Climate Act – Page 43 – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

New York Climate Act Scoping Plan Approved

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

Background

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

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

New York State Leadership Statement

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

Principle 1: Climate Action

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

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

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

Principle 2: Climate Justice

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

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

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

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

Principle 3: Climate Economy

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

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

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

At Large Member Supporters of the Scoping Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reducing energy bills

Improving our health and lowering health care costs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Council Members who Voted Against the Scoping Plan

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

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

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

•             Fails to adequately ensure grid reliability for consumers;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaping to moratoriums and bans instead of developing innovative technologies.

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

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

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

Limiting our solutions by losing sight of our climate challenges

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

Readiness of our Electric System

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

New York’s Climate Act Scoping Plan Process Template

This post was first published at Watts Up With That.

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

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

Climate Act Background

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

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

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

Public Comments

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

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

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

What’s Next

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Climate Act Narrative: Heat Pumps are the Answer

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) final draft Scoping Plan framework for the transition plan has been released. It has become clear recently that the Hochul Administration approach to the net-zero transition is to follow the narrative that meeting a net-zero by 2050 target is simply a matter of political will. As with all political descriptions, the components of this narrative are overly simplified and conflicting information is ignored or disparaged. This post discusses the heat pump “solution” to home heating.

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

Climate Act Background

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

I have published a couple of recent articles about this process. I noted that the Climate Action Council treatment of stakeholder comments basically ignored anything that conflicted with the narratives of the Draft Scoping Plan so the Council lost the opportunity to correct any deficiencies. The second article pointed out that the Hochul Administration has not included responses to stakeholder comments in the process. As a result, it is not clear whether the issues raised were even considered.

The buildings sector is currently the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in New York State. As a result, reducing emissions from home heating is a key component of the Scoping Plan implementation framework. Heat pumps are a prominent part of the state’s residential electrification plans and its narrative that installing a heat pump is easy, cost-effective, and will provide a satisifactory level of comfort. If you are interested in more home heating background information, an article describing my interview with Susan Arbetter at Capital Tonight gave an overview of heat pump technology and described building shells. In the energy efficiency world, building shells refer to the insulation, infiltration, window treatments and ventilation components of the building.

Political narratives over-simplify their solutions and this is a major flaw in the heat pump story preached in the Scoping Plan and by its acolytes. Last summer I did an article about heat pump technology that concluded that it can work in New York State. However, I showed that it is not simply a matter of swapping out a fossil-fired furnace for a heat pump. The potential for the conversion to be done improperly is high because there are numerous complications. Based on a discussion with an expert HVAC technician I now understand that it is not just the furnace but the whole heating system and building shell that needs revisions too. The air infiltration, inflow, interior duct, and exhaust requirements are much higher priorities than I realized. Some of these issues are mentioned by the Hochul Administration in the Scoping Plan and the public ~~education~~ indoctrination public service advertising but the implications on heat performance are ignored.

This article addresses one detail of the residential home heating challenge that I believe did not receive proper emphasis in the Draft Scoping Plan. It is based on comments that I submitted that to this point have not been acknowledged. The Council has recently repeated its promise that comments will be acknowledged but has not clarified what that means. In particular, I am going to discuss the New York regional differences in climate presentation at the November 21, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting.

Council Presentation New York Regional Differences in Climate

During the buildings discussion of the staff response to Climate Action Council comments two slides were included. The discussion of the first slide explained the importance of cold temperatures for heat pump performance. Apparently, the Council asked why three regions were called out in the Draft Scoping Plan text as the coldest regions of the state. The presentation noted that the Draft said that the North Country, Mohawk Valley, and Capital regions are the coldest and went to say that heating systems there are designed to keep buildings warm even when temperatures fall below zero Fahrenheit.

The Hochul Administration narrative is that “These cold climate air source heat pumps do work well in New York’s climate” and this point was explicitly included in the presentation. The presentation mentioned the appropriate qualifiers shown in the figure that equipment quality, proper design and installation, envelope efficiency, and the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors also impact performance.

The presentation explained that Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) maintains a specification and product list that identifies specific air source heat pumps that work during extreme cold weather. The presentation noted that “in very cold conditions the heating capacity, or output from the heat pump efficiency drops.” The explanation noted that the NEEP list includes equipment that report the heating capacity at 5^o F and meets or exceed a specified efficiency at that temperature.

The discussion of the regional differences in temperature claimed that in southern and coastal regions and along the Great Lakes the minimum winter temperatures stay above 5^o F. The map on the preceding figure was used to show this visually. The implication was that as long as you use an air source heat pump from the NEEP product list that meets the 5^o F criterion that you are good to go.

The next slide includes a table with 99% design values for heating capacity calculations. This is the outdoor temperature that a location stays above 99% of the hours in a year, based on a 30-year average. The presentation claimed that the North Country, Mohawk Valley, and Capital regions had the lowest heating design temperatures so that was the basis for their being listed in the text as the coldest regions.

Caiazza Comments on Residential Heating Electrification

My residential heating electrification comments on the Draft Scoping Plan noted that home electrification is a primary concern for New Yorkers given the importance of affordability and the impact to every household. The Draft Scoping Plan considers two aspects of residential heating electrification in Appendix G: Integration Analysis Technical Supplement. The first aspect is conversion of furnaces.The second aspect is the energy efficiency and building shell improvements necessary. In order to determine which technologies are needed for a particular location, the regional differences in climate within New York State must be considered. The Appendix G documentation includes NYSERDA climate zone categories for each county. As far as I can tell, these climate zones use the International Energy Conservation Code. As shown below there are only three climate zones and they are similar but not the same as the normal minimum January temperature map in the presentation described ablove.

Figure 1: New York State Climate Zones in the Integration Analysis

My written comments argued that there is a better, more detailed climate zone map for building shell upgrade estimates. The United States Department of Agriculture plant hardiness map has nine zones for New York (Figure 2). It uses the average annual extreme minimum temperature for its classification that I believe that is a better indicator for building shells when using heat pumps. Notably there are prominent differences that I believe make a more refined classification system appropriate. In my comments I argued that the average minimum is above zero for only two of the nine zones, corresponding roughly to Integration Analysis climate zone 3. I categorized this as zone 4. For the most part it appears that New York Climate zone 5 should correspond to NYSDA zones 6a and 6b. As a result, I limited zone 5 to the lower Hudson Valley and counties along the Great Lakes. I categorized all the counties in the Mid- and Upper Hudson Valley as zone 6 as well the counties along the Pennsylvania border except Chautauqua County along Lake Erie. If the average annual extreme minimum temperature is less than equal to -10^oF (USFDA zones 3b, 4a, 4b, 6a, and 6b) then I believe another climate zone should be included. I categorized Allegheny and Cattaraugus counties as well as counties in the Adirondacks as climate zone 7 to meet this criterion.

Figure 2: USDA Plant Hardiness Map

My comments used this more refined climate zone categorization and found that the building shell categorization used in the Draft Scoping Plan underestimates the level of building shell upgrades needed for effective air source heat pump installations. The Draft Scoping Plan claims only 26% of New York residences need deep shell upgrades. I estimate that more than half will need to have deep shell upgrades. Consequently, the Integration Analysis cost estimates for electrifying residences significantly underestimates the costs and the ease of implementation for air source heat pumps.

Discussion

There has been no acknowledgement that my comments were made known to the Climate Action Council and certainly no indication that the Council considered them in their comments to the Agency Staff who are responsible for the final draft of the Scoping Plan. Nonetheless, there is a link between the response to the cold region question in the presentation at the November 21, 2022 meeting and my comments. My comment that a different approach (such as Figure 2) to define the appropriate heating technology requirements than the climate zones shown in Figure 1 was inadvertently confirmed by this presentation. In the presentation they showed a different graphic to describe the climatic differences and referenced an even better metric – the 99% design values.

I believe that a comparison of a map of the 99% design values and the plant hardiness zone map would show much better agreement than the NYSERDA climate map does to the 99% design values. I do not believe that the Integration Analysis did not used the 99% design values when they estimated the cold-climate air source heat pump requirements or the appropriate building shell upgrades necessary to make air source heat pumps effective in New York’s climate. I found that a better metric nearly doubled the number of residences that would have to be upgraded to a better building shell standard. The presentation did not mention the relevant issue that I brought up in my comments.

The Hochul Administration narrative is that cold climate air source heat pumps work well in New York’s climate and that is true but with a whole host of caveats that make a difference. Cold climate air source heat pumps all have a drop off in performance if the outside temperature gets cold enough. If the only consideration was the quality of the heat pump, then I believe the overarching issue would be the acceptability criterion. If the heat pump works acceptably 99% of the time that means there still are 87 hours a year when they will not provide sufficient heat. It would be useful to the public if the differences between the 99% design values and the plant hardiness zone maps were explained because the county-wide 99% design value may not be appropriate everywhere in the county. The greatest flaw in the Scoping Plan narratives is that “what if” questions are not addressed like what will happen when heat pumps are improperly installed and there isn’t sufficient heat.

