in and categorizing them.  For example, some comments addressed specific non-controversial problems such as typographical errors.  Others addressed specific methodological issues in the Integration Analysis.  Because those had a direct bearing on the veracity of the Draft Scoping Plan they should have been summarized and responses developed for Council review and consideration.  Instead, the staff presented the Council with summaries of the themes of the comments submitted.

The political theater of the public comment period included eleven Public Hearings where 700 people spoke.  Approximately 35,000 comments were received but around 25,000 comments were “potentially the same or substantially similar”, i.e., form letters.  That left on the order of 10,000 unique comments and it was obviously impossible for the Council members to read them all.   As a result, agency staff had to read, categorize, and summarize all the comments.  It appears that agency staff who were charged with reading them did not start in earnest until the end of the comment period so the very real issues associated with processing got short shrift.  Publicly all I saw was presentations to the Council that listed themes of the comments with very little specificity and it is not clear if other documentation was available to the Council.  There was clear bias in the theme presentations – anything inconsistent with narrative was disparaged, downplayed, or ignored.  No comments associated with Integration Analysis methodology or errors were discussed at any of the Climate Action Council meetings and it is not clear that the Council members are even aware that specifc integration analysis issues were raised. 

I think that the Hochul Administration decided early on to treat stakeholder comments only as an obligation.  At one of the Council meetings, it was stated that all comments would be “acknowledged” and they promised to make the comments available to the public.  During the last attempt to develop a New York Climate Plan the State provided a copy of all the comments and a response to each one of them.  I am sure that the State will argue that they were overwhelmed by 10,000 unique comments but on the other hand they are proposing to completely change the energy system of the state and commit New Yorkers to higher costs and significant reliability risks.  I thought that they would do something similar to the previous program but there is no sign that is the case.  The comments are not even publicly available at the same time the revised draft of the Scoping Plan has been finalized.  It is a slap in the face to all the people who submitted comments that it appears that there will be no acknowledgement of their concerns until the Scoping Plan is completed.  What better way to say “we don’t care and you don’t matter.”

Lost Opportunities

Regrettably, the Climate Action Council actions over the last 12 months have concentrated on specific political narratives.  The Hochul Administration’s narrative is appeasement of the constituencies that view as their political base.  For example, in the presentations on comments received, specific comments raised by the Climate Justice Working Group were addressed.  There was no similar acknowledgement of comments from the New York Independent System Operator on the vitally important electric grid.  The revisions to the Draft Scoping Plan appear to be more reflective of the issues raised by the ideologues on the Council than anything submitted by stakeholders.  The staff presentations describing stakeholder comments were quick to acknowledge numbers that supported the ideological narrative and were quicker to disparage anything that did not even if there were many comments making the point.

The result is that the focus of the Council has been on specifics, and only parts of the specifics, but not overarching issues.  This section will describe the lost opportunities for my three major concerns: reliability, affordability, and environmental impacts.

Reliability

One of the more frustrating aspects of the last year is the presumption of expertise by some Climate Action Council members who have no relevant background or experience on topics on which they confidently preach.  Astoundingly, when it comes to electric grid reliability, they have gone so far to state anyone who disagrees with them is a mis-informer.   For example, Paul Shepson, Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, (starting at 23:39 of the 26 May 2022 Council meeting recording said:

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

Robert Howarth, Professor, Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell, starting at 32:52 of the recording) picked up on the same issue.  He said that fear and confusion is based on mis-information but we have information to counter that and help ease the fears.  He stated that he thought reliability is one of those issues: “Clearly one can run a 100% renewable grid with reliability”, although he did admit it had to be done carefully. 

Two quotes from a recent New York Independent System Operator presentation directly contradict them: “Significant uncertainty is related to cost / availability of Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource (DEFR) technologies, as well as regulatory definition of ‘zero-emissions’ compliant technologies” and “Some scenarios do not represent realistic system performance but are helpful in identifying directional impacts and sensitivity to key variables”.  I have explained that is as close as a technical report can come to saying this won’t work as you can get without actually saying it.  For more information about the required but currently unavailable DEFR technologies see my DEFR page.

The recently released NYISO 2021-2040 System Resource Outlook also warns:

DEFRs that provide sustained on-demand power and system stability will be essential to meeting policy objectives while maintaining a reliable electric grid. While essential to the grid of the future, such DEFR technologies are not commercially viable today. DEFRs will require committed public and private investment in research and development efforts to identify the most efficient and cost-effective technologies with a view towards the development and eventual adoption of commercially viable resources. The development and construction lead times necessary for these technologies may extend beyond policy target dates.

I recently gave a presentation describing my skeptical concerns about the Climate Act.  I wrote it as if I were trying to persuade folks like Shepson and Howarth that there are legitimate reliability concerns.  In my blog post summary of that presentation, I described the basics of the electric grid making the point that our electric grid system has taken decades to reach the current reliability levels using resources that can be dispatched as needed.  A system that relies on wind and solar needs DEFR to provide the operators with an option to match load when it is needed the most.  I believe that all the experts who are responsible for electric reliability are concerned that a plan that relies on any technology that is not commercially viable today to replace resources by 2040 has significant inherent risks. 

I am disappointed that the Hochul Administration did not make it clear that debating reliability arguments were beyond the scope of the Council.  They should have accepted the input of the organizations responsible for electric grid reliability that warn there are issues.  Rather than debating whether there are risks, the Climate Action Council should have been discussing what they should be doing about that risk.  The biggest question is whether any reduction in reliability standards is acceptable in order to meet the Climate Act transition to net-zero targets.  Most of the expert concern revolves around the aggressive schedule.  The Council should have discussed whether a conditional schedule based on the availability of DEFR might be necessary and made recommendations for the criteria that should be used to determine whether that is necessary.

Affordability

If the Hochul Administration would bother to ask the public about the Climate Act I suspect the first question that the public wants answered is how much is this going to cost?  It is amazing that the only information provided to the Council and public was the claim that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action based on various versions of the following figure.  There is no documentation for the expected specific costs and emission reductions of the control strategies proposed so very little meaningful critiques are possible. The Council should have demanded better documentation than what was provided.

My comments eviscerating their claim that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action is the most egregious example of irresponsible replies to stakeholder comments.  I made verbal comments at the Syracuse Draft Scoping Plan public hearing on April 26 and submitted written comments that explained why the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action claim based on this figure are misleading and inaccurate.  I followed up later with a more detailed explanation in another submitted written comment. There is no way that the reviewers of the written comments or the members of the Council that were present at the Syracuse can say that they were not aware of my comments.

I am sure that they were ignored because they destroy the narrative.  The claim is misleading because the values shown are relative to the Reference Case rather than a Business-as-usual case that is usually used in these analyses.  The Reference Case includes the Statewide zero-emissions vehicle mandate among other things because it is “already implemented.”  Does anyone really believe that the zero-emissions vehicle mandate is anything but a necessary component of the Climate Act costs?  Excluding that program alone means that $700 billion in costs are not included in the costs for the Climate Act shown in the figure.  Furthermore, the benefits incorrectly count the societal benefits of avoided carbon emissions multiple times.  The claimed $235 to $250 billion in those benefits should be no more than $60 billion. If just those two “tricks” are corrected then the costs far exceed the benefits.

Obviously, this is a basic underlying presumption of the Draft Scoping Plan that the Council should have discussed.  My claims should have been described and the authors of the Integration Analysis should have been held accountable to explain why they did what they did and why they disagree with my arguments.  Only then could the Council discuss and decide whether this claim is appropriate. 

There is a bigger problem however.  Every jurisdiction that has tried to implement a similar transition plan has seen significant price increases of electricity.  The Climate Act Council should have discussed affordability.  If the costs exceed some threshold, then I believe there should be a response.  It is up to the Council to define that affordability threshold. The NY REV Energy Affordability Policy intends to limit energy costs to no more than 6% of income as per the 2016 order from the Public Service Commission. The Council should have determined where the State stands with respect to this metric now. I have tried multiple times to find where the state stands relative to this or any other energy poverty metric but have been unable to find it.  The Council should have demanded that this metric be made readily available so that it can be tracked as the transition plan progresses.  Then their discussion could have turned to the “what if” question if the metric gets worse what should be done.

