NYS Proposed Amendments to Vehicle Emission Standards

I lost track of this proposed regulation so I did not let my New York readers know that there was the opportunity to comment on the proposed rulemaking that will incorporate the State of California’s Advanced Clean Cars into New York’s regulations.  This is the implementing regulation for the state law to switch to zero emission vehicles.  It is unlikely that it will do any good but it would be appropriate to comment and express any misgivings you have about the requirement for a battery electric vehicle.  The comment deadline is 5 pm, Monday, March 6, 2023. Written comments may be submitted by e-mail to air.regs@dec.ny.gov. Put Part 218 in subject line.

This is another article about my evaluation of the Climate Act 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.

Part 218 Advanced Clean Cars

The rulemaking is described at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Air Pollution Regulatory Revisions webpage.  It explains that:

Emergency Rulemaking – Parts 200, General Provisions, and 218, Emissions Standards for Motor Vehicles and Motor Vehicle Engines. The emergency/proposed rulemaking will incorporate the State of California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulation. The proposed amendments establish new zero emission vehicle (ZEV) and low emission vehicle (LEV IV) standards intended to reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) and NMOG + NOx (non-methane organic gas + oxides of nitrogen) emissions from light- and medium-duty on-road vehicles.


The ZEV amendments include an annual ZEV sales requirement for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), minimum technical requirements, ZEV assurance measures, regulatory flexibilities, and simplified credit accounting. The proposed ZEV amendments will apply to 2026 and subsequent model year light-duty passenger cars (PC), light-duty trucks (LDT), and medium-duty passenger vehicles (MDPV). Starting with model year 2026, OEMs, will be required to deliver an increasing annual percentage of their sales that are ZEVs or PHEVs. This percentage requirement will start at 35% in model year 2026 and increase to 100% of sales for 2035 and subsequent model years. The proposed LEV IV amendments will apply to 2026 and subsequent model year PC, LDT, and medium-duty vehicles (MDV).


The Notice of Emergency Rulemaking will be available in the December 28, 2022 issues of the State Register and the Environmental Notice Bulletin. A virtual hearing is scheduled for March 1, 2023 at 1 pm. The comment deadline is 5 pm, Monday, March 6, 2023. Written comments may be submitted to NYSDEC, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-3254, ATTN: James Clyne, P.E., or by e-mail to air.regs@dec.ny.gov.

My Comments

For what it is worth I had been accumulating material for comments so I manage to put together something to submit.  I include a link to my comments and describe them below.  I submitted comments to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) because the proposed rulemaking ignores feasibility, affordability, and life-cycle environmental impacts.  The primary rationale for this emergency rulemaking is to implement the control strategy recommendations included in the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) Scoping Plan.  The Climate Action Council deferred a feasibility analysis of reliability, affordability, and environmental impacts to the rule-making phase.  The result of this irresponsible avoidance of responsibility is a regulation that could very well not be in the best interests of New York

New York agencies are begrudgingly following their mandates for public comments.  In the past each rulemaking had its own web page with a bit more description.  More importantly the web page would have links to each component of the regulatory package.  Admittedly they often would only be in html format so trying to develop comments required downloading and reformatting.  This proposed amendment refers to a single pdf format file Part 218 Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) that includes all the components in one massive file.  If they wanted to encourage public input then they would have everything on a dedicated web page and include links to the pdf format components.

It gets worse because the rationale provided in the proposed amendment documentation is insulting.  The program boils down to California did it so we can too.  There is no consideration of the potential that circumstances in New York differ from California.  The two-county Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020 and can be crippled by winter storms. Blizzard conditions with winds excess of 70 mph and heavy lake effect snow in the Buffalo area on Christmas Eve 2022  resulted in devastating impacts across the Buffalo area.   Battery electric vehicles (BEV) mandated by this proposed rule do not do well in those conditions.  Thirty-nine people died in this storm and more surely would have died if electric vehicles were the only option available.  California has no similar major metropolitan areas subject to this type of extreme weather so relying on their analysis so suggesting that it will work here too is disingenuous at best.

The Climate Act mandates a full life-cycle analysis of fossil-fuel use.  On the other hand, the life-cycle impacts of the so-called “zero -emissions” alternatives are ignored.  BEVs may not have emissions when operating but the volume of materials needed to access the rare earth elements necessary for those technologies certainly have environmental impacts when mined and processed. The vehicles mandated by proposed Part 218 require between 1,000 and 2,000 percent more minerals to deliver the same amount of power and on the order of 400% more metals to manufacture the same vehicles.  The consequence of this is that many more materials will be required.  The Part 218 Regulatory Impact Statement should address where the materials necessary for BEVs come from and whether there will be sufficient quantities available for the New York transition. 

I also addressed disposal of electric vehicles.  The modern gas automobile is one of the most highly recycled products in human existence. After initial creation, each vehicle has an average life cycle of about 20 years. At that point it is dis-assembled and its parts are sold used in a global used parts chain, which is the most profitable part of the whole life cycle.  In comparison, a Tesla has a plastic body, and a battery assembled from thousands of 18650-type cells, so it is extremely hard to recycle. The body can’t be recycled.  According to recent Tesla documents the batteries are “valorized” by grinding them up and putting their waste in construction cement. In contrast, Toyota/Honda hybrid batteries are easily re-used and recycled.

The rationale for this action is that “zero-emissions” vehicles in New York are good for the planet.  However, the proposed amendment simply exports emissions elsewhere.  I referenced a horror story of the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park where the danger and pollution involved in mining nickel is at a rapid pace to meet the demand for EVs.  I asked how this proposed amendment comports to the environmental justice cornerstone of the Climate Act.

The regulatory documents associated with the Proposed Amendment do not address a critical feasibility problem.  DEC has to address BEV charging requirements and existing on-street parking.  Who is responsible for providing the on-street charging infrastructure for car owners that do not have a dedicated charging resource?

The proposed amendment mandates that starting with model year 2026, car makers, will be required to deliver an increasing annual percentage of their sales that are ZEVs or PHEVs. This percentage requirement will start at 35% in model year 2026 and increase to 100% of sales for 2035 and subsequent model years.  Despite tremendous publicity and extensive subsidies nothing can obscure the fact that EVs remain extremely costly for consumers and offer unproven maintenance and reliability records.  I will never buy a BEV because I cannot afford a car that does not offer the same flexibility and convenience as an ICE vehicle.  Moreover, I do not want to deal with home charging infrastructure and the safety risk of Lithium-Ion battery chargers below my bed room.  What happens when the public does not buy enough of these vehicles to meet those quotas? 