Another aspect of political narratives is over-simplification. The presentation did include the appropriate qualifiers explaining that in addition to the heat pump other factors, like proper design and installation; appropriate specification of the design value; and envelope efficiency must be considered. The impact of these considerations and any related stakeholder comments was not discussed. In my opinion this furthers the incorrect impression that simply installing in a cold-climate air source heat pump is easy and effective.

Conclusion

The November 21, 2022 Climate Action Council meeting discussion of the cold regions of New York exposed several flaws in the Hochul Administration’s Draft Scoping Plan revision process. In response to the question about the cold regions a different description of the New York cold temperature climatology was used than what was in the Integration Analysis documentation. My comments on the Draft Scoping Plan argued that the Integration Analysis cold regions were not detailed enough and the choice of a different document supports that. In my opinion the heating 99% heating design values are an even better indicator of cold regions in New York.

I believe that a comparison of a map of 99% design values and the plant hardiness zone map I porposed would show much better agreement than the NYSERDA climate map does to the 99% design values. The important point is that the Integration Analysis did not use the 99% design values when they estimated the appropriate building shell upgrades necessary to make air source heat pumps effective in New York’s climate. I found that a better metric nearly doubled the number of residences that would have to be upgraded to a better building shell standard. The presentation did not mention the relevant issue that I brought up in my comments.

I conclude that the residential home heating plan proposed in the Scoping Plan under-estimates the degree of difficulty of this transition. The political narrative suggests that residential heating electrification is mostly just about installing heat pumps. However, proper design and installation, envelope efficiency, and the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors impact performance as much as the installation of a high-quality heat pump. The State is doing a disservice to the residents by not clearly acknowledging the complications for an adequate electric heat source. Finally, they have yet to propose a plan when heating is electrified and an ice storm knocks off power for days in the winter. It is very disappointing that my comments in this regard have been ignored.

Agricultural and Farmland Viability and the Climate Act

The last several years I have spent an inordinate amount of time evaluating the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) and its legal mandate for New York State greenhouse gas emissions to meet the ambitious net-zero goal by 2050. I recently published an article describing some of the overarching issues that have not been adequately addressed in the transition plan to meet the net-zero goal. I used the Climate Action Council’s failure to protect prime farmland from utility-scale solar development as one example. This post highlights recently signed legislation and an announcement by Governor Hochul that provides further proof that when the government says we are here to help it is likely a day late and a dollar short.

Climate Act Background

In order to meet the net-zero target the general strategy is to electrify everything primarily using newly developed wind and solar resources. According to the NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook there were 1,985 MW of land-based wind and 2,148 MW of solar in 2019. The Draft Scoping Plan spreadsheet Appendix G: Annex 2: Key Drivers and Outputs projects that in 2040 when all the electricity in New York must be zero emissions that there will be 12,242 MW of land-based wind and 43,342 MW of solar. I documented that the solar projects in the Article Ten queue in 2020 averaged 9.3 acres of equipment area per MW. Using that estimate of land required, the Draft Scoping Plan mitigation scenarios would require over 900 square miles of solar equipment.

This post explains why the state’s response to the impact of the land needed for these developments is too little and too late to prevent serious issues. I have written enough articles on solar siting issues that I have setup a page that summarizes them all. Given the massive amount of projected utility-scale solar generation capacity required to meet Climate Act goals the rush to develop solar projects could easily lead to the permanent loss of significant amounts of prime farmland that will hurt farming communities and endanger Climate Act strategies to sequester carbon in soil. Solar developers argue that a landowner gets revenue when a solar project is developed. However, when land is taken out of production it will reduce farm jobs and the economic activity may be improved during construction but once the facility is operational there are very few economic benefits to essential local businesses. Furthermore, taking the land out of production may make other farmers who have been renting that land to make their operations viable will not be able to support investments made in facilities, livestock, or equipment.

State Actions to Protect Farmlands

First, let me describe New York’s inaction. In a recent post describing the Climate Action Council’s transition plan approach I explained that there are already serious land use issues because there is no implementation plan in place. Because there is no policy regarding utility-scale solar siting requirements relative to prime farmland the developers are thumbing their noses at the Department of Agriculture and Markets. The Department has a policy in place to protect prime farmland but developers claim that there is “no statutory or regulatory support” for the policy so it can be ignored. The Hochul Administration permitting authorities have apparently placed renewable development as the highest priority without any assessment of the impacts identified by its regulatory agencies.

On December 12, 2022 Governor Hochul announced that “a special working group of state agencies and agricultural community stakeholders will collaborate to support New York farmers and help boost the agricultural industry”. The press release stated that “This working group will be critical to tackling several challenges within New York’s agricultural industry, and my administration will continue to work with farmers to address their needs and reimagine farming in our state.” The press release explains that:

The Task Force will initially focus on, but not be limited to, the following topics:

Transportation – address challenges involving the movement of agricultural commodities and products while understanding the needs for investment in roads, bridges and other vital infrastructure to bring products to market.
Labor – identify and build the next generation of farmers and farmworkers to support a diverse industry with the skills and workers required to operate modern farms.
The environment – address and remove obstacles to capital investments in manure management, on-farm energy production, and the transition to alternative fuel sources that limit the ability of some farms to meet the State’s climate goals and become carbon neutral.
Housing for workers – increase worker housing to provide workers with a safe living environment that is close to farms and assures for sustained and daily production.
Taxation – provide clearer guidance on property tax administration and improve access to existing tax relief programs.
Farmland protection – review existing programs and identify ways that the State can ensure that productive farmland remains accessible, in production, and continues to feed New Yorkers.
Expand procurement – of local food products by various state agencies to build local food supply chains and better connect with New York farms.

On December 6, 2022 Senate bill (S8889A) to create the Agricultural and Farmland Viability Protection Fund was signed. It will bolster efforts to protect agricultural land from being permanently removed from farming to make way for solar development. The press release for this states:

Currently, all solar projects receiving funding through NYSERDA’s NY-Sun incentive program that site projects on active farmland must pay a penalty, which currently goes into the State’s General Fund. S8889A-Hinchey requires that all penalty money collected be deposited instead into the new Agricultural and Farmland Viability Protection Fund and allocated to state and local farmland protection programs.

I apologize but I am not going to get into the details of this legislation. I applaud the intent to get the money where it should logically go to try to redress the problem. However, it does not seem likely that it will be much help to a farmer who lost the land he needed and was renting to a solar developer that can afford to pay more. Furthermore, NY-Sun is the state’s initiative to expand distributed solar so this law does not cover the utility-scale solar projects that are my primary concern.

The most frustrating thing is that a solution is readily available. Last December I described a webinar hosted by New Yorkers for Clean Power (NYCP) and Alliance for Clean Energy NY (ACENY) entitled “What’s the Deal with Renewable Energy & Agriculture?” that discussed the compatibility of renewable energy and agriculture in New York State. One part of the solution discussed during the presentation could be the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority Agricultural Technical Working Group. This group released an interim final report last May that described “strategies to integrate renewable energy sources into working landscapes with minimal impact on agriculture, including the need for more research; the potential for financial incentives; and proposed tools for State and local governments”. Protection of prime farmland is a prime component of this report.

Incredibly it gets even more tone deaf in New York. The NY-Sun program is New York State’s initiative to encourage distributed generation solar. The projects participating in the NY-Sun program are “typically five MW alternating current or smaller, and do not fit the definition of a Major Renewable Energy Facility”. The interim final report notes that:

On April 19, 2022, the Public Service Commission approved the Roadmap, charting a path towards achieving an expanded goal of at least 10 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2030 and continues the NY-Sun program. NY-Sun Commercial/Industrial (C/I) projects located in an agricultural district must comply with AGM’s Solar Construction Guidelines. If the project utilizes over 30 acres of MSG 1-4, it is required to make Agricultural Mitigation Payment to the fund administered by NYSERDA. Since being implemented, these requirements have already demonstrated their effectiveness. In 2021, all 50 distributed solar projects subject to these requirements, totaling 1,037 acres of affected area, have committed to avoiding and minimizing impacts to important agricultural lands in consideration of the solar layout and complying with the Solar Construction Guidelines.

The bottom line is that there is a solar siting policy that addresses my concerns in place but only for the small solar projects. Since I started tracking solar development project approvals late last year, a total of five applications have been approved for a total of 1,120 MW. The total project areas cover 14,812 acres and the project footprints total 5,728 acres. Despite the best efforts of Department of Agriculture and Markets staff to prevent the loss of Prime Farmland, the area that will be unavailable for farming in these projects totals 3,920 acres or 26% of the combined project areas. This is bad enough but all three Draft Scoping Plan mitigation scenarios call for over 40,000 MW of solar development and there are no protections.

