Category: Reasons to Pause Climate Act

I have argued repeatedly that New York should pause implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) until the State provides a credible demonstration that its proposed electric system will be reliable and affordable. Several recent articles raise additional questions about the assumptions underlying the transition. They address how the grid works, what batteries can and cannot do, how to evaluate solar generation, the consequences of regulations that discourage existing power plants, and the opportunity cost of prioritizing wind and solar over firm generation.

These articles are not all equally detailed, and their numerical claims deserve scrutiny. Nevertheless, they raise a common question that New York has not adequately resolved: are we pursuing the resources needed to provide dependable electricity, or are we pursuing preferred ideological technologies and assuming that someone will figure out how to make the system work?

I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed and am convinced its implementation plan will adversely affect affordability and reliability. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with; these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to research the material summarized in this article and prepare an initial draft.

Overview

The articles discussed approach electricity policy from different directions, but their most useful distinction is between producing electricity and providing electric service. A wind turbine, solar panel, battery, and nuclear reactor do not provide interchangeable services simply because each can deliver electricity to the grid. Their availability, operating characteristics, storage requirements, and supporting infrastructure matter. Scott Grout’s grid explainer and the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA) battery analysis make that distinction central to their arguments.

That distinction should also be central to Climate Act implementation. The appropriate test is not whether New York can procure enough renewable nameplate capacity or generate enough electricity over an average year. It is whether the complete system can meet demand during the difficult hours, with realistic allowances for equipment outages, unfavorable weather, and the cost of maintaining necessary reserves.  It is also necessary to determine how much that will cost.

Electricity Generation Is Not the Same as Electric Service

Scott Grout’s Electricity Generation and the Grid: a Brief Explainer provides a useful starting point because it separates two questions frequently mixed together in energy-policy discussions: what job must a resource perform, and what physical characteristics allow it to perform that job?

Grout identifies three roles. Baseload describes the minimum demand present throughout the day. Load-following generation serves the predictable variation above that minimum. Peaking resources cover the periods of highest demand. These are descriptions of system needs, not competing political preferences. A reliable system must accommodate all three.

He then distinguishes firm generation from variable generation and discusses flexibility—the ability to change output. Wind and solar produce electricity according to available weather conditions. Grid operators can reduce their output but cannot increase production beyond what the wind and sunlight permit. Gas, nuclear, coal, and hydro have different operating constraints, but their production is not governed by the same immediate dependence on wind and sunshine. Hydro availability, of course, remains constrained by water conditions.

The important qualification is that firm does not mean infallible. No generating plant is available every hour, and a high annual capacity factor is not itself a complete measure of reliability. The planning question is how the resource mix performs collectively when demand is high and equipment or fuel supplies are constrained.

For New York, the implication is straightforward. Political renewable generation targets do not describe a complete electric system. Batteries can shift energy, but the State must still identify the resources that will supply prolonged shortfalls and the operating services necessary to maintain the grid.

That is another reason to pause implementation as presently structured. Before requiring additional commitments, New York should publish a resource-by-resource explanation of how its proposed system will perform every necessary job, particularly during the hours when weather-dependent generation contributes little.

Batteries Shift Electricity; They Do Not Manufacture It

Schernikau’s Can Batteries Help Wind and Solar Provide Continuous Electricity Year-Round? central distinction is between generating enough electricity over a year and supplying electricity whenever customers need it. Those are different requirements. An annual energy balance can look satisfactory while concealing individual periods when generation is inadequate.

Batteries help close that gap, but their contribution has limits determined by both their discharge capability and the amount of energy stored. A battery rated in megawatts tells us how much power it can produce. Its megawatt-hour rating tells us how much electric energy it can supply before recharging. Confusing power—the rate at which a battery can deliver electricity—with energy—the total amount it can supply—obscures why a battery capable of meeting an evening peak may lack the stored energy needed to sustain that output through several days of low renewable generation.

The report emphasizes the recharging problem. During an extended period of weak wind and solar production, the available generation may already be needed to serve customers. It cannot simultaneously replenish depleted batteries unless there is sufficient surplus generation or another charging source. Storage also causes losses, so more electricity must enter the storage system than is ultimately delivered from it.

For New York, the relevant issue is not whether batteries work. They do. The issue is whether a specified storage portfolio can support the proposed generation mix through the conditions that determine reliability, and what that complete arrangement will cost.

Before proceeding further, the State should disclose:

• The duration and magnitude of the renewable shortfalls used in its planning.
• The usable stored energy available at the beginning of those events.
• The resources available to recharge storage while meeting ongoing demand.
• The cost of storage replacement, reserve capacity, and supporting infrastructure.

New storage technologies may change these answers. However, prospective improvements should not be treated as equivalent to demonstrated resources with credible deployment schedules.

The rationale for a pause is not that storage can never solve a particular problem. It is that New York should demonstrate the solution, including its charging requirements and total cost, before making irreversible decisions that depend on it.

The Cost of Regulating Dependable Generation Out of Service

The Energy Bad Boys article Destroying the $138.5 Billion Blackout Machine approaches the issue through federal power-plant regulation. The authors report that their modeling found $138.5 billion in net benefits for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region from removing existing greenhouse-gas regulations and preventing future carbon-pollution standards of the type they evaluated.

That is their modeled result, not an independently established saving that can be transferred to New York. The article also identifies the Lignite Energy Council as the client for the analysis. That sponsorship does not automatically invalidate the work, but readers should know who commissioned it and should examine the assumptions before accepting the headline number.

The underlying issue deserves attention regardless of the exact estimate: environmental requirements can affect whether an existing generating plant remains available, how much it costs to operate, and what must be built to replace it.