Conclusion

This is another instance of a regulation that affects most New Yorkers but only a few are aware of its existence.  I expect that the climate activists will mobilize their acolytes to submit comments supporting the rule-making.  DEC will count the pro and con comments and consider implementation as a mandate from the public because more comments in favor than against will be submitted.  If everyone was aware of this I am sure there number of people opposed would far outweigh the number in favor.

Worse is the complete disregard for rigor in the analysis.  The primary rationale is “California said they could do it and we agree”.  I did not spend sufficient time to develop comments on the California analysis but given the record of the state’s response to my comments it would only have been a waste of time. 

I encourage readers to send a comment.  I think it is sufficient to say that the state needs to prove that this is feasible, affordable, and doesn’t cause more environmental harm than good.  They have not done that work so this should be delayed until they can prove their case.

Micron Electrical Needs and the Climate Act

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

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

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

Micron and the Climate Act

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellenbogen Fact Check and Alternative Approach

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

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

Ellenbogen responded with the following analysis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He concludes his writeup:

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

New York Assemblyman Al Stirpe Town Hall Budget Meeting

I attended a town hall meeting for the 2023 Budget sponsored my New York State Assemblyman, Al Stirpe, to explain why I am opposed to any legislation in the budget supporting implementation of any aspect of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act  (Climate Act).  The meeting format did not lend itself to presenting anything as detailed as the comments I wanted to make.  This post documents the Climate Act-related issues that came up at the meeting and the comments I wanted to make.

This is another article about my evaluation of the Climate Act 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.  Moreover, the costs will be enormous and hurt those least able to afford increased costs the most.  I have worked over 40 years as an air pollution meteorologist in the electrical generating sector. After retirement, I served as Director of the Environmental Energy Alliance of New York, and later started the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog that debates the challenges of balancing the risks and benefits of environmental issues. 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.

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.  New York environmental policies have lost sight of the need to balance the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives.  I submitted comments on the Climate Act Scoping Plan and have prepared a layman’s summary of issues associated with the Climate Act.  Those resources provide more backup to the references linked in the following.

Meeting Notes

Assemblyman Stirpe took an hour to go through the proposed legislative budget.  He went through quite a bit of detail of all the components.  The Climate Act component of the discussion was no more than five minutes of the presentation.   

I got to the meeting a little early and there were people talking about the effects of the Climate Act, especially the electric vehicle mandate and the gas ban.  Clearly, they were not in favor of either component.  Someone in the audience made the point that most people still aren’t aware of the ramifications of the Climate Act and suggested that more outreach would have been appropriate.  His response insinuated that people were getting wrong information from the fossil fuel interests.  Several other people made comments that were skeptical of the rationale of an existential threat from climate change and others complained about components of the Climate Act. 

Mr. Stirpe incorrectly responded to a couple of comments.  To the climate change is not that big a deal comment he said he has been shoveling less snow and insinuated that climate change was to blame.  I pointed out that he did not know the difference between weather and climate.  Near the end of the meeting he insinuated that air quality has not improved much since 1970 and the first earth day.  I was tempted to respond at the meeting but by that point everyone was tired and I thought he wouldn’t appreciate my response.  The fact is that according to the EPA Air Quality Trends website Northeast air quality improvements from 2000 to 2021 have been significant:

  • Carbon monoxide has decreased 61%;
  • Nitrogen dioxide has decreased 35%;
  • Sulfur dioxide has decreased 90%;
  • Ozone has decreased 16%;
  • Particulate matter has decreased 31%; and
  • Inhalable particulate matter has decreased 43%.

Air quality is much better than it has been in the past.  This misunderstanding is particularly problematic for a New York legislator because Environmental Justice activists have lobbied policymakers into accepting the PEAK coalition conclusion that “Fossil peaker plants in New York City are perhaps the most egregious energy-related example of what environmental injustice means today” and are putting tremendous pressure on the legislature to act.  However, the analysis that forms the basis of that conclusion is flawed.  The health impacts claimed in that analysis are for ozone and inhalable particulates that are secondary pollutants that form far downwind of the adjoining neighborhoods of peaking power plants. 

My Climate Act Comments

I gave Assemblyman Stirpe a document with the following information.

I am opposed to any legislation implementing the Climate Act because the Hochul Administration has not done a feasibility analysis that proves that the Scoping Plan list of control strategies can maintain current levels of reliability, will be affordable, and will not do more environmental harm than good.  I have written over 290 articles on my Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog about the Climate Act and I am convinced that the state is on a dangerous path.

New York greenhouse gas emissions are less than one half percent of global emissions per year but global greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing by more than one half percent per year on average since 1993.  Anything we do will be supplanted by emissions elsewhere in less than a year.  That does not mean we should not do something but it does mean that we can take the time to do it right.

The New York Independent System Operator recently published “Information for Policy Makers” that summarizes their activities “to design and implement the operations, planning and market enhancements necessary for the grid in transition.”  I have noted that their work describes the situation well.  New York electric gird is a complex system that has evolved over many years. It is a highly reliable system using proven hardware and procedures. Reliance on unprecedented levels of wind and solar has not been demonstrated successfully anywhere. The energy storage system technology to account for intermittent wind and solar has not been tested on the scale necessary for the proposed use. These facts make it an ill-conceived plan that will likely end in blackout.  Furthermore, the rush to electrify everything is not safe.  What will happen when everything has been converted to electricity and there is an ice storm?

The Scoping Plan does not include a detailed accounting of the costs to consumers. The administration claims that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action but that claim is misleading and inaccurate. It is misleading because the Scoping Plan costs of action only includes the costs of the Climate Act and do not include all the costs to meet the net-zero by 2050 target, including vehicle electrification. It is inaccurate because it double counts the societal benefits of reductions.

The Climate Act only accounts for fossil fuel life-cycle costs and environmental impacts while ignoring the lifecycle impacts of wind, solar, and energy storage technologies. Those “zero-emissions” resources may not have emissions when generating electricity but the volume of materials needed to access dilute wind and solar energy and the rare earth elements necessary for those technologies certainly have environmental impacts when mined and processed. The large number of wind turbines and solar panels will also create massive amounts of waste when they are retired. Furthermore, the cumulative environmental impacts of thousands of wind turbines and square miles of solar panels has not been evaluated for the levels proposed in the Scoping Plan.

Opposition to Following Legislation

My submittal noted that I oppose the following legislative proposals.  I oppose all components of the NY Renews Climate Jobs, and Justice package including the Climate and Community Protection Fund as well as the following specific bills:

A4592/S2016 “NY Home Energy Affordable Transition Act”;Aligns utility regulation with state climate justice and emission reduction targets; repeals provisions relating to continuation of gas service; repeals provisions relating to the sale of indigenous natural gas for generation of electricity.  

A4306/S732 DEC to establishes a carbon dioxide emissions price for electric generation from carbon-based fuel; creates a carbon dioxide emissions fund; distribute revenue to low-income individuals and communities and to support mass transit. 