Conclusion

Hochul’s press release for the special working group included statements of support from New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Richard A. Ball; New York Farm Bureau President David Fisher; Brian Reeves, President of the New York State Vegetable Growers Association; Tonya Van Slyke, Northeast Dairy Producers Association Executive Director; Jim Bittner, owner of Bittner Singer Orchards and Interim Director of the New York State Horticulture Society; and Jeffery M. Fetter, President of Scolaro Fetter Grizanti & McGough, P.C. and Chairman of the Business and Tax Practice and Agricultural Services Groups. If these people truly care about the agricultural sector, then they should demand a moratorium on utility-scale solar developments until a responsible solar siting policy is put in place for utility-scale solar development.

The moratorium would be lifted when the special working group develops policy recommendations. At a minimum that utility-scale solar developments should adhere to the Department of Agriculture and Markets goal for projects to limit the conversion of agricultural areas within the Project Areas, to no more than 10% of soils classified by the Department’s NYS Agricultural Land Classification mineral soil groups 1-4, generally Prime Farmland soils, which represent the State’s most productive farmland. It would be best if the same farmland protection criteria contained in the Public Service Commission distributed solar Roadmap were applied to all solar projects.

I have met people affected by these huge utility-scale solar projects. It is so frustrating that their concerns and the viability of neighboring farms are being ignored when there are protections in place for smaller solar projects when the solutions are in place for small projects. I wonder why and the only thing I can think of is that money talks.

Climate Action Council Lost Opportunities

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

Climate Act Background

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

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

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

Climate Action Council

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

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

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

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

Lost Opportunities

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

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

Reliability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affordability

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environmental Impacts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act Zero Risk Motivations

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

Climate Act Background and Risk Management

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

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

Zero Risk Motivations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zaruk addresses the definite article related to the environment:

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

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

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

He also addresses the climate consensus:

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

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

Zaruk concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

In Europe Zaruk points that that:

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

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

Zaruk describes the concept of industry vilification:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Industry Complex (Part 2): The Hate Industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zaruk explains the concept of Realpolitik:

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Champlain Hudson Power Express Construction Begins

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

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

Climate Act Background

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

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

Champlain Hudson Power Express

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

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

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

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

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

Implementation Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

New York Clean Energy Industry Report

One problem I have when I am writing a blog post is that there is a target rich environment. In this case I was working on a post about Governor Hochul’s announcement concerning the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) transmission project starting construction. One topic I wanted to address in the post concerned jobs and another Hochul announcement about a record number of clean energy jobs came up in our discussion that needed to be addressed.. This post describes the 2022 New York Clean Energy Industry Report.

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

Climate Act Background

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

A major emphasis in the transition planning is on clean energy industry jobs. The Climate Act required a Just Transition Working Group Jobs Study to “provide a robust understanding of the impacts of climate change mitigation, to assess potential effects on the job market, and to understand impacts to training, education, and workforce development.” The creation of clean energy jobs has been a point of emphasis as an advantage of the net-zero transition and the Climate Act mandated regular updates on the number of clean energy jobs in the state.

Clean Energy Industry Report

On the day before the CHPE announcements Hochul announced a record level of clean energy jobs in New York. That claim was based on the NYSERDA New York Clean Energy Industry Report 2022 that found:

More than 165,000 New Yorkers had clean energy jobs at the end of 2021, up from 157,686 in 2020.

New York’s clean energy employment grew 5% from 2020 through 2021 – gaining over 7,000 jobs in 12 months.

Employment met or exceeded pre-pandemic levels in almost all technology sectors. Renewable electric power generation, alternative transportation, renewable fuels, grid modernization, and energy storage all reached or surpassed their pre-pandemic employment levels by the end of 2021.

The alternative transportation technology sector saw unprecedented growth between 2020 and 2021 and employment expanded by almost 26% or 2,318 jobs in just 12 months.

Solar accounted for the largest share of job gains in the renewable electric power generation technology sector.

The industries with the largest job growth were labor and civic organizations, software publishers, durable goods merchant wholesalers, and machinery, equipment, and supplies wholesalers

There are times when I read something that is a “You have to be kidding me” moment. For example, the claim that the largest clean energy job growth was in the in the labor and civic organizations sector was one of those. The Climate Act mandates that the Just Transition Working Group estimate “the number of jobs created to counter climate change, which shall include but not be limited to the energy sector, building sector, and working lands sector”. I am sure that labor and civic organizations sector was not necessarily what the authors of the Climate Act had in mind.

Discussion

I had been talking to Richard Ellenbogen about the CHPE announcement and the topic of jobs came up. Richard and I both critiqued the Clean Energy Industry Report that had been mentioned. He pointed out that out of the 165,000 employed on their list, 87% (124,000) work in “Energy Efficiency” (page 15), so that could include anyone that installs insulation. Those jobs existed before renewable energy was a thing. He used two different insulation installers on his house in 2004 and a different one on his factory in 2000. It appears to both of us that there is an opportunity to inflate numbers depending upon the classification of building contractors.

I dug a little deeper into the report and confirmed plenty of opportunities for NYSERDA to inflate numbers. I found out that they use something called “clean energy employment intensity” that are “used to identify the concentration, or intensity, of clean energy activities”. The claim that there are 165,000 employed in the clean energy sector (Figure 2 from the document page 12) “includes all workers that dedicate any amount of their labor hours or work week to clean energy goods and services. As such, an electrician who spends only a quarter of their work week installing or servicing solar panels would be counted as a clean energy worker”. For emphasis it does say any amount of their labor hours counts as a clean energy job.

My first thought was that they include the intensity-adjusted clean energy employment metric because even they admit that the 165,000 employed in the sector claim is a stretch when anyone who spends any amount of time is counted. Upon further review I am not convinced that is the case. The document states (page 16):

The metric weights each job according to how much time workers were reported to spend on clean energy activities: the categories include less than half of their labor hours, half to the majority of their labor hours, or all of their labor hours. These categories correspond with the following delineations: 0 to 49 percent of labor hours, 50 to 99 percent of labor hours, and 100 percent of labor hours.

The description goes on to say:

An increase in total employment would indicate that there are more workers in the labor market overall servicing clean energy technologies, while an increase in intensity adjusted employment indicates that these workers are dedicating a larger proportion of their work week and labor hours to clean energy-specific activities; this could be the result of increased policy support or financial incentives spurring market demand for clean energy goods and services. For instance, a traditional HVAC worker might have spent only a third of their work week installing or maintaining energy efficient HVAC technologies in 2016. If a state began offering rebates in 2017 for efficient heat pumps, that traditional HVAC worker would likely be spending more of their labor hours or work week installing high-efficiency heat pumps. This increase in activity per worker would not necessarily result in overall job growth in Figure 2 but would be captured as an increase in intensity-adjusted clean energy employment in Figure 8.

The last statement in this section leads me to believe that this metric is not supposed to address the dis-information that any time whatsoever spent on clean energy work qualifies the job to be a clean energy job. It says that an increase in activity per worker would not necessarily result in overall job growth in the total numbers. Instead, it “would be captured as an increase in intensity-adjusted clean energy employment”. What I had hoped that the State would do was to report the clean energy jobs as full-time equivalents using the fractional time spent. In other words, two employees that work 50% of the time on clean energy projects are equivalent to one full-time equivalent position. The fact that they don’t do it that way and instead conjure up an intensity adjustment metric shows, as Richard Ellenbogen explains, that while they are trying to do something to explain the employment opportunities “this looks more like a political document for the non-thinking”.

The document states that there is a full description of their methodology in Appendix A. However, there is no meat to that documentation. The appendix is titled Clean Energy Technology List. It only includes the following text:

A clean energy job is defined as any worker that is directly involved with the research, development, production, manufacture, distribution, sales, implementation, installation, or repair of components, goods, or services related to the following sectors of the clean energy economy: Renewable Electric Power Generation; Grid Modernization and Energy Storage; Energy Efficiency; Renewable Fuels; and Alternative Transportation. These jobs also include supporting services such as consulting, finance, tax, and legal services related to energy.

The remainder of the Appendix only lists sub-sector jobs for each of the sectors of the economy listed above as shown below. I believe that ay time spent on any job on the clean energy technology list qualifies the employee to be a clean-energy job holder.

According to the numbers, the clean energy industry jobs are an increase of 18,200 since 2016, 13,400 of those in “Energy Efficiency”. New York State employment is at 57% of 19.5 million people or about 11.1 million. The 165,000 is 1.4% of the state’s total workforce. The increase in what they call “Clean Energy Jobs” is 0.0012 or about 1/10 of 1% of the state workforce over the past five years.

The following figure from the report lists the industry sectors that had employment gains. Keep in mind that if a labor organization changes the job description for any staff to include weekly updates of renewable energy developments that counts as one of these jobs because the claimed jobs “includes all workers that dedicate any amount of their labor hours or work week to clean energy goods and services”. Moreover, I am not sure why any rational person would count jobs at a software publisher as a clean energy job.

