Ronald Stein’s Energy Literacy Newsletter is an excellent resource. This post reproduces his latest article. He says:
As the United States follows Germany’s green deal, YOU should anticipate uncontrollable electricity prices. If you think your electricity prices are high now, brace yourself for what’s coming!
I have followed the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 400 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. Proponents of the Climate Act refer to Germany’s transition as an example to emulate but show no sign of understanding all the issues. 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.
Ron Stein Overview
Stein’s newsletter provides an overview of his primary concerns:
My books have a common theme as they address the elephant in the room that the ruling class and the media refuse to talk about, i.e., the lack of products in the future, and the lack of fuels for planes, ships, militaries, and space programs, manufactured from the fossil fuels that built the world from 1 to 8 billion people in less than 200 years.
Without a planned replacement for crude oil to make those same products, limiting the supply of the products and fuels manufactured from crude oil will inflict shortages and inflation in perpetuity on current lifestyles.
Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that Crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society… All the components and equipment for the generation of electricity by wind, solar, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro are all made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil !
For the 8 billion on this planet that are quite dependent on food and medications, those wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture any of the fuels for 50,000 ships, 50,000 planes, militaries, and space programs, nor can they make the 6,000 products in our daily lives. Enhancing ones energy literacy will empower individuals to have conversations on energy at the dinner table with friends and co-workers.
Net-Zero Transition Lesson from Germany Uncontrollable Electricity Prices
The remainer of this post reproduces his latest newsletter article:
Germany was the first country to go “green”. Today, Germany now has some of the highest prices for electricity in the world and the number of Germany’s corporate insolvencies in March 2024 reached the highest level on record as the Great Green Electricity economic debacle continues.
The push to “green” electricity from wind and solar, and away from conventional sources, began in earnest under the government led by Germany’s Angela Merkel and her CDU center right party. The latest Socialist-Green coalition government, led by Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck, have since pushed further draconian policies that have only exacerbated Germany’s economic and electricity woes.
In addition, high electricity prices in Germany and inflation are sapping consumers’ purchasing power, which further aggravates the economic situation. Currently, Germany is resorting to restarting several mothballed coal plants to keep the lights on as their wind industry continued its long record of failure to live up to promised performance and cost levels.
Shockingly, most of America and the Western Countries are following the German green movement, and are forging ahead with shuttering their generators of reliable, continuous, and uninterruptible electricity generation, that may be dispatched at short order as required by the network load, and adding more weather-dependent variable renewable electricity with almost no regard to electricity reliability or affordability to support hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, data centers, the general consumer public and telemetry, that all need continuous uninterruptable supplies of electricity.
Of the six electrical generation methods, occasional generated electricity from wind and solar cannot compete with reliable, continuous, and uninterruptable electricity from hydro, nuclear, coal, or natural gas:
Wind and solar generate occasional electricity, due to the time of day and the inherent vagaries of weather.
Hydro, nuclear, coal, and natural gas generate continuous uninterruptible electricity.
Solar and wind generators, as currently widely employed by the dreamers in Germany, America, Australia, and the UK, are inherently unreliable and cannot ever provide the continuous, uninterruptable, and reliable electric power as is generated by coal, oil, nuclear and hydro systems. Their use, under mandatory policies of governments, is forcing the consumer to subsidize net-negative dreams of intermittent electric power from breezes and sunshine. Such speculative ventures should not be funded by the taxpayer, they should be required to obtain funding from commercial entities and independent investors.
It is incomprehensible that twenty-three states in America have adopted goals to move to 100 percent “clean” ELECTRICTY by 2050. The elephant in the room that no policymaker understands nor wants to discuss is that:
The nameplate generation capacity of both solar and wind equipment is a total farce. Time of day solarization and the vagaries of weather determine the power output of both systems, this has no relationship whatsoever with the nameplate capacity value. As these systems also exhibit frequent mechanical failures due to wear and damage from weather conditions, they should be subject to penalties for periods of inactivity. Further, they should be subject to additional penalties for failure to provide adequate back-up generation during periods when there is no sun illumination, or the wind speed level is inadequate.
Occasional electricity generated from wind and solar CANNOT ever support hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, data centers, computers, and telemetry, that all need continuous uninterruptable supplies of electric power.
Wind and solar CANNOT manufacture anything as neither the occasional electricity from wind turbines nor solar panels, can replace the supply chain of products from crude oil that are the foundation of our materialistic society demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
Practically every wind turbine or solar panel requires a backup from coal, natural gas, or nuclear, thus understanding electricity generation’s true cost is paramount to choosing and prioritizing our future electricity generating systems.
Politicians and policymakers in the few wealthy countries are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Electricity poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take electricity for granted. Wealthy countries may be able to bear the cost of expensive electricity and fuels, but those that live under conditions of “electricity poverty” cannot do so.