I am also disappointed that the Council did not work with the Climate Justice Working Group on the topic of affordability for those least able to afford energy price increases.  For all the social justice concerns addressed why wasn’t prevention of regressive energy price increases a priority.  The poor will be hit hardest by any energy price increase and there was nary a peep of concern.  There should have been a push to provide the energy poverty metric determined by census tract so that any disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged communities could be tracked and addressed.

Environmental Impacts

The complete lack of concern relative to the cumulative environmental impacts of the massive amounts of wind, solar, and energy storage required for the net-zero transition is another disappointment. On September 17, 2020 the Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act was released.   I estimated that the Draft Scoping Plan calls for at least 497 more onshore wind turbines, 493 more offshore wind turbines and 602 more square miles covered with solar equipment than was considered in that cumulative impact statement.  In addition, the environmental impacts of battery energy storage were not addressed and it is impossible to project the impacts of the environmental impacts of the dispatchable emissions-free resource that it included in the capacity projections because a technology has not been specified.  I commented that an updated impact statement that addresses all these issues is necessary but this topic was not mentioned as a theme at Council meetings.

The Climate Action Council should have considered whether thresholds for unacceptable cumulative environmental impacts are appropriate.  I believe that without addressing this problem that it is likely that the environmental impacts from the massive wind and solar resource developments will have far worse impacts than anything that can be ascribed to climate change caused by New York emissions but this issue was never discussed.  For example, I project that at least 216 Bald Eagles could be killed every year when there are 9,445 MW of on-shore wind.  There were 426 occupied bald eagle nest sites in New York in 2017.  I am not a wildlife biologist but those numbers indicate to me that there will be major threats to the survivability of Bald Eagles in New York.  I recommended that the Final Scoping Plan include proposed thresholds for unacceptable environmental impacts like this but the comment was never mentioned as a theme at the Council meetings.

There is another environmental impact aspect that I think the Council should have addressed.  I have written enough articles on solar siting issues that I have setup a page that summarizes them all.  I became aware of the particular issues of utility-scale solar development on agriculture after I had a couple of people contact my blog describing issues that they had and suggested that I look into the issue.  The problems that they raised are real, the solutions are available, but in the rush to develop as many renewable resources as quickly as possible, the Hochul Administration has dropped the ball on responsible utility-scale solar development.  Given the massive amount of projected utility-scale solar generation capacity required to meet Climate Act goals the rush to develop solar projects could easily lead to the permanent loss of significant amounts of prime farmland that will hurt farming communities and endanger Climate Act strategies to sequester carbon in soil. 

I submitted a comment to the Council in March calling for a moratorium on utility-scale solar siting in March but that too has been ignored.  Since I started tracking solar development project approvals last year, a total of five applications have been approved for a total of 1,120 MW.  The total project areas cover 14,812 acres and the project footprints total 5,728 acres.  Despite the best efforts of Department of Agriculture and Market staff to prevent the loss of Prime Farmland, these projects were approved and the prime area lost for farming in these projects totals 3,920 acres or 26% of the combined project areas.  This is bad enough but all three Draft Scoping Plan mitigation scenarios call for over 40,000 MW of solar development so imagine how much more prime farmland will be lost if nothing changes.  The Climate Action Council should have addressed this issue and decided whether responsible solar siting guidelines similar to the policy option roadmap for the proposed 10 GW of distributed solar development should be instated.  As a result of Hochul Administration inaction there will be significant and irreplaceable loss of prime farmland and damage to farming communities across the state.

There is another aspect of this that the Council should have addressed.  The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (AGM) “discourages the conversion of farmland to a non-agricultural use”.  With respect to utility-scale renewable energy projects, “The Department’s goal is for projects to limit the conversion of agricultural areas within the Project Areas, to no more than 10% of soils classified by the Department’s NYS Agricultural Land Classification mineral soil groups 1-4, generally Prime Farmland soils, which represent the State’s most productive farmland”.  The latest solar development permit application that was approved included this response to AGM concerns:

In addition, no statutory or regulatory support is cited for AGM’s proposed 10% or less Prime Farmland soil conversion “goal” that “the production of food is more essential than the generation of [renewable] electricity,” or that soil classifications 1-4 should be avoided, even if it means interfering with the development of a renewable facility contracted to sell renewable energy credits to NYSERDA. The Certificate Conditions conserve and protect agricultural lands; it is the responsibility of AGM, and not private solar developers, to encourage the development of farming. That charge cannot be used to thwart the renewable energy goals of the State.

While Council members spent time arguing over their personal agenda issues out-of-state developers are coming into the State throwing up as much renewable energy as possible completely disregarding the New York regulatory agencies charged with protecting the State’s larger issues.  The Hochul Administration has apparently placed renewable development as the highest priority without any assessment of the impacts identified by its regulatory agencies.  The Council should have discussed whether the agencies will be allowed to do their jobs and protect the interests of the state as a whole or will be muzzled and ignored all in the name of the Climate Act.

There is one final point that I raised in comments that the Council has apparently never addressed.  New York’s contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases is too small to expect that there will be any measurable improvement to the alleged effects of climate change on New York.  Moreover, as shown in the following graph New York’s emissions have been consistently less than the global increase in emissions since the early 1990’s.  I found that New York’s emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and that the average increase in global emissions is greater than one half of one percent.  In other words, even if we eliminate our emissions the increase in global emissions will be replace them in less than a year.  Considering this information, Why is not a conditional and measured transition approach warranted?  Why didn’t the Council consider these tradeoffs.

Conclusion

 I spent a lot of time preparing comments on the Draft Scoping Plan trying to improve, correct, and clarify it so that the transition to net-zero will more likely result in an affordable and reliable energy system with minimal adverse environmental impacts.  I have seen absolutely no sign that the Hochul Administration ever had any intention of making changes to the Scoping Plan framework for the future energy system based on comments that ran contrary to their politically driven agenda.  There are no indications that any of my comments made it past the agency staff screening step to reach the Climate Action Council membership for consideration.

The Climate Action Council revisions to the Draft Scoping Plan has focused on details and ignored overarching issues.  If the Council were truly doing its job, they would be working with the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council to determine if the current reliability standards are adequate or must modified for the future electric grid.  If the Hochul Administration was truly worried about disadvantaged communities they would have required the Council to recommend an energy poverty metric and would have set up a clear and transparent tracking system for it at the census tract level.  If Co-Chair of the Council and DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos took his responsibility for the environment seriously, he would have had a cumulative environmental impact statement completed that addressed the Integration Analysis projected renewable resource development levels and had the Council discuss environmental impact acceptability thresholds.  If Co-Chair of the Climate Action Council and President of the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority Doreen Harris wanted her organization to provide objective information and analysis, the issues I raised relative to the misleading and inaccurate cost benefit analysis would have been addressed by the Council. If Council member and Commissioner of the Department of Ag and Markets Richard Ball truly cared about New York farms he would have demanded a responsible solar siting policy for utility-scale solar development that protects prime farmland.

The Hochul Administration’s treatment of the stakeholder comments has been an insult to anyone who took the time to develop comments.  This does not portend well for the public consultation process mandated for next year.  Unfortunately, the ultimate issue is that if the zero-emissions electric grid plan is inadequate because the Council ignored critical issues raised by stakeholders, people will freeze to death in the dark.

Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act Zero Risk Motivations

The last several years I have spent an inordinate amount of time evaluating the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) and its legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  As the implementation outline for the transition to a net-zero evolves I have been struck by the number of people involved with the transition that insist on reducing their perceived priority risks to zero.  That is the antithesis of a pragmatic approach and I have tried to understand where those folks are coming from.  This post describes some recent articles at the Risk Monger blog that address the motivations of those who want zero risks.