Another area for misleading information is construction jobs. A New York Daily News article about the CHPE project states: “An agreement between the developer tasked with completing the line and New York State Building and Construction Trades means the project will lead to about 1,400 union jobs.” If one of the CHPE contractors was building a non-clean energy project but now sends his workers to build the transmission line I suspect they are counted as new clean-energy jobs. There are two issues. The first is that the construction jobs are temporary and this approach does not seem to take that into account. The second is that if the contractor goes to work on another non-clean energy project after this project ends but a year later puts them to work on a new clean-energy project I am sure the State will count those as new jobs.

Ellenbogen and I talked about the issue of finding people to work. We both have talked to contractors that told us they cannot find enough people to work. What does that say about the future increase in these numbers? To do what they want to do, they will have to increase that number to about 250,00 – 300,000, at least a third of that in Renewable Electric Power Generation and Grid Modernization. The increase in those two categories over the past five years is 3,300, so at the current rate of increase it will take 50 years to reach the number that they need. That is about 25 years after they expect to complete their plan.

Finally, there is one other aspect of the report that concerns me. The New York Daily News article about the CHPE project notes that the project will lead to about 1,400 union construction jobs. It will provide 1,250 MW or power to New York City. This report does an inadequate job addressing the loss of jobs from other New York State policies. For example, the shutdown of Indian Point meant the loss of over 1,000 permanent union jobs and 2,000 MW of New York City power. In other words, the unknown number of permanent additional jobs in the report numbers probably means that that there has been a net loss in New York due to the Indian Point shutdown and CHPE will not replace the loss of Indian Point capacity.

Conclusion

Whenever I have evaluated any component of the Climate Act, I have found that there is no acknowledgement that issues are more complicated, uncertain, and costly than portrayed by the State. Unfortunately, there is a bigger issue because there are instances where the documentation provided is misleading and inaccurate. In my opinion the Clean Energy Industry Report is misleading. It would be more appropriate to provide the impact of clean energy jobs as a function of full-time equivalents instead of counting clean energy jobs as any that “dedicate any amount of their labor hours or work week to clean energy goods and services.” In addition, the reporting of that metric is likely high because there is a bias towards more emphasis on clean energy goods and services. As it stands there is a clear bias towards higher numbers supporting the narratives of the Climate Act.

Skeptical Overview of the Climate Act Presentation

This is a summary of the presentation I gave to the Central New York Chapter Air & Waste Management Association on November 29, 2022 explaining why I believe that the risks, costs, and impacts of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) exceed the protections, savings, and benefits.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I submitted 23 comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have published over 250 blog posts on New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that this supposed cure will be worse than the disease. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Introduction

I explained that given the time constraints it was only possible to give sound bites to describe why I am skeptical of the ultimate impacts of the Climate Act. This blog post gives an overview of the presentation and, more importantly, a link to detailed information supporting my arguments. Everything presented draws on my blog posts and Draft Scoping Plan comments.

I discussed three primary concerns: reliability, affordability and environmental impacts. In every instance, my evaluation of the components of the transition plan has found that issues are more complicated, uncertain, and costly than portrayed by the State. Moreover, they have not provided a feasibility analysis to document whether their list of control strategies could work. In addition there is no implementation plan. The Climate Act is simply too fast and too far.

Overview of the Climate Act

I described the transition plan for New York’s Climate Act “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council has been working to develop plans to implement the Act. The 22 members of the Council were chosen for their ideology and not their expertise and the lack of clear direction by the Hochul Administration led to misplaced priorities. Instead of focusing on overarching policy issues there has been inordinate attention to personal concerns of Council members.

Over the summer of 2021 the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultant Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) prepared an Integration Analysis to “estimate the economy-wide benefits, costs, and GHG emissions reductions associated with pathways that achieve the Climate Act GHG emission limits and carbon neutrality goal”. Integration Analysis quantitative implementation strategies were incorporated into the Draft Scoping Plan when it was released at the end of 2021. Since the end of the public comment period in early July 2022 the Climate Action Council has been addressing the comments received as part of the development of the Final Scoping Plan. Most recently they have been revising the Scoping Plan to come up with a final document. The intention is to release the Final Scoping Plan by the end of the year.

I expressed my disappointment with the public stakeholder process associated with the Draft Scoping Plan comments. Seven hundred people spoke at Climate Act Public Hearings and around 35,000 comments were received. However, on the order of 25,000 comments were “potentially the same or substantially similar”, i.e., form letters. That still left 10,000 unique comments that the Council promised would be “acknowledged”. In my opinion, the comment process was treated as an obligation not as an opportunity to improve, correct, or clarify the scoping plan.

Of course it is unreasonable to expect that the Council members could be expected to review all the comments themselves. Agency staff categorized the comments and then filtered them in presentations to the Climate Action Council that described themes with very little specificity. I think there was a clear bias in the presentations. Anything inconsistent with Administration’s narrative was disparaged, downplayed, or ignored. I was most disappointed that no comments on the fundamental basis of the Draft Scoping Plan, that is to say the Integration Analysis, were mentioned, much less discussed.

I also addressed the Climate Act mandates for 2023. The expectation is that the regulations that implement policies that force the transition away from fossil fuels will be implemented by the end of 2023. However, the Climate Act also mandates a public comment and consultation process before promulgating regulations. It requires the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to complete a public comment and consultation process before it can promulgate the 2024 Implementing Regulations. This process includes public workshops and consultation with the Climate Action Council, the Environmental Justice Advisory Group, the Climate Justice Working Group, representatives of regulated entities, community organizations, environmental groups, health professionals, labor unions, municipal corporations, trade associations and other stakeholders. At least two public hearings and a 120-day public comment period must be provided. Only after this extensive stakeholder process concludes is DEC authorized to propose the implementing regulations. When the regulations are formally proposed the State Administrative Procedures Act requires a 60 day public comment period, public hearings, and that the agency respond to all comments. I think this is a very ambitious plan.

Electric Grid Risks

Many of the most vocal supporters of the Climate Act believe that existing renewable technology is sufficient to transition the New York electric grid to zero-emissions resources by 2040 and that suggestions that may not be true are misinformation. In order to address that fallacy my presentation concentrated on my concerns about the reliability risks of an electric grid that is dependent upon intermittent and diffuse renewable resources. The electric grid is crucial to New York’s energy future because the primary de-carbonization strategy is to electrify everything possible using those resources. I described the existing grid, generation resource planning, the current New York State system, and the projected New York State system. Electric grid reliability requires that generation resources match electric load at all times and the challenges associated with wind and solar in this regard are ignored by those who believe that existing technology is sufficient.

I made the point that failure to adequately plan will mean an inevitable catastrophic blackout like the Texas February 2021 blackout. In short, weather related issues due to freezing rain, snow and then an extended period of cold weather led to periods when the generating resources did not match the load necessary. The storm was the worst energy infrastructure failure in Texas history. Over 4.5 million homes and residences were without power, at least 246 people died, and total damages were at least $195 billion.

In order to illustrate the basic electric grid I included the following diagram. It shows that generating station provide power using turbine generators that convert mechanical energy into electric energy using water, steam, or other means to spin the turbines. I have heard the argument that the grid is inefficient because there are power losses between the generating station and the users but the fact is that New York will always be dependent upon a transmission system because there is insufficient space in New York City for sufficient renewable resources to provide the energy needed to keep the lights on. Power output from generating plants is stepped up at substation transformers for long distance transmission and then substation transformers step down the power for the distribution system for use by consumers.

I included the following diagram to make the point that New York is in the Eastern Interconnection which is the largest machine in the world. Incredibly all the fossil, hydro, and nuclear generating stations in the Eastern Interconnection work together. In order to provide 60 Hz power the generating turbines are synchronized to run at 3600 revolutions per minute. Operators keeps the voltages as constant as possible in the entire area but have the advantage that those turbines provide inertia and they can dispatch generating resources as necessary. Unfortunately, wind and solar resources are inverter based and cannot be dispatched as needed.

New York State has its own regional operator – the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). Within Power the Eastern Interconnection system operators match the load with the generation in smaller regional systems. Regional system operators manage imports and exports between neighboring systems. New York has unique system constraints related to New York City and Long Island that warrant its own system operator.

NYISO operates the electric grid for New York State. There are 11 control areas with specific load, interconnection, and generation characteristics that must be addressed on a six-second basis to keep the lights on. New York State’s major challenge is that there are limits to transmission to the highly populated New York City and Long Island control areas. The NYISO has to address different time scales for load management:

Sub-minute fluctuations are addressed automatically
Hourly and daily fluctuations are handled by operators
Annual peaks require planning so that operators can respond

New York’s high reliability performance standards are the result of decades of experience working with dispatchable resources and implementation of specific metrics developed after blackouts in 1965 and 1977.