The article quotes Alliance Resource Partners chief executive Joe Craft arguing that existing coal plants can provide additional electricity at competitive cost. He cites an Indiana study finding that much of the existing coal fleet could produce electricity more cheaply than new combined-cycle gas generation, while existing combined-cycle plants were already heavily utilized. New York has decommissioned its coal plants so this is not applicable in the state.

For New York, the useful connection is the distinction between the cost of continuing to operate an existing resource or even repowering the facility and the cost of building a green field replacement system. A comparison that considers only the operating cost or emissions of the existing plant can miss replacement generation, transmission, storage, and reliability requirements.

There are legitimate environmental reasons to regulate power plants. The relevant question is whether a particular compliance schedule produces benefits commensurate with its costs and whether dependable replacements will be operating before existing resources leave service.

That is why this article provides another rationale for a pause, rather than a justification for accepting every claim made by its authors. New York should evaluate retirement and compliance decisions against a transparent replacement-cost and reliability analysis of renewable resources..

A mandate does not make replacement resources available. Before allowing policy deadlines to remove dependable capacity, the State should demonstrate that the replacement portfolio can provide the necessary service and disclose what customers will pay for it.

The Opportunity Cost of Choosing Wind and Solar

Stu Turley’s The $5 Trillion Question: What Wind and Solar Bought, and What Nuclear Could Have Bought Instead raises an important question about opportunity cost. Money, construction capacity, equipment, and skilled labor devoted to one energy strategy cannot simultaneously be devoted to another. The relevant comparison is therefore not simply whether wind and solar produce electricity. It is what alternative investments might have delivered.

The question is relevant to New York. If the objective is dependable, low-emissions electricity, the State should compare alternative ways of providing that service, rather than treating renewable procurement as the objective itself.

A fair comparison must use consistent boundaries over the expected lifetime of the technologies. Wind and solar should include the storage, firming, transmission, and operating support required by the particular system being evaluated. Nuclear should include financing, construction risk, operating costs, outages, fuel, and end-of-life obligations. Neither side should receive favorable assumptions simply because its technology is politically preferred.

The comparison should also distinguish annual energy from dependable output. A dollar spent on a resource available during a prolonged renewable shortfall may provide a different system benefit from a dollar spent producing additional electricity during hours of abundant supply. Grout’s explanation of resource roles and Schernikau’s discussion of continuous service both underscore that distinction.

Turley found that with these constraints nuclear could be cheaper.  He estimated the cost to install the solar and wind deployed between 2011 and 2025 was $5.2 trillion to produce 5,491 TWh.  Reactor costs vary .  At the price of the most recent reactors built in the USA the same output would cost $10.2 trillion.  At the other end of the range, the Korean reactors built for the UAE would cost $2.8 trillion.  I believe that the most recent reactors in the USA cost will come down if we make a commitment to develop the infrastructure to build multiple reactors.  I do not think that comparable price improvements are available for wind, solar, and battery resources.

This does not establish that nuclear is always the least-cost choice or that additional wind and solar have no value. It establishes the need to compare complete portfolios that meet the same reliability and emissions requirements.

For New York, that is another reason to pause the present approach. Before locking customers into further long-lived commitments, the State should publish an independently reviewed comparison of realistic alternatives.

The question should be: which combination of existing resources, new firm generation, renewables, storage, and transmission provides dependable electricity at the lowest reasonable total cost? A technology quota is not an adequate substitute for that analysis.

Discussion

These articles are most persuasive when read as challenges to the planning process, rather than as proof that a particular technology must always succeed or fail.

Grout explains why resources perform different jobs. The battery analysis explains why energy shifting is not equivalent to continuous supply. The solar discussion highlights the need to define what is actually being replaced. Turley’s opening asks what alternative investments might have provided.  Together, they support several requirements before New York makes further irreversible implementation decisions:

• Demonstrate reliability using chronological analysis across multiple weather years, including prolonged renewable shortfalls.
• Identify the firm resources needed during those shortfalls and establish credible deployment schedules.
• Compare complete resource portfolios using the same demand forecast, reliability standard, and financial assumptions.
• Disclose total customer costs, not just individual project prices.
• Link retirement schedules to demonstrated replacement capability rather than expectations that necessary resources will become available.

Conclusion

The strongest reason to pause Climate Act implementation is not a dramatic headline or a single disputed cost estimate. It is the need to demonstrate that the proposed system can provide dependable electric service at an acceptable total cost.  The State should show how the system will work—and show its math—before requiring everyone else to pay for it.

I believe that it is necessary to reconsider 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.  Grid Inertia support is another example illustrating reliability and affordability concerns.

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 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

I am currently overwhelmed with blog posts that I want to write, regulatory submittals I should submit, and it is spring so my life outside of this blog demands time too.  As a result, I unapologetically acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to produce this post because it would not have been written were it not for its support.  I edited the output, checked references and added my own references.

Grid Inertia Past

I started working for Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation (NMPC) in 1981.  At the time it was a vertically integrated utility responsible for generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity.  The importance of reliability was an all-encompassing driver at the company.  Since then, much has changed and, in my opinion, not for the better.  NMPC proudly described their generation mix of coal, oil, nuclear, and hydro as resilient and reliable. 

The emphasis on reliability took many forms but there was an explicit mandate to support the ancillary gird services needed to keep the lights on.  Grid inertia is one example ancillary service that helps keep the power system frequency stable by using the stored kinetic energy in large rotating machines, such as synchronous generators or synchronous condensers, that are physically spinning in sync with the grid. When there is a sudden mismatch between supply and demand—like a generator trip—this rotating mass resists the change in speed, slowing the rate at which grid frequency deviates and buying operators time to respond.

When NMPC was responsible for providing electricity to consumers the system was built around large rotating machines synchronized with all the other generators in New York and beyond.  NMPC owned and operated many hydro-electric units that provided additional grid inertia support.  For example, the hydro plants on the Black River could provide grid inertia and did so for 70 years until sold about 30 years ago when New York politicians demanded a de-regulated electric system.  At that time NMPC had to sell all their generating plants and got out of the power management business.