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

Climate Act Background and Risk Management

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council states that it will finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the year.  Climate Action Council meetings have included discussions about revisions to the Draft Scoping Plan that emphasize the need for zero risk that is the opposite of a pragmatic approach to the risks of climate change.

I addressed risk management for the Climate Act in August 2020.  That article and this one relies on work done the Risk Monger, a blog “meant to challenge simplistic solutions to hard problems on environmental-health risks”. The author of the blog, David Zaruk, is an EU risk and science communications specialist since 2000, active in European Union (EU) policy events and science in society questions of the use of the Precautionary Principle. He is a professor at Odisee University College where he lectures on Communications, Marketing, EU Lobbying and Public Relations. In my opinion, he clearly explains the complexities of risk management and I recommend his work highly. 

Zero Risk Motivations

Zaruk has argued that the Precautionary Principle, a strategy to cope with possible risks where scientific understanding is incomplete, has led many to rely on the idea that to be safe we have to eliminate all risks as a precaution.  Zaruk explains that the problem is that policy-makers and politicians have confused this uncertainty management tool with risk management.  In the August 2020 article I described his analysis and conclusion of the failures of risk management of the COVID-19 response.  While fascinating on its own, it also provides a cautionary tale relative to New York’s energy policy and implementation of the Climate Act. 

This article describes some of his recent work and its relevance to the Climate Act implementation process.  Over the last couple of months, he has published four relevant articles that I will summarize below:

THE Science, THE Environment, THE Climate… Abusing the “The” in Risk Issues

This article makes the point that the definite article has been “abused by activists needing definite truths to win policy debates on complex problems.” When someone describes, for example, “The” science they are claiming certainty on issues that are anything but certain. Zaruck writes:

Improperly using “the” in front of an abstract noun is part of a game to claim authority, isolate dissenters, simplify an issue and close dialogue. In declaring: “This is the science on XYZ” an activist is attempting to own the issue and shut down any discussion or analysis. In a policy framework where there may be uncertainty or grey areas, imposing a “the” provides a wedge between others’ false opinions and “the” truth. It is staking a claim to colonise a debate. Interestingly, it cannot be applied to issues that don’t allow for simplification or are too broad and complex. We do not speak of “the” food or “the” health without qualifications.

In reality, science is a continuous process where hypotheses are constantly challenged and confirmed.  Zaruk notes that it refers to “a process – a method – not some body of truth”.  When Climate Act proponents invoke “the” science, they are referring to is a consensus view.  Zaruk notes that arguing consensus is “a politicized pronouncement of the state of scientific research” and points out that “A consensus abhors sceptics (ostracizing them as deniers)”.  In reality a scientist must always be skeptical.

Zaruk addresses the definite article related to the environment:

When it is used with a definite article, it implies that the environment is a place … perhaps where biodiversity is being “stored”.  Is it in some location, outside of urban areas, in “nature”? But nature is a proper noun (personified in Mother Nature). As a construct, “the” environment appears to be in peril since we are being told how we can save it by polluting less, using natural products, having fewer children… Saving “the” environment means we all get to go to some Shangri-La, living longer and more harmoniously with nature. With simple views comes simplistic polarisation: natural = good (part of “the” environment); synthetic = bad (part of man).

Oversimplifying humankind in the world relative to nature turns issues into a simple dichotomy. Good vs. bad. safe or unsafe, or us-vs-them. He notes that: “For them, industry, corporations, conventional farmers… are against the environment and they are for it.”  In reality, however the environment is everywhere and affects everything in a complex, unpredictable manner. He explains that activists are playing a divide and conquer approach for their own interests.  He notes that:

Worse, hard-core activists have separated the environment from humanity and potentially beneficial technological solutions. In other words, the only way to “save” the environment is to keep humans away from “it”, to stop doing what we have been doing and let it heal itself (see Charles Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet). These misanthropes welcome any environmental events as fuel for their hatred but their anti-technology solutions are simply “failure by design”.

He also addresses the climate consensus:

But what is a consensus and what does it mean? Formally, a consensus is anything above 50% but that lacks political impact. 100% agreement is impossible but as close to 100% is desirable. Certain scientific facts are rarely disputed and widely accepted (Newton’s laws are not considered theories, certain human limitations are self-evident…) but it is not so much whether a position has been tested and retested, but that the scientific method is a mindset: Always be prepared to question and re-evaluate. By arguing for a consensus – “the” science – the scientific method is being suppressed by some political interest.

If we spoke outside of the definite article – not of “the” science, “the” environment or “the” climate but of scientific issues on environmental concerns and climate evolutions, such transcendence would not be possible. Our discourse would shift from the dogmatic beliefs to pragmatic solutions and ridiculous conclusions would be rightfully challenged. This is not something that activists would want and we have not taken much notice of their linguistic deception.

Zaruk concludes:

I suppose what gets to me the most about these manipulative ideologues making claims on behalf of “the” truth (on subject matters which most science-minded people are struggling to find pragmatic solutions to complex problems) is their sanctimonious moral elitism. That their righteous condemnations were built on an illegitimate consensus, arbitrary divisions, linguistic deceptions and simplification just adds to their hypocrisy. They are pompous zealots cloaked and choked in their own false piety and any respect or trust they will have manufactured from their manipulative wordplay will be short-lived.

The Industry Complex (Part 1): The Tobacconisation of Industry

This essay is the first chapter of his analysis of the vilification of industry by activists that don’t want to weigh the benefits, risks, and costs of alternatives.  He notes that in Europe industry lobbyists are just going through the motions and have given up on the policy process.  This is also evident in New York.  All of the electric generating companies and delivery companies know that there are major challenges associated with the net-zero transition but have not stood up and publicly rebuked the current plans.  The New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council have carefully fashioned their comments and reports to not offend the Hochul Administration’s pursuit of what the experts know very likely won’t work on the schedule proposed. 

Zaruk explains that the tactic of not strongly engaging in the policy process will only work for so long before it is too late to salvage their business.  The electric utility companies are going along with all the risks hoping someone will speak up and demand accountability.  For their part they continue their public sustainability campaigns supporting doing something about climate change and keep their concerns about the transition buried in industry comments that no one reads and the Climate Action Council ignores.  The ultimate question is will be anyone be willing to be the bad guy?

This essay explains how the policy process that has been corrupted by activists demonizing industry will eventually cause problems. Zaruk notes that corporations “do not consider the ramifications – that the constant media assault, reputation, and trust destruction and political denormalization of industry are an existential threat.”  In New York the utility companies publicize their sustainability programs and their own net-zero plans and seem to think that the public will embrace their actions and not treat them like Big Tobacco pariahs.  Unfortunately, Zaruk argues that is not the case.

In Europe Zaruk points that that:

The last decade has seen a rather audacious move by activist NGOs (and some policymakers particularly in Brussels) to ostracise most industries from the public policy dialogue process, create public revulsion and denormalise companies as stakeholders and social actors. This proved to be a successful strategy during the war on tobacco and many of their campaign tools are now simply being copy-pasted to other industries. Some, particularly in the financial industry, have bought into the activist campaigns and are courting public favour by considering a degrowth strategy or a capitalism reset. But can such a beast seriously hide its stripes?

This is exactly what has happened with the Climate Action Council.  Of the 22 members on the Council only two represent industry interests and their input is constantly disparaged.  More importantly, the Hochul Administration has ignored industry expert concerns about all the technical challenges of the net-zero transition.  The Scoping Plan drafts may refer to reliability a lot but there hasn’t been any suggestion that reliability concerns might slow the schedule.

Zaruk describes the concept of industry vilification:

I came across the word “tobacconisation” while reading an American activist conference report, Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control, masterminded by Naomi Oreskes, the Union for Concerned Scientists and the Climate Accountability Institute in 2012 in La Jolla, California. This meeting of lawyers, activists and scientists argued that the tobacco industry lobby did not capitulate in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement because of the science, regulatory restrictions or public outrage. They gave in because of the insurmountable financial costs of endless waves of tort litigation that threatened to wipe out the industry. So the La Jolla Plaintiff Playbook was to take that same strategy and apply it to the petroleum industry – to destroy public trust and then litigate the hell out of oil companies for damages due to climate change until they either go bankrupt or change their business model.