A920/S562 the “all-electric building act”; provides that the state energy conservation construction code shall prohibit infrastructure, building systems, or equipment used for the combustion of fossil fuels in new construction statewide no later than December 31, 2023 if the building is less than seven stories and July 1, 2027 if the building is seven stories or more.  

A279/S4134“New York State Build Public Renewables Act”; requires the New York power authority to provide only renewable energy and power to customers; requires such authority to be the sole provider of energy to all state owned and municipal properties; requires certain New York power authority projects and programs pay a prevailing wage and utilize project labor agreements.

S4854/no same as. Requires agencies to develop recommendations regarding  the  establishment  of microgrids at critical facilities.  

A4393/S2007. Establishing a one hundred percent clean renewable energy system for electricity by two thousand thirty-four; such energy system shall include solar, wind, geothermal and tidal sources.

A4866/no same as. “fossil fuel facilities replacement and redevelopment blueprint act” requires NYSERDA, DPS and DEC to prepare a blueprint to guide the replacement and redevelopment of the oldest and most-polluting fossil fuel facilities and their sites by 2030.

A411/S3581 Declares a climate emergency and places a ban on fossil fuel infrastructure projects but shall not apply to repair or maintenance of existing infrastructure.

Support for following legislation:

I listed the following two legislative proposals as ones I think will help address my concerns.

S2030/no same as Directs the public service commission in consultation with NYSERDA to conduct a full cost benefit analysis of the technical and economic feasibility of renewable energy systems in the state of New York and to compare such directly with other methods of electricity generation within nine months after the effective date and every four years thereafter.

A4999/S2474 Directs the state energy planning board to conduct a study of the technical and economic feasibility of a one hundred percent renewable energy system and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Conclusion

I don’t think Assemblyman Stirpe understands just how poorly informed he is because of the mis-information in the Scoping Plan and the constant propaganda from the media and climate activists.  I had offered in the past to give him a briefing but he refused.  I do not expect to hear anything as a result of the comment I gave him.  If did respond I would ask him to put pressure on the Hochul Administration to give a full accounting of the costs, do a feasibility study of the effects on electric system reliability and do a cumulative environmental impact analysis of the Scoping Plan recommendations for wind and solar resources.  Until the Scoping Plan is proven to be feasible, it is inappropriate to support any implementing legislation.

NYS Senate Republican Smart Energy Solutions

According to a press release: “New York State Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt, members of the Senate Republican Conference, and statewide energy stakeholders today unveiled a package of smart energy policies to pursue a cleaner energy future. The plan puts affordability and reliability first for New York ratepayers, in sharp contrast to some of the radical proposals coming out of Albany.”  I am highlighting a link to the press conference where this is announced because Richard Ellenbogen did a masterful job explaining his concerns about the net-zero transition plan and they match my worries.

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 or anyone else for that matter.  As a result, I am convinced that it will fail.

I recently published Richard’s analysis of New York’s energy storage plan as a guest post.   Ellenbogen is the President of Allied Converters  that manufactures food packaging.  His facility is about 55,000 square feet and does a lot of manufacturing with heat to seal the bags, all electrically driven.  The facility has solar panels and uses co-generation.  He explains:

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

NYS Senate Republican Conference for Smart Energy Solutions

The event was an announcement for “smarter energy solutions”.  The Republicans are calling for several alternatives and affordable amendments to the state’s current course of action, including:

  • Independent cost studies and full transparency;
  • Supporting diverse energy sources;
  • Keeping needed power supply online to ensure the reliability of New York’s power grid; and
  • Repealing and opposing anti-market mandates on consumers.

Richard was introduced as during the press conference to describe his technical concerns.  He explained that he was representing an engineer’s perspective of the Climate Act Scoping Plan.  I think his comments are a nice short and sweet description of the underlying technical issues that make the net-zero transition a very risky proposition that will cost too much for the state to afford.  His email to me said:

The following link is to my presentation at today’s Senate Republican Press Conference at the Capital in Albany.  I want to thank them, and Senator Mattera in particular, for offering me the platform to present reality to a wider audience before State policy causes major damage to our energy systems, public health, and to the state economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQd-QlkDCbk

The full press conference is at the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9E3bSeutAg&t=4s

His presentation referenced a bar graph and the energy storage report.

During the question and answer period Richard said he made a power point presentation that explained his concerns about the proposed net-zero energy transition before the Climate Act was signed.  That document and other information is available on his website

Conclusion

There are a few minor issues I might quibble with but overall this is a great summary of the issues facing New York with this plan.  I only hope that it wakes some people up.

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.

Here is What New York Climate Activists Want

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

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

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget Climate Act – Funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So where’s the misinformation?

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

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

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

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

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Buildings

The Gothamist article describes proposed policies for buildings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Energy

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

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

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

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

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

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

The article goes on:

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

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

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

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget – Transportation

The Gothamist article describes proposed policies for transportation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Climate Act Hidden Costs for Upstate New York

I know that there are enormous hidden costs to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act  (Climate Act).  A friend sent information that lifts the veil of secrecy enough to get an idea how much money is involved and the impacts to Upstate New York

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.  Moreover, the costs will be enormous and hurt those least able to afford increased costs the most.  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.

Transmission Upgrades

North American Wind Power gleefully reported that the “The New York State Public Service Commission has authorized a large number of upstate transmission system upgrades that are designed to alleviate bottlenecks in the grid and allow a higher penetration of renewable energy.”

The article noted:

In its decision, the commission approved requests from Central Hudson Gas & Electric, New York State Electric & Gas, National Grid and Rochester Gas and Electric to develop a total of 62 local transmission upgrades that will reduce congestion in the Capital Region, the southwest and northern region of the state.

“New York is making significant upgrades and additions to the state’s existing transmission and distribution systems to integrate new large-scale renewable energy projects into the state’s energy supply, and we must ensure that these investments are smart and cost-effective,” says commission Chair Rory M. Christian. “The commission recognizes the need to address congestion in certain parts of the state where renewable energy is already bottled and where additional generation projects are in development or likely to be developed in the future.”

In total, the projects will clear the way for 3.5 GW of capacity for clean energy – enough for more than 2.8 million average-sized homes.

“In order to keep moving towards our clean energy goals, New York needed grid investments in these three locations,” comments Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “This will allow electricity generating projects to deliver the clean power they make and will facilitate additional renewable energy projects coming online.”

The projects, which will cost an estimated $4.4 billion, include upgrades to existing transmission lines, upgrades to existing substations and the construction of three new substations. The utilities plan to complete the projects between 2024 and 2030.