Grid Inertia Present

In today’s electric system the New York System Operator (NYISO) runs the system: “NYISO-administered markets send price signals designed to attract and retain investment in the types of flexible, firm, cleaner, dispatchable resources essential for efficiently maintaining system adequacy into the future.”  The design of the market establishes price signals necessary to provide the services needed keep the lights on.  However, The Climate Act is shutting down traditional plants faster than we can replace all the resources they provided so the grid loses the resilience that NMPC provided. Eventually, NYISO system operators will need to procure inertia explicitly as an ancillary service, either from remaining synchronous machines or from technologies that can emulate inertial response.

NYISO does not have a standalone “inertia” market today.  Instead, synchronous generators, synchronous condensers, and certain non‑generator devices can be paid  when this resource is needed.  This is insufficient in my opinion.  As evidence the current owner of NMPC, National Grid is building synchronous condensers because they must think they are necessary for reliability.

In June 2024, GE Vernova announced that it would build two turnkey synchronous condenser sites for National Grid at the Coffeen and Taylorville 115 kV substations. Each site will include three synchronous condenser units and associated transformers, with the stated purpose of improving grid stability as the resource mix shifts under New York’s Climate Act decarbonization policies.

Market Failure

I think the construction of the these plants represents  market failure. The Coffeen St substation used to serve the Black River hydro plants.  Now these plants are paid only when they produce power.  I have heard from NMPC retirees that said it t was hard to believe that you can contract for power and and not contract for the inertial support and other ancillary services.  He said It would take less than 24 hours to bring this back to how it was run before if there was a suitable market.

New York already had synchronous resources that historically supplied many of the services necessary to support the electric system. New York is not simply adapting to a new grid. It is paying to replace a reliability function that legacy hydro plants once provided. That should raise a basic question for both the Public Service Commission and NYISO: why are customers paying for new synchronous condensers instead of first determining whether existing hydro facilities could be contracted or compensated to provide comparable system-strength services?

The fact that there is a market gap matters. If the only straightforward compensation mechanism is for dedicated voltage support equipment, then utilities and regulators will naturally gravitate toward building new rate-based infrastructure. Existing hydro resources may be physically capable of helping, but unless there is a contract or explicit market design to value those services, they will be overlooked. The losers are New York ratepayers.

Discussion

This is why the Coffeen and Taylorville projects are more than a local transmission story. They are evidence that the Climate Act is driving a second layer of costs that is rarely acknowledged in public debates. New York is not just paying for renewable generation. It is also paying for replacement grid services that were once provided by conventional and hydroelectric units as part of ordinary operations.

That fact alone should change how New Yorkers think about the claimed cost of the energy transition. Wind and solar developers may claim that their projects are cheap, but that comparison often ignores the system cost of all the additional equipment needed to keep the grid operating reliably once conventional generators are retired or used less often. The Coffeen and Taylorville projects are a clear example of those hidden costs now being imposed on upstate ratepayers.  The observed increases in recent utility rate cases are not caused exclusively by the Climate Act but there is no question that buried costs like this are exacerbating costs at the time there is an affordability crisis.

Before more synchronous condenser projects are approved, state regulators should require a transparent comparison of alternatives. That analysis should evaluate whether existing hydro units, especially those historically operated by Niagara Mohawk, could be returned to ancillary support service through contracts, tariff changes, or operating modifications. If that can be done at lower cost, then building new synchronous condensers should be the last resort, not the default option.

Conclusion

The larger lesson is straightforward. The Climate Act does not merely require more wind, solar, and batteries. It also requires an electric system strong enough to survive with fewer conventional synchronous machines. When policymakers ignore that reality, ratepayers end up paying twice: once for the new intermittent resources, and again for the equipment needed to compensate for what those resources do not provide.  Implementation of the Climate Act Renewable Energy Program needs to be paused to address this hidden affordability burden.

Update: 5/3/2026

Here are the links in the DPS DMM System for our filing and the three exhibits

• Filing in support of petition
• Exhibit 1 documents the trend of New York customers in arrears
• Exhibit 2 is the spreadsheet with the calculations and data for the results in Exhibit 1. 
• Exhibit 3 responds to a public comment submitted by hundreds of individuals to illustrate why the stakeholder process must change for the hearing from that used in the Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan.

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act or CLCPA) and includes a safety valve provision.  In posts published this week I provided a status update that provides extensive background information, a description of the Independent Intervenor filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled, and described how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations.  This post describes the filing the Independent Intervenors submitted in support of the petition for a safety valve hearing.

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

Background

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that 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”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates. 

I have joined Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (“Independent Intervenors”) submitting comments in a few Public Service Commission proceedings.  I am a retired utility meteorologist, with extensive electric energy and environmental regulatory analysis experience.   Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles on his Manhattan Contrarian blog that analyze New York’s energy transition.  We have no financial interest in Climate Act policy, have received no funding from any outside interests for our filings, and have invested thousands of hours of our time in efforts to explain why physics, engineering and economics prevent a Renewable Energy Program that powers a safe, adequate, and affordable electric system in New York State.

Petition Support

The Independent Intervenor filing argued that the Legislature included this safety valve precisely for the circumstances New York now faces.  Proponents of the Climate Act argue that the transition strategies must be implemented to meet the net-zero mandates regardless of affordability or reliability constraints. However, PSL § 66-p is also a legal requirement, and it charges the PSC with implementing the Renewable Energy Program subject to feasibility safety valve conditions for affordability and reliability. We described four lines of evidence that support the need for the hearing.

