Reasons to Pause Climate Act – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

December Reasons to Pause the CLCPA

I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to amend the law I believe that there are three general reasons to amend the Climate Act: affordability, reliability, and environmental impacts. This post highlights recent articles in each category that provide additional reasons to pause.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Affordability

Governor Hochul’s letter announcing the approval of the State Energy Plan states: “If any state can show the nation that a clean energy transition can be reliable, affordable, and achievable, it’s New York.” Gaslighting involves repeatedly denying, distorting, or contradicting what the target knows or observes so that they begin to question their reality and judgment. The Hochul Administration is gaslighting us to cover up the fact that the recently approved State Energy Plan analysis shows the clean energy transition costs are anything but affordable. The analysis of energy affordability with a sensitivity for equipment costs analysis shows that when the levelized costs of the appliances and vehicles necessary to meet the Climate Act household zero-emissions goals are included energy costs increase $593 month for a moderate Upstate household that uses natural gas and has two gasoline vehicles. Insufficient information to calculate similar costs for other household profiles was provided.

This is a common feature of all states that have similar ambitions. Energy Bad Boys Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling released a report this week entitled Blue States, High Rates that Always On Energy Research coauthored with the Institute for Energy Research. You can access the entire report here.

The report includes the following section describing New York:

Federal data show New York’s electricity prices were 58% higher than the national average and 62% higher than Florida’s, based on the average all-sectors rate from January 2025 to August 2025.

Furthermore, a study from the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) found New York has experienced some of the fastest increases in electricity prices in the country. Retail electricity prices for residential customers increased by 36% between 2019 and 2024, nearly three times faster than the national average and the second-fastest increase in the country during this period, after California.

PPI determined that electricity is expensive in New York due to a wide range of factors, but the report clearly explains: “The convergence of shrinking supply and rising demand inevitably leads to upward price pressures for consumers. These costs are compounded by the immense capital investment required to transform the grid and specific policy choices that increase the cost of energy production [emphasis added].”

For example, New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) constitutes a massive renewable energy mandate, requiring the state to produce 70%of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040, which will require substantial capital investments financed by ratepayers.

At the same time, the state’s firm capacity is being diminished by the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, the state’s decision to deny the expansion of needed natural gas pipelines, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s decision to block a number of necessary upgrades for natural gas power plants, which the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warns could cause an increased risk of power shortages over the next five years.

Prices are also rising in response to state policies mandating the electrification of buildings and transportation, which are straining New York’s already overburdened grid and necessitating additional infrastructure buildouts. The state also suffers from natural gas supply issues due to its decision to ban hydraulic fracturing. In addition, ratepayers effectively pay a tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The expenses associated with these policies are projected to be so large that New York Governor Kathy Hochul delayed implementing the state’s cap-and-tax mandates under the 2019 climate law. The state claimed the regulations would be “infeasible” because they would impose “extraordinary and damaging costs upon New Yorkers.” The Governor has approved two natural gas pipelines as part of a rumored deal with the Trump Administration to approve offshore wind facilities.

New York’s attempts to show the nation that a clean energy transition can be reliable, affordable, and achievable will never succeed.

Reliability

Rafe Champion recently described the work of Anton Lang, widely known in the Australian energy discourse by his pseudonym “TonyfromOz. ” For over five years he has updated his weekly series of posts that documents data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia.

His work highlights a reliability issue that in my opinion, has not been adequately addressed In New York despite my attempts to get the issue considered since September 2020. Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. Case 15-E-0302 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard addresses the fact that there is no commercially available technology for this resource.

Lang’s analysis addressed my ultimate reliability concern. How much DEFR will be required to keep the lights on when needed most? Lang documents “wind droughts”. Champion notes:

Through his analysis of Australian Energy Market Operator records, Lang has identified numerous instances where wind generation across the entire National Electric Market (spanning Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania) has fallen to less than 5% of its installed capacity. He points out that these droughts often coincide with high-pressure systems during winter or summer peaks when demand is at its highest. Lang’s work poses a fundamental challenge to the “the wind is always blowing somewhere” mantra, showing that when a large high-pressure cell sits over the Great Australian Bight, the entire fleet of thousands of turbines can fall silent simultaneously.

These droughts are a global phenomenon and occur in New York. In my opinion, New York should evaluate data going back to 1950 to determine the worst-case drought. If those results were available, we could discuss what to do about the likely result. I suspect that deploying DEFR capacity sufficient to prevent the worst-case blackout will be extremely expensive and will need to use resources with expected lifetimes less than the return period of the worst case. I believe this is a strong reliability case against relying on weather-dependent resources to the point that DEFR is required. New York has not determined this renewable capacity decision point.

Environmental Impacts

In my Draft Scoping Plan comments I noted that on September 17, 2020 the Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act was released. It covered the “environmental impacts of the offshore wind and distributed solar procurement goals, and the estimate of utility-scale solar capacity required to meet the meet the 70 by 30 goal” based on the resources estimated necessary at that time. Since then, considerably more resources have been projected, but the cumulative assessment has not been updated.

Syracuse.Com recently published an opinion piece submitted by residents living near the planned Liberty Renewables wind farm in the town of Fenner, Madison County. These people live near 20 250-foot wind turbines that came online in December 2001. This is the kind of wind resource modeled in the 2020 cumulative analysis and the opinion piece describes the cooperative process that characterized siting those turbines. That has changed:

Liberty Renewables, representing an international energy company, came to Fenner, Nelson, Smithfield and Eaton; secured leases from some small, and often struggling farms and residents; and developed a large-scale project of 24 700-feet-tall wind turbines. Twelve of these would be sited in Fenner and in the middle of our thriving neighborhood of 230 homes and farms. Liberty Renewable’s tactics in securing leases and in dealing with our objections have been questionable.

They go on to point out that the cooperative siting process is broken:

At one time, state laws gave municipalities a say if New York state had approved hydrofracking. Now these state laws have been set aside, undermining our local town councils. Our town supervisors have been diligent in investigating, attending public hearings and keeping the citizens informed, but have not had a seat at the table and the town’s investigations have been ignored. This is immoral, unethical and cruel. Our state should be protecting its citizens and supporting its local democracies, not punishing us in our very own neighborhoods. We are furious and broken-hearted that, in the name of saving our climate, we would be treated with such disrespect and forced to live with such a massive industrial project.

I conclude that in addition to their concerns, the cumulative impacts of these monstrous wind turbines have not been considered. To meet the generating capacity needed to fulfill the projections in the State Energy Plan, I expect that all land-based wind facilities will use these turbines that are twice the size of the current 20 turbines and twice the height of the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse.

Conclusion

We cannot afford the Climate Act, the proposed reliance on weather-dependent resources is dangerous, and the environmental impacts being shoved down rural areas is unconscionable. Please contact your legislators and demand accountability.

New York’s Impossible 2030 GHG Emissions Target

David Wojick recently published an article describing why New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) 2030 GHG emission mandate to reduce New York State 1990 GHG emissions 40% by 2030. This article supplements his article with numbers and additional context.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. His specializes in science and technology intensive issues. I correspond regularly with him on New York issues.

Supplemental Number for the Article

Wojick’s article is an overview of the challenge and impossibility of the Climate Act 2030 interim GHG emission reduction goal. He explains:

New York Governor Hochul has told the Court her administration cannot write the regulations required to enforce the Climate Act’s 2030 emission reduction targets because they would be infeasible and ruinously expensive to New Yorkers. For all practical purposes, they are actually impossible, so the law must be changed. The legal situation is explained in my article “New York’s climate law hits the wall” here:

He provides a brief qualitative analysis of the impossibility.

The law calls for a 40% reduction in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990 levels by 2030. According to state data, the emissions have already been reduced by 10% leaving a whopping 30% to go in just four years.

The Department of Environmental Conservation’s 2024 Statewide GHG Emissions Report, covering data through 2022, revealed that New York emissions as of 2022 were 371.08 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO₂e) from Table ES.2 in the report. According to the Final Department of Environmental Conservation Part 496 regulation, 1990 emissions were 409.78 MMTCO₂e. Using these numbers NYS has achieved only a 9.3% reduction in gross GHG emissions from 1990 levels.

Table ES-2: 2022 New York State GHG Emissions (mmtCO2e GWP20), by IPCC Sector

Click to access summaryreportnysghgemissionsreport.pdf

Table ES-2 lists data in four CLCPA sector categories. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to describe and summarize these sectors. The Energy sector is the dominant source (75%) of GHG emissions in New York State, accounting for about 282 MMTCO₂e in 2022. The Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU) sector covers emissions from manufacturing processes and the use of manufactured products, accounting for approximately 6% of total gross emissions (24.29 mmt CO₂e in 2022). The

Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Sector encompasses emissions from agricultural activities, livestock management, and soil practices, as well as carbon sequestration from forests, wetlands, and harvested wood products. In 2022, agricultural emissions totaled 21.49 mmt CO₂e (6% of gross emissions). The Waste sector covers emissions from managing and treating waste materials, accounting for approximately 12% of total gross emissions (43.45 mmt CO₂e in 2022). This sector is unique in New York’s inventory because it includes emissions from waste exported to out-of-state facilities, addressing potential emission leakage.

Wojick describes the reasons for the observed reductions.

Most of the reductions occurred in just two ways that are similar to America as a whole. Foremost, is a switch from coal to natural gas in electric power generation. Second, is the loss of manufacturing, helping to make China the industrial center of the world. Neither of these reduction measures is available or feasible to help hit the remaining 30%.