Germany was the first country to go “green”. Most Germans used to be enthusiastic supporters of the country’s Energiewende (transition to renewable electricity from wind and solar), especially in the early days when they were brazenly misled about the endeavor’s humungous costs and technical limitations. Those days are gone. Finland, France, China, Japan, and others are not following the lead of Germany that now has the highest cost for their electricity, and that electricity generation is occasional as it depends on breezes and sunshine.
Finland already gets about a third of its electricity from nuclear generation and has joined France, UK, China, Japan, and others as they pursue dependable, reliable, affordable, and zero emission electricity by ramping up their nuclear power generations capabilities. The Finnish government has announced that the first order of business is expanding Finland’s nuclear power generation capacity as soon as humanly possible.
Solar and wind power are specified by the state government to be critical to meeting California’s ambitious requirementto switch to 90% carbon-free electricity generation by 2035 and to 100% by 2045. This policy has resulted in the state continuously shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear generating stations that provide continuous uninterruptible electricity in favor of occasionally generated electricity from renewables However, in spite of the policy and renewable stations built, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Most experts argue that the government hasn’t been fixing problems, rather it has been making them far worse. It simply refuses to acknowledge the reality and participate in conversations regarding the real verifiable science of the world’s climate changes.
A situation is developing in the US where personal debt and homelessness numbers are increasing at an alarming rate. The average debt in this country is greater than $100,000 per person (across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans and student loans), and with more than half of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, society is facing an unsustainable problem where those “financially challenged” will never pay off their continuously increasing debt.
Further, the loss of employment resulting from failed businesses, the failure of which is mostly caused by impossible increases in power costs, has forced many more people into a homeless situation. It is not possible to forecast the rate of rise of homelessness, but it will increase substantially as power prices continue to escalate under a failed renewable electricity policy.
The question that must be answered is how the electric power process can be brought back to sustainable levels to halt the failure of businesses and the resultant increases in poverty and homelessness.
Wind turbines and solar panels are recipients of free breezes and free sunshine, plus humongous government subsidies, so the question needs to be asked of those in charge of electricity policy in the governments of the USA why are ELECTRICITY PRICES ESCALATING AT AN ALARMING RATES?
Conclusion
Everything in Stein’s article is applicable to New York’s Climate Act. It cannot end well.
If you like this article sign up for Ron’s newsletter here.
Richard Ellenbogen recently submitted comments as part of the record for the Department of Public Service Proceeding 15-E-0302 related to the net -zero mandate of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), Last spring the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) recently initiated an “Order initiating a process regarding the zero-emissions target” that will “identify innovative technologies to ensure reliability of a zero-emissions electric grid”. His comments discuss “a viable, affordable, and rapidly executable Plan B to assist NY State in reducing its carbon footprint using technologies that actually exist at scale, unlike the technologies proposed by the CLCPA which only exist at scale in the fantasies of its proponents.” I think it is important that his message gets out to all New Yorkers to try to avert the inevitable collision between aspiration and reality..
Ellenbogen is the President [BIO] Allied Converters and frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with the CLCPA. I have published other articles by Ellenbogen, a description of his keynote address to the Business Council of New York 2023 Renewable Energy Conference Energy titled: “Energy on Demand as the Life Blood of Business and Entrepreneurship in the State -video here: Why NY State Must Rethink Its Energy Plan and Ten Suggestions to Help Fix the Problems”, and another video presentation he developed describing problems with CLCPA implementation. There are only a few people in New York that are trying to educate people about the risks of the CLCPA with as much passion as I am, but Richard certainly fits that description. He comes at the problem as an engineer who truly cares about the environment and how best to improve the environment without unintended consequences. He has spent an enormous amount of time honing his presentation summarizing the problems he sees but most of all the environmental performance record of his business shows that he is walking the walk. The comments described here put his thoughts on the record.
CLCPA Overview
The CLCPA established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be “zero-emissions” by 2040. The Climate Action Council (CAC) is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In brief, that plan is to electrify everything possible using zero-emissions electricity. The Integration Analysis prepared by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultants quantifies the impact of the electrification strategies. That material was used to develop the Draft Scoping Plan. After a year-long review, the Scoping Plan recommendations were finalized at the end of 2022. In 2023 the Scoping Plan recommendations are supposed to be implemented through regulation and legislation.
Although vocal members of the Climate Action Council refused to acknowledge that not all the technology necessary for net-zero transition is available today the PSC zero-emissions target order recognizes that is not true. The Council ideologues ignored the fact that the Integration Analysis recognized that “as renewable resources and storage facilities are added to the State’s energy supply, additional clean-energy resources capable of responding to fluctuating conditions might be needed to maintain the reliability of the electric grid”. I published a post last summer summarizing the proceeding, including an overview of the questions raised by the PSC, and describing t comments I submitted.