In order to educate those who believe that existing renewable resources are sufficient for maintaining current reliability standards I described generation resource planning. The following load duration curve is a key concern of load management planning. There are three general resources. Baseline resources ideally are dispatched so they can run at a constant rate which enables the resource owners to tune the units to run as efficiently as possible. Daily load variations require some resources to follow load during the day. The biggest planning challenge is capacity and energy for peak loads that occur when temperatures are highest or lowest. Before deregulation, each utility was responsible for meeting all these resource needs. In New York City the solution for the peak load problem was a fleet of simple-cycle turbines dedicated for use to provide peaking power when and where needed.

The problem with existing renewable resource technology is matching load when the system is dependent upon renewable resources that cannot be dispatched and provide variable energy. This is a new and difficult challenge. It is exacerbated by intermittent renewable energy availability associated with peak loads. Load peaks with the coldest and hottest weather but those conditions typically are low wind resource periods. Wind lulls in the winter when solar is low availability is the critical reliability issue.

The NYISO 2022 Power Trends Report includes this description of the capacity (power available in MW) for the existing system. It shows that 70% of installed capacity is fossil fueled and 25% is zero emissions. Wind and other renewables (solar energy, energy storage resources, methane, refuse, or wood) account for only 6% of installed capacity. Note that NYISO does not measure distributed solar directly. In their accounting it reduces the load so less generation is needed.

The NYISO 2022 Power Trends Report includes this description of Energy Production (MWh). Note that 50% of New York’s generated electricity is zero-emissions. There is a Climate Act target to “Increase renewable sources to 70 percent by 2030” that does not include zero-emissions nuclear. One reason that I am skeptical of the Climate Act is because 24% of renewable source energy produced is hydro and hydro pumped storage. Wind and other renewables (solar energy, energy storage resources, methane, refuse, or wood) account for 5% of energy produced. The 29% of the energy produced from renewable sources is far less than the 70% by 2030 target. I don’t think that it is feasible to develop over 29GW of renewable resources between now and 2030 with supply chain issues, constraints on permitting, procurement, and construction when development of supporting infrastructure is also needed for off-shore wind development.

The capacity factor is a useful metric to understand electric generation resources. The annual capacity factor equals the actual observed generation (MWh) divided by maximum possible generation (capacity (MW) times the 8,760 hours. In New York nuclear is a key contributor but the Administration recently shut down 2,000 MW at Indian Point. At this time the simple-cycle peaking turbines are being phased out and peaking power is produced by oil-fired units and spare capacity in the gas and dual fuel units. Note that oil is a unique New York resource. Imagine the difficulty replacing that capacity with a resource that would only need to run 1% of the time. Note that in 2021 New York land-based wind only had a 22% capacity factor.

It is commonly argued that renewables are the cheapest type of new electric generating resources. For example, that was the claim in a Dave Davies interview on National Public Radio Fresh Air: “A new climate reality is taking shape as renewables become widespread” with New York Times staff writer David Wallace-Wells. Wallace-Wells said: “In fact, according to one study, 90% of the world now lives in places where building new renewable capacity would be cheaper than building new dirty capacity. And indeed, in a lot of places, it’s already cheaper to build new renewables than even to continue running old fossil fuel plants.” He went on to say “…we should be going all in on renewables here. We shouldn’t be building new coal or new oil or new gas capacity.”

The key to this claim is the reference to capacity. If that were the only factor involved in getting the electricity when and where it is needed 24-7, 365 days a year without losing load due to extreme (one in ten year) conditions then his argument that we shouldn’t be building new coal, oil, or natural gas capacity” would be valid. It is not. Obviously electric users want power even when the wind is not blowing at night. Electric system innumerates under-estimate the challenge of the energy storage requirements for extreme renewable resource lulls which correlate well with weather events that are safety threats because of extreme cold and heat.

Given time restraints I could not fully describe all the NYISO’s planning responsibilities. I did not include the following slide but made the point that their modeling analyses incorporate all of the complexities of the New York electric system. I did not describe the three primary components of their responsibilities: comprehensive system planning which examines near-term and longer-term issues impacting reliability, economic, and public policy transmission planning; interconnection planning to evaluate the reliability implications of resources interconnecting and deactivating from the grid; and inter-regional planning with neighboring grid operators. One of the primary functions of the NYISO is electric system planning. NYISO modeling incorporates all the complexities of the eleven control areas in the New York energy system.

I included the following summary of the NYISO Comprehensive System Planning Process to show all the components and to highlight the recent addition of a new component. In order to address the Climate Act NYISO added “Develop the System & Resource Outlook” component that looks at a longer planning horizon that was included previously.

The first report for the resource outlook component was released a couple of months ago. The 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook can be downloaded from NYISO and a datasheet summary of key takeaways of the Outlook report is also available. The summary describes the four key findings: an unprecedented buildout of new generation is needed, load will increase when we electrify everything, transmission is necessary and must be expended to get diffuse renewables to New York City and a new resource has been identified: Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR). That resource is essentially a fossil-fueled turbine without any emissions.

I compared the NYISO Resource Outlook modeling analysis with the Integration Analysis modeling. The Outlook analysis was based on three scenarios. In order to evaluate the effects of different policy options, this kind of modeling analysis projects future conditions for a baseline or business-as-usual case. The evaluation analysis makes projections for different policy options, and then the results are compared relative to the business-as-usual case. NYISO ran two policy scenarios: one based on their estimates of future demand and one that tried to simulate the Integration Analysis projections. I compared their scenario 1 to the Integration Analysis in the presentation.

The Integration Analysis modeling was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan. It is important to note that contrary to usual practice the Integration Analysis baseline was a reference case that included “already implemented” programs. In other words there are some programs incorporated into the Reference Case that only exist to reduce GHG emissions. This definition of the Reference Case instead of a Business-As-Usual case is different practice and motivated to get a specific answer. The Integration Analysis considered four different policy projections. The first considered the Advisory Panel recommendations for control measures, but the modeling showed that they did not meet the Climate Act targets. The Integration Analysis came up with three mitigation scenarios that did meet the targets. The model used for the analysis is not as sophisticated as the NYISO model. Modelers plugged in a set of control measures at varying efficiencies until they met the targets. Note, however, they have not claimed that the scenario measures as scoped out will provide electricity that meets current reliability standards. In my opinion this approach gave the impression to the Council that meeting the targets would be relatively easy. Council members requested scenarios that considered a faster implementation schedule and more reductions that the 85% target. The cost/benefit results claim that those more stringent scenarios provide more benefits primarily because of reduced costs. I think that is a counter-intuitive result so my comparison was against Scenario 2: Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels.

I compare the installed capacity for the two models in the next table. As noted by the NYISO, an extraordinary development of renewables by 2030 is required and both models agree on that. There also are some key differences. The NYISO modeling projects more onshore wind, less offshore wind, less solar, and more DEFR. The NYISO model simultaneously optimizes resource capabilities and costs to come up with a least-cost solution. I think the wind differences are due to cost and availability differences. The two modeling approaches handle distributed solar differently. NYISO does not measure generation from distributed sources and only considers it as a way to reduce the load needed. The Integration Analysis explicitly includes distributed solar capacity and generation as an output. Note that existing storage is pumped hydro but any new storage will be batteries. Finally, it is notable that both modeling analyses project that 2040 DEFR will be comparable to existing fossil capacity albeit NYISO projects significantly more and Integration Analysis a little less.

I compare the energy produced (GWh) for the two models in the next table. The largest difference between the models is that NYISO projects that DEFR generates ten times more energy. It turns out that NYISO has DEFR generating 14% of the total energy in 2040 but Integration Analysis projects only 1%. NYISO projects more onshore wind than offshore wind and the Integration Analysis projects the opposite. There is huge difference between solar but I believe that is related to the fact that NYISO does not explicitly include distributed solar. Clearly the two models handle storage differently.

I noted earlier that I was disappointed that the Hochul Administration ignored my comments on the Integration Analysis. The capacity factor table shows one of the points I made in my comments. I pointed out that the Integration Analysis land-based wind capacity factors were unrealistically high. The model projected the 2020 generation with a capacity factor of 29% but the 2021 observed capacity factor was only 22%. As a result the Integration Analysis projections for the land-based wind needed to meet the load is too low. For all renewable resources the Integration Analysis capacity factors are higher than the NYISO projections. I prefer the projections from the organization responsible for New York reliability to those from the unelected bureaucrats who have no such responsibilities.

There is one other point in this table. The DEFR capacity factors are different. To this point the extra capacity needed to keep the lights on during peaking periods was provided by relatively cheap sources of energy. When new peaking resources were needed, cheap simple-cycle turbines were installed. Currently peak energy resources are primarily from existing old, amortized facilities. As we shall see, the new DEFR required to keep the system working will use much more expensive resources. In our deregulated system the NYISO will have to develop a market payment scheme to cover those increased costs.