Table 1 from the Part 496 Revised Regulatory Impact Statement lists 1990 emissions for the CLCPA sectors used in ES-2. The following table has been supplemented with the 2022 observed emissions. Note that there have been reductions in the energy and waste sectors but increases in the IPPU and AFPLU sectors. This supports Wojick’s assertions that observed reductions have come from the energy sector.

Table 1. Total Statewide Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 1990 by IPCC Sector and Gas, in GWP20.

Click to access revisedris496.pdf

Wojick breaks down the potential for additional emission reductions.

According to EIA, roughly 50% of New York’s energy consumption is from petroleum. About 80% of this is transportation fuel, especially gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. It is clearly impossible to reduce transportation by 30%. In some cases, electrification is technologically feasible, but it cannot possible be done at the needed scale in just four years.

This is especially true given much of the transportation is from out of state vehicles. New York stands between New England and the rest of America, so it gets a huge amount of through traffic.

In addition, an estimated 20% of New York households heat with fuel oil. Winters are very cold, so we are not about to cut that by 30%.

The next biggest source is natural gas, which accounts for about 30% of energy consumption, not counting electricity generation. Roughly 60% of households are heated with natural gas as are most larger buildings, such as apartments, co-ops, offices and stores. Here again, while electrification is theoretically possible, it cannot possibly be done in just four years.

Table ES-3 from the most recent emission inventory lists emissions by economic sector. The type of fuels used are not included but this table supports Wojick’s arguments.

Table ES-3: 2022 New York State GHG Emissions (mmtCO2e GWP20), by Economic Sector

Click to access summaryreportnysghgemissionsreport.pdf

Wojick points out that the Climate Act accounting includes unique provisions to account for imported fuels and imported electricity.

A big extra complication is that the emissions to be reduced by 30% include those out of state emissions created by producing imported electricity and fossil fuels. This might include emissions from things like Texas refineries and Pennsylvania coal fired power plants. New York obviously has no control over these sources.

Here is the Climate Law’s incredible definition of the emissions that need to be reduced: “”Statewide greenhouse gas emissions” means the total annual emissions of greenhouse gases produced within the state from anthropogenic sources and greenhouse gases produced outside of the state that are associated with the generation of electricity imported into the state and the extraction and transmission of fossil fuels imported into the state.”

New York imports almost all of the huge amounts of petroleum and natural gas that it uses. These out of state emissions are likely to be a significant fraction of those that are required to be reduced 30% in just four years.

Plus of course, there are the emissions from electric power generation. Roughly 40% of the natural gas consumed in New York is used to generate electricity. About 54% of the generated electricity is powered by natural gas versus just 15% from renewables, mostly hydro. These numbers can be little changed in just four years.

The sum of the imported fuels and imported electricity category GHG emissions in Table ES-3 is 63 MMT CO₂e or 17% of the total emissions. Those emissions are beyond the control of New York to reduce.

Climate Act Global Warming Potential

There is one aspect of the impossible target not addressed by Wojick. The Climate Act uses a unique GHG accounting methodology. This is a particular problem for me. I used Perplexity AI to provide a summary of the reasons I have described on this blog why I think the use of 20-year global warming potential emissions accounting is inappropriate. The reason that these values are used is because the authors of the Climate Act had an irrational obsession with methane because they thought that the global warming potential of methane is much greater than carbon dioxide. However, as the summary shows, the use of a 20-year global warming potential is scientifically flawed and politically motivated. In brief, the parameter measures the ability of a molecule of a greenhouse gas to reduce long wave radiation (the greenhouse effect) in the laboratory. In the atmosphere where proponents worry about greenhouse effects on global warming, saturation effects, relative impacts on black body radiation and actual concentrations make the global warming potential relative of methane to CO2 insignificant.

Tables ES-2 and ES-3 from the 2024 GHG report list the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) GHG emissions. This is the International Treaty aimed at addressing climate change. It includes established specific guidelines to report and compare emissions data using a global warming potential measured over 100 years instead of the 20 year parameter used in the Climate Act. New York proponents for climate change claim to follow the science but in this instance, they chose to ignore the established science. As a result, it is impossible to track New York’s progress relative to the rest of the world.

As a practical matter the Climate Act accounting increases emissions. In 2022, total GHG emissions using the GWP-20 units were 371.08 MMT CO₂e but are only 192.13 MMT CO₂e using the UNFCC GWP-100 units. Table 2 from the Part 496 Revised Regulatory Impact Statement lists 1990 emissions for the CLCPA sectors used in ES-2. Note that 1990 emissions were 317.92 MMT CO₂e compared to 409.78 MMT CO₂e using GWP-20. Furthermore, when compared to the 2022 emissions total emissions are down 39.6% – very near to the 40% 2030 mandate!

Table 2. Total Statewide Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 1990 by IPCC Sector and Gas, in GWP100

Click to access revisedris496.pdf

Discussion

Wojick concludes:

New York State cannot cut emissions by the required 30% in just four years, so the 2030 target of the Climate Act is impossible. The legislature must change the law, and the Court has given them until February 6 to do so. After that, the Court says it will impose the Climate Law, which would be incredibly harmful.

When the reported numbers are considered the conclusion that New York State cannot make the 2030 40% GHG emission reduction target is confirmed. However, if the GWP-100 GHG emission accounting methodology is used a 40% reduction from 1990 by 2030 only needs a further 1% reduction from current emissions. There is a caveat to this observation. While this suggests that the 2030 reduction target is possible, the fuel switching and loss of manufacturing emission reductions that were the cause of the observed reductions will not provide significant future reductions. Future reductions will require replacement with zero emissions resources no matter what the accounting methodology. Those strategies are much more difficult and costly.

Although changing the accounting methodology would be a potential political approach to achieve compliance for the Hochul Administration, this is unlikely. In the spring of 2023, her Administration floated the idea of changing the metric undoubtedly because of these numbers. Climate Act activists melted down when that was proposed and the idea was shelved.

In my opinion, Wojick correctly points out that the law must be changed in response to the recent legal decision he referenced. These data are just one of a long list of other reasons that I think that Climate Act implementation should be paused and the lessons learned since 2019 incorporated in a new implementation schedule. I believe that evidence is overwhelming that the aspirational targets should also be modified to include affordability, reliability risk, and environmental impact boundary conditions constraints.

Conclusion

David Wojick and I agree that the Climate Act 40% reduction by 2030 target cannot be met using the existing GHG accounting methodology. My numbers confirm everything he said in his article.

NY Politicians Face Climate Act Decision

On Oct. 24, 2025, the New York Supreme Court issued a decision and order in a case pitting environmental organizations against the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The judge ordered DEC to issue final regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026. This post summarizes the findings and my thoughts on the ramifications and path forward.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Decision Summary

I think Supreme Court Judge Julian Schreibman’s decision includes an excellent overview of how we got where we are. He wrote:

In the present case, in 2019, the Legislature passed the Climate Act with the express goal of making New York a leader in addressing climate change through reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. The Climate Act specifically committed the state to achieving a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and an 85% reduction by 2050, measured against 1990 emissions levels.

The decision goes on to explain that the Climate Act implementation plan has three steps:

DEC was required to set emission limits for the reduction targets;
The Climate Action Council, “an advisory group made up of 22 members with relevant expertise”, was given two years to prepare a Scoping Plan containing recommendations for “attaining statewide greenhouse gas emissions limits”; and
The DEC was required to issue regulations that would achieve the mandated emissions reductions following the findings of the Scoping Plan.

The State met the first two requirements but the regulations that were supposed to be released by January 1, 2024, were not promulgated. On March 31, 2025, a group of environmental advocates filed a petition pursuant to CPLR Article 78 alleging, among other things, that DEC had failed to comply with the timeframe.

Although I agreed with most of the descriptive text in the Schreibman decision, I disagree with his characterization of the Climate Action Council having “relevant expertise”. I evaluated the background of the 22 members and found they were chosen based on political ideology. Only eight come from energy sector organizations or have backgrounds in the energy sector. Four of the energy sector members are agency heads, two represent renewable energy organizations, and one represents both renewable and traditional energy organizations. This leaves only one member from the traditional energy sector. Furthermore, the stakeholder process ignored comments that did not comport with the Administration’s narrative. My point is that the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan is unworkable because most of its members approved components that can only be described as magical solutions.

The petition from the environmental advocates states:” The Scoping Plan recommends that New York implement a “cap-and-invest” system to ensure that the state meets those limits.^” This is supposed to provide a cost-effective way to ensure compliance with the Climate Act emission limits. As explained here, my comments on the Draft Scoping Plan explained why it would not work as claimed. My comments were never acknowledged, much less discussed by the Council. Now that dreams cannot avoid reality, the State’s argument in the case boils down to:

Petitioners have not shown a plausible scenario where the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction goal can be achieved without inflicting unanticipated and undue harm on New York consumers, and the concrete analysis in the 2025 Draft Energy Plan dispels any uncertainty on the topic: New Yorkers will face alarming financial consequences if speed is given preference over sustainability.

Schreibman’s decision noted that the State had made a persuasive argument that there were issues related to achieving the emissions targets. However, he notes:

The Legislature has not empowered DEC to set its own targets, to achieve results within a range, or to simply to make progress. Instead, it has specified a result and required DEC to issue regulations that “shall” fulfill it.