Safe and Adequate Service Is Imperiled by Declining Reliability Margins

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) has documented a systematic deterioration of grid reliability since the Climate Act was enacted. NYISO data show a net loss of 2,041 MW of dispatchable capacity (4,315 MW retired versus 2,274 MW added). Fossil retirements are outpacing new supply additions, with additions largely consisting of intermittent renewables and limited-duration storage that cannot provide the firm, dispatchable capacity the grid requires.

NYISO’s 2024 Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) identifies an actionable reliability need in New York City beginning in 2033, with deficiencies ranging from 17 to 97 MW, and high-risk scenarios show the deficiency could begin as early as 2025 and grow to over 1,000 MW by 2034.  The “high‑risk scenarios” are from the RNA’s High Demand Forecast Scenario and related NYC risk scenarios documented in the 2024 RNA report’s “Exploring Uncertainty: Scenarios and Risks” section and detailed in Appendix E/F scenario figures and text. The 2025 Q3 Short-Term Assessment of Reliability (STAR) Report identifies a Zone J (NYC) summer 2027 reliability need requiring retention of peaker units scheduled for retirement. Statewide, NYISO projects that by 2034 there will be no surplus power without further development of reliable sources of electricity.

NYISO has officially stated that the dispatchable emission-free (DEFR) technologies needed to replace fossil generation “are not yet available on a commercial scale”. The CLCPA and Scoping Plan implicitly assume large volumes of firm zero-emission resources will be available, cost-effective, and sited in New York by 2040, but there is no clear procurement or market framework to ensure they materialize. This represents a technology and market design gap between what the CLCPA requires and what is under contract or in interconnection queues today.

The Renewable Energy Program depends heavily on transmission infrastructure that either does not exist, has been terminated, or faces severe uncertainty:

• Clean Path NY terminated: NYSERDA and developers mutually agreed to suspend the Tier 4 REC Purchase and Sale Agreement in late November 2024 due to cost escalation. The PSC subsequently denied NYPA’s petition for Priority Transmission Project designation in August 2025. There are no plans to revive Clean Path NY.
• Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) winter limitations: Although CHPE is in late-stage construction, NYISO’s Short-Term Reliability Process Report states that “the facility is not expected to provide any capacity in the winter.” The New England Clean Energy Connect experience during the January 2026 cold snap, where power flows from Québec largely collapsed, foreshadows this vulnerability. This is a serious failure of planning given the prospect that New York grid demand will peak in the winter rather than, as now, in the summer, if building and transportation electrification advances. 
• Offshore wind transmission withdrawn: The PSC voted to withdraw the NYC Public Policy Transmission Need determination in July 2025, cancelling the process for delivering 4,770 to 8,000 MW of offshore wind into New York City. Proposal costs ranged from $7.9 billion to $23.9 billion.
• Federal disruptions to offshore wind: The Trump administration’s stop-work orders on offshore wind projects and suspension of leasing have further compromised the transmission pathway for the mandated 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035.

NYISO has warned that without major transmission project completion, NYC reliability margins will become deficient. NYISO has concluded that cumulative factors — retirements, electrification, and delays — risk creating reliability metric violations incompatible with safe and adequate electric service.

The Affordability Crisis Demands a Hearing

The affordability evidence satisfies the PSL 66-p(4) threshold of “a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections.” As of December 2024, over 1.3 million New York households were behind on their energy bills by sixty days or more, collectively owing more than $1.8 billion. Independent Intervenors have demonstrated that the increase in the number of accounts in arrears from 2019 before enactment of the CLCPA and 2024 are statistically significant for statewide totals and four of ten utilities.  We filed exhibits that updated the analysis through 2025. We found the same results.

The cost trajectory is alarming. The recently completed New York State Energy Plan found that Climate Act costs are expected to require $120 billion in annual energy system investments through 2040, equivalent to over $1,200 per month per household. NYSERDA’s own Energy Affordability analysis shows that Climate Act compliance adds approximately $594 per month (a 43% increase) for an upstate moderate-income household that fully electrifies.

Recent rate cases approved by the PSC between March 2025 and January 2026 for five major utilities have markedly increased residential electric bills, and as Kris Martin of NY Solar Divide has noted only “a small fraction of Climate Act expenses” have been incurred to date — the bulk will hit ratepayers in the next 5-10 years as onshore and offshore wind, grid-scale solar, and electrification mandates ramp up.

The State’s own Attorney General has acknowledged that achieving the 2030 target is “currently infeasible” and that “New Yorkers will face alarming financial consequences if speed is given preference over sustainability”. DPS staff estimates that Climate Act residential impacts range from 4.6% to 10.3% of 2023 monthly electric bills, and these estimates are widely considered conservative.

The PSC’s existing 6% energy burden target for low-income households lacks any tracking or compliance reporting mechanism. Despite the urgent need for clear affordability metrics, the Hochul Administration and Legislature have not adopted transparent tracking systems or mandatory corrective actions when affordability thresholds are exceeded.

Multiple Independent Sources Confirm the Need for a Hearing

The case for a hearing is supported by multiple independent, authoritative analyses:

• NYISO: Reliability Needs Assessments, STAR Reports, and Power Trends documents consistently identify declining margins, capacity shortfalls, and transmission dependencies.
• New York State Comptroller: The July 2024 audit found that PSC and NYSERDA plans “did not comprise all essential components, including assessing risks to meeting goals and projecting costs”.
• DPS Biennial Review: Concluded that the 70% renewable target by 2030 “will likely not be achieved until 2033” and that a delay “may be unavoidable”.
• State Energy Plan: Acknowledged that “current renewable deployment trajectories are insufficient to meet statutory targets”.
• DPS Second Informational Report: Identified four feasibility concerns, including that the 2030 target is “likely unattainable,” offshore wind faces “major obstacles,” transmission remains a “critical bottleneck,” and grid reliability challenges are “mounting”.
• State Attorney General: Acknowledged on the record that the current implementation schedule creates unacceptable affordability liabilities.