Upstate Reality

It is not unexpected that the renewable energy crony capitalists are happy to have these projects funded,  For ratepayers it is just the tip of iceberg.   The transmission upgrade projects will cost $4.4 billion to support 3.5 GW of renewable energy or $1.26 billion per GW. An additional 2.8 GW is expected by 2025 and another 4.1 GW by 2030 according to Scenario 2 of the Scoping Plan.  The ratepayers will be on the hook for a total of $13.05 billion through 2030.

The New York Public Services Commission Case for this decision is 20-E-0197.  The order approving the transmission upgrades is available for download here.  According to the order there is a pressing need for transmission upgrades in three areas of Upstate New York:

The Commission found these areas to be characterized by “the presence of existing renewable generation that is already experiencing curtailments and a strong level of developer interest that exceeds the capability of the local transmission system. ”The Phase 2 Order identified these areas as Hornell and South Perry (NYSEG/RG&E), the Watertown/Oswego/Porter subzone (National Grid), and an area of southeastern New York consisting of facilities owned by NYSEG, National Grid, and Central Hudson. The same locations –referred to in the Phase 2 Order and here as the Areas of Concern (AOC)–are also identified by the New York Independent System Operator, Inc.

In other words, the renewable developers are unable to build as much wind and solar as they want because there are transmission constraints getting it out of those areas.  Because New York City cannot ever hope to install enough wind and solar generating capacity within the City the primary destination of this power is New York City.  However, the Public Service Commission is saying that it is the responsibility of the upstate utilities and their ratepayers to subsidize the renewable developers who want to build in those areas and sell downstate.

The specific impacts are described starting at page 39:

Table 6 below shows the estimated impacts, in dollars annually, of the AOC Projects for typical customers assuming the above noted energy price increase estimates. Table 7 below shows the estimated ratepayer impact, as a percentage, of the dollar increases depicted in Table 6 above for each of the major electric utilities. The percentage increases shown in Table 7 are based on 2021 typical total bills, with the exception of NYSEG and RG&E Industrial High Load Factor (HLF) customers, which is based on 2019 data – the most recent data available for these utilities.

Conclusion

The numbers are clear.  Upstate bills will rise much more than the bills for Con Ed ratepayers in New York City. The bill impacts are nearly double for most of the Upstate ratepayers.  It hardly seems equitable that rural New Yorkers have to bear the brunt of the impacts of the massive renewable development necessary for New York State’s Climate Act but also have to disproportionately pay for the privilege of having it in their backyards.

Making Climate Policy Work, RGGI, and New York Cap and Invest

One of my pragmatic interests is market-based pollution control programs.  In this post I am going to address the take on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)  in an influential book Making Climate Policy Work.  There are also important lessons to be heeded as New York considers a Cap and Invest program.

I follow and write about the RGGI market-based CO2 pollution control program for electric generating units in the NE United States.   I have extensive experience with air pollution control theory, implementation, and evaluation having worked on every cap-and-trade program affecting electric generating facilities in New York including the Acid Rain Program, RGGI, and several Nitrogen Oxide programs. 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.

Making Climate Policy Work Overview

The description of the book states:

For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis – the use of market-based programs – hasn’t been working and isn’t ready to scale.

Danny Cullenward and David Victor show how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied. Reforms can help around the margins, but markets’ problems are structural and won’t disappear with increasing demand for climate solutions. Facing that reality requires relying more heavily on smart regulation and industrial policy – government-led strategies – to catalyze the transformation that markets promise, but rarely deliver.

The authors recognize the enormity of the challenge to transform industry and energy use on the scale necessary for deep decarbonization.  They write that the “requirements for profound industrial change are difficult to initiate, sustain, and run to completion.”  Because this is hard, they call for “realism about solutions.”  Cullenward and Victor recommend clear thinking and strategy as opposed to “Efforts spent tilting at ephemeral, magical policy solutions waste scarce resources that should instead be invested in things that work.”  The goal of their book is to explain how market-oriented climate policies have fallen far short and how they might be modified so that they work.

RGGI Results

One of my first posts at this blog is still in the top ten viewed articles: Academic RGGI Economic Theory of Allowance Management.  In that article I argued that economic value theory for an allowance market fails to account for the behavior of the affected sources.  In particular, the owners and operators of sources treat the allowances primarily as compliance instruments and not as financial assets.  The important difference is that the academic economic theory holds that affected sources are looking years down the road but in reality, there is no such long-term time horizon for affected sources.  Compliance entities decide to buy allowances based on their expected operations in the period between auctions or, at most, the entire 3-year compliance period including a small margin for operational variations and regulatory compliance.  Contrary to theory there is little attempt to make the allowances a profit center.

I have regularly evaluated RGGI performance on this blog.  Last December I evaluated the 2020 RGGI Investment Proceeds report that describes the results of RGGI investments over the entire region.  I found that since the beginning of the RGGI program CO2 emissions have been reduced more than 50% but that RGGI funded control programs have been responsible for only 5.6% of the observed reductions.  In late December I did a similar analysis of just the New York investment proceed results and found that in New York since the beginning of the RGGI program to 2021 CO2 emissions have been reduced 39% but the reduction was 47% until the State shutdown the Indian Point nuclear station.  The RGGI funded control programs have been responsible for only 16% of the observed reductions.  The main reason for the reductions in RGGI and New York State has been fuel switching to natural gas unrelated to RGGI.

I also recently evaluated New York’s operating plan that guides the investment of RGGI proceeds.  In the next fiscal year, the operating plan has 30 programs but only two programs claim direct CO2 reduction savings.  Over the years 2013 to 2021, the total investment for those two programs is $565 million and the claimed savings are 1,684,616 MWh and 861,442 tons of CO2e with a calculated cost benefit of $656 $/ton.  I classified each program relative to six categories of potential RGGI source emission reductions.  The first three categories cover programs that directly, indirectly or could potentially decrease RGGI-affected source emissions.  Those programs total 45% of the investments.  I also included a category for programs that will add load that could potentially increase RGGI source emissions which totals 27% of the investments.  Programs that do not affect emissions are funded with 21% of the proceeds and administrative costs total another 7%.  In summary, even though the ostensible purpose of RGGI proceeds is to reduce emissions from RGGI-affected sources, less than half of the investments expect to do so.

Even though many RGGI proponents claim the program has been a success, my work shows that depends on how success is defined.  If success is defined as significant cost-effect emission reductions from affected sources then that is not the case.  If success is defined as a functional market-based system that provides proceeds then it is a success.  There is no question the program components work well.  The misuse of RGGI funds for affected source emission reductions is not the fault of the system but the politicians who control fund disbursement. 

Making Climate Policy Work and RGGI

I wondered if this book talked about RGGI and how they rated its results relative to my analyses.  I went through the document searching for and documenting every reference to RGGI to see whether I agreed with their description and evaluation of the program.