Faced with this mandate, DEC does not have the discretion to say no or to decide that it has the authority to choose not to follow the express legislative directive at issue. Under our system of separation of powers, upon concluding, based on its subject-matter expertise, that achieving the goals of the Climate Act might be “infeasible” for the reasons stated, DEC had two options. One, it could issue compliant regulations anyway, and let the chips fall where they may for the State’s political actors. Or, two, it could raise its concerns to the Legislature so that the State’s elected representatives could make a determination about what costs their constituents can or cannot bear in the pursuit of reining in climate change.

The decision concludes:

The Court has no more authority to set climate policy than DEC and would generally expect to have less. However, bearing in mind the factors and issues addressed by the parties, the Court considers that, at this point, it would be improvident to order relief before the next regularly scheduled session of the Legislature convenes. The Court takes judicial notice that the next such session is scheduled to commence in January 2026. If legislative action modifies DEC’S obligations under the Climate Act, DEC will act in accordance therewith. In the absence of legislative relief, however, respondent shall “promulgate rules and regulations to ensure compliance with the statewide emissions reductions limits” set forth in the Climate Act no later than February 6, 2026. Respondent is cautioned that, having afforded it with the time to both further develop its regulations and address its concerns to the political branches, the Court is highly unlikely to grant extensions of this deadline.

Going Forward

The judge ruled that DEC must either issue compliant regulations or tell the Legislature that they must change the law. In the cap-and-invest approach pollution permits to operate (aka allowances) are set equal to the emission targets. Judge Schreibman said DEC could “issue compliant regulations and let the chips fall where they may for the State’s political actors”. The Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review and the Draft Energy Plan both concluded that GHG emissions in 2030 would exceed the emission target. If that projection occurs, then there will not be enough allowances and the only way for entities to comply with the law is to stop operating. That would create an artificial energy shortage. It is disappointing that the State’s argument did not raise this possibility. However, it would not matter because DEC can only issue compliant regulations or the politicians must act to revise the law.

An article by Greenberg Traurig notes that issuing compliant regulations by February 6, 2026 is “virtually impossible” for DEC to comply because:

State Administrative Procedure Act § 202, which specifies that draft regulations are subject to a minimum 60-day public comment period. Additionally, it takes the Department of State at least two weeks to publish draft regulations in the State Register after being provided with the same by an agency. Finally, there would likely be thousands of public comments to which DEC would be required to respond.

While I am not politically astute it seems equally unlikely that DEC “could raise its concerns to the Legislature so that the State’s elected representatives” could revise the law in this timeframe. Although the decision stated that “the Court is highly unlikely to grant extensions of this deadline” there was no mention of New York Public Service Law § 66-p (4) “Establishment of a renewable energy program” that includes safety valve conditions for affordability and reliability. Section 66-p (4) states: “The commission may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”. There has been a significant increase in arrears so if the Public Service Commission were to rule that a temporary suspension was warranted, that might persuade the Judge to extend the deadline.

The Greenberg Traurig article describes the third possible option:

All of this may be rendered moot, however, if DEC appeals the decision – a viable option given Gov. Hochul’s public statement following the decision – and appropriate amendments are made to ECL § 75- 0109(1) in the next legislative session. Pursuant to CPLR § 5519(a)(1), the State would be entitled to an automatic stay of the directive to issue the regulations upon the filing of a notice of appeal or an affidavit of intention to move for permission to appeal. In this respect, a decision on an appeal may take more than six months to be issued from the date of the filing made under CPLR § 5519(a)(1). The timing of an appeal may coincidently provide the Hochul administration with time to include amendments of ECL § 75- 0109(1) in the Governor’s Executive Budget Proposal, which is issued in January of each year. Although in recent years it has taken well into May for the final budget to be enacted, there is a strong chance that an appeal would not be heard and decided prior to that time, allowing for sufficient time to change the statutory language upon which the Citizen Action decision was based if there is the political will to do so.

Colin Kinniburgh wrote a recent article about the decision that indicates that the third option is likely:

Now, Hochul is slamming the court order as unrealistic in light of President Donald Trump’s war on renewable energy and the ongoing economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking to reporters Monday, she made clear that she has no intention of reviving the cap and invest program in the coming months. Instead, she plans to appeal the ruling and seek a deal with the legislature to amend the climate law.

“We have time to work it out,” she said. “We’ll work on appeal. We’ll sit down and talk to the legislature [about] what’s within the realm of possibility and reality here in light of all these changed circumstances.”

In my opinion, appealing the ruling is not going to change the decision. It is clear cut. DEC had to promulgate regulations that meet the Climate Act law. Even though they know it won’t work and will cost too much, that does not matter. The only way to change the requirement is to hold the politicians accountable and have them change the law. Appealing will just push the inconvenient ramifications of political accountability off, probably past the Gubernatorial election. How convenient for Governor Hochul.

In a recent Capital Tonight segment Susan Arbetter interviewed Earthjustice attorney Rachel Spector about the ruling. I made a transcript and added my comments because I think the responses to her questions exemplify the position of environmental organizations that support the Climate Act. Despite overwhelming evidence that it is time to reconsider the Climate Act schedule, these organizations deny that there is any need to worry about affordability, reliability, and environmental impacts. I think their belief that they have sufficient leverage with the New York legislature is going to crash into reality sooner rather than later.

My Recommendation

I am very frustrated with the Climate Act net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed. In my opinion, the best way to proceed is to couple a revised Climate Act schedule with clearly defined standards for affordability, reliability, and environmental impacts. A trackable metric for each should be developed and a tracking system be put in place. The key point is that the law should be modified so that there are consequences when those metrics are exceeded. In short, the safety valve provisions of PSL 66-p should be improved and incorporated into the Climate Act.

The process to establish these metrics should incorporate extensive public participation. New Yorkers need to understand the range of costs, impacts on personal choice, and changes to lifestyles that are buried in the Scoping Plan and Energy Plan. If these safety valve metrics have reasonable limits, I expect that affordability, reliability, and environmental impacts targets will be exceeded as soon as tracking begins. That is the point. Eliminating fossil fuels sounds has been portrayed as simple and cheap but the reality is very different.

Conclusion

The Climate Act has always been about politics and appeasing certain constituencies with climate “leadership”. The politicians who supported the Climate Act did not include a feasibility analysis, concrete implementation plans, or defined affordability and reliability risk limits. The necessity to consider a pragmatic approach is undeniable now. Will the politicians step up and address the issues identified in the last five years of implementation experience? That would require admission that the current plan is doomed to failure. I suspect that politicians will selfishly kick the can down the road to try to avoid the consequences of their virtue-signaling Climate Act.

Renewable Reliability Risk Reasons to Pause

The implementation plans for the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition relies on inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and energy storage. This article highlights a couple of recent documents that describe the reliability challenges introduced by these resources. These reports are another reason we need to pause implementation because I think they make an argument that these problems are unreconcilable.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written nearly 600 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Inverter-Based Resources

I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate this summary of inverter-based resources (IBR). The Perplexity description of issues notes:

While renewable energy sources such as wind, solar photovoltaic systems, and battery storage are essential for achieving sustainability goals, their fundamental differences from traditional synchronous generators create unprecedented challenges for grid stability and reliability. Unlike conventional power plants that rely on massive rotating machinery to provide inherent system support services, IBRs interface with the grid through power electronic converters that lack the natural physical characteristics essential for traditional grid stability mechanisms

I described a Watt-Logic article in September that gives an overview explanation of the “importance of voltage control and reactive power” that were the root cause of the Spanish blackout. In short, the existing system depends upon synchronous generators that convert mechanical energy (spinning turbines) into electrical energy, producing alternating current that matches the frequency of the electric grid. These generators inherently provide important electric grid functions that are difficult to replicate with inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and energy storage. The problem is that not only do inverter-based resources not perform many of these functions, but they can also de-stabilize the grid in certain, poorly understood circumstances.

NYISO Draft Energy Plan Comments

I have written a couple of articles that described comments submitted by the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) on the New York Draft State Energy Plan. One article summarized the NYISO comments and the other described their recommendations, This article will highlight a couple of points made that were not covered in those two articles.

NYISO Technology Comments

The NYISO Comments on Emerging Technologies and Other Resource Development describes the resources needed:

The resources the electric system will require must include sufficient reliable, dispatchable, and dependable supply resources to maintain the level of service New Yorkers expect. The electric generation fleet must collectively maintain a balance of the attributes listed below:

Zero-emission/carbon free (i.e., the qualification criteria for the Zero-Emissions by 2040 Target);

Dependable Fuel Sources that allow these resources to be brought online when required and to operate based on system needs;

Non-Energy Limited and capable of providing energy for multiple hours and days regardless of weather, storage, or fuel constraints;

Dispatchable to follow instructions to increase or decrease output on a minute-to-minute basis;

Quick-Start to come online within 15 minutes;

Flexibility to be dispatched through a wide operating range with a low minimum output;

Fast Ramping to increase or reduce energy injections based on changes to net load which may be driven by changes to load or intermittent generation output;

Multiple starts so resources can be brought online or switched off multiple times through the day as required based on changes to the generation profile and load;

Inertial Response and frequency control to maintain power system stability and arrest frequency decline post-fault;

Dynamic Reactive Control to support grid voltage; and

High Short Circuit Current contribution to ensure appropriate fault detection and clearance.

My concern is that these resources do not presently exist. More importantly, there are no commercially available technologies for some of these resources and grid operators will eventually have to learn how to employ them to prevent blackouts caused by IBRs and intermittency of wind and solar resources.