Responding to Opposition Arguments

ACE NY and WE ACT have urged the Commission to reject this petition, suggesting that all progress would stop if a hearing were held. This characterization is inaccurate. PSL 66-p(4) authorizes temporary suspension or modification — not abandonment — of Climate Act obligations. A hearing represents pragmatic management to ensure safe, adequate, and affordable service while the clean energy transition continues. Refusing to invoke the safety valve does not eliminate the underlying reliability and affordability problems; it simply ensures they go unaddressed until a crisis forces emergency action.

The Commission Should Proceed Directly to a Hearing

The evidence presented by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, the Independent Intervenors, NYISO, the State Comptroller, and the State’s own agencies demonstrates that the statutory criteria for a PSL 66-p(4) hearing have been met. Our filing recommended that rather than further delaying action through an extended review period, the Commission should proceed expeditiously to conduct the hearing that the law contemplates.

At minimum, a hearing should:

1. Establish clear affordability metrics — Define “safe and adequate electric service” and “significant increase in arrears” with specific, measurable criteria so that the safety valve operates as the Legislature intended.
2. Evaluate reliability margins — Examine NYISO’s documented capacity shortfalls, transmission deficiencies, and the gap between policy assumptions and physical grid reality.
3. Assess the technology gap — Determine whether the firm, zero-emission resources assumed by the CLCPA will be available on the timelines required.
4. Review transmission status — Evaluate whether the termination of Clean Path NY, the winter limitations of CHPE, the withdrawal of the offshore wind PPTN, and federal disruptions collectively impede the ability to provide safe and adequate service.
5. Require transparent cost reporting — Mandate that DPS and NYSERDA provide comprehensive, auditable cost projections covering all CLCPA implementation costs, not just utility rate case impacts.  NYSERDA should be instructed to develop comprehensive cost projections that reflect the total expense of meeting CLCPA mandates, rather than limiting estimates to individual CLCPA program elements.

On April 17, 2026, we filed a recommendation regarding the stakeholder process.  Our filing recommended that once everyone has had an equal chance to raise their concerns that the Commission categorize and prioritize the technical issues submitted and convene a technical hearing conference that resolves the substantive issues raised in comments.  Resolution of issues is necessary to assure New Yorkers that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.

Conclusion

The Legislature included Section 66-p(4) precisely to address the situation New York now faces: implementation challenges that threaten reliability and affordability as the aggressive timelines and technology requirements of the Climate Act confront real-world constraints. The Commission has both the authority and the obligation to act. I am relatively optimistic that the Commission will call for a hearing, but I am 100% sure that any decisions regarding the need to temporarily delay or modify the Renewable Energy Program obligations will not occur until after the election.

This year’s New York budget negotiations include significant changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  One of the contentious issues is implementation of the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) program.  This post addresses a misleading opinion piece published in the Albany Times Union by environmental organizations.

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

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050.  It includes an interim reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

In a recent post I described several initiatives that have led Governor Hochul to suggest that the timeline for the Climate Act electric sector goals needs to be revised. Legislative leaders and Hochul have not yet announced a final climate plan deal.  Reporting as of April 19–21 describes a stalemate with ongoing behind‑closed‑doors talks rather than agreed‑upon bill text.  Environmental groups have rejected the proposed revisions to the Climate Act.

I believe that opinion pieces published in the Albany Times Union have an out-sized impact on negotiations in Albany simply because everyone sees what is published.  I also believe that the Times Union is biased towards the environmentalist side.  This post addresses the Governor Hochul is mispresenting our CLCPA lawsuit (“TU Letter”) piece published this week written by Josh Berman, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program and Eric Walker, energy justice senior policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice.  I do not think that the Times Union will publish a response to  the op-ed that is long enough to rebut what I think is a misleading opinion.

NYCI Lawsuit

The first argument in the TU Letter describes the author’s rationale for the lawsuit.  I will only address the claims associated with NYCI. The letter states:

The governor asserts that only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost will satisfy the law and litigants. This is false.

The Preliminary Statement in the litigation Petition filed by the authors clearly states that they wanted to ensure that the emission reduction requirements were achieved. 

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 2 states that

Although the climate law sets mandatory limits on New York’s statewide greenhouse gas emissions, it does not specify how the emissions reductions will occur or obligate any polluting entity to reduce emissions. Instead, the Legislature directed the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) to give the law teeth by issuing regulations that ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates.

Statement 10 states that

DEC’s abdication of its statutory duties is unlawful and critically threatens the state’s ability to achieve the emissions reductions requirements of the CLCPA. DEC’s failure to implement the Legislature’s directive is also endangering Petitioners’ members who continue to breathe dirty air, suffer from pollution-related illnesses, and face economic barriers in their efforts to protect themselves and their communities by replacing fossil fuel-burning equipment with clean new technology. The state must not be allowed to continue to violate the law by withholding a climate solution that it has deemed necessary to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the climate law and that it estimates will prevent many premature deaths and asthma-related emergency room visits each year.

The litigation clearly states that they sued to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

The petition also describes the timeline of the regulatory process.  It started in 2023 with the release of draft regulations and public meetings.  Of particular interest was the June 1, 2023 pre-proposal Cap-and-Invest overview session because DEC requested feedback on the Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) program stability mechanism.  As described in the NYCI Second Stage Outreach: Preliminary Analysis Overview Preliminary Analysis on January 26, 2024, the CCR is a price control mechanism.  If the bidding price reaches a preset trigger limit, additional allowances would be released to the market.  That results in lower prices.  However, the CCR is a pool of extra allowances that is only used if the trigger price is exceeded and that means that the cap will be exceeded if used.  I

I always felt that this was an inconsistency that would eventually cause problems.  Proponents of the economy-wide cap-and-invest approach presumed compliance with the Climate Act mandates, but this affordability mechanism would cause non-compliance.  Frankly, I do not think that the litigants understood that this provision was inconsistent with their desire to ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates. 