The first chapter describes the vision and the reality of carbon reduction market-based policies.  Three example policies are described, including RGGI.  The RGGI description states:

RGGI’s vision is the most realistic and generally applicable precisely because it is the most pragmatic about what is able to be achieved. The program encompasses states with varied political interests around climate change, ranging from the highly ambitious to the cautiously engaged. It covers only the electricity sector – where the technologies for cutting emissions are most mature – with transparent and predictable program rules. Even in the power sector, however, RGGI is not the only or even main show in decarbonizing its participating states’ electric grids. Other policy programs are having a bigger impact, including state renewable portfolio standards; subsidies that keep nuclear power plants, which are prodigious suppliers of zero-carbon power, from shutting down; and other government-managed regulatory and procurement efforts all aimed at making the RGGI states’ power infrastructure less carbon-intensive. In many respects, the RGGI system represents the high-water mark for what subnational markets can do: RGGI supports the broader goal of deep decarbonization, generates discretionary revenue streams for participating governments, and increases the static economic efficiency of a policy portfolio – all in a single sector. Its benefits are clear and relatively  modest. Among purists, RGGI is often mocked because its prices are low (about $5–6 per metric ton of CO2 emissions in 2019) and coverage is limited to just one sector. We see the experience through a completely different lens: RGGI works because its architects knew what they were doing and designed a system that is politically feasible and durable.

I have slightly different takes on some of these points but overall I agree with their characterization.

The next two chapters and Chapter 5 only mention RGGI in passing.  Chapter 2: Ambition makes the case that the theory of flexible and economically efficient carbon markets should make them ideal for maximizing the effort to control carbon pollution. This chapter explains why carbon markets have failed to live up to the expectations.  The only reference to RGGI discussed the political process that underpins participation.  The RGGI framework is flexible enough so that the addition and deletion of participating states when political regimes change does not affect the viability of the overall program.  It concludes: “Firms and governments participating in RGGI know that states may come or go, with the consequences managed through an informal political process rather than a legal one.”  Chapter 3 on coverage and allocation notes that RGGI is limited to the electric sector.  Chapter 5 on offsets notes that even though offsets are allowed they have not been a factor in RGGI.  I agree with their characterizations. 

Chapter 4: Revenue and Spending delves into the disbursement of funds collected in the market.  The total RGGI cumulative auction proceeds at the time of this writing is $5,895,274,757.14 since the first auction in September 2008 so RGGI has successfully generated revenues. With regards to spending the chapter notes that “How societies spend the money raised through these sales is vital to understanding the politics of emissions trading.” 

The chapter discussion on RGGI points out that each state controls its revenue spending.  There is a graph from the 2017 RGGI proceeds investment report that describes revenue uses in three categories: general funds; revenue recycling (earmarking revenues for spending that benefits citizens); and green spending (energy efficiency, clean energy, and climate mitigation).  Given the difficulties I have had trying to interpret the RGGI proceeds reports, it is not surprising that there isn’t more detail.

The authors did pick up on some of the revenue problems in RGGI:

The RGGI program also reveals some of the political dynamics that can emerge when political leaders decide to re-purpose funds. The Governors of New York and New Jersey have both diverted RGGI revenues to the state’s general fund at points in the program’s history, raising concern from environmental NGOs and others who have supported a green spending agenda.  

In a section within this chapter titled “Why green spending becomes green pork” the authors explain that there is not much scrutiny how the money is spent.  They define pork as an expenditure that is designed to disproportionately benefit a special interest rather than the broader public good.  They claim that “the organizations that spend RGGI funds are better designed to provide more discipline and accountability on how those funds are spent” than the other example programs discussed. While that may be true with respect to RGGI as a whole, it is not the case for New York.  For example, the authors did not manage to tease out the fact from various unclear reports that New York uses RGGI funds to cover costs that were covered by general funds, i.e., a hidden diversion of revenue to the general fund.  I am sure that had the authors looked into New York’s operating plan for RGGI auction proceed expenditures they would have agreed with my conclusion that green pork is a prominent part of New York’s expenditures.

Chapter 6: Market Links discusses the “institutional challenges of managing cross-border market governance”.  With regards to RGGI I agree with their characterization:

Critically, what holds this system together is not law and the creation of robust, tradeable property rights, but rather a shared vision of parallel efforts at low levels of ambition. Design decisions are made according to the evolving political views of current and prospective participants. And because RGGI features so many parties – none of which hegemonically dominates the group’s overall agenda – the program  must be transparent and predictable. The largely egalitarian cooperation of RGGI states works because it is anchored in stability-oriented market design features that make market behavior more predictable and risk management more tractable.

Chapter 7: Getting the Most Out of Markets explains how to increase program ambition, for example, attracting more jurisdictions or setting more ambitious targets.  The RGGI discussion does a good job explaining how the program addressed an oversupply condition:

The northeastern United States’ RGGI program takes a similar approach through a pair of one-time cap adjustments, as well as a dynamic intervention that resembles the Market Stability Reserve. Like the EU ETS, RGGI experienced market oversupply conditions and very low prices in the 2010s. The situation with RGGI was more extreme, however, because this cap-and-trade program only applies to the electricity sector and the United States’ electricity sector began a profound transformation alongside (but not because of) RGGI. Not only did many of its participating states implement aggressive renewable energy and energy efficiency regulations, but also the rise of cheap natural gas from fracking dramatically accelerated the replacement of high-emitting coal-fired electricity with relatively clean natural  gas and zero-carbon renewables. Emissions have been falling steadily, despite – not because of – anemic RGGI prices. As emissions fell owing to exogenous forces, the market became oversupplied. In response, RGGI’s two cap adjustments removed almost 140 million allowances – about two years’ worth of total emissions – from the supply of allowance budgets through program year 2020.[1]

In addition to these one-time adjustments, RGGI also developed a dynamic mechanism to alter the supply of allowances.[2] This additional market feature is triggered by observed market prices, rather than the EU ETS Market Stability Reserve’s measurement of excess allowance supplies. Like the EU ETS Reserve, RGGI’s approach is two-fold: RGGI features a Cost Containment Reserve that releases 10% of the program-wide allowance budget into the market if prices reach $13 per allowance in 2021; and if prices fall below $6 per allowance in 2021, an Emissions Containment Reserve will absorb 10% of the program’s annual allowance budget and remove these allowances from circulation. When the market remains in between the two triggering prices, allowances supplies are fixed – just as in the EU ETS, where supplies are fixed so long as the total number of surplus allowances stays within a specified range. (Both triggering prices increase at 7% per year to increase ambition over time, but not even the high-end prices are significant when compared to the policy incentives supporting renewable or nuclear energy in participating RGGI states.)[3]

The final chapter is entitled “Rightsizing markets and industrial policy”.  One of the problems identified in the book is that the level of expenditures needed to implement the net-zero transition vastly exceeds the “funds that can be readily appropriated from market mechanisms”.  The chapter describes RGGI as the “the cap-and-trade system  whose design is most purely oriented around generating and spending revenue”.  The authors note that the October 2019 report “The Investment of RGGI Proceeds in 2017” indicates that New York has mobilized just $100 million per year for green spending.  My review of the latest plan to invest New York RGGI auction proceeds indicates that the design plan is supposed  to “support the pursuit of the State’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals”.  Of the five goals listed, only one addresses emission reductions.  The others are vague cover language to justify the use of RGGI auction proceeds as a slush fund for hiding administrative expenses and costs related to Climate Act implementation at the expense of programs that affect CO2 emissions from RGGI affected sources. 