Zaruk describes three key activist tobacconisation strategies being applied against most industries.  The first is adversarial regulation.  This is a strategy where regulatory scientists effect change not through the democratic policy process but through the courts. With respect to the Climate Act at least the legislation was passed by the state legislature, albeit it was written by activists and I doubt that very few supporters understood the risks, costs, and challenges. 

The second strategy is to limit communications and ban advertising.  Activists have a key role in this playbook to raise public outrage against targeted companies.  With respect to the Climate Act, they are aided by a compliant media that parrots the main talking points without any challenges.  If anyone dares to suggest anything that does not hew to the narrative then the activists demean those remarks and smear the speaker.  Zaruk explains that “they need to ostracise the company or industry and exclude them from any role as a societal actor.”

The final strategy is public outrage trumps bad science.  Zaruk describes it as follows:

Public outrage against Big Tobacco meant that poor science (on the health risks of second-hand smoke or vaping) could be glanced over with little scrutiny in the policy process. People were fed up with the industry and just wanted to believe the research claims were accurate.

Opportunistic public officials wanting to play to the loud activist mobs need simply reach for the precautionary safety pin to gain favour without any risk of data or evidence interfering with this strategy. For policymakers, it is a no-brainer to play the precaution card (demanding that the substance is proven with certainty to be 100% safe prior to acting) rather than lock horns with angry activist groups with friends in the media.

Zaruk describes three approaches to fight the zero-risk mentality.  He suggests: “demand a White Paper articulating a rational strategy on the use of the precautionary principle within a clear risk management process.”  His primary concern is the EU policies but New York is following the same approach.  He states that “the hazard-based policy approach has to branded for what it is: irrational.”

His second approach is to call out the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that drive much of this policy.  They “break rules, act without respect for moral principles (unlike industry, very few NGOs have an ethical code of conduct that guides their behaviour) and ignore evidence and data in their campaigns.”  This is problematic with respect to the Climate Act because there are members of the Climate Action Council and the advisory panels who are from prominent climate activist NGOs.

Finally, he points out that the rules of engagement need to apply to all. There is evidence that the NGOs actively supporting the Climate Act have had access to material not available to all.  In no small part that is probably because some Council members are from these NGOs.  The end result is that the regulatory process has become biased.

The Industry Complex (Part 2): The Hate Industry

Zaruk’s second essay on the industry complex describes the business of demonizing industry.  He says:

The last two decades of relentless anti-industry attacks in the media, cinema and policy arenas have taught industry actors to be quiet in public, but they should not be ashamed of what their innovations and technologies have brought to humanity. We are living longer with a better quality of life, direct access to better food while feeding a growing global population, enjoying amazing personal communications devices, travelling faster and safer and accessing information in seconds. But all we hear about industry in the public sphere is resentment and animosity. This is the “Industry Complex.”

Zaruk describes one of the ironies of the professional hatred of industry.  He notes that:

Most of the people throwing brown beans at artwork or spray painting corporate offices are from a privileged class that have never experienced want. The tragic consequence of such “altruistic” zealot demonstrations is that the victims from the policy decisions they are forcing through are the most vulnerable in society, and will never be heard.

In New York primary funding for the ideological war on natural gas comes from trust funds controlled by the ultra-rich who have never experienced work.  I think one of the problems with the privileged and ultra-rich classes is that they have very little experience dealing with real-world problems associated with making things work.  For example, people who have not done much gardening may want to ban pesticides but they haven’t had a bug infestation wipe out a crop.  They have no experience with the fact that reality bats last.

Zaruk points out that the definition of industry has expanded beyond manufacturing.  In particular:

 “Industry” is now an umbrella term referring to any capitalist venture that may involve risk, inequity, and unequal access to markets. This definition makes targets because of shared social justice tenets of anyone associated taking risks. All perceived problems are blamed on “industry” all the while ignoring all the benefits derived from their activities.  The vilification of fossil fuels is a perfect example.  Despite the fact that all metrics show improvements in all quality-of-life metrics with increased use of fossil fuels, their continued use is attacked.

Zaruk gives an example of violence in France related to farming practices and states:

We can’t simply brush these people off as confused and frightened Luddites. Opportunistic activists have twisted reality, converting fear and uncertainty into a dangerously powerful political force. As one commentator on BFM decried: “This is the collapse of rationality “. Not only do they believe their hateful bullshit, they are relentlessly spreading it with a missionary zeal via an unaccountable social media propaganda tool (while the rest of us remain tolerant or uninformed).

This is entirely apropos of the ideologues pushing the net-zero transition in New York.  They can say just about anything and get away with it.  Activist organizations claim that the public is in favor of net-zero but the question is whether that support is limited to a loud minority of activist ideologues? Will the majority be heard when they lose their jobs while their energy and food costs go through the roof?  I have always thought that would be inevitable conclusion but as long as people only listen to what they want to, then they will likely not speak up or place blame incorrectly.

Zaruk explains that many irrational policy decisions are justified by activist anti-industry objectives.  For example, consider the European decisions to shut nuclear reactors even though there is an energy crisis looming.  Zaruk notes that:

In the face of an energy crisis, ecologists are holding firm in Germany and Belgium against keeping some nuclear reactors from being decommissioned arguing that such a move would be supporting big business. Greenpeace claimed shutting down these reactors would give energy production back to the people. Renewables like wind and solar have the image of small, locally produced energy (from nature), enjoying a virtuous halo that belies the big companies making these technologies or managing the big wind parks and solar farms.

I believe that Zaruk’s conclusions of the European solution is consistent with what is happening in New York relative to the net-zero transition.  He notes:

These decisions are not based on issues of cost, efficiency, and benefits, but only on an ideology built on the hatred of industry. Thus, the pro-renewables and pro-organic policies dominating the European Commission Green Deal strategy are not based on facts or research but ideology. They are, in a word, irrational.

The Industry Complex (Part 3): A Return to Realpolitik

In this essay Zaruk argues that it is time for regulators to “start doing their job: making the hard decisions and managing risks rather than promising a world of zero risk to a public that has come to expect simple solutions to complex problems.”  He argues that it is time for a return to Realpolitik: “making the best choices from a finite list of options and circumstances rather than continuing the current approach of false promises that someone else will have to pay for”.

Zaruk explains the concept of Realpolitik:

It is not a new concept. The term “Realpolitik” was in use several decades before Bismarck (commonly referred to as the father of Realpolitik). It was developed by Ludwig von Rochau who tried to introduce Enlightened, liberal ideas, post 1848, into a political world that was embedded in less rational cultural, nationalistic and religious power dynamics (much like the green dogma pushing many Western political spheres today). Realpolitik is often best understood by what it is not: it refers to decisions not made solely on issues of ideology and morality. In other words, Realpolitik refers to pragmatic decisions based on best possible outcomes and compromises (something done when leaders have to face unpleasant realities). Ideologues can easily ignore scientific facts when imposing their power but Realpolitikers will follow the best available science while appealing to reason.

He explains that in Europe as in New York, politicians shutdown nuclear facilities to placate the loud, activist minority but did not consider “pragmatic alternatives or a rational transition plan.” He said “a Realpolitiker would not have shut down the nuclear power stations until the energy transition was safely achieved.”  It gets worse in New York because the Department of Environmental Conservation is proposing regulations that require existing fossil-fired generating plants to consider compliance with the Climate Act as part of their operating permit extensions.  It is possible that they could shut down those facilities before alternatives consistent with the Climate Act are operating.

Zaruk argues that “we should aim for safer rather than safe.”  He points out:

Safer is something risk managers in industry measure and continually strive for while safe is an emotional ideal that cannot be measured or, for that matter, reached. We will never have safe, but we can always strive for safer. This is where a more pragmatic, Realpolitik approach would be more successful than any arbitrary risk aversion.