NYISO Reliability Metrics

I want to highlight the NYISO recommendations for reliability metrics that were discussed in the Electricity Chapter of the Draft Plan:

Consider whether the current reliability-related metrics should be supplemented given the evolving nature of the grid and increased risks of high-impact reliability events. New York should consider whether the current reliability-related metrics (i.e. loss of load expectation) should be supplemented given the evolving nature of the grid and the increased risks of high-impact reliability events. Establishing criteria for metrics like expected unserved energy (EUE) may help supplement traditional LOLE-based criteria by providing information about risks of long-duration outages. As fuel availability will be incorporated into the NYISO’s capacity accreditation framework, additional consideration should be given to whether this adjustment to capacity accreditation provides sufficient incentives and compensation to resources for attributes needed to ensure energy adequacy and resilience to extreme weather events from both a planning and operational perspective (e.g. compensation for fuel storage capabilities).

This is important. In my opinion, the biggest unresolved reliability risk associated with Climate Act implementation is addressed in Case 15-E-0302 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard. Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. In early August I submitted a filing that I prepared with Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton to New York Public Service Commission Case 22-M-0149 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission Assessing implementation of and Compliance with the Requirements and Targets of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection. Exhibit 4 – Resource Gap Characterization describes the challenges of defining the frequency, duration, and intensity of low wind and solar resource availability (known as dark doldrums) events. I do not believe that policy makers understand the ramifications associated with a fundamental planning component of this resource – how much is needed. The reliability metric for this question is unresolved.

Exhibit 4 describes the issues associated with the resource planning objective for dark doldrum episodes. Comparison of results from different evaluation periods indicates that the longer the evaluation period the more likely that the worst-case event will be discovered. New York has not done an analysis using the longest possible data set. I believe the goal of an evaluation over the longer period would be to define a probabilistic range of return periods for dark doldrum events similar to 100-year floods that could be used for electric system planning. The unresolved issue is how long should the evaluation period be for the metric used to determine how much DEFR is needed.

A fundamental observation is that there is no expectation that the failure of conventional power plants will be correlated. We do not expect that many will fail at the same time. That in turn means that even if we decided to set the reliability metric based on, for example, a one in thirty-year probability instead of one in ten-year probability, there would not be much of an increase in the installed reserve margin. The under-appreciated problem is that the wind and solar resources go to low values over large areas at the same time. This means that the installed reserve margin or any other reliability metric in a wind and solar dependent electric system will increase significantly to cover the worst case. That is a significant challenge because of the tradeoff between the enormous costs of this necessary but infrequently used resource and the risks if insufficient electric energy is available when the de-carbonized energy system is completely electrified. This economic and safety tradeoff is much less of an issue in the existing system.

Until now, my concerns about the wind and solar dependent system have focused on supply during low resource periods. The Iberian Peninsula blackout was caused by IBR operations issue.

April 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout

The second document describes what can happen when the existing grid becomes overly reliant upon inverter-based resources without providing sufficient backup resource development. “On April 28, 2025, at 12:33:24 CET, a blackout encompassed Spain, Portugal, and parts of southwest France, leaving over 50 million people without power. The loss of electricity cost Spain an estimated $1.82 billion in economic output and damages.” Deric Tilson writing at the Ecomodernist delves into the minute-by-minute description of exactly what caused the blackout. He includes an excellent description of the technical reasons behind the blackout.

The article also poses the question whether a similar blackout could hit the American grid. He explains:

A month after the blackout, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) gave a presentation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in which several potential areas of concern were identified:

Insufficient voltage regulation to handle large oscillations

Unreliable voltage regulation to prevent a system collapse

Poor tolerance of inverter-based resources to handle voltage oscillations

Potential gaps in operations planning

The key lesson learned by US grid operators and NERC was that if increased voltage leads to generators tripping, which then results in a lowering of frequency, load shedding measures meant to protect the grid will cause voltages to increase further if there is not enough spinning generation.

Tilson presents some reasons why he thinks that the US grid is more resilient than Spain. He argues that:

As technologies have developed and been introduced to energy systems, the grid has grown in its complexity. Intermittent resources and renewables added an extra layer of complexity to what is already a complex system. The structures and institutions that govern the grid were made when all the generation was made up of large fossil fuel plants and hydroelectric turbines; the specific cascading failure seen in Spain would have been unlikely in a more conventional grid. These institutions need to evolve with the technology; if they don’t, the grid will become increasingly unreliable.

He concludes:

Some are waiting expectantly for the results of official investigations into what caused the Iberian blackout; they want some person, policy, or technology to blame. But, electrical systems are not so simple as to care about your pet policies. We need a wide variety of generation sources and types: stable baseload power to always be on and provide generation in all hours of the day; quick, responsive power for when demand is changing rapidly; and emergency power for when there are outages. Grids are more reliable when there is diversity. Nuclear, natural gas, wind, hydroelectric dams, diesel, geothermal, and coal can all contribute to a resilient system.

Conclusion

It is encouraging that the NYISO comments highlighted agreement with points made in the Draft Energy Plan. That suggests that the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) is getting the message about reliability issues. Of course, the proof will be if the Final State Energy Plan includes the recommendations based on the points NYISO highlighted.

I think these are two more reasons to pause the Climate Act net-zero transition because the need for “a wide variety of generation sources and types” is recognized but not defined. Adding wind and solar without sufficient support services risks blackouts but necessary support services have not been defined. Should the inverter-based resources have limits on production? How should the limits vary as additional support services are deployed? The electric grid is too complex, and the impacts of a blackout are too severe to risk changing the electric system without a plan committed to reliability.

There is intense pressure to meet an arbitrary decarbonization schedule determined by the naïve authors of the Climate Act. The implementation should be paused until a feasibility analysis determines what is needed, when it can be deployed, and whether we can afford to build those resources. In my opinion it is possible that such an analysis could conclude that the reliability risks of wind and solar- dependent electric systems are too great and that a system based on nuclear power is better.

Climate Act Safety Valve Filing Exhibits

In early August I submitted a filing that I prepared with Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton to New York Public Service Commission Case 22-M-0149 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission Assessing implementation of and Compliance with the Requirements and Targets of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection. The filing argued that there are sufficient circumstances to warrant the PSC commencing a hearing process to consider modification and extension of New York Renewable Energy Program timelines consistent with Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-P bounds on implementation. This post provides details on exhibits submitted with the filing.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and has two electric sector targets: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” The Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda” was based on an Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

There is a fundamental Climate Act implementation issue. Clearly there are bounds on what New York State ratepayers can afford and there are limits related to reliability risks for a system reliant on weather-dependent resources. The problem is that there are no criteria for acceptable bounds.

Submittal

Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, Francis Menton, and I (Independent Intervenors) filed testimony in the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation dba National Grid and the Consolidated Edison Company of New York rate cases. Among other things, we argued that Section 66-P, Establishment of a renewable energy program includes bounds on implementation that have not been considered in the rate cases. The Department of Public Service (DPS) staff response to our arguments boiled down to “rate cases are not the appropriate forum to consider limitations of the renewable energy program”. The filing submitted on August 12 argues that Case 22-M-0149 is the appropriate forum and should address this issue.

The filing included extensive documentation. An earlier post describes our main argument but only mentioned the attached supporting exhibits. This post provides more details about exhibits 3-5 that address affordability and reliability challenges.

Affordability Recommendations

Exhibit 3 – Affordability-Focused Recommendations documents references to affordability and reliability recommendations in the New York Department of Public Service (DPS) Document and Matter Management (DMM) System. Rather than personally wading through the system we acknowledge the use of Perplexity (https://www.perplexity.ai/) to generate summaries and references included in the document.

The Perplexity summary provided the following key takeaway:

Since 2022, at least six concrete safeguards have been proposed in the New York Department of Public Service (DPS) record to keep the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act affordable for households and businesses. They call for (1) rigorous public cost reporting, (2) objective “safety-valve” triggers under Public Service Law §66-p(4), (3) systematic pursuit of alternative funding, (4) expansion of low-income bill-protection programs, (5) transparent data dashboards, and (6) stricter benefit-cost and rate-design standards.

There has been no DPS staff response to any of the calls to develop affordability triggers.

Reliability Recommendations

The biggest unresolved reliability risk associated with Climate Act implementation is addressed in Case 15-E-0302 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Large-Scale Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard. Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. Case 15-E-0302 is supposed to address this technology. Exhibit 4 – Resource Gap Characterization describes the challenges of defining the frequency, duration, and intensity of low wind and solar resource availability (known as dark doldrums) events. Two exhibits addressing reliability were included in the filing.

Exhibit 4 describes the issues associated with the resource planning objective for dark doldrum episodes. Comparison of results from different evaluation periods indicates that the longer the evaluation period the more likely that the worst-case event will be discovered. New York has not done an analysis using the longest possible data set. In the opinion of the Independent Intervenors, the worst-case planning episode will likely be based on a January 1961 dark doldrum episode. Until that period is evaluated then it is likely that we don’t know how much energy will be required during the worst-case New York dark doldrum. The Independent Intervenors believe the goal of an evaluation over the longer period would be to define a probabilistic range of return periods for dark doldrum events similar to 100-year floods that could be used for electric system planning.

Even if a robust probabilistic parameter is developed and used for future resource planning it would not allay all our reliability concerns. Today’s electric system resource planners for a conventional system base the amount of capacity that they think will be needed based on decades of observations of the fallibility of power plants. The result is that they know the probability there will be a shortage of available capacity to meet load when the installed reserve margin for system capacity is a fixed percentage of the expected load very well. In New York State the installed reserve margin to meet the accepted probability of a loss of load expectation of an outage no more than once in ten years reliability metric was under 20% for many years but has increased over 20% in the last several years.