As the petition notes everyone understood at the end of 2024 that the regulations were ready and would be released in January 2025.  That did not happen.  The only regulation released was the greenhouse gas emission reporting rule and that was months later.  The cap-and-invest rule regulation was put on hold and on March 31, 2025 the litigants filed the petition demanding that the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issue the draft regulations.

In October 2025, the New York Supreme Court issued a decision ordering the DEC to either issue the regulations or revise the regulations.  DEC appealed the decision, a hearing was held in the last month, but no decision has been made. 

However, this is an election year and the Governor is pushing an affordability agenda.  David Caralfamo described the political theater that preceded the budget deliberations:  “Two days after Governor Hochul’s own budget director stood up at a hearing and all but announced that CLCPA rollbacks were coming, a conveniently alarming memo from NYSERDA — dated the very same day — found its way into the press.”  The NYSERDA memo was allegedly a new analysis, but I believe that these numbers have been available since early 2024 and were the driver for the recommendation to include the CCR mechanism.  That is the key.  These are the cost estimates for NYCI without the CCR which will necessarily increase the costs but is also the only way to ensure compliance.

NYCI Affordability

The TU Letter addresses Hochul’s affordability arguments:

Hochul appears to have forgotten that many of our groups had expressed support for a program that controlled for cost and would have lowered energy bills by over $1,000 a year for families making under $200,000. That’s not our number; it’s based on two independent research reports. There is no reason such a program cannot move forward now.

I addressed those “independent research reports” when they came out.  I believe they are referring to a January 2025 report titled New York’s Affordable Energy Future and a January 2026 report titled Investments for New York’s Future.  In my opinion described research reports as “independent” when they were sponsored by the authors’ organizations is misrepresentation.  The 2025 report was funded in part by WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the 2026 report was funded by EDF.  Moreover, there was no independent peer review of the reports so they are not unbiased independent analyses.

I raised a number of concerns with the 2025 analysis by Switchbox. I found that while the report does acknowledge that cap-and-invest alone won’t achieve the 2050 goals (which is honest), it doesn’t adequately address a critical problem: the proposed investments cannot achieve the required annual emission reduction rates to meet 2030 targets. I showed that under Scenario C (lower revenue), the program falls short of the 2030 goal entirely, and neither scenario achieves the 2050 target.

The bigger problem, and one that exemplifies the authors’ presumptions about NYCI, is that fundamental feasibility problems are not addressed.  The authors assume compliance as a matter of faith and ignore reality. There are no add-on controls that achieve zero emissions for any sector. The only strategy is to convert to different energy sources, which takes time and is partially outside the control of compliance entities.  The political timeline of the Climate Act has never been evaluated for feasibility and the record since 2019 proves that it is impossible. 

Another feasibility aspect is the cost-effectiveness of controls.  I showed that using New York’s experience with Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative proceeds that the proposed spending allocations will not provide meaningful reductions.  Furthermore, in the book Making Climate Policy Work, the authors argue that the level of expenditures needed to implement the net-zero transition vastly exceeds the “funds that can be readily appropriated from market mechanisms”. 

The TU Letter and this report don’t acknowledge what happens if the program fails to meet emission reduction targets. Organizations don’t voluntarily violate compliance requirements, and the penalties are severe. If the schedule or technologies aren’t feasible, the only remaining option is to simply stop selling fuel or generating power.  This could create an artificial energy shortage with serious consequences as the only way to comply with the regulations.

I concluded that while Switchbox is more transparent than some analyses in acknowledging price ceiling limitations, it remains advocacy research designed to support a predetermined conclusion. It overstates benefits while downplaying the fundamental feasibility challenges of meeting Climate Act targets, and it doesn’t adequately address whether the proposed investments can actually deliver the emission reductions needed—especially by 2030.

I also reviewed the2026 EDF Investments for New York’s Future report and found that it was advocacy research, not independent analysis. I showed that:

• Greenline Insights explicitly states they “develop compelling research questions and build the right mix of tools to answer them” – which I interpret as getting the results clients want

• EDF has been actively lobbying for cap-and-invest since 2023 and has a vested interest in the program’s success

• They strategically rebranded the program as the “Clean Air Initiative” (CAI) instead of using the official “New York Cap-and-Invest” (NYCI) terminology – a deliberate messaging strategy

I also explained that the methodology has serious flaws:

• The analysis doesn’t account for opportunity costs—what else could be done with those resources

• It assumes idle economic resources, which is unrealistic in a full employment economy

• It measures “gross economic activity” without subtracting displaced economic activity elsewhere

• It’s missing “the Missing Peter Problem”—robbing Peter (existing economy) to pay Paul (clean energy sector) while claiming total growth

I also showed that the economic projections are questionable and concluded that the report is simply a lobbying presentation that was commissioned by EDF. The benefits are overstated, the costs are minimized, if not ignored, and the methodology is sketchy.

Discussion

The TU Letter was published without qualification at a critical time in the Climate Act revision negotiations by the organizations that sued the DEC to release the NYCI regulations.  It is ironic that the unintended consequence of their successful lawsuit turned into political cover for the Governor to argue that NYCI would be unaffordable.  However, the TU Letter attempt to resolve the perverse result of their actions is flawed and their arguments that the Climate Act does not need to be changed are without merit.

Their lawsuit explicitly demanded NYCI regulations that “ensure the state achieves its statutory greenhouse gas reduction mandates”.  The authors of the TU Letter disagree with the presumption that “only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost” will satisfy the law and their litigation.  However, I showed that the CCR checks on cost mechanism in the pre-proposal documents was incompatible with ensuring compliance with the reduction mandates. 