Realpolitik accepts that a perfect world is a pipe dream. Freed from the shackles of seeking the totally safe, they get to work on risk management, reducing exposures to as low as reasonably possible (achievable) and making the world (products, substances, systems…) better – safer. They seek a world with lower risks for more people, not zero risks for all people. We need to turn away from the fundamentalist activist mindset and adopt a more industrial, scientific approach (as seen in product stewardship): of continuous improvement, constant iteration, and technological refinement.

Conclusion

Zaruk provided a good summary of his work and if you replace Brussels with Albany, it is apropos to New York:

It is patently clear industry actors in Brussels cannot continue to do what they have been doing. Brussels has far too many activists with special interests solely dedicated to seeing industry and capitalism fail. They have money, passion and limited ethical constraints as they execute their objectives with missionary zeal. This series on the Industry Complex has tried to show how anti-industry militants have worked to destroy trust in all industries (excluding them from the policy process and equating the word “industry” with some immoral interpretation of lobbying) and using the same tactics that worked with the decline of the tobacco industry. Using the emerging communications tools to create an atmosphere of fear and hate, these activists have successfully generated a narrative that the only solution to our problems is to remove industry, their innovations and their technologies. And their solutions are getting even more extreme (with, for example, 6000 environmental militants recently attacking an irrigation pond project on a farm in France for being too “industrial”). Policymakers, perceiving these loud voices as representative, have adopted the path of virtue politics rather than Realpolitik (of policy by aspiration and ideology rather than practical solutions relying on the best available evidence).

The Climate Act and the transition plan embodied in the Draft Scoping Plan is full of examples where the perceived risks of fossil fuels are comprehensively addressed but none of the risks of the proposed alternatives are addressed.  The most glaring Climate Act example is the requirement that the full life cycle and upstream emissions associated with fossil fuels must be considered to eliminate those risks.  Those considerations are not applied to wind, solar, and battery technologies.  The benefits of the current energy system are ignored and the risks of the net-zero future system minimized.  This approach will not work out in the best interests of New York.

Climate Action Council Response to Comments Is Worse Than I Thought


The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) has a legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  I have not posted recently on the Climate Action Council response to Draft Scoping Plan comments because I have been on vacation and have not bothered to follow the most recent meetings.  Based on what I observed at the September 29 meeting (presentation and recording), there appears to be no consideration of any comments that are inconsistent with the Hochul administration transition narrative.

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

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to the meet the goals to the Council.  Those strategies were used to develop the integration analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that tried to quantify the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council states that it will revise the Draft Scoping Plan based on comments and other expert input in 2022 with the goal to finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the year.

Last May I posted an article describing the composition, responsibilities and consideration requirement mandates in the Climate Act related to the Climate Action Council.  Based on the activities of the Council from the start of 2022 I believe that the Climate Action Council is going through the motions of addressing public comments.  If the public comments were truly going to be considered then I think it would have been appropriate to make comment distillation an on-going process from the get go.  At the time I also said I didn’t see why the comments had not been posted to the website.  It would be relatively easy to just provide a list of comments as they were received and there is no reason why they couldn’t also list the comments in some broad categories.  As I write this on October 9, 2022 three months after the close of the comment period the comments have not been posted to https://climate.ny.gov/ as promised last May.  This post highlights further indications of the gameplan from the September 29, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting.

Reliability

I have spent enough time educating myself about the operations of the electric grid over the last 40 years that I am well aware of reliability challenges for the New York electric system.  More importantly, I know people who are subject matter experts and they all share my concerns that the Integration Analysis and the Draft Scoping Plan have not adequately addressed the feasibility of the transition in the mitigation scenarios.  On the other hand, some of the more vocal members of the Council have downplayed reliability as a concern and have gone so far to claim that those concerns are misinformation. 

I have previously written that the Climate Action Council has not confronted reliability issues raised by New York agencies responsible for keeping the lights on.  The first post (New York Climate Act: Is Anyone Listening to the Experts?) described the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) 2021-2030 Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP) report (appendices) released late last year and the difficulties raised in the report are large. The second post (New York Climate Act: What the Experts are Saying Now) highlighted results shown in a draft presentation for the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook that all but admitted meeting the net-zero goals of the Climate Act are impossible on the mandated schedule.  Recently I wrote about the “For discussion purposes only” draft of the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook report described in the previous article and the concerns raised.  Most recently, I detailed the differences between the Resource Outlook and the Draft Scoping Plan Integration Analysis and recommended that those differences be reconciled in a public forum.

At the September 29 Climate Action Council meeting Gavin Donohue asked about dispatchable emissions-free resources (DEFR) at 1:05:25 of the meeting recording.  DEFR refers to a generating resource that can provide power as needed to keep the lights on.  It is a critical component but there is no commercially available resource that meets the specifications.  The main point of my articles described in the previous paragraph is that the organizations responsible for electric system reliability have raised questions that have not been addressed including DEFR viability.  Donohue apparently agrees with me and asked about the risks of not specifying exactly how DEFR will be used in the transition and how that could affect costs.  The response by the lead modeler, Carl Mas, was that they did look at it at the end of last year and found that the costs would change.  He acknowledged that it has not been resolved whether the hydrogen would be used in combustion turbines or in fuel cells and that should be resolved.  Donohue pressed him that it needs to be resolved as part of the process.  Mas said that it was a previous sensitivity from last year and it is “good to bring it back up”.

Later in the same meeting Dennis Elsenbeck pointed out (2:58:40 of the meeting recording)  that the NYISO Resource Outlook raised issues that haven’t been addressed in the Draft Scoping Plan.  He asked how do we reconcile what the subject matter experts are saying versus what’s in the scoping document.  He also asked if that is a conversation that we need to have during this process or are we beyond that?  The Climate Action Council Executive Director, Sarah Osgood, said “it would be interesting to hear from other council members and said she didn’t know if the modeling analyses were comparable. She said that “at this late stage” it might be difficult to compare the analyses and wasn’t sure whether it would be worthwhile. 

Carl Mas said they could determine whether there is enough time to do at least a little side by side analysis of some of the key issues.  At this point he said there is uncertainty as to, for example, imports vary between the analyses.  He noted that the NYISO did adopt one of the Integration Analysis load scenarios in their analysis.  He said the Integration Analysis team worked very hard to ensure that there was “at least some commonality between the scenarios”.  He did admit that not all aspects were similar but suggested that they might be able to find some time to evaluate differences between scenarios and the projections. 

Elsenbeck pointed out that stakeholders outside of the Hochul Administration see the NYISO reports and “the first thing that comes to mind is my resiliency is going to go to hell”.  He said the Council could just not look the other way.  Mas responded that there is agreement that by 2040 there is a need for firm dispatchable resources but ignored the implications of the state’s reliability depending on an unproven resource.  Then he went on to claim that it is critical to work with the NYISO.  Elsenbeck then pointed out that the Council is going to be voting on a Final Scoping Plan that has not been fully vetted with the NYISO.

In my opinion, these conversations are very troubling.  At no time during his presentation or his questions did the Integration Analysis lead modeler mention any issues raised in the stakeholder comments.  Were it not for the fact that my comments and the comments submitted by the NYISO and New York State Reliability Council did raise substantive issues I would have to believe that all the stakeholder comments agree that the unelected bureaucrats who have no reliability responsibilities have produced a perfect transition plan that can guide the future New York energy system. 

Sarah Osgood’s response to the Elsenbeck question is especially troubling.  The Executive Director of the Climate Action Council didn’t know if the generation resource modeling analyses critical to the success of the transition plan were comparable to the analyses by the NYISO.  She said that “at this late stage” it might be difficult to compare the analyses and wasn’t sure whether it would be worthwhile.  This demonstrates an astounding lack of awareness by the Climate Action Council leadership that has frittered away months without addressing this issue.  Now they claim they cannot reconcile the results because it is too late.  You can bet the ranch that when this implodes that the NYISO will be blamed for not speaking up. 