Making Climate Policy Work and New York Cap and Invest

Governor Hochul recently announced a plan to use a market-based Cap and Invest program to raise funds for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act.  I submitted comments on the Draft Scoping Plan that made opposed the recommendation for such a program.  My initial impression of the Cap and Invest program is that it is more style than substance.  If I had read this book before drafting the comments or my initial impression article, I would have highlighted the findings in this book as part of my arguments against this approach.

The program public relations summary claims that “A Cap-and-Invest Program is the most feasible, efficient, and affordable method to attain a more sustainable future.”  I have been surprised by the amount of support for the plan.  At the February 14, 2023 New York Senate Environmental and Ways and Mean legislative public hearing on the 2023 executive budget the majority of the speakers supported the proposal.  I don’t think that any of the comments that support the program realize the many flaws in that proposal that are described in this book.

In my opinion, a fundamental flaw in the Scoping Plan is that it does not include feasibility analyses to determine whether the laundry list of control strategies will be feasible.  The Plan does not demonstrate that the proposed strategies will be maintain current standards of reliability and safety or can keep energy costs affordable.  This lack of analysis extends to the Cap and Invest proposal.  Proponents claim that it is the most feasible option but that is relative to a short list of options and does not necessarily mean that it will work as proposed.  The preface of the book notes the importance of feasibility:

In telling the story of how market-based climate policy works in the real world, we adopt the premise that idealized markets would be desirable if they were feasible. We hope this choice allows us to reach readers who identify strongly with the power of market forces, since we hope to change their minds. We want them to understand how political forces constrain what market-based policies can do, especially at the early stages of deep decarbonization, because wishing those forces away isn’t practical and hasn’t worked.

The Cap and Invest fact sheet notes that this program will be similar to RGGI that “has helped reduce greenhouse gases from power plants by more than half and raised nearly $6 billion to support cleaner energy solutions”.  As noted previously my analyses show that RGGI was only a minor cause of the observed emission reductions.  Chapter 1 this book also argues that RGGI is not the primary cause: “Other policy programs are having a bigger impact, including state renewable portfolio standards; subsidies that keep nuclear power plants, which are prodigious suppliers of zero-carbon power, from shutting down; and other government-managed regulatory and procurement efforts all aimed at making the RGGI states’ power infrastructure less carbon-intensive.”  Based on my work I believe fuel switching has been the primary cause of New York observed reductions but there are two aspects to consider.  The reductions were because natural gas was a cheaper alternative than coal and oil.  However, the subsidies for nuclear power plants kept emissions from rising.  That is until the State made the irrational decision to shut down 2,000 MW of nuclear power at Indian Point.  Since 2019, when the staged closure began, New York electric utility CO2 emissions have increased 5.8 million tons or 23%.

The Scoping Plan recommendation for an economy-wide strategy to address the financing and emission limitations is based on a naïve understanding of market-based programs.  Cullenward and Victor explain the reality:

Market-based policies on a planetary scale, the theory goes, would empower firms and governments with the flexibility to focus investment on the least expensive options for controlling emissions. Flexibility would reduce costs, allowing more environmental protection with fewer resources; in turn, frugality would make it easier to mobilize business and voter support for ever-deeper climate pollution reductions.

They go on to explain that this vision has completely failed:

Many pollution markets exist, but nearly all are smokescreens that create the impression that market forces are cutting emissions when, in fact, other policies are doing most of the real work of decarbonization. Almost everywhere that market systems are in place they operate at prices that are so low as to have little impact on key decisions such as whether to invest in or deploy new technologies.

The Cap and Invest solution is being marketed as both a compliance and financing tool.  The belief is that the cap will establish compliance limits and the auction will provide the funding to make the reductions.  There are issues with these tools.

The use of the cap as a binding compliance mechanism is unprecedented.  Consider, for example, the EPA Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR).  This cap-and-trade program is in place to limit nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in the eastern United States for ozone compliance.  There have been multiple iterations of this rule that have progressively reduced the cap.  The distinction between CSAPR and a binding cap is that EPA evaluated emissions, existing control technology, and potential improvements or additions for all the sources in the CSAPR-affected states.  The cap was determined using this control technology evaluation to set a feasible limit.  A binding cap is one chosen arbitrarily without any such feasibility evaluation.  In 2030 New York GHG emissions must be 40% lower than the 1990 baseline but this is an arbitrary target mandated by the Climate Act. 

There is another aspect of any GHG emissions reduction program.  There are no cost-effective add-on control technologies available for existing sources.  The only options available for an affected source are to change the fuel to something with lower GHG emissions, make the system more efficient, to reduce operations, or shut down.  As noted previously, New York reduced its electric system emissions significantly because of fuel switching but that strategy is tapped out for any future significant reductions.  In order to get more reductions from the electric generating system, zero-emissions resources must be deployed to displace the fossil resources.  This is particularly difficult because the loss of Indian Point’s zero emissions generation has increased recent emissions.  The control strategies are similar for all other sectors. 

Cullenward and Victor make the point that it is easier to make reductions with existing technology:

In a few places, carbon prices from market-based policies have been powerful enough to induce some changes in emission patterns – such as when firms decide whether to produce electricity from high-emission coal plants or lower-emission rivals. Those impacts, however, have nearly always involved commercially mature technologies competing in stable environments and under other highly restrictive conditions.

In order to meet the 2030 GHG emissions target technology that has not been proven commercially viable at the necessary scale is needed.  This challenge is a problem with the Climate Act deep de-carbonization targets that the Scoping Plan recommendations ignore:

On another front, what markets do best – creating transparent, marginal price signals that encourage firms and households to optimize their choices – is misaligned with the industrial challenges facing deep decarbonization today. In most sectors the world is not far along with deep decarbonization: key technologies, demonstration projects, and the emergence of new firms to back low-carbon technologies are fledgling at best (see Figure 1.2).9 Industrial firms and consumers aren’t waiting for a faint, marginal signal from markets to nudge their behavior. Instead, they need active programs to mobilize and apply resources to new technologies that, with time and effort, will launch the global process of deep decarbonization and displace incumbent industries. Well-designed market signals, at best, are good at encouraging optimization when technologies are commercially mature and strategic choices are clear – such as when the UK electricity market had a signal to select mature renewable energy technologies and gas instead of coal. The hardest challenges of deep decarbonization involve redirecting  investment toward technologies and businesses that are the opposite: beset with risk and danger for first movers. Creating those new industries requires a policy strategy – industrial policy, in effect – that is focused on the problem at hand, rather than inducing marginal changes in behavior with known technologies and production methods.