Exhibit 4, Renewable Resource Gap Characterization, provides background information explaining why incorporating weather variability needs to consider probabilistic metrics based on as long a record as possible. The insurmountable reliability concern is that we know that if an even longer period of record was used there would very likely be an even worse event of correlated low wind and solar resource availability. Instead of the confidence in the current planning process that increasing the lookback period will not markedly change the resources needed for the worst case, relying on weather-dependent resources means that inevitably there will be a period of extreme weather that requires markedly more resources. The costs to provide backup support for these events will be extraordinary and building excess capacity for a very rare event will significantly add to those costs. The DEFR requirement means it is likely that we cannot afford to invest in enough safety margin resources using existing technology. This trade-off means that eventually there will be a catastrophic blackout when the load exceeds the storage capacity. The filing stated that the proposed proceeding should define the acceptable risk for this reliability concern.

The Public Service Commission believes that PSL 66-P, Establishment of a Renewable Energy Program, can be implemented reliably. This exhibit shows that there are major uncertainties associated with the current assessment of necessary DEFR resource requirements. New York has not projected the potential need for DEFR using the longest period of data available. It is also necessary to expand the area covered in such an analysis so that the potential for imports from outside New York can be determined. Even if an analysis were completed for the longest meteorological data set over the North American continent, it is not possible to address natural variability. This Proceeding should establish an acceptable reliability metric for weather variability.

Recently, Russ Schussler (a retired electric planning engineer) argued that the intermittency issue addressed here might be solvable: “The long-term problems associated with wind and solar due to their intermittency could and may likely be made manageable with improved technology and decreasing costs.” The Independent Intervenors note that may not be practical. It would be necessary to upgrade the electric transmission system, deploy short-term storage, and develop and deploy a dispatchable emissions-free resource all to address short and infrequent periods and to somehow finance those resources with those constraints. Importantly, even if intermittency can be addressed Schussler argues that there is a fatal flaw:

Overcoming intermittency though complex and expensive resource additions at best gets us around a molehill which will leave a huge mountain ahead. Where will grid support come from? Wind, solar and batteries provide energy through an electronic inverter. In practice, they lean on and are supported by conventional rotating machines. Essential Reliability Services include the ability to ramp up and down, frequency support, inertia and voltage support. For more details on the real problem see this posting. “Wind and Solar Can’t Support the Grid” that describes the situation and contains links to other past postings provide greater detail on the problems.

Exhibit 5 – Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources explains that the need for a resource that is not currently commercially available risks investments in false solutions and poses significant reliability risks.

One fundamental flaw in the Climate Act is the mistaken belief by the authors of the law that existing wind, solar, and energy storage resources would be sufficient and that no new technology would be required. This attachment explains why this position is incorrect. It describes the unresolved challenges associated with specifying how much DEFR capacity and energy will be needed to prevent a reliability crisis.

The Public Service Commission presumes that the PSL 66-P Establishment of a Renewable Energy Program can be implemented reliably. However, that presumption does not address the fact that DEFR must be identified, tested, and deployed to provide energy during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. There is a real chance that nothing will be feasible. Furthermore, because the DEFR technologies have not been identified it is impossible to determine if they are affordable.

The Independent Intervenors believe the requirement for DEFR is the major reliability risk of PSL 66-P zero-emissions electric grid by the 2040 zero-emission-grid mandate. DEFRs must be developed and deployed at scale well before 2040 to ensure reliability and meet climate mandates. They are not commercially viable today and the Department of Public Service (DPS) Proceeding 15-E-0302 has no schedule to address the mandates in the May 18, 2023 Order Initiating Process Regarding Zero Emissions Target. That Order initiated a process to “identify technologies that can close the gap between the capabilities of existing renewable energy technologies and future system reliability needs, and more broadly identify the actions needed to pursue attainment of the Zero Emission by 2040 Target.”

Deployment of existing technology takes time as shown by the delays in the wind and solar development programs. The uncertainty associated with deploying new technologies is much greater. One of the boundary conditions that must be established in the proposed proceeding is to determine the acceptable risk for long-term planning associated with DEFR development. Given that we don’t know what will work, how much it will cost, and how long it will take to deploy, the Independent Intervenors recommend that implementation should be paused until this issue is resolved.

Conclusion

The Overview for the Draft State Energy Plan states that it is “Advancing abundant, reliable, affordable, and clean energy for all New Yorkers.” Unfortunately, the Hochul Administration has yet to define those terms. This filing made a case that boundary conditions must be established for reliability, affordability, and clean energy. Without bounds we are flying blind towards a future energy system catastrophe.

More Reasons to Pause

I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed. This post summarizes an article that describes the misleading nomenclature used by activists to describe clean and dirty energy, notes that Tisha Schuller says: “Get ready for an extinction burst of myth-making”, and references two Climate Discussion Nexus Newsletter items that address the root cause for the Climate Act transition.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Clean and Dirty Energy

Tom Shepstone hosted a guest post from the Institute for Energy Research that raises the important distinction between “clean” and “dirty” energy sources. The article notes that:

Discussions about energy policy tend to draw a stark divide between “clean” (or “green”) and “dirty” energy sources, with the former largely referring to wind, solar, and hydro, and the latter targeting natural gas, oil, and coal. This distinction is generally accepted by the public and politicians, who abhor the economic and technological problems that force the continued use of “dirty” sources, assuming that “clean” ones will become cost-effective enough to take over eventually.

The article goes on to compare different energy sources and points out often overlooked aspects of “clean” and renewable wind, solar, and hydro compared to fossil fuels. The weak energy density of renewable energy sources requires much more land area to produce equivalent amounts of power. Wind turbines and solar panels last half as long and the volume of materials is greater than a fossil plant. “Wind turbines, solar panels, and their batteries require significant mineral resources — including copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, and rare earths — the extraction and processing of which produce carbon emissions, erosion, and wastewater, while threatening species habitats.”

I agree with this statement:

When it comes to energy production, no source can be considered completely “clean” because all human activity necessarily involves environmental effects. Therefore, calling a source “clean” indicates more about whether politicians favor it than the extent of its environmental impact.

The article goes on to describe a framework for considering environmental protection:

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) depicts the phenomenon of environmental outcomes improving as a result of growing income. According to the model, environmental degradation increases as poorer economies begin to industrialize because they lack the resources to mitigate the environmental damage of industrialization. This occurs up to a certain point, after which the level of environmental degradation begins to decrease as the economy grows because it can use its wealth to spend on improving the environment.

Source: Institute for Energy Research

The article explains:

As the EKC highlights, wealth, not emissions-reducing regulation, leads to improved human welfare and environmental quality. For an advanced economy such as the U.S., this means that the best course of action involves pursuing energy policies that focus on allowing production, mining, and utilities to connect dispatchable and reliable generating sources to the grid. These actions lower electricity costs, making it easier for communities, businesses, and individuals to fund their activities and invest in environmental protection.

New York’s economy is far to the right on this curve. The fact that there are value judgements related to the level of acceptable environmental degradation is leading New York down a path with inevitable unacceptable costs, reliability risks, and the adverse environmental impacts described in this article.

Extinction Burst

Tisha Schuller uses a different term to describe where we are in the clean energy debate. We are already seeing climate activists and their sycophants in the mainstream media claim that the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is to blame for anticipated energy price spikes even though it hasn’t been implemented yet. She says: “Get ready for an extinction burst of myth-making”.

Her article explains that two things are true:

Energy prices are likely to rise in the short term.
Those price hikes were largely baked in before the Big Beautiful Bill even arrived.

She notes that the Myth of an Easy Energy Transition is “throwing a timely tantrum”. There will be an overreaction that has its own consequences for future energy and climate politics. She states:

In a nutshell:

Oversimplified climate policy had us on a path to big challenges—not just for energy prices but for energy reliability as well. (The Myth promised that the transition would be easy and cheap; it would have been neither.)

Lately, more citizens and decision-makers (including many identified with the climate left) have begun to understand that decarbonization and infrastructure buildout are and will be difficult and expensive. (The Moment for practical energy conversations has finally arrived.)

This understanding contributed to a political shift last fall, and all things climate and renewables became controversial.

The BBB arrived.

And now there is a sweeping new narrative claiming that but for the BBB energy prices would be … where, exactly? The Myth has not provided a suitable response.

In my dreams I had hoped that the New York Energy Plan would open the door to practical energy conversations but that is not happening. Schuller goes on to define the extinction burst:

An extinction burst is the whirlwind of a behavior an organism will demonstrate after the reinforcement for that behavior stops. For example: A lab rat that’s been receiving pellets by pressing on a lever will press furiously at the lever when the pellets suddenly stop coming. And then it will go bite and kick the lever and go berserk. If you’ve ever seen a toddler throw a fit when their screen time ends, you’ve witnessed an extinction burst. Well, The Myth of an Easy Energy Transition is throwing its own tantrum.

Media outlets and policy wonks are spinning a tale: The Big Beautiful Bill will jack up prices. That’s not wrong. But here’s what they’re not saying: Energy prices were already climbing—thanks to poorly coordinated climate mandates, a lagging grid, and reliability issues.

We can expect this kind of misdirection repeatedly in the months ahead, as The Myth becomes more exposed and tattered.

The challenge for a pragmatic New York energy policy is to target the energy reality message to those who want to get out of this mess. She recommends arguing for a “durable strategy that includes clear commitment to growing energy resources, pragmatic decarbonization, energy reliability, and cost control”.

Weather and Climate

The August 20 Climate Discussion Nexus Newsletter had two items that address the root cause for the Climate Act transition.