Integration Analysis

Carl Mas gave an update on the Integration Analysis at 24:25 of the meeting recording.  Ostensibly the updates address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as well as analyses that look at a high fuel price sensitivity and a high technology cost sensitivity.  In order to prove the benefits are greater than the costs the focus is on the net benefits metric especially as it relates to their societal cost benefit test. 

The following slide summarizes the IRA integration analysis update.  The modeling addresses two key aspects: what IRA funds may be available that could come to New York to offset costs and to translate that into how it “layers into our net benefit or overall analysis”.  I interpret that to mean that because of the emphasis on net benefits that means that the analysis assumes that IRA funds directly offset New York costs so the net benefits increase. 

The modeling updates purportedly will also consider the ramifications of IRA funding on adoption technologies.  For example, the IRA might fund more electric vehicle subsidies so that the adoption rate will increase.  One of my criticisms of the Draft Scoping Plan is that there are enormous presumptions that the public will acquiesce to, for example, purchase more expensive and less suitable electric vehicles simply because the Climate Act says they have to.  Any increase in adoption levels because there is more money available increase this type of speculation level further.

While I have not listened to every minute of every meeting, I am pretty sure that Carl Mas has not suggested that there were any relevant stakeholder comments on the Integration Analysis that need to be addressed.  I provided extensive comments on the Integration Analysis cost–benefit analysis and recommended that the Integration Analysis provide the costs, benefits, and expected emission reductions for every control measure proposed.  There are three possibilities why those comments have not been raised: the comment reviewers never provided any relevant comments to the modelers, the comments were received and have been ignored, or that they won’t be mentioned until the end so the response will be there is insufficient time to address them.  All three excuses are unacceptable given the responsibilities of the Climate Action Council that are mandated in the Climate Act.

Implementation

Based on comments from the leadership of the Climate Action Council their perception of the Scoping Plan is that it is just an outline of how the future energy system will transition to meet the net-zero targets.  I have heard repeated suggestions that particular implementation issues didn’t need to be addressed as part of this process because there will be an opportunity for stakeholder input when regulations are proposed that implement the changes needed.  The announcement that New York is going to implement a 100% zero-emission vehicle mandate by 2035 raises the question whether that is an appropriate approach.

At 12:29 of the meeting recording Jared Snyder announced that on the morning of this meeting that Governor Hochul announced that the Department of Environmental Conservation “will adopt the Advanced Clean Car rule by the end of the year.  That rule will require all sales of light-duty cars and trucks to be zero emissions by 2035 which means that all vehicles have to be either battery electric of fuel cell powered.  He said “that rule implements legislation that Governor Hochul signed a year ago in September 2021 that required 100% sales of electric vehicles by 2035”.  He also said that “it implements a recommendation of the Draft Scoping Plan to adopt the advanced clear cars rulemaking”.   

This portends what I predict will be the future for the regulatory process.  In this instance there is a law in place that mandates going forward whatever the cost, whatever the impacts, and whatever the feasibility.  What I think will happen is that when other regulations are proposed the rationale will be “it was a recommendation in the Scoping Plan so it has to be done” whatever the cost, impacts, or feasibility.  The fact that the Scoping Plan did not address the cost, impacts, or feasibility is immaterial to this line of reasoning and will be conveniently forgotten in the response to comments.

Response to Questions

The focus of the Hochul Administration response to comments has been on the concerns of the Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) and particular members of the Climate Action Council.  For example, at 22:28 of the meeting recording Peter Iwanowicz asked about the New York State Thruway Service Area Redesign and Redevelopment Project that is presently underway.  He asked if anyone in the administration could give the Council an idea what’s going on with respect to fast charging at the Thruway rest stops stating: “I was personally blown away at driving into one of the newly reopened ones to see no electric vehicle charging there”.  He went on to say that “it’s pretty shocking to me, one as a member of the Council but two as an EV driver not to see chargers in the newly reopened station charging”. 

On the list of issues confronting the state’s energy transition this is pretty low on the priority list.  We have already seen the leadership of the Council claim that there is too little time to reconcile the electric grid projections made by the NYISO with the Integration Analysis.  Nevertheless, a Council member thinks that it is appropriate to cut into the precious little time available for the Council to consider the entirety of the energy transition with his personally biased question.  More importantly this is just an example of a recurring theme throughout the Scoping Plan process.  Any question from the CJWG and certain members of the Council gets a response no matter how removed from the issue at hand. 

In this case the response was “Let us get back to you”.  Left unsaid is we don’t have that information at our finger tips because we are trying to consider the entirety of the energy system.  The ultimate response may suggest that this is indicative of a bigger problem but I bet that the Administration answer will not raise that type of issue.  I will address this in more detail in a future post but a quick read of the summary of the New York State Thruway Service Area Redesign and Redevelopment Project shows that the Frequently Asked Questions explains that they are working on it:

Additionally, under direct guidance and consultation with the New York Power Authority (NYPA), Empire plans to implement a passenger vehicle electric charging program at all Service Areas to further New York’s goals of reducing emissions and expanding electric vehicle infrastructure across the State.

Conclusion

From what I have seen at the recent Climate Action Council meetings the promise to consider public stakeholder comments on the Draft Scoping Plan is being ignored.  There is no indication that the Hochul Administration intends to reconcile the differences in the generating resource projections in the Integration Analysis and any of the NYISO reports or the risks involved in depending upon a resource that is not currently available.  It is scary that the leadership of the Climate Action Council does not even appear to comprehend that addressing those issues would be appropriate and even if they can be convinced now, they will plead that there is insufficient time.  Furthermore, it is not clear to me that the Administration even intends to tell Council members that there any comments that question any of the fundamental assertions in the Draft Scoping Plan.

It is clear that the Hochul Administration’s primary goal in the Integration Analysis is political posturing – in particular to “prove’ that the benefits are greater than the costs.  It is also clear that the leadership of the Council is catering to particular members of the Climate Action Council that represent the interests of political supporters.  Given that Council legal mandate is to prepare a plan “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda” the focus should be on that instead.

The legal mandate for the Scoping Plan is that it “shall inform the state energy planning board’s adoption of a state energy plan”.  The Climate Action Council membership is generally lacking the background, experience, and education to inform technical matters such as the fuel mix of the future generating system. Thomas Sowell said “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong”.  To ignore the analyses of the subject matter experts who are responsible for reliability is insane.

As noted in this article I have written multiple articles about the differences in generating resource projections and dependency upon the magical dispatchable emissions-free resource.  When I submitted my draft scoping plan comments that explained why I believe the differences between the Draft Scoping Plan and the NYISO analyses have to be addressed in a public forum I thought it inconceivable that the response to comments would ignore the state’s experts.  At no time did I believe that the response to comments would meaningfully address my personal comments but ignoring the state’s experts is why I believe the response to comments is going to be worse than I thought possible.

Climate Act Hubris

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) has a legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  The Hochul Administration subscribes to the belief that a collective crossing of fingers will ensure that the electric system that has taken decades to develop can transition to a system not using the fossil fuels, the foundational building block of progress and prosperity, by 2040.  This post highlights comments by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos that epitomize this position.

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

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to the meet the goals to the Council.  Those strategies were used to develop the integration analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that tried to quantify the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. The Climate Action Council states that it will revise the Draft Scoping Plan based on comments and other expert input in 2022 with the goal to finalize the Scoping Plan by the end of the year.

The Independent Power Producers of New York hosted a conference on September 14, 2022 that included a couple of relevant presentations.  Writing in the Albany Times Union, Rick Karlin described the presentation by Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Mehling argued that given the affordability and reliability issues evident in Europe at this time, that a Plan B backup using existing technology and natural gas is an appropriate approach.

According to Karlin’s article, Commissioner Seggos disagreed:

“I don’t think there is a Plan B,” state Environmental Commission Basil Seggos told those at the gas conference.  Seggos echoed the thoughts of environmentalists who believe the need to reduce carbon emissions in order to fight global warming is so urgent that the shift to renewables needs to push ahead, even though there will be costs. “I think we are on the edge right now when it comes to global emissions,” Seggos added.