The authors address three issues related to the fact that the existing systems have failed to live up to expectations.  The first issue is related to the technology issues noted above:

We explain why idealized, “first-best” designs for pollution markets envision systems that produce high carbon prices as a powerful incentive for change. In the real world, the outcome has been the opposite: prices are low and often volatile, which undercuts the incentive to invest in ambitious new technologies and to make changes in production methods beyond those that are straightforward with few risks. First-best visions for pollution markets also imagine that markets should cover many sectors simultaneously, allow extensive interconnection with markets overseas, raise large amounts of revenue, and spend those revenues efficiently to offset distortions in the economy. On every front the real world has produced outcomes that are the opposite from theory: markets are fragmented, links are few, sectoral coverage mostly is narrow, and revenues raised are small.

Details for the proposed Cap and Invest program are sketchy but my impression from what I have heard is that it will also be the opposite of this theory.

As an alternative, the author describe how to make market-based programs more effective.  Their second issue is necessary market reforms:

Some reforms are needed to make market signals more reliable – an outcome that requires shifting away from cap-and-trade systems, where market structures create volatile prices, and toward systems where prices are managed within narrow bands. In effect, cap-and-trade systems can be made more effective when they are designed to behave more like taxes; it is no accident that the few jurisdictions with the highest prices and the greatest level of effort use taxes, not cap-and-trade. More stable prices will make it easier for firms to invest in anticipation of market signals and to build political coalitions that are supportive of that investment. Systems that are designed like taxes also perform better in the real world where market policies are implemented alongside other regulatory programs. In that setting, cap-and-trade schemes merely trade the residual and get little work done in cutting emissions – they are Potemkin markets. Tax approaches, by contrast, create a clear incentive for change (the specified tax level), which persists even as other policy instruments have big impacts on behavior as well.

This approach is basically RGGI without a binding cap.  Unfortunately, Climate Act proponents are convinced that the transition schedule is possible despite the lack of any evidence supporting evidence and that the climate crisis necessitates the aggressive schedule of the Climate Act.  Even though New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing by more than one half of one percent per year this rationale for the Climate Act schedule is a major obstacle against this common sense approach.

In addition to the compliance mechanism the proposed Cap and Invest program is intended to provide revenues for the transition.  I have no doubts that the program will generate revenues and suspect that the Hochul Administration will decide the revenue targets based on just how much they think they can get away with rather than basing them on the results of their RGGI auction proceeds.  Cullenward and Victor address this aspect:

Our playbook for market reform offers some insights into why so many of the visions for market-oriented climate policy won’t happen under real-world political conditions. For  example, many advocates for market-based policies imagine that the adoption of market schemes will occur alongside massive policy reforms that roll back regulation. We explain why, politically and administratively, those regulatory and industrial policies are not easily rolled back. Moreover, we explain why pushing for that outcome would be a bad idea – since those other regulatory policies, in fact, are doing most of the serious work in cutting emissions.

One of the most important contributions of markets is among the least appreciated today: well-designed market schemes can raise revenue. A politically savvy strategy for market reforms requires paying closer attention to how program revenues are spent – and specifically to allocating funds to activities that will build experience with new technologies and thus also catalyze new interest groups that are supportive of accelerating deep decarbonization.

Because of the enormity of the challenge another issue is discussed.  In particular, what else is needed:

The key is to channel resources into the sectors that are critical for deep decarbonization. Rather than link all sectors together into a common market system, each must be treated independently because each has its own political economy and state of technology. In sectors where technologies are immature, industrial policy should focus on research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) in a diverse array of options – an approach that yields knowledge and also builds political coalitions around new low-carbon industries.

The New York Climate Act covers all sectors.  It may be possible to breakout the sectors based on such a recommendation.  However, the looming problem is that a binding cap will limit emissions even if the zero-emissions resources are not available to displace the existing emissions.  Carbon dioxide emissions are directly tied to fossil-fuel combustion and energy production.  If for any number of reasons, the zero-emissions are not deployed fast enough in all the sectors there won’t be enough credits available to cover the emissions necessary to provide the energy needs.  In the worst case, an electric generating unit needed to keep the lights on will refuse to operate because they have insufficient allowances. 

The obvious solution to this concern is a feasibility analysis of the schedule for technological innovations necessary to maintain affordability and reliability.  The authors suggest “Doing better requires recognizing the structural limits to what is achievable with market-based approaches – limits that are rooted in how the politics and technological opportunities are organized in each sector.”

Conclusion

The Hochul Administration proposes a Cap and Invest program that will provide revenues and establish a compliance mechanism.  I agree with the authors that the results of RGGI and other programs suggest that the Cap and Invest proposal will generate revenues.  However, we also agree that the amount of money needed for decarbonization is likely more than any such market can bear.  The problem confronting the Administration is that in order to make the emission reductions needed they have to invest between $15.5 and $46.4 billion per year.  I don’t think that range is politically palatable.

The use of Cap and Invest as a compliance mechanism is more of a problem.  The Hochul Administration has not acknowledged or figured out that the emission reduction ambition of their Climate Act targets is inconsistent with technology reality.  Because GHG emissions are equivalent to energy use, limiting GHG emissions before there are technological solutions that provide zero-emissions energy means that compliance will only be possible by restricting energy use.  Unless a miracle occurs in 2030 when there are insufficient allowances someone has to choose who gets to operate.

This is a good book and I recommend it to anyone interested in energy and climate policy and emissions trading programs.


[1] The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “Elements of RGGI,” https://www.rggi.org/program-overview-and-design/elements; see also The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “RGGI Program Review: Summary of Proposed Changes to RGGI Regional CO2 Allowance Budget” (Nov. 21, 2013); The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “Second Control Period Interim Adjustment for Banked Allowances Announcement” (March 17, 2014).

[2] The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (2014), supra note 11.