As noted earlier, I believe that the NYISO projections based on more sophisticated modeling has a much better chance than the Integration Analysis to describe a mix or resources that will maintain current reliability standards. Nonetheless, I have reservations about any projections because the future electric grid will depend on unprecedented amounts of renewable energy resources. The following slide lists six of concerns for an electric system dependent upon renewable resources. For my presentation I only mentioned the first three. Because wind and solar are intermittent that means you have to have storage for daily, seasonal, and peak load requirements. The lack of an implementation plan ignores that wind and solar success is location specific. New York needs a plan that encourages development where the resource is better during the winter lulls. Specifically, it is not a good idea to offer the same incentives to utility-scale developments on the Tug Hill plateau where over 200” of snow are common as areas where snowfall amounts are lower. The third concern is reliability services and they are a reason that wind and solar are far more expensive for deliverable energy than fossil.

I found a good summary of the essential reliability services in a paper by National Renewable Energy Laboratory authors entitled Getting to 100%: Six strategies for the challenging last 10%. It describes ancillary services that must be provided to keep the transmission system going. Wind and solar do not provide those services so someone, somewhere else has to provide them at some additional cost.

The ultimate reliability problem is illustrated in the following figure. This graph illustrates the long-duration wind lull problem from an early presentation to the Climate Action Council. It explicitly points out that firm capacity (DEFR) is needed to meet multi-day periods of low wind and solar resource availability. The Council has known about the problem all along but have basically pushed it aside as inconvenient. The thing to remember is that in order to prevent catastrophic blackouts caused because intermittent wind and solar are unavailable, NYISO and the Integration Analysis are both banking on DEFR capacity. Using wind, solar and storage exclusively makes meeting the worst-case renewable resource gap much more difficult.

There is no doubt that the fate of future reliability is inextricably tied to DEFR success. The next slide discusses DEFR options. The Draft Scoping Plan acknowledges the need for DEFR and proposes seasonal hydrogen storage as a placeholder technology. NYISO, while explaining that the resource is necessary, has offered no recommendations what technology could fill the need. The NREL authors of Getting to 100%: Six strategies for the challenging last 10% described six DEFR strategies

Seasonal storage which could be hydrogen or some other kind of long term storage solution
Renewable energy is basically overbuilding with battery energy storage. I believe this represents the preferred approach of those who claim existing technology is sufficient.
Existing technology adherents also claim that demand side resources can flatten the load peaks so much that less DEFR is needed
The problem with other renewables (e.g. hydro) in New York is that they cannot be scaled up enough to meet identified needs
Nuclear is the only proven and scalable DEFR technology currently available but it is a toxic option for NY politicians
Carbon capture is unacceptable to the activists and has technological challenges that make it an unlikely a DEFR option.
Because of the challenges of carbon sequestration to net out the 15% net-zero emissions, the Draft Scoping plan mentions the CO2 removal strategy but in my opinion it is unlikely.

There are two approaches advocated by those who believe that existing technology is sufficient to maintain electric system reliability in a zero-emissions electric grid. Some claim that only minimal storage is needed because renewables are available somewhere else, that is to say, the wind is always blowing somewhere. Others claim that overbuilding renewables supplemented with battery energy storage systems is a viable solution.

While the concept that the wind is always blowing somewhere else is indisputably true the issue is that in order to keep the lights on we need power at specific times and places from a dedicated source. New York City’s peaking turbines were located in specific locations to maintain reliability and they were dedicated to that application. New York’s reliability standards were developed based on decades of experience that showed that a certain installed reserve margin would guarantee that New York reliability standards could be maintained. Against that backdrop consider the following weather map on February 17, 2021. The Texas energy debacle was associated with this intensely cold polar vortex huge high pressure system. Remember that winds are higher when the isobars are close together. On this day there are light winds from New York to the southeast, west, and north including the proposed New York offshore wind development area. There are packed isobars in northeastern New England, in the western Great Plains, and central Gulf Coast. In order for New York to guarantee wind energy availability from those locations, wind turbines and the transmission lines between New York and those locations would have to be dedicated for our use. Otherwise I think it is obvious that jurisdictions in between would claim those resources for their own use during these high energy demand days. It is unreasonable to expect that building those resources for a once in a few years situation could possibly be an economic solution.

Another way of looking at this issue is to consider the NYISO fuel mix data available at the NYISO Real-Time Dashboard. I downloaded four days of February 2021 data to generate the following table. It shows that a high pressure system reduces wind resource availability across the state. The data show that less than a quarter of the daily wind capacity is available for this period. Note that the worst-case hour on 2/18/21 at 7:00 AM wind production was only 138 MW out of a New York total of 1,985 MW for a capacity factor of 7%. If we were to overbuild wind resources to replace the fossil capacity of 7,191 MW on that hour you would need 102,729 MW of wind resources.

Clearly, overbuilding alone is not a viable solution. You have to have new energy storage and the currently available technology is battery energy storage systems. Both the Integration Analysis and NYISO Resource Outlook optimized the balance between renewables and storage but still found that DEFR was needed. Existing technology proponents claim that over-building wind, solar, and storage is viable but have not countered the NYISO or Integration Analysis modeling results. I am concerned about the risks associated with the current preferred technology: lithium-ion storage battery systems. The first risk is logistical inasmuch as battery storage footprints are larger than the existing peaking turbine sites so finding space for the batteries is an issue. Worse is the fact that lithium-ion storage batteries have the risk of thermal runaway fires and explosions that trade an acute health risk for chronic, and speculative, in my opinion, risks. Paul Christensen, Professor of Pure and Applied Electrochemistry at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom gave a presentation at PV magazine’s Insight Australia event in 2021 that describes the risks. His videos of thermal runaway tests are terrifying. He is one of the world’s leading experts on battery fires and safety and said global uptake of lithium-ion battery technology has “outstripped” our knowledge of the risks. He also stated that he is “astounded and appalled that if there is no appreciation of the safety issues involved” with large battery energy storage systems. This is another feasibility issue that is unaddressed by the Draft Scoping Plan.

Hydrogen storage is the Draft Scoping Plan DEFR placeholder technology. The plan is to use wind and solar electrolysis to produce “green” hydrogen from water. The stored hydrogen would either be combusted to power turbines or used in fuel cells. There are fundamental issues associated with the use of hydrogen that I detail on my blog. Hydrogen generation, storage and use loses much more energy than alternatives and may not even have a net energy benefit so it is unlikely to be sustainable. In order for it to provide the necessary peaking power in New York City a colorless, odorless, hard to store explosive gas will have to be stored and used. I don’t think that the technology will be embraced in the City. All the infrastructure necessary to produce, store, and use will have to be built and paid for to meet a projected capacity factor of 2%. I doubt that makes economic sense.

I concluded my discussion of the risks to electric system reliability by summing up the NYISO Resource Outlook Key Findings Datasheet. According to the organization that is responsible for keeping the lights on, DEFR is necessary for future reliability. Because a politically acceptable DEFR that can be scaled up to meet the levels needed for reliability is not currently available, a new technology has to be developed, tested, and put on line well before 2040. The NYISO makes the point that until you have the necessary DEFR technology on line shutting down existing fossil generation is inappropriate. I am disappointed that the NYISO Resource Outlook has not mentioned any costs. This is likely to be a particular issue relative to DEFR. Clearly conditional implementation dependent upon the availability of DEFR would be a rational approach.

There is no documentation that lists the specific costs of control strategies, the expected benefits, or the expected emission reductions making it impossible to estimate the total costs of the Climate Act. That information is necessary to determine whether the Integration Analysis projections are feasible. The Draft Scoping Plan claims that the cost of inaction is more than the cost of action but a variation of this graph is the only documentation for that claim. I directly addressed this misleading and inaccurate statement in my comments at the Syracuse public hearing but there has been no response or mention of the issues I raised at any Climate Action Council meeting. The statement is misleading because costs are given relative to the Reference Case and not a business-as-usual case as explained earlier. I believe that the Reference Case includes at least the cost of the “already implemented” electric vehicle mandate. That means that all of the costs for electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and distribution system upgrades necessary for electric vehicle charging are excluded from the cost of action. Correcting that “trick” would mean the costs of action are more than the costs of inaction.

There is another egregious cheat that further undermines the claim. It is inaccurate because the Draft Scoping Plan counts the societal benefits of avoided greenhouse gas emissions multiple times. My Draft Scoping Plan comments on benefits documents why I believe that their claim for $235 billion in societal benefits should only be $60 billion. Their approach is equivalent to me saying that because I lost 10 pounds five years ago, I can say that I lost 50 pounds. Correcting that error would also by itself invalidate their benefits claim. Bottom line is that I estimate that the real costs are at least $760 billion more than the imaginary claimed benefits.

In my opinion one of the biggest environmental success stories in my lifetime is the reintroduction of Bald Eagles. When I moved to Syracuse in 1981 it was inconceivable that it would be possible to see a Bald Eagle from my home but I have seen several in the last few years. One of the missing pieces of the Climate Act implementation plan is an update of the Cumulative Environmental Impact Statement to reflect the latest estimates of the number of wind turbines and areal extent of solar panels. I worry that the combined effect of all that development will threaten Bald Eagles.