In the past NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris has described climate change as “the existential threat” when talking about the need for the Climate Act transition. I suppose it is progress that the Draft State Energy Plan does not explicitly refer to climate change as an existential threat. However, the rabid climate activists who spoke at recent New York Power Authority and Draft Energy Plan hearings continued to call climate change an extreme threat.

John Robson’s Newsletter featured an article that described the response to the major new climate report from the U.S. Department of Energy. The report by five esteemed scientists dared to say that the “science” that claims there is a catastrophic threat from climate change is much less certain than advocates for the transition away from fossil fuels acknowledge. They have been so blunt to say that the “science” is unfit for policy purposes. In a pragmatic world that means that the urgency to transition away from fossil fuels is unwarranted and certainly does not support the idea that New York must transition before the technology necessary for the Climate Act renewable energy plan is available.

The frustrating inability to distinguish between weather and climate continues in the Draft State Energy Plan. Chapter 6: Climate Change Adaptation Resilience states “New Yorkers have experienced the impacts of climate change in numerous ways in recent years, including extreme storms, heat waves, seasonal drought, and smoke from wildfires in the Western U.S. and Canada.” It goes on to list five weather events that “prove” climate change is “already driving measurable impacts worldwide”.

In his Tidbits section, John Robson describes a mass media description of extreme weather and climate. The highlighted passage is important.

How wrong can you get? Well, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is up to the challenge. It bellows “A new study suggests extreme weather caused by climate change is disrupting more and more large events, like festivals and sports.” But you see the problems, right? First, the data clearly show that extreme weather is not getting worse and the IPCC does not claim otherwise. Second, climate change isn’t something that causes weather to change, it’s a statistical description of long-term changes in the weather. Other than that, fine journalism from the Canadian state propaganda outfit that has, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation recently noted, “more than: 250 directors 450 managers 780 producers 130 advisors 81 analysts 120 hosts 80 project leads 30 lead architects 25 supervisors” and “200 Mystery People” all “Paid more than $100,000 per year!” But none, apparently, doing proper fact-checking.

The simple explanation of the difference is that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. A separate article on the DOE report also addresses the difference between weather and climate.

Another beneficial aspect of the DOE report is that it informs the public about the facts regarding climate science. Namely, it finds fault with those who invoke process-based reasoning and simple thermodynamic arguments to assert that warming is worsening extreme weather events. Because climate is the statistical property of weather over decades, single event attribution to climate change is not possible by definition.

I suppose it is too much to ask that the New York Energy Plan consider the actual science. There is too much invested by too many people who will never admit that climate change is not an existential threat. A problem yes, but one that should not be an over-riding priority siphoning funding and resources from other environmental issues.

Climate Act Safety Valve Filing – Customers in Arrears Trigger

My last post described a filing that I made with Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton to New York Public Service Commission Case 22-M-0149 – Proceeding on Motion of the Commission Assessing implementation of and Compliance with the Requirements and Targets of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. We argued that this Proceeding is the appropriate venue to address the safety valve provisions in Public Service Law (PSL) Section 66-P. This post explains that a requirement for the Public Service Commission to hold a hearing to consider whether it is appropriate to temporarily suspend or modify PSL 66-P obligations has been triggered.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

The Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 and has two electric sector targets: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” The Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda” was based on an Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The summary post describing the filing includes a summary of the safety valve requirement and the rationale for submitting the filing. In brief, Ellenbogen, Kontogiannis, Menton, and I believe that the Public Service Commission (PSC or Commission) has not adequately addressed their broad mandate to ensure access to safe, reliable utility service at just and reasonable rates relative to all the Climate Act mandates incorporated in recent rate cases. PSL 66-P requires the Commission to establish a program to ensure the State meets the 2030 mandate that a minimum of 70% of the statewide electric generation in 2030 is generated by renewable energy systems and the 2040 requirement that the statewide electrical demand system will be zero emissions also includes safety valve provisions. The Commission is empowered by this statute to temporarily suspend or modify these obligations if, after conducting an appropriate hearing, it finds that PSL 66-P impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service. However, in response to those arguments Department of Public Service (DPS) staff have stated that the rate cases are not the appropriate venue to determine whether a hearing is necessary.

Our filing to a generic proceeding responds to that argument. It explains that the statewide utility customers in arrears provision has been exceeded so it would be appropriate to conduct a hearing. This post will describe Exhibit 1 – Trend in Company Customers in Arrears that documents increasing trends in statewide utility customer payment delinquencies, providing baseline data for the customers in arrears safety valve trigger. The filing includes the Exhibit 2 – Customers in Arrears spreadsheet that contains the detailed analytical data on utility arrears across New York’s major distribution companies.

Utility Customers In Arrears

Exhibit 1 of the filing documents my analysis of residential customer in arrears data to estimate whether there has been a significant increase in arrears consistent with New York Public Service Law 66-p (4) for the ten largest electric and gas distribution utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission. The spreadsheet used for the calculations is available. The first tab in the spreadsheet describes the other tabs in the spreadsheet.

Residential Collection Data

Utilities file a monthly report in the PSC Case 91-M-0744 docket that details their arrears and service terminations. There is a data set in New York Open Data that provides this information that was used to determine the number of residential customers in arrears. The “Quarterly snapshot of residential collection dataset” contains the following information:

This dataset provides a quarterly snapshot of residential bill collection activity for New York State’s ten largest electric and gas distribution utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission. Included in this dataset are each utility’s total number of residential customers, residential customers with arrears (overdue bills) greater than 60 days, residential final service termination notices issued, residential accounts terminated (service shut off for nonpayment), active residential deferred payment agreements and the number of uncollectible residential accounts. Also included are the corresponding utility sales figures for each metric above, showing the dollar figure represented.

The “Documentation” tab in the spreadsheet lists the Data Dictionary in the New York Open Data source record. For this analysis, the data were exported in May 2025 to the “Input” tab in the spreadsheet. The original data is available by quarter, but the data labels are listed as month and year, so the input data is converted to quarterly labels in the “Quarterly” tab. The “Statewide” tab sums data for all the utilities by quarter.

Company Residential Customer Summary – Quarterly Data

Table 1 lists the sum of the quarterly data for the Summary Snapshot for all ten utilities for the statewide number of residential customers, residential customers with arrears (overdue bills) greater than 60 days, and the percentage of residential customers with overdue bills relative to the total number of customers. The final termination notices and number of service disconnections (not shown) are not good estimates of the effect of the Climate Act because other mandates have affected the data, e.g., service disconnections were suspended during COVID.

Table 1: Ten Largest Electric and Gas Distribution Utilities Summary Snapshot Quarterly Residential Collection Data

Table 2 summarizes these data relative to the PSL 66-P(4) trigger. The annual average number of statewide customers in arrears greater than 60 days was 1,040,664 in 2019, the last year before the CLCPA was implemented. The average in 2024 was 1,385,119 customers in arrears which is an increase of 344,455 or a 33% increase. The Public Safety Law section 66-p (4) criteria for consideration of suspension or modification is a “significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”. The standard deviation of the number of customers in arrears from 2010 to 2019 is 64,333. Because the observed difference, 344,455 is greater than two times the standard deviation, the increase in statewide customers in arrears is statistically “significant”.

Table 2: Combined Ten Largest Electric and Gas Distribution Utilities Summary Snapshot Quarterly Residential Collection Data Summary of Customers in Arrears Greater than 60 Days

There are ten tables in the spreadsheet in a similar format but only include data from each of the ten largest utility companies that are included in the New York Open Data quarterly snapshot of residential collection data. Table 3 summarizes the results listed in the PSL 66-p(4) tab in the spreadsheet. In addition to the statewide significance finding, four of the ten utilities had a statistically significant increase in customers in arrears since the start of the CLCPA: Consolidated Edison, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, National Grid Metro – Natural gas to Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and National Grid Upstate: the former Niagara Mohawk service territory.

Table 3: Summary of Analyses of Customers in Arrears More Than 60 Days Difference Before the Climate Act and Since Implementation Showing Whether the Difference in the Number of Customers Changed Significantly Before 2019 and After 2020

Discussion

Our filing included a description of the DPS staff response to this argument that was based on a post here. There were two arguments. DPS stated that the proper place to address this was in a generic proceeding and our filing addresses that argument. It is anybody’s guess if and when the PSC will respond to our filing.

The other argument was that our analysis was incomplete. The Public Safety Law section 66-p (4) criteria for consideration of suspension or modification is a “significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”. DPS argued that we did not prove that the significant increase was due to the Climate Act. That response overlooks the fact that the information necessary to determine whether the costs are due to the program is not available because DPS has not fulfilled its obligations. The information in the DPS informational report required as part of Case 22-M-0149 is needed to determine if the increase is related to the CLCPA program. The DPS has not provided that report since July 2023 so only information through 2022 is available. That is too short a period to be used for this evaluation.

Conclusion

Utility affordability is a major issue as reflected by the PSC decision for the National Grid request. According to the press release: “The Commission’s action will significantly reduce the company’s request for total electric delivery revenues by over $340 million (67% decrease from request) and total gas delivery revenues by nearly $100 million (63% decrease from request) in the first year.” This post explains that the requirement for the Public Service Commission to hold a hearing to consider whether it is appropriate to temporarily suspend or modify PSL 66-P obligations has been triggered. The significant reduction in the National Grid rate case implicitly acknowledges that Climate Act costs are contributing to unacceptable cost increases. However, the decision was driven by the political imperative to reduce energy costs and not the rational decision to pause the Climate Act. At some point the politicians supporting the Climate Act must be called out to defend the costs of the net-zero transition. This filing demonstrates that the rationale to hold a hearing to determine if the schedule should be temporarily suspended exists.