[3] New York and Illinois (the latter of which is not in RGGI) created the first zero-emission credit (ZEC) subsidy programs for nuclear energy in the United States. See Nuclear Energy Institute, “Zero-Emission Credits” (Apr. 2018). These policies were challenged in court  and ultimately upheld in two parallel cases. Coalition for Competitive Electricity v. Zibelman, 906 F.3d 41 (2nd Cir. 2018) (New York); Electric Power Supply Association v. Star, 904 F.3d 518 (7th Cir. 2018) (Illinois). Following these favorable outcomes, New Jersey (once again part of RGGI) adopted a similar program. Robert Walton, “New Jersey moves ahead on nuke subsidies, approving ZEC application process,” Utility Dive (Nov. 21, 2018). For an overview of state renewable energy policies, see Galen L. Barbose, “US Renewables Portfolio Standards: 2019 Annual Status Update,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2019), https://emp.lbl.gov/projects/renewables-portfolio.

New York Good Intentions Unsullied  by Reality 

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

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Paradigm

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

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

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

Three Zero-Risk Initiatives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Russell Schussler for comments and the title.

New York Annual Climate Act Cap and Invest Revenue Targets

One of the biggest questions related to Governor Hochul announced plan to use a market-based program to raise funds for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) is the revenue target.  I incorporate the latest 2020 GHG emissions inventory data and some other bits of information to follow up on a couple of earlier posts that addressed this issue. 

I submitted personal comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written over 280 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.  I also follow and write about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) market-based CO2 pollution control program for electric generating units in the NE United States.   Before I retired I had extensive experience with air pollution control theory, implementation, and evaluation having worked on every cap-and-trade program affecting electric generating facilities in New York including the Acid Rain Program, RGGI, and several Nitrogen Oxide programs. 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 first related article I posted gave my initial impression of the New York cap and invest program.  That post gives background information on the Climate Act’s  economy-wide strategy and my overarching concerns.  I explained that I had evaluated New York’s RGGI auction proceeds funding status report and found that the projected costs of the current programs are $776.1 million, the net greenhouse gas emission savings are 1,656,198 tons and that works out to emission cost per ton removed of $469.  If all the RGGI administrative and operating costs are included another $113 million is added to the total and the emissions cost per ton removed is $537 per ton.   I also evaluated existing emissions and the reduction trajectory necessary to meet the 2030 Climate Act emissions target.  Those numbers will be updated in this post.  The post also lists some practical considerations that should be a concern for this initiative.

The second related article determined different annual revenue targets.  I determined the emissions reduction trajectory needed to meet the 2040 GHG emissions target, calculated the control cost per ton removed based on the RGGI auction proceed investments, and found that a total of $7.9 billion per year is needed.  That is the low-end cost of the projections.  At the upper end three projections exceed $45 billion a year.  I will update those projections below.

New York GHG Emissions

In order to understand the challenge it is necessary to know where we stand for our GHG emissions.  The following table (the link is to the full table because I cannot figure out how to make tables in the text get bigger when a reader clicks on it) lists the New York State GHG emissions (MMT CO2e AR5 20 yr) by sector from the DEC emissions inventory .  It also includes the annual change in emissions since 1997.

I evaluated current emissions relative to the 2030 Climate Act target of a 40% reduction by 2030.  The following table lists the trajectory of observed, projected, and interpolated emissions consistent with the 2030 requirement to reach 245.87 million metric tons of CO2e.   New York State has released the official GHG emissions for New York State for 2018, 2019, and 2020 and they are highlighted in gold.  I estimated emissions for 2021 and 2022 using the observed electric generating unit emissions and historical averages for other sectors.  Note that emissions increase due to the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear generating facility.  The 2030 levels are fixed and are highlighted in rose. There are six columns that list the emissions trajectory necessary to get from the observed emissions (gold) to the target.  The annual reduction in the trajectory is the difference between the observed emissions and the 2030 target divided by the number of years.  For example, the estimated GHG emissions in 2021 were 381 million metric tons. If the emissions are reduced by 15 million tons per year, then in 2030 the emissions will meet the target of 245.87 million metric tons.  Two projections are listed for 2022 that give bounds to the reductions necessary.  One uses the estimated emissions and the other assumes that total state GHG emissions stay constant between 2020 and 2022. 

Ostensibly the goal of the cap and invest program is to generate the revenues necessary to make the required reductions.  The following table uses the range of 2022 emission estimates (384.92 and 345 million metric tons of CO2e) and the range of cost per ton reduced ($533.79 and $487.75) to place bounds on the required reduction costs.  If the assumption is made that all the reduction costs will be financed by auction proceed investments, then the annual revenue needed for the high bound is $9.278 billion and the low bound is $6.044 billion.  That assumes that all the money collected is invested.  However, Hochul announced that there would be a Climate Action Rebate of 30%.  In order to maintain the revenue needed to meet the emission targets that means that the total collected has to increase from $9.278 billion to $12.254 billion increasing the cost per ton reduced to $763.  In addition, she announced another 3% for small businesses and, this being New York, I assume that the administrative costs will be the same as the 7% as in RGGI.  Incorporating those costs raises the total needed to between $15.463 million and $10.073 billion.  That assumes that all the environmental justice targeted money can be invested in reductions that benefit environmental justice communities.  If the interpretation of the 40% for environmental justice communities is in addition to the investments needed to meet the reduction targets, then the annual totals increase between $46.390 billion and $30.219 billion.

There are a couple of other potential annual revenue target methodologies.  The clearing price at the last RGGI auction was $12.99 and assuming that 385 million allowances were auctioned off the revenues would be $5 billion.  The highest auction clearing price would increase revenues to $5.35 billion.  Keep in mind that that the allowances auctioned will decrease over time so this is the upper bound.  In addition, there are mandates for set asides so that is not a true reflection of the number of allowances that would be auctioned.  The annual reductions could also be set to the NYS Value of Carbon which is set at $129 in 2025 and $172 in 2050.  The estimates for those revenues range between $1.6 and $3.0 billion.

Discussion

The sectors affected by the Climate Act Cap and Invest Program are most interested in the revenue target for the auction.  Regulatory staff claim that they are interested in the emission reductions and not the revenues which would argue for setting the cap at a defensible value that could provide the reductions necessary.  There are many issues with this simple approach.  It is assumed that there are no other sources of funding to make the reductions.  It also assumes that the cost per ton reduced is constant but control programs will increase as control efficiencies necessarily get tighter.  There are also issues with how the EJ set-aside is invested and how much money is used for administration.

Conclusion

There is no clear and obvious revenue target.  As with all GHG market-based control programs the real concern is that the costs necessary to make reductions are so high that they exceed the Value of Carbon and the likely limits of the public’s willingness to pay.

There is another concern.  The Scoping Plan requires an ambitious emission reduction trajectory.  Because there are no cost-effective control options for GHG emissions, the reductions will have to come from indirect displacement of fossil-fired energy use or simply reducing fossil-fuel use.  The ultimate compliance control strategy is stop operating when there are no allowances available to be had.  Energy demand is inelastic so there will be interesting times ahead as this plays out.