The following table was not included in the presentation but shows the capacity of the resources not considered in the cumulative impact statements. Clearly, much more renewable capacity will be required than has been evaluated.

Comparison of Integrated Analysis Projected Capacity and Cumulative Environmental Impact Statements (MW)

The following table used in the presentation shows the number of wind turbines and areal extent considered in the completed cumulative impact statements relative to the projected numbers in the Integration Analysis. The Draft Scoping Plan calls for at least 497 more onshore wind turbines, 493 more offshore wind turbines and 602 more square miles covered with solar equipment than has been evaluated in cumulative analysis.

I have considered the avian impact of the Bluestone Wind Project in Broome County New York to show impacts for a single facility. It will have up to 33 turbines and have a capability of up to 124 MW covering 5,652 acres. Over the 30-year expected lifetime of the facility the analysis estimates that 85 Bald Eagles and 21 federally protected Eastern Golden Eagles will be killed. A first-order approximation1 is to scale those numbers to the total capacity projected for the Draft Scoping Plan. This back of the envelope approximation suggests that at least 216 Bald Eagles could be killed every year when there are 9,445 MW of on-shore wind. There were 426 occupied bald eagle nest sites in New York in 2017. In my comments on this topic I stated that the Final Scoping Plan must include proposed thresholds for unacceptable environmental impacts like this. There has been no response whatsoever to my comment.

When New York’s GHG emissions are considered relative to global emissions I conclude that New York only action is pointless. In the presentation I compared New York emissions to global emissions in two graphs. I used CO2 and GHG emissions data for the world’s countries and consolidated the data in a spreadsheet. I used the New York State GHG data set CO2e AR4 100 year global warming potential GHG values for consistency. Plotted on the same graph New York GHG and CO2 emissions cannot be differentiated from zero.

When the New York emissions are plotted relative to global emission increases the futility of New York affecting global emissions is shown. The trend results indicate that the year-to-year trend in GHG emissions was positive 21 of 26 years and for CO2 emissions was positive 24 of 30 years. In order to show this information graphically I calculated the rolling 3-year average change in emissions by year. New York’s emissions are only 0.45% of global emissions and the average change in three-year rolling average emissions is greater than 1%. In other words, whatever New York does to reduce emissions will be supplanted by global emissions increases in less than a year.

Climate Act advocates frequently argue that New York needs to take action because our economy is large. I analyzed that claim recently and summarized the data here. The 2020 Gross State Product (GSP) ranks ninth if compared to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of countries in the world. However, when New York’s GHG 2016 emissions are compared to emissions from other countries, New York ranks 35^th. More importantly, a country’s emissions divided by its GDP is a measure of GHG emission efficiency. New York ranks third in this category trailing only Switzerland and Sweden.

Despite the fact that the ostensible rationale for GHG emission reduction policies is to reduce global warming impacts, the Draft Scoping Plan continues an unbroken string of the Administration not reporting the effects of a policy proposal on global warming. The reason is simple. The change to global warming from eliminating New York GHG emissions are simply too small to be measured much less have an effect on any of the purported damages of greenhouse gas emissions. I have calculated the expected impact on global warming as only 0.01°C by the year 2100 if New York’s GHG emissions are eliminated.

Conclusion

My presentation explained why I am skeptical of the value of the Climate Act. Attempting to get to zero emissions is an extraordinary challenge that is downplayed by the Climate Act, the Council and the Draft Scoping Plan so most people are unaware of the likelihood of success. The experts say we need DEFR but it has to be developed for New York in less than a decade which I believe is unlikely. There is no reason to expect that the costs won’t be huge despite the Hochul Administration’s cover up of costs and benefits. The cumulative impacts of the required renewable developments have not been evaluated and could be unacceptable. There is no plan for implementation so there are going to be problems. Finally, what is going to happen when we have electrified everything and there is an ice storm? Extreme weather events can have devastating consequences on a more fragile wind and solar electricity network. I am particularly worried about ice storms. On a local level it is not clear how the public will be able to survive a multi-day power outage caused by an ice storm when the Climate Act mandates electric heat and electric vehicles but the bigger reliability concern is that fact that ice storms can take out transmission lines. The January 1998 North American ice storm struck the St Lawrence valley causing massive damage and required weeks to reconstruct the electric grid. When everything is electrified how will it be possible to rebuild?

New York City Large Multi-Family Residential Heat Pumps

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) has been the primary focus of this blog since 2019. I am from Upstate New York so I really have not been following New York City’s equivalent regulation Local Law 97. This article looks at what it would take to meet the requirement that law’s requirement that “most buildings over 25,000 square feet will be required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits by 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030”.

Everyone wants to do right by the environment to the extent that they can afford to and not be unduly burdened by the effects of environmental policies. I submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan and have written extensively on New York’s net-zero transition because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that this supposed cure will be worse than the disease. Moreover, many of the implementation requirements are going to increase costs tremendously. 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

Both the Climate Act and Local Law 97 are intended to meet a “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. Since 2020 the Climate Action Council has been working to develop plans to implement the Climate Act. Over the summer of 2021 the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultant Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) prepared an Integration Analysis to “estimate the economy-wide benefits, costs, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions associated with pathways that achieve the Climate Act GHG emission limits and carbon neutrality goal”. Integration Analysis implementation strategies were incorporated into the Draft Scoping Plan when it was released at the end of 2021 for public comment. The next step is to finalize a scoping plan by the end of the year. Incredibly the proposed transition plan does not include sufficient feasibility analysis to determine whether it will be affordable, reliable, or what the cumulative environmental impacts will be on the state.

I have intended to write an article since I read an article describing “cutting-edge” climate technology for New York City public housing. That article describes the first awards of the Clean Heat for All Challenge that I described in an earlier post. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), New York Power Authority (NYPA) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) launched the Clean Heat for All Challenge as “an industry competition directed at heating and cooling equipment manufacturers to develop a new electrification product that can better serve the needs of existing multifamily buildings and hasten the transition to fossil-free heating sources. While this challenge is laudable the fact is that the Climate Action Council presumes it will be successful and has not established standards for affordability and reliability. If a reliable system doubles the cost of housing is that acceptable? If an affordable system risks frequent and severe blackouts is that acceptable? New York’s approach is to cross their fingers and hope that these implementation schemes will work.

Integration Analysis Residential Heating Costs

Because GHG emissions from buildings is the largest remaining sector in the State, the Integration Analysis proposes to replace all fossil-fired generation with electric options. As part of my comments on the Draft Scoping Plan I consolidated all the residential heating information in the Integration Analysis in a single spreadsheet. The Integration Analysis supporting documentation included device costs for Single-Family, Small Multi-Family, and Large Multi-Family residences. The Bldg Device Cost tab lists all the costs. A complete table with current building shell, air conditioning, hot water, and heating costs for Large Multi-Family residences is available. The following table consolidates device costs for three choices of building shells, air source heat pumps, backup electric resistance heat, and electric heat pump storage that I believe represents the costs to replace heating and hot water from the steam boiler systems used in many New York City Large Muti-Family apartment buildings. There is not enough documentation for me to definitively state that these represent the Integration Analysis best estimate of likely expected costs so I made the following assumptions. Anecdotally my son’s Brooklyn apartment had air source heat pumps that were inadequate in the winter because the building shell had not been upgraded so I think a basic shell upgrade is appropriate. I think the costs should include a basic shell upgrade ($26,259), an air source heat pump ($26,873), electric resistance heating because the basic shell is insufficient in the coldest weather (($1,140) and an electric heat pump water heater ($3,267) to provide hot water for a grand total of $57,539.

NYCHA Woodside

Environmental Justice advocates have repeatedly complained that disadvantaged communities have problems heating their homes. The poster child of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments with heating problems is the Woodside Development in Queens. After Hurricane Ida damaged the heating boilers in August 2021, Queens lawmakers toured the facility after resident complaints about problems with heat and hot water in January 2022. The problems are still not resolved because in early October 2022 residents still were having problems.

According to MYNYCHA “Woodside Houses has twenty, 6-story buildings and was completed December 30, 1949. The Heating Action Plan states that there are 20 buildings with 1,357 apartments for 2,842 residents. The heating system has six boilers that provide heat and hot water through a two-pipe steam system. The plan’s “major challenges” states:

This plant needs to allow all six boilers to individually switch to fuel oil during a gas service disruption. The current setup only allows staff to switch all boilers to either gas or oil. These are old models of the Preferred brand burners which cause difficulty in obtaining parts during an emergency. The boilers at this location have outlived their life expectancies.

The “cutting-edge” climate technology article interviewed Woodside residents in its article about window heat pumps. The article stated:

In an effort to help public housing residents stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter without resorting to extreme and even dangerous measures, New York announced the winners of its Clean Heat for All Challenge on Tuesday. It awarded $70 million to Gradient and Midea America, a startup and an established HVAC company, respectively. The duo will use that funding to manufacture 30,000 window heat pump units over seven years.