 I will address this supposition in this article.

Some Ohm Truths About the Great Green Fantasy

After I saw the Seggos quotes I was prompted to write this article when I read an article by Peter Smith in Quadrant outline that made points about similar efforts in Australia.  Smith introduces his concerns:

No sane person should be fooled. A climate-cult madness has infected governments and their activist agencies; exemplar, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Delusions of grandeur is a common manifestation of madness. Climate cultists fit the profile. Clothing themselves in virtue, they strut about proclaiming that they can save the earth from a fiery end if only we would give away the foundational building block of progress and prosperity; namely, fossil fuels.

New York is different inasmuch as the New York market operator, New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), is not driving the Climate Act bus.  Instead, the state’s politicians passed legislation that gave the keys to the Climate Action Council’s politically-chosen ideologues.  Seggos is co-chair of the Climate Action Council and has gone to the COP26 Glasgow meeting and the signing ceremony for the Inflation Reduction Act to tout New York’s climate virtues. 

I maintain the biggest shortcoming of the Climate Act is the lack of a feasibility analysis.  Smith describes a similar situation in Australia:

As Stephen Kruiser puts it, they act “as if we can go from Point A to Point Z without hitting any of the 24 points between them. They truly believe that they can mandate the future.” As I said, delusions of grandeur; epitomised by AEMO and its “2022 Integrated System Plan.” A plan having the delusional and grandiose objective of engineering “a true transformation of the NEM [National Electricity Market, which excludes WA and NT] from fossil fuels to firmed renewables.”

New York just assumes that they too can get from the current electric system to a zero-emissions electric system by 2040. 

The recently released NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook report notes that:

  • Significant new resource development will be required to achieve CLCPA energy targets.
  • To achieve an emission-free grid, dispatchable emission-free resources (DEFRs) must be developed and deployed throughout New York. It is important to note that the lead time necessary for commercialization, development, permitting, and construction of DEFR power plants will require action much sooner if this timeline is to be achieved.
  • As the energy policies in neighboring regions evolve, New York’s imports and exports of energy could vary significantly due to the resulting changes in neighboring grids.

In Australia “The plan calls for the supply of electricity to almost double by 2050; from just under 180 terawatt hours (TWh), to 320 TWh.”  New York load is projected to increase less by 2040, it increases slightly less from 146 TWh to at least 245 TWh.  Smith goes on to explain that the amount of electricity needed when transport, industry, offices and residences are electrified is extraordinary and claims that the official projections are underestimated.  To meet this demand Australia and New York both increase the amount of wind and solar in operation tremendously.  So much in fact that the presumption that the equipment can be permitted, fabricated, and constructed in the time frames required strains credulity.  Both Australia and New York need to build significant amounts of transmission with the same limitations and the same concerns apply to this build out too.  New York has studiously avoided any estimates of consumer costs but surely the build out of all this infrastructure will be enormous.  Smith also points out that the labor needed to install all this infrastructure will also be a constraint.  Smith concludes: “To wit, it’s a case of delusions being not delusional enough. Increased madness required.” 

Conclusion

Seggos believes that “the need to reduce carbon emissions in order to fight global warming is so urgent that the shift to renewables needs to push ahead, even though there will be costs”.  The entire intent of my blog is to discuss tradeoffs between environmental and energy policies.  The political agenda of the Hochul Administration precludes an honest discussion of any tradeoffs.  They just ignore anything inconsistent or inconvenient. 

Seggos claims we are on the edge with respect to global emissions.  If New York’s emission reductions could truly make a difference it would be one thing, but the State has never offered an estimate of the Climate Act effect on global emissions or global warming.  I have found that New York’s emissions are only 0.45% of global emissions.  The change to global warming from eliminating New York GHG emissions is only 0.01°C by the year 2100 which is too small to be measured much less have an effect on any of the purported damages of greenhouse gas emissions.  Furthermore, whatever New York does to reduce emissions will be supplanted by global emissions increases in less than a year.

The Draft Scoping Plan repeats the consensus story that imminent climate catastrophe is inevitable.  However, those claims are based on model assessments and not observations.  A recent paper concludes that “on the basis of observational date, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet”.

Pushing ahead with renewables no matter what risks the reliability and affordability of the system.  The comments by the NYISO and the New York State Reliability Council raise significant concerns that the Climate Action Council has to date ignored.  As noted, the State has so far refused to produce any estimate of consumer cost estimates but, surely, they will be significant.  I fear that the ideological agenda of the administration will prevent an open and transparent discussion of these issues before serious impacts occur.

Initial Impression of Climate Action Council Response to Public Comments on Transportation

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) has a legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050.  The comment period for the Draft Scoping Plan that outlines how to meet that goal recently ended.  The last two meetings of the Climate Action Council have offered some insights into the plans to address those comments.  I am not encouraged by what I have seen so far.

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

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act establishes a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to the meet the goals to the Council.  Those strategies were used to develop the integration analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that tried to quantify the impact of the strategies.  That material was used to write a Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment at the end of 2021. Since the close of the public comment period in early July staff has been updating the Integration Analyses and working through the comments to provide the Council with summaries for their review.

In this article, I will describe the response to the Transportation sector comments relative to the comments I submitted on this sector.  I submitted two comments on electric vehicles.  I noted that the Integration Analysis is making assumptions about future zero-emissions transportation implementation strategies without providing adequate referenced documentation.  The other comment addressed electric vehicle costs.  I also submitted a comment on high-speed intercity passenger rail transportation that is relevant to the September 13, 2022 Climate Action Council Presentation that will be the focus of this article.

Transportation Comments Response

The discussion of Transportation Summary Themes at the September 13, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting included “Several commenters suggested investments in rail infrastructure, to connect cities and move freight”. 

The staff recommendations stated that few changes in response to public comments were needed.  Relative to the railroad theme they noted that: “Emphasize that improving intercity passenger rail service, including High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail transportation, and strengthening the freight rail system is an important component of New York State’s economic future and environmental sustainability.”

I submitted a comment on high-speed intercity passenger rail transportation that is ignored in this response.  The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), in cooperation with the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) completed the Empire Corridor Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2014 to “evaluate proposed system improvements to intercity passenger rail services along the 463-mile Empire Corridor, connecting Pennsylvania (Penn) Station in New York City with Niagara Falls Station in Niagara Falls, New York.” This is the primary reference for Draft Scoping Plan Scenario 4 high speed intercity passenger rail transportation upgrades.

I evaluated the transportation sector vehicle miles traveled difference between Scenarios 2 and 3 compared to Scenario 4 due to rail passenger improvements.  Note that this basically proposed the development of a dedicated high-speed rail corridor between Buffalo and Albany.  The Draft Scoping Plan claims that “Incremental reductions from enhanced in-state rail aligning with 125 MPH alternative detailed in Empire Corridor Tier 1 Draft EIS” will provide a reduction of 200 million light duty vehicle miles at a per unit cost of $6 per mile or $1.2 billion.  I estimated that the only valid cost for the difference between the rail alternatives is $8.4 billion and that it would only provide a vehicle mile reduction of 64.7 million miles. 

Discussion

There are multiple issues associated with the presentation response to comments.  At the previous meeting the State acknowledged that they had not worked their way through the comments submitted as attachments.  My comment was submitted as an attachment so it is possible that it has not even been reviewed yet.  In my opinion, the only way to make detailed comments is through an attachment so I think many of the substantive comments may not have been evaluated yet.

It is not clear whether this presentation was only meant to be an overview of the comments received.  Alternatively, it could represent the entirety of the discussion of the comments for each of the sectors (Transportation, Agriculture and Forestry, Land Use, Local Government, and Waste) discussed. My specific comment was not mentioned and it is not clear if this was because they have not reviewed it yet or whether it was inconvenient for them to respond.  If this is supposed to be the final word on the comments for each of these sectors then it is clear that the stakeholder public comment process is just window dressing and that no meaningful revisions will be incorporated.