Climate Action Council Member Letter to the PSC

Two members of the Climate Action Council, Donna DeCarolis and Dennis Elsenbeck, recently submitted a letter to Rory Christian, Chair & Chief Executive Officer of the New Yok State Public Service Commission (PSC) that deserves mention. The letter notes that “there are more than sufficient circumstances to warrant the PSC commencing” a hearing process to “consider modification and extension of New York Renewable Energy Program timelines.”. I have been referencing the legislation mandating a hearing process if certain circumstances are exceeded since early 2022 so I want to publicize this letter.

Net-Zero Aspirations

Letter

The subject line of the letter is “Modification of Statewide Electric Generation Renewable Energy System Requirements Pursuant to New York Public Service Law § 66-p “ The introductory paragraph lays out their position.

We are writing in our capacity as members of the state’s Climate Action Council to respectfully request that the Public Service Commission (“Commission”) invoke its authority, granted pursuant to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“Climate Act”), to hold a hearing to evaluate whether to modify certain renewable energy obligations of the Climate Act. Specifically, as you know, the Climate Act added a new section 66-p to the New York Public Service Law (“PSL”) that requires the Commission to establish a program to ensure that: (a) a minimum of 70% of the statewide electric generation in 2030 is generated by renewable energy systems; and (b) by the year 2040 the statewide electrical demand system will be zero emissions (“Renewable Energy Program” or “Program”). The Commission is empowered by statute to temporarily suspend or modify these obligations if, after conducting an appropriate hearing, it finds that the Program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service. As noted below, there are more than sufficient circumstances to warrant the Commission commencing the referenced hearing process to consider modification and extension of Renewable Energy Program timelines.

The letter goes on to document the circumstances that they believe warrant a hearing. At the top of the list is the Draft Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review prepared by Department of Public Service Staff and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (“NYSERDA”). They note that the Commission recognizes “the substantial efforts that have been made to deploy renewable energy systems and zero emission sources to meet the Renewable Energy Program targets”. Despite the progress through 2022, they explain “the Biennial Review Order details the numerous factors, including inflation, transmission constraints, shifting federal energy and trade policies and interconnection and siting challenges that have adversely impacted renewable development and the state’s trajectory towards achieving the Program’s 2030 target.” They quote the Biennial Review that “concludes that a delay in achieving the 70% goal may be unavoidable.”

The second circumstance noted is the recently released Draft New York State Energy Plan that “further affirms that current renewable deployment trajectories are insufficient to meet statutory targets, and that external constraints continue to impede progress.” They include this quote: “Consistent with the findings of the CES biennial review, the [Draft Energy Plan’s] modeling shows achievement of a 70% renewable grid in 2033.” However, the letter points out that the Draft Energy Plan goes on to “acknowledge that the anticipated buildout of renewables could be limited by external factors and the 70% target by 2030 may not be met until much later in the decade.” They also note that { The Commission’s recent decision to withdraw its Public Policy Transmission Need determination for a major offshore wind transmission project that would have delivered up to 8 GW of renewable electricity to New York City by 2033 is just one of many examples underscoring the fragility of current renewable deployment timelines and further supports the need for the Commission to exercise its authority under PSL 66-p (4).”

The letter makes the following important point:

While these obstacles to renewable energy deployment and greater emissions reductions in the state are deeply concerning, their implications with respect to the provision of safe and adequate electric service should be viewed as nothing short of alarming. The challenges with bringing sufficient renewable energy on-line in a timely manner, while simultaneously decommissioning existing and effective energy sources in order to hit Program targets, could have devastating repercussions for the state and its residents.

The CAC members go on to reference the 2025 Power Trends Annual Grid and Markets Report (“Power Trends Report” or “Report”) recently issued by the New York Independent System Operator (“NYISO”). They believe that it is reasonable to “conclude that the Renewable Energy Program’s current obligations could impede the provision of safe and adequate electric service.” The problem noted in the Power Trends Report is the warning that “reliability margins across New York continue to decline as fossil-based generation retires and new supply resources fail to keep pace with anticipated dramatic demand growth.” They explain that the NYISO’s warning is critical, because “[s]trong reliability margins enable the grid to meet peak demand and respond to sudden disturbances and avoid outages. As these margins narrow, consumers face greater risks of outages if the resources needed for reliability are forced out of service or are not maintained because of policy mandates or failures associated with aging equipment.”

The letter explains that “acknowledging the challenges to renewable deployment thoroughly described by the Commission in it Biennial Review Order and underlying Biennial Review”, the NYISO states in its own Report that:

A change as monumental as decarbonizing our electric system can be challenging and unpredictable. For instance, to achieve the mandates of the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, new, emission-free generating technologies must replace retiring fossil fuel-based generation. However, these new technologies are not yet available on a commercial scale.

The letter quotes the Draft Energy Plan to support their recommendation for considering multiple energy options. Electric sector results in particular state that “[m]eeting growing loads and peaks while working towards achieving 2040 emissions constraints and maintaining reliability requires a significant buildout of a diverse set of resources” and the preservation of existing resources including the natural gas system which “[i]n all scenarios … remains an important energy delivery system.” They go on:

The NYISO’s determination that pursuit of “every plausible option” is necessary to ensure energy reliability includes the continued use of reliable, dispatchable energy systems like the natural gas system, as well as the ongoing pursuit of traditional renewable resources (hydro, solar, wind) and more concentrated efforts relative to nuclear power (e.g., the state’s recently announced New York Power Authority Advanced Nuclear Project) and hydrogen (e.g., NYSERDA’s Hydrogen Assessment). Providing support for bridge technologies (e.g., fuel cells, linear generators, etc.) is essential to help address market demand in the near term while the state pursues longer-term options. The NYISO notes that “repowering of existing, older fossil fuel plants … is especially important to consider as we rely more on an aging generation fleet.” This repowering likely will not occur absent prompt action by the Commission to extend Program timeframes to obviate the risk for developers that the plants will be forced to retire before they can recover their investments.

The letter acknowledges that activists will argue “that this diverse mix of existing and new energy sources could delay achievement of the state’s energy goals, it is clear from recent analyses by the NYISO and others that it is necessary to ensure the provision of safe and adequate electric service while the state takes the time it needs to responsibly advance progress toward its Renewable Energy Program goals.” They state that these circumstances were addressed by the Legislature “when it included the safeguard in the Climate Act that would allow the Commission to suspend or modify Renewable Energy Program targets. They argue that “Now is the time for the Commission to exercise its authority under PSL § 66-p (4) to conduct a hearing to consider modification and extension of these targets.” They conclude:

To act otherwise would be contrary to the legislature’s intent and inconsistent with the Commission’s “paramount objective of ensuring reliable and affordable electric service and protection of ratepayers.”

Finally, in addition to the urgent need for a hearing to evaluate extending the Renewable Energy Program timeframes, the letter urges “the legislature to act with haste to extend the statutorily-required 2030 GHG limits consistent with the state’s Draft Energy Plan findings”. This is necessary because the greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions reduction requirements of 40% by 2030 included in the Climate Act are similarly late.

Conclusion

Given that many of the arguments in the letter are similar to those that I have been trying to make for several years, I am very much encouraged that powerful voices have come out advocating a similar approach. I am cautiously optimistic that their letter will at least be acknowledged. I am not sure what the resolution will be but the authors are on the side of reality and pragmatic energy policy. It is inevitable that the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act will be modified simply because implementation in PSL 66-p is impossible without endangering reliable and affordable electric service.

More Reasons to Pause Climate Act Implementation

I am very frustrated with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition because the reality is that there are so many issues coming up with the schedule and ambition of the Climate Act that it is obvious that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed. This article describes an interview with Steven Koonin and uncertainties associated with wind and solar forecasting that complicate renewable energy deployment.

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Steven Koonin on the Unsettled Science of Climate

I have been meaning to do a post on the recent Department of Energy (DOE0 report A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. That topic deserves more than a mention so it will have to wait In the meantime here is a link to an interview of one of the authors – Steven Koonin. John Robson from the Climate Discussion Nexus conducted the interview.

The theme of the interview was that contrary to the constant barrage from alarmists, the mainstream media, and New York’s energy policy analysts, there are major uncertainties associated with climate change science. Koonin and the other authors of the DOE report are not arguing that there is no climate change. He remarked that he was disappointed that some opponents call climate change a hoax or conspiracy but he also noted that supporters should not call climate change an existential threat or a potential catastrophe.

In no particular order, my notes include the following points made by Koonin and Robson:

Need to understand subtleties
Need humility when discussing climate variation because the observations are uncertain
Regional models are unfit for purpose
Societal impact descriptions are influenced by value judgements
When evaluating climate change these are things to watch out for
- Historical context
- Scale
- Data, especially long-term
- Need to consider divergent opinions

A key point relative to climate change solutions is consideration of what we know, what we don’t know and why it matters. Contrary to popular opinion we don’t know nearly as much as proponents claim. Furthermore, personal values color the priorities of responses. Finally, both Koonin and Robson noted that many of the purported solutions do not consider feasibility.

Renewable Implementation Uncertainty

Electric grid operators must constantly balance generation and load on a near instantaneous basis. The variability of wind and solar complicates that challenge. To account for weather conditions that affect wind and solar resource availability, weather forecasters prepare projections. Forecasts ranging from very short term (minutes) to a week are needed. The Independent System Operator for New England (ISO-NE) recently released assessments of wind and solar forecast errors. The results offer another indication that implementation is not going to be easy.