While the technology is relatively new and unproven at scale, proponents of the window heat pump say it could address a number of problems that plague New York’s public housing, which one in 16 New Yorkers call home. Many of those buildings feature outdated and unreliable heating systems as well as poor insulation. A large number of residents also lack access to air conditioning due to the cost of buying window units and the fees for professional installation and added energy use required by the New York City Housing Authority.

The Clean Heat for All Challenge description states:

The challenge calls upon manufacturers to develop a packaged cold climate heat pump that can be installed through an existing window opening to provide heating and cooling on a room-by-room basis. The envisioned product would enable rapid, low-cost electrification of multifamily buildings by reducing or eliminating many of the cost drivers inherent to existing heat pump technologies when used in resident occupied apartments. These include costly electrical upgrades, long refrigerant pipe runs, drilling through walls and floors and other construction aspects which result in high project costs, and significant disruption to residents.

In my post on the Clean Heat for All Challenge I described another NYCHA electrification project where they are testing a Variable Flow Refrigerant heat pump system that I showed was very expensive likely due to the disadvantages of existing heat pumps described in the previous paragraph. Of the 30,000 window heat pumps NYCHA plans to purchase in the coming years, 10,000 will come from Gradient and 20,000 from Midea. If the project is a success, it could provide a more financially viable alternative. However, there are very few cost details available.

The Draft Scoping Plan does not do a very good job explaining that many of the control technology options used in the Integration Analysis are on the cutting edge of technology. In many cases, the required technologies have not been applied at scale so it is possible that there will be unforeseen issues that either increase costs or threaten the viability of the technology. Gradient is a San Francisco based startup with a clever window sited heat pump. Although Midea is an established HVAC company the heat pump offerings on its web site are sparse. The only Midea America heat pump option that I found that might be appropriate is the Thermal Arctic Series ATW Heat Pump, MHA-V16W/D2RN8-B, HB-A160/CGN8-B, HBT-A160/240CD30GN8-B. The description states:

Discover the real peace of mind for you right being at home. The eco-friendly, low-noise M Thermal Arctic Series Air-to-Water Heat Pump integrates air heating, cooling, floor heating and domestic hot water into one system, which is specially designed for satisfying all your demands. With the Built-in hydraulic kit and integrated design, the Mono type M Thermal is highly friendly for household installation. High efficiency and wide operating range allows proper selections under numerous utilization conditions according to the actual needs. Intelligent control and flexible maintenance bring convenience both to users and service providers.

The NYCHA Woodside boilers provide heat and hot water. The Midea option appears to address both needs but it is not clear if the Gradient unit does. In order to provide hot water plumbing to the water system will have to be installed and that raises questions about the applicability of any window unit.

There is another aspect of the heating application that was glossed over in the Draft Scoping Plan and rarely gets mentioned by heat pump advocates. For example, consider the following picture from the Gradient website. In order for heat pump technology to maintain comfortable temperatures when temperatures drop below 20^o F the building shell has to be upgraded or resistance heating has to be used. The efficiency of heat pumps is a great benefit but the inefficiency of resistance heating is a big disadvantage that will likely require upgrades to the distribution service to the housing complex. In this picture the window is going to have to be replaced with a more energy efficient type and the wall itself would have to be insulated in order for a heat pump to provide all the heat necessary in that room.

Gradient Website Home Page

The press releases do not address total transition conversion costs. Assuming that the NYCHA housing does not have insulated walls then there is a major problem. The only ways to provide additional insulation is to add rigid foam insulation over the existing wall or frame a wall next to the existing wall. In a high rise the only practical way to do this is to add those options on the inside. As noted previously I believe that in order for a comfortable solution the building shell has to be upgraded to a basic shell. The unit costs for the window heat pumps are cheaper than the Integration Analysis device costs but it is not clear how many window heat pumps per apartment are needed, whether building shell upgrades will be included in the transition, if backup resistance heat is included and what will provide hot water.

Private Condominium Example

Nearly half of the residences in New York City are in high rise multifamily buildings and on the order of 30% of those are in NYCHA projects. Writing at the Manhattan Contrarian website Jane Menton described the impact of Local Law 97 on her condominium that is representative of the rest. In her article she describes an email sent to the condominium board that said:

“I just wanted to bring this topic to your attention… The Climate Mobilization Act of 2019 will have a big impact on our building. Our emissions must be cut by 60% in the next 10 years or so. If we fail, the fines are in the range of $150k a year. We will be required to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments to upgrade our systems.”

She went on to describe the details for her building:

My colleague’s email was accompanied by the following chart, created by this website, called the NYC LL97 Carbon Emissions Calculator. This site has been endorsed by the City for buildings to use to calculate how much they are supposed to reduce their carbon emissions and how much they will owe in fines if they fail to install “zero-emissions” heating systems by the set deadlines. Here is the chart that my colleague came up with for our building:

According to the chart, about 75% of our carbon emissions result from our natural gas heat, represented in green in the circles in the lower right portion of the chart. The City’s statute mandates a series of lowering thresholds for building emission per square foot of space. By 2035, supposedly we must reduce our emissions by 60%, or face fines well in excess of $100,000 per year. In order to reduce our emissions by 60% we would have no option but to convert our building away from its current gas heat system – which is quite reliable, only a few years old, and in fine working condition – to an electric heating system.

Menton’s board has not estimated the costs to electrify their heating system. She explains:

Assuming that they decide to or are forced to go along with this, how much will it cost the unfortunate co-op owners? We haven’t yet had an estimate done for our building, but here are a few words from Warren Schreiber, board president of another Queens co-op, the Bay Terrace Gardens Co-op Section 1, and co-president of the Presidents Co-op & Condo Council (PCCC):

“Converting to (electric) heat pumps will cost [the co-op] $2.5 to $3 million, which does not include finance charges. This expense will result in a 25-30% monthly maintenance increase. Shareholders who have lived here for 20, 30, 40 and 50 years will have to leave Bay Terrace Gardens to find more affordable housing.”

Sadly, I would not be surprised that the heat pump conversion price shown does not include the costs for upgrading the building shell, providing hot water, and backup heat. I do not know how Local Law 97 addresses the inability of heat pumps to provide sufficient heat at temperatures below 20^oF. Given that the costs will likely double I cannot imagine a scenario where building owners will bother to upgrade building shells. Most likely it won’t be considered until electrified buildings all over New York City start tripping their breakers or, worse, the combined load of all the electrified buildings causes sub-stations to trip off line plunging sections of New York City into blackouts. Importantly this also means that the Integration Analysis expectations for New York City peak wintertime loads that assume building shell upgrades underestimate likely future loads.

Discussion

I have written over 250 articles about the Climate Act and the implementation plans. In my opinion the biggest single shortcoming of the whole boondoggle is the lack of a feasibility plan addressing affordability and reliability feasibility. The Integration Analysis depends on technology that has not been deployed at the scale necessary nor in differing applications necessary for the residential heating electrification. Fortunately, in this sector the heat pump technology proposed for electrification has a long commercial history. The issue is how effective they will be at low temperatures when there simply isn’t enough energy in the air to keep residences warm in large multifamily buildings without substantive building shell upgrades. While there are potential solutions the costs and implementation issues are speculative. The Draft Scoping Plan provides undocumented device costs and the total costs relative to an arbitrary reference case but no breakdown of likely implementation costs per sector.

The specifics on affordability and reliability should give planners concern. The Integration Analysis all-in device costs including the “Basic” building shell upgrades for large multifamily residences total $57,539 per residence. The Integration Analysis states that there are 1,667,493 high rise multifamily residences in New York City alone. On the face of it that works out to nearly $96 billion for the net-zero transition. That is just affordability feasability. When 1.7 million New Yorkers have to turn on their backup resistance heaters it will create a peak load substantially higher than the current peak load. I believe that will require upgrades to the electric distribution system which if unaddressed will lead to reliability issues. In addition to this cost, it introduces an unprecedented stress to the electric grid. While I hope that the electric system planners will anticipate all the potential problems and upgrade the grid accordingly, the inclusion of a large percentage of generating resources that are intermittent and unable to be dispatched on demand makes me very pessimistic that there will not be learning curve blackouts.

Conclusion

In every instance where I have evaluated a component of the New York energy system and the challenge of a net-zero transition I have found that the problems are more complicated and uncertain than presumed in the Integration Analysis and the Draft Scoping Plan. As a result, I think the costs are underestimated and the potential risks to reliability a significant risk. The challenge of meeting Local Law 97 is no different. It is very easy to promulgate an aspirational target but clearly the politicians involved have no clue about the scale of the challenge. If they did, they would not be so anxious to jump into these laws. I have shown that New York’s total greenhouse gas emissions are less than one half of one percent of total global emissions and that since 1990 global emissions have increased on average more than one half of one percent per year. It is not clear what the point of these costs and these risks are when anything the state does is subsumed by what others are doing in a year.