At one point the Council promised to provide all the comments for public review.  Of course, the odds that the comments will be provided in format that enables it to be evaluated easily is another thing.  I believe all the comments should be available by topic in a searchable formatted document.

I believe my specific comment has to be addressed on two levels.  On the first level, I identified a problem with their numbers.  Shouldn’t they have to respond to that error?  While it might not rise to the level where an explicit Climate Action Council decision is needed, I do think the Council has to decide what level of high-speed intercity passenger rail transportation improvements they are recommending. The response to this topic at this meeting “Emphasize that improving intercity passenger rail service, including High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail transportation, and strengthening the freight rail system is an important component of New York State’s economic future and environmental sustainability” is just a bunch of words devoid of meaningful comment.

I also noticed a bias in the comment descriptions.  For example, “Generally, there was strong support for electrification policies in the draft plan” compared to “Some commenters expressed concern over the costs of electrification, particularly in rural communities and for larger vehicles” inappropriately indicates the rates the level of support based on numbers.  The value of a comment is the quality of the argument not the number of people who submitted the argument.  The statement “Several detailed comments supported the development of renewable and/or low-carbon fuels, while many commenters expressed opposition, describing such fuels as a ‘false solution’ “ is particularly problematic because it suggests that no matter how strong the technical argument, if enough ideologues using slogans oppose it that the Council is going to side with the slogans. 

Conclusion

I am not surprised that my comments were ignored.  However I am terrified that the Council may ignore the comments submitted by the New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Reliability Council.  There was no mention of any need to reconcile the Integration Analysis with the recent NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook report.  The projections are significantly different and the citizens of New York deserve to have them reconciled clearly and transparently.  It is entirely inappropriate for the state to be committed to go down a transformational energy policy path based on the work of unelected bureaucrats who are not responsible for keeping the lights on without incorporating the input of the state’s experts who are responsible.

Question for the Climate Action Council

The implementation plan for New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 is being developed.  Here is a question for the Climate Action Council.  How do you expect to avoid the affordability and reliability issues evident in Europe occurring as their net-zero policies are implemented?

I have written extensively on implementation of the Climate Act and submitted extensive comments on the Draft Scoping Plan.  Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that efforts will make a positive impact at an affordable cost.  Based on my analysis of the Climate Act I don’t think that will be the case.  I believe that the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy outstrip available renewable technology such that the transition to an electric system relying on wind and solar will do more harm than good.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Climate Act Background

The Climate Act established the Climate Action Council who is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that will “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”.  They were assisted by Advisory Panels who developed and presented strategies to meet the goals.  Those strategies were used to develop the Integration Analysis prepared by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants that quantified the impact of the strategies.  That analysis was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan that was released for public comment on December 30, 2021 and will be finalized in 2022.  The Climate Action Council has set up three subgroups to consider alternative fuels, economy-wide strategies to fund the transition, and gas system transition.  While I do not deny that these are worthwhile topics, I am disappointed that reliability, feasibility, and affordability are not being explicitly considered.  This is of particular concern given the energy affordability and reliability crises underway in Europe.

Great Britain Affordability

Net Zero Watch publishes a newsletter that describes climate and decarbonization policies, what they cost, whether they are delivering and what their real impact is on the environment.  Based in Great Britain they are following the affordability impacts of current net-zero energy policy.  The latest reports from their newsletter are disturbing.

The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (OFGEM), supporting the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority, is the government regulator for the electricity and downstream natural gas markets in Great Britain.  The energy price cap is a backstop protection from the government for people who default onto their supplier’s basic energy tariff. Ofgem calculates the cap level that suppliers must apply to these tariffs. 

According to the Independent, August 27, 2022, the “United Kingdom faces ‘catastrophe’ after energy bills soar 80% amid warning price cap could hit £7,000”.  The article notes that:

Regulator Ofgem has revealed that the price cap, which is supposed to protect consumers from unfair energy bill increases, will rise to £3,549 per year for an average household – more than three times last winter’s level. That is expected to leave some 8.9 million households in fuel poverty, charity bosses have said, with a “real risk” that children will go hungry as Britain’s poorest see almost half of their income taken up by gas and electricity.

There also were articles describing the impacts beyond the obvious energy poverty ratepayer effects.  The energy caps apply only to consumers but not, for example, health care providers.  It has been reported that:

The chief executive of Care England said providers faced a staggering 683 per cent increase in energy costs during the past 12 months, with bills expected to rise again early next year. For gas and electricity, the costs were £660 per bed, per year, this time last year; this week, care providers have to pay an astonishing £5,166.

The Daily Telegraph writes that this is not just a problem for low-income people.  In an interview with the Telegraph, Nadhim Zahawi said that “support cannot be confined to families on benefits and added that gas prices could remain punishingly high for two years.”  He went on to say: “If you are a senior nurse or a senior teacher on £45,000 a year, you’re having your energy bills go up by 80 per cent and will probably rise even higher in the new year – it’s really hard”.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal brings home the impacts of these high prices.  It notes that the latest price increases bring the average household’s annual bill to £3,549 and that the median household income is £31,400.  That means that for half of the households if their average annual budget for central heating, cooking, and keeping the lights on is equal to the average that the percentage of income spent on energy is over 11%.  New York has an energy poverty target of only 6% so if the adverse affordability effects of New York net-zero implementation are anyway similar then we can expect a major increase in the number of households in energy poverty.

German Reliability

Writing at No Tricks Zone, P. Gosselin translates an article from Die kalte Sonne.  He explains that Germany’s massive, subsidized expansion of electricity generation from renewable sources has squeezed conventional generation units out of the market. Two experts warn of growing grid instability.

Quo Vadis, Grid Stability?

The conclusion of the two is very alarming. Here, too, not a word about “storage facilities galore. Here, reality clashes with the wishful thinking of some green energy protagonists who think there is enough storage and that all that needs to be done is to change the “mindset,” as Patrick Graichen put it.

The continued expansion of highly volatile renewable energy sources and the further displacement of more conventional generation units from the market are making the power grid increasingly sensitive to weather-related fluctuations. Unusual weather phenomena such as dark doldrums pose significant challenges to the security and stability of supply to the power grid. The largely intermittent output of solar and wind farms does not correlate with fluctuations in electricity demand.

The excess supply of renewable energy should be buffered during periods of low electricity demand, and the stored capacity should be injected back into the grid during periods of high electricity demand when fewer renewable sources are available. However, large battery energy storage systems, which have been promisingly announced, are still not on the horizon due to their low capacity and maturity, as well as their exorbitantly high cost of deployment.”

At this point, at the latest, some people’s ears should be ringing:

As long as economic energy storage systems are not established, even proponents of the current direction of Germany’s energy transition will have to admit that reliable conventional power plants will be needed for a long time to come.”

This article is also an urgent reading recommendation for politicians and experts who like to be interviewed.

The authors also conclude:

The importance of nuclear power plants for security of supply in base-load operation and their and their ability to operate the grid in parallel with renewable renewable energies have been demonstrated. The nuclear power plants appear to be well suited for the energy made to achieve the future goal of carbon-free power generation. However, the Atomic Energy Act foresees an early end to nuclear power generation by the end of 2022.”

So without nuclear power in Germany, grid stability problems are a future certainty.

Conclusion

At the August 23, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting some of the comments were discussed.  Among the 35,000 comments submitted were around 900 with attachments including “some still being reviewed and summarized”.  There was no mention of a couple of points I raised in comments about specific Climate Act mandates including one for the Climate Action Council  to consider results from other jurisdictions and another for the New York Public Service Law  § 66-p. “Establishment of a renewable energy program” safety valve conditions for affordability and reliability.  In order to address both mandates the Climate Action Council should respond to the question: How do you expect to avoid the affordability and reliability issues evident in Europe occurring as their net-zero policies are implemented?

I don’t think there is any way to avoid the issues seen in Europe.  So, I have to wonder whether the Climate Action Council is willfully or naively ignoring the energy crisis as it unfolds.  In any case failure to account for the issues will ensure that New York goes over the same cliff.