The issues associated with solar and wind forecasts are different. Figure 1 shows the solar power forecast bias. Bias is the average tendency of a forecast parameter to overpredict or underpredict. Ideally, it would be equal to zero. Positive bias means less solar power was available compared to forecast. Negative bias means more solar power was available compared to forecast. The calculations are based on the solar forecast at 9:00 AM for periods out to a week for individual and the combined plants or fleet. The results show that the fleet peak loads forecasts consistently over-predict how much solar power will be available by approximately 20%. That is not a very good outcome. It implies that more storage will be needed to cover for solar variability.

Figure 1: ISO-NE Solar Medium and Long-Term Forecast Bias

Figure 2 shows the wind power forecast bias. The calculations are based on the wind forecast at 9:00 AM for periods out to a week for individual plants and the fleet. In my opinion, there are some unexpected things going on in these data that would need more time than I have to address. It appears that the fleet forecast bias is very good out to 48 hours but after that there is an apparent diurnal effect and the difference between observed and forecast markedly increase. I think that the diurnal effect should show up in the first 48 hours albeit in a reduced form. Frankly the lack of that indicator makes me think there is a problem in the analysis.

Figure 2: ISO-NE Wind Medium and Long-Term Forecast Bias

There are differences between the solar and wind results. The data indicate that the fleet wind estimates are better than the solar forecasts because the bias is lower. The individual forecasts vary more than the fleet forecasts for solar than for wind. These results are evidence that the factors affecting wind are driven more by larger scale factors than those for solar.

The challenge to balance generation and load on a near instantaneous basis in a system that depends on wind and solar is not going to be solved by weather forecasts. There are systemic weather forecast bias errors on the order of 20% for solar forecasts. Also note that these are average statistics. I have no doubt that there are days that the forecasts are bad enough to negatively impact the ability of the grid operators to balance generation and load.

More Reasons to Pause Climate Act Implementation

I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Department of Energy Reliability Report

Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling describe the relationship between retirements, demand growth and outages. The U.S. Department of Energy recently released a report entitled Evaluating the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid, which concludes “the United States will experience a 100-fold increase in blackouts if coal and natural gas plants are retired amid rising demand from data centers.”

The report evaluated multiple scenarios for power plant retirements across the country. One scenario allows the retirement of 104,000 MW of power plant capacity that intends to retire and adds 209,000 MW of Tier 1 resources to the grid by 2030. The Tier 1 resources are overwhelmingly wind, solar, or battery storage. It only includes 20,000 MW of new natural gas capacity expected to come online by 2030, along with 31,000 MW of additional 4-hour batteries, 124,000 MW of new solar, and 32,000 MW of incremental wind. If the plants that have announced retirement go offline, then coal capacity will go down 72,000 MW and gas capacity almost 5,000 MW.

At the same time, the analysis expects “electricity demand for data centers to increase by 52,000 MW by 2030, representing about 6.7 percent of the current average peak demand in the United States.” Orr and Rolling note that one of the future load projections is “projecting zero demand increases in New England or New York, resulting from data centers.” They speculated that “it could be due to tight electricity supplies and consistently high prices in these regions.”

They described the expected impacts on reliability. The report found “huge blackouts throughout much of the country” if all the plants that have announced retirements are allowed to go offline. They also noted:

In a somewhat unexpected finding, the DOE report did not find capacity shortfalls in ISO New England or New York in either of the scenarios studied. This is likely due to the fact that load growth is expected to be small in both of these areas because there is no expected data center demand growth in these regions in the DOE study.

In my opinion, the future load projections did not consider the potential load impact of new manufacturing facilities in New York, most notably the Micron chip fabrication plant. That undoubtedly would affect capacity shortfalls.

Orr and Rolling note that this report is an indication that the Department of Energy is stopping the “childish fantasy that America can shut down its reliable coal and natural gas plants and rely on wind, solar, and battery storage to meet surging electricity demand, it’s clear the energy adults are now back in charge.” It is also time for New York to stop its own childish fantasy that existing fossil-fired power plants can be shut down here.

Lessons from Europe – Germany

Brawl Street Journal (BSJ) explains how Germany’s energy policies are affecting neighboring jurisdictions. The article recounts the bureaucratic morass of European Union energy policy. Teresa Ribera, the woman who “helped turn Spain into blackout country” is now the EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy.” In that role, she “plays a powerful part in shaping Germany’s energy choices.”

Germany has figured out that wind and solar don’t work all the time. Instead of pinning their hopes on a magical solution like New York is proposing, they are planning to deploy “21 GW of new gas-fired backup plants.” BSJ explains the problem with this plan:

These plants would operate so rarely, their revenues wouldn’t come close to covering their fixed costs. No sane investor would finance them without some form of guaranteed support. In other words: subsidies.

And that’s where Ribera comes in. As the European Commissioner overseeing competition policy, she effectively gets to say whether Germany can subsidize these gas plants or not. Given her past as a fierce advocate for a 100% renewable grid in Spain, you can probably guess where this is going.

In its quest for clean energy the EU is pulling the plug on fossil fuel infrastructure subsidies.

In the past, the Commission signaled it might tolerate up to 5 GW of new gas plants in Germany to help secure supply. But anything beyond that? Only if the plants are designed to eventually run on hydrogen — an option so expensive and speculative it borders on science fiction.

The result is that German coal plants will have to run longer. I love the summation:

This creates the absurd situation that high-emission coal must run longer because support for lower-emission gas plants is being denied. It’s the kind of logic you’d expect from a socialist economy where outcomes don’t matter, only ideological purity.

This is exactly what is happening here. We already shut down the coal plants but there are a large number of old, inefficient, and relatively high emitting gas units still in operation. The Hochul Administration blocked plans by several plants to repower their old turbines with modern and efficient combined-cycle turbines. The result is that high-emission units must run longer because support for lower-emission gas plants is being denied. The most recent Energy Planning Board meeting presentations hinted at the need to repower units but there is a tortuous path between suggesting that and having some developer commit to building modern new units and getting them on line.

More Lessons from Europe – Spain

Ed Reid explains that the blackout in Spain earlier this year raises many questions about the “stability and resilience of renewable powered grids”. He listed the following questions:

Can a renewable plus storage grid operate reliably and stably?

What is the maximum percentage of renewables consistent with reliability?

Is there a maximum percentage of solar generation on a reliable grid?

Is there a maximum percentage of wind generation on a reliable grid?

Does a reliable grid require inertia; and, if so, how much?

Is the physical location of the inertia sources on the grid important?

What is the relative inertia contribution of steam turbines vs. gas turbines?

What would be the inertia contributions of small modular nuclear generators?

What is the effect of modulated output on inertia contribution?

What effect does grid-scale storage have on inertia?

Can inertia be effectively provided electronically?

These are fundamental questions that proponents of the Climate Act have ignored to date. It is time that we make sure their “solution” will work. These must be addressed by the Energy Plan for it to have any credibility.

Media Energy Credibility

It may just be me, but it seems that the claims by clean energy zealots are becoming ever more hysterical and shrill in the face of evidence that the Trump Administration is advancing a practical, adult energy policy. The global energy transition is faltering but the media still is claiming otherwise. Robert Bryce describes “What The Media Still Won’t Tell You About The Energy Transition”.

There is no energy transition. Just don’t expect the media to tell you the truth about it.

Of course, I could provide dozens, or even hundreds, of other examples of climate-focused journalists, academics from elite universities (hello, Princeton!), and policymakers making risible claims about our energy future and how the world will soon be fueled by “clean” sources like wind, solar, and batteries, with some nuclear and maybe a bit of hydropower, thrown in for good measure. As I explained two years ago in “The Anti-Industry Industry,” the “energy transition” narrative is relentlessly promoted by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate-media complex, a multi-billion-dollar-per-year business that includes dozens of NGOs and media outlets that promote anti-hydrocarbon agendas. The World Economic Forum even maintains an “Energy Transition Index.”

He uses the latest edition of the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy to show that the world runs on hydrocarbons. There is no question that wind and solar capacity is growing but “in 2024, just 3% of global primary energy came from wind and solar while 87% came from hydrocarbons. The costs of the failed transition are staggering: “Since 2004, about $5.4 trillion has been spent on solar and wind, and yet they are still only providing 3% of the world’s primary energy.”

One of the annoying arguments from the useful idiots who support the energy transition is that “Big Oil” is spending huge amounts of money to spread misinformation. The Department of Energy report described above makes it clear that shutting down more US coal capacity would cause blackouts. Bryce notes:

As I reported here in 2023, billionaire media baron Michael Bloomberg is giving $1 billion to anti-hydrocarbon NGOs that want to shut down the entire US coal sector. That’s only part of the billionaire’s radical climate agenda. The billionaire’s “beyond carbon” campaign aims to close all US coal plants, “cut gas plant capacity in half while blocking all new gas plants, and increase US clean energy four-fold, reaching 80 percent of total electricity generation,” by 2030.

Who is really spreading misinformation with massive funding?

The Energy Plan process currently underway appears to be acknowledging that the Climate Act transition plan’s schedule and ambition are out of reach and must be re-assessed. That message is in direct contradiction to much of the media narrative. The Hochul Administration is going to face backlash from the media when it bows to reality.

Conclusion

New York’s energy planners must openly address grid reliability, resource adequacy, and practical transition timelines. Until these fundamental concerns are resolved, pausing the Climate Act’s implementation is the only responsible course.