The two reports referenced in the TU Letter do not provide credible affordability mechanisms.  Moreover, the reports do not acknowledge that the CCR mechanism is necessary to keep the costs palatable.  The NYSERDA memo with the high costs that Hochul cites as the reason that revisions to the rule are necessary simply shows costs for NYCI without the CCR mechanism.

Conclusion

This opinion piece offers no credible reasons why New York State should not be considering revisions to the Climate Act but got published in Albany while negotiations are underway.   I plan to submit a letter to the editor of the Times Union summarizing this post.  Unfortunately, a word limited summary could not incorporate the explanations why this letter was flawed even if it was accepted.  This is a perfect example of the BS Asymmetry Principle: Alberto Brandolini: “The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act and includes a safety valve provision.  In posts published this week I provided a status update that provides extensive background information and a description of the Independent Intervenor filing describing how the hearing to address the safety valve should be handled.  This post explains how the Independent Intervenors think the Public Service Commission should respond to the hundreds of identical comments prompted by advocacy organizations.

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

Background

New York Public Service Law (PSL) § 66-p establishes a renewable energy program for the Climate Act.  It  provides that 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”.  This safety valve was included because even the lawmakers realized that it may not be possible to transition the electric system to “zero-emissions” by relying on renewable energy.  New York State never followed up with a feasibility study proving that it could be done, never pointed to another jurisdiction that implemented such a system successfully, and has not provided clear and comprehensive cost estimates. 

I have joined Richard Ellenbogen, Constantine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton (“Independent Intervenors”) submitting comments in a few Public Service Commission proceedings.  I am a retired utility meteorologist, with extensive electric energy and environmental regulatory analysis experience.   Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles on his Manhattan Contrarian blog that analyze New York’s energy transition.  We have no financial interest in the Climate Act, have received no funding from any outside interests, and have invested thousands of hours of our time in efforts to explain why physics, engineering and economics prevent a Renewable Energy Program that powers a safe, adequate, and affordable electric system in New York State.

The Problem

As I explained in my previous post, the Independent Intervenors filed a petition on April 17, 2026 recommending that the stakeholder process for the PSL 66-P hearing should differ from the process used in the Scoping Plan and the Energy Plan.  In those proceedings the response to comments was handled by the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA).  NYSERDA did not use the stakeholder process as an opportunity to improve those plans.  Instead, they went through the motions of stakeholder interaction and only provided a list of comments without any responses.  I was particularly disappointed that the NYSERDA general characterization of comments was along the lines of “most of the comments agreed” with the draft documents. As a result, green energy advocacy organizations were encouraged to organize advocacy campaigns to swamp the public comments with comments supporting their policy preferences.

To have a stakeholder process that informs the PSC decision on the PSL 66-P hearing we stated that the Commission should order the following process steps:

1. A notice opening an initial comment period that gives all stakeholders a meaningful opportunity to identify issues relevant to the statutory findings required by PSL § 66-p(4).
2. At the conclusion of the comment period, Commission Staff should prepare an issue list that categorizes and prioritizes the comments received into major technical subjects, including reliability, resource adequacy, transmission readiness, contract and compliance obligations, arrears and disconnections, and definitions of safe, adequate, and affordable service.
3. The documentation should identify opposing positions on each material issue so that participants and Staff can see where there is consensus, where there is factual disagreement, and where methodological disagreements require focused review.
4. The schedule must provide sufficient time for written comments, reply comments, and preparation of supporting technical materials so that the record is not limited to conclusory assertions.
5. One or more technical conferences should be convened at which both sides of disputed issues are presented in a structured manner, with sufficient time for questions from Staff and stakeholders.
6. A dedicated conference session addressing the meaning of “safe,” “adequate,” and “affordable” service should also be included, because those terms are central to the Commission’s statutory findings and need common definitions before competing analyses can be compared.
7. A post-conference report prepared by Staff that summarizes the issues raised, the competing positions presented, the areas of agreement and disagreement, and explains how those discussions inform the Commission’s determination under PSL § 66-p(4).
8. This information would enable the Commission to determine if it is necessary to temporarily suspend or modify obligations under the Renewable Energy Program.

This post explains how I think the proposed stakeholder process should handle hundreds of similar advocacy comments expressing policy preferences without technical or economic support.

Recommended Response to From Letter Campaign

The Independent Intervenors plan to submit our comments on the petition on May 1. Our filing addresses a comment submitted by hundreds that express policy preferences without technical or economic support. The comment lacks the analytical detail needed for meaningful regulatory consideration.  We are not suggesting that these comments lack value.  In our April 17 filing, we recommended that once everyone has had an equal chance to raise their concerns that the Commission categorize and prioritize the technical issues submitted and convene a technical hearing conference that resolves the substantive issues raised in comments.  This exhibit is an example of issues that need to be addressed in this manner.

As an example of our recommended comment process consider 100 public comments number 1151 posted on 4/23/26 through number 1050 posted on 4/3/26 at Case Number 22-M-0149.  The first 50 characters of more than half these comments were identical, which clearly indicates a campaign to submit comments.  Comment number 1151 posted on 4/23/26 by Melanie Acampora met these criteria.  It states:

Dear PSC Commissioners, I urge the Public Service Commission (PSC) to reject the petition filed by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, which would improve neither safety nor reliability, and would instead raise utility costs by deepening New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels. With the cost of oil and gas skyrocketing as a result of the U.S. war on Iran, this is not the time for New York to be considering rollbacks to our renewable energy targets. I urge the PSC to remain committed to the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and the Clean Energy Standard. Temporarily modifying or suspending the clean energy mandates in the CLCPA will not benefit New Yorkers and is entirely unnecessary to maintain a reliable electric grid. In fact, any further investments in the fossil fuel economy will have a negative financial impact on New Yorkers. Costs of energy in New York are driven by the price of fossil fuels, which are highly volatile and affected by events outside of the control of New York, such as the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia and the U.S. war on Iran. Sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers. Renewable energy – which requires no fuel – offers predictable costs which makes families less vulnerable to energy price shocks. Renewable energy is a long-term cost-saving strategy that will promote affordability and protect New York utility customers from the impacts of volatile fossil fuel prices. I urge the PSC to reject the unsupported request to hold a hearing to consider temporarily modifying or suspending the renewable energy and zero-emission energy goals. Sincerely,

This comment appears many other times since the first comment addressing the petition (Comment number 33) appeared in the record on 3/9/26 in Case Number 22-M-0149.  It also appears many more times in the public comments for Case Number 15-E-0302.  The Independent Intervenors believe that the comment incorrectly characterizes the petition as an attempt to “roll back” or “suspend” the CLCPA mandates and asserts, without record support, that a §66‑p(4) hearing is “unsupported” and “entirely unnecessary.”  In the following sections we describe our responses to this comment as an example of responses to a disputed issue that should be resolved in a hearing.

Recommended Response

The form letter argues that the petition filed by the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy should be rejected because it “would improve neither safety nor reliability and would instead raise utility costs by deepening New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels.”  However, it does not provide any support for those claims.

It argues that “Temporarily modifying or suspending the clean energy mandates in the CLCPA will not benefit New Yorkers and is entirely unnecessary to maintain a reliable electric grid.”  It is important to note that the hearing will not necessarily temporarily modify or suspend the Renewable Energy Program, but it will address feasibility.  The fact is that the State has never done a feasibility analysis to determine if Renewable Energy Programs are a viable path to a zero-emissions electric system.   If the hearing finds that safe and adequate energy is not impeded by the Renewable Energy Program, then we can continue the current path reassured that it is feasible.  However, the Independent Intervenors cannot help but think that the concerted effort to flood the docket with comments that all say do not even consider the hearing is a sign that even devoted proponents have concerns.

The comment goes on to argue that fossil fuels are the cause of the high prices and that renewable energy is a long-term cost saving strategy.  The Independent Intervenors believe that this argument needs to be addressed at a hearing.  We believe that cheap intermittent energy does not lead to a cheap energy system.  The claims that renewable energy is cheaper are based on an incomplete analysis that tells you what it costs to produce electricity under ideal conditions, but it leaves out what it takes to run a system that has to perform under real ones. Accounting for reliability, timing, infrastructure, and risk, the picture changes and renewable costs are not cheaper.

The commenters deserve to have their arguments addressed.  As detailed below, the Independent Intervenors believe that those arguments are flawed but they must be addressed.  A PSL 66-P hearing is the appropriate venue to resolve the issues raised.

The Petition Properly Invokes PSL §66‑p(4)

The Coalition’s petition expressly requests that the Commission “hold a hearing pursuant to Public Service Law §66‑p(4) to evaluate whether to temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under the Renewable Energy Program established as part of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”

Thus, a hearing is the statutorily prescribed mechanism for testing whether the safety‑valve criteria are satisfied; it is not an extraordinary or anti‑CLCPA measure but part of the CLCPA implementation framework itself. The adverse comment’s request to deny a hearing disregards this structure and effectively ignores §66‑p(4) in the statute. Note however, that the hearing must resolve issues.

Reliability and Affordability Triggers Have Been Met

Multiple filings in Case 22‑M‑0149, as well as the Coalition petition, present credible evidence that the current implementation of the Renewable Energy Program may: (a) impede safe and adequate service, and (b) coincide with a significant increase in arrears, thereby implicating both primary §66‑p(4) triggers. The recommended technical conference would evaluate this evidence.

The Commission itself has acknowledged in Case 22‑M‑0149 that PSL §66‑p(4) includes safety‑valve provisions and that the customers‑in‑arrears condition has been specifically raised as a trigger. The adverse comment does not grapple with any of this record; it simply asserts that a hearing is “unsupported” and “unnecessary,” which is inadequate given the clear statutory language and evidence already before the Commission.

Mischaracterization of the Petition and of Fossil Fuel Risk

The form comment argues that granting the petition and potentially modifying obligations would “deepen New York’s reliance on expensive and volatile fossil fuels” and that “sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers.”

If this issue were addressed as proposed we believe that it would show the Coalition petition does not seek to abandon the CLCPA’s targets; it seeks a recalibration of obligations and timelines, if warranted by the evidence, so that the Renewable Energy Program is compatible with reliable and affordable service. A transition that outpaces feasible infrastructure development, transmission build‑out, and proven firm zero‑emission resources can actually increase reliance on emergency fossil generation and expensive backstop measures, thereby exacerbating the very fuel‑price and affordability risks the comment highlights.

Granting the Hearing is Consistent with, Not Contrary to, the CLCPA

The Independent Intervenors generally support the CLCPA’s broad decarbonization objectives, but durable climate policy must be aligned with reliability and affordability constraints. A PSL §66‑p(4) hearing is the means the Legislature chose to ensure that alignment. If there was a hearing these concerns could be addressed.

Conclusion

New York’s climate and energy policy choices are too consequential to ignore the legal mandate to confirm that the Renewable Energy Program can provide safe, adequate, and affordable electricity.  The Independent Intervenors believe that genuine stakeholder processes require open discussion of trade‑offs, clear documentation of how comments are handled, and a willingness to adjust course when the evidence points in a different direction.  In my opinion, green energy advocacy organizations are trying to game the system by submitting an overwhelming number of comments.  While they deserve to have their opinions heard, the system should transparently address their concerns.  In the example shown, the arguments do not warrant rejecting the petition or make a convincing argument that the PSL 66-P Renewable Energy Program obligations should not be temporarily suspended or modified.