I described the first set of comments for this Order submitted by Ellenbogen last summer. In order to make it easier for readers I have copied his submittal here. I converted his footnotes into inline references because footnotes do not lend themselves to blog posts.
About the Author
The first section of his comments describes his background and its relevance to the Proceeding.
Richard Ellenbogen an active party in the case , a resident of the State of New York, the CEO of Allied Converters, and welcomes the opportunity to provide comments as requested by the Commission in the above referenced proceeding, issued in the May 18, 2023 “Order Initiating Process Regarding Zero Target”.
I am a Former Bell Labs Engineer that has done work on the Utility System with NYSERDA and Con Ed. I also decarbonized my factory starting in 1999 and those measurements resulted in the Public Service Commissions Case 08-E-0751 to reduce power line losses. I was an invited speaker to a PSC Utility Conference in 2008 for that case on Line Loss Reduction that was initiated by Steven Keller based upon my work at the factory and a paper written at the request of Con Ed after a factory visit. I was the Keynote Speaker at the 2023 Business Council of NY Renewable Energy Conference and an invited speaker at the Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce meeting on Energy. I was an early adopter of renewable technologies going back to the 1990’s and decarbonized both my home and my business two decades ago. Between 2006 and mid-2023, the business recycled or repurposed 100% of its waste and sent nothing to a landfill. Over the past 20 years, the factory has generated between 60% and 85% of its electrical energy onsite with a carbon footprint approximately 30% lower than the Con Ed System, even prior to the closing of Indian Point.
I have lived live in an “electric” house since 2004 with a solar array and a geo-thermal heating system with 100% radiant heat using 95–100-degree water with a COP between 5.5 – 6.0, far more efficient than what most places will build under NY State guidelines, and I have driven an EV for six years. As all of the parameters in both the house and factory are measured three times per minute, I see firsthand what implementing the CLCPA will do to the load every day. The house was written up in the NY Times in November, 2008 under “Going Green: Still Challenging Turf” and the factory was written up in the Wall Street Journal under, “Westchester Plastics Maker Embraced Renewable Energy Decades Before The Gas Moratorium”.4 Additionally, I defeated Con Ed in a tariff hearing (NY State Public Service Commission Case 08-E-1426 Allied Converters, Inc. – Petition For a Declaratory Ruling on the Administration of Solar Net Metering Provisions at Locations Where Multiple (Hybrid) Energy Efficient Generation Technologies Are Installed) in 2008-2009 to allow additional interconnection of renewables and the factory became the first building in NY State with multiple sources of high efficiency grid connected generation.
It is through this lens that I have developed an understanding of the shortcomings of renewables after over 20 years of living with them. They are a great way to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels but attempting to run the entire system on them is going to be an unmitigated disaster which will be documented in the following pages. The requirement in the CLCPA for 25 – 37 Gigawatts of Dispatchable Emission Free Generation (DEFR) by 2040 is problematic at best and is impossible to execute in the stated sixteen year time frame, especially when considering that a single 1.2 GW Power Cable will have taken nearly that long to plan, construct, and get operational (2011 – 2026). I recommend that this DEFR proceeding determine whether there is a dispatchable emissions-free resource that can provide sufficient baseload and, if not, recommend a Plan B.
Introduction
The introduction lays out reasons that things have changed since last summer that could affect the schedule and viability of the Scoping Plan list of control strategies.
Since the original filing was made in August, a lot has changed in the NY State energy landscape. Renewables projects requested $12 billion in infaltionary increases that were declined by the Public Service Commission and that led to the cancellation of numerous projects, including solar, offshore wind, and battery storage. Those resources are now being rebid, likely at a significantly higher price.
The NYISO has indicated that the peaker plants will be operating far longer than planned because of a lack of renewables needed to replace them. Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is running into issues with landholders in upstate NY and may have to make eminent domain filings for certain parcels. It will not cripple the project but may delay it.
As mentioned in the earlier filing, the NYSERDA 6 GW Energy Storage Report, on page 94 of the 104 pages documents a need for 1000+ hours of storage or 6000 GWh of storage. Text from page 94 follows in italics.
Solar output is highest in the summer and lowest in the winter, and wind output is complementary to solar, as shown in Figure 40. With seasonal storage (1000+ hours), the availability of a specific resource during critical weeks – or in between multiple critical weeks in a season matters less; instead, the cheapest form of energy, such as solar in the spring and summer, can be stored and discharged over multiple winter weeks.
Column C in Figure 1, below, shows the 6,000 GWh of storage on the same scale of generation and demand. It is almost non-existent relative to the loads and will be totally inadequate to support the system. Far more storage than that will be needed to support a renewable system, however the NYSERDA report also documents a cost of $560 per KWh. At that price, the 6,000 GWh will cost $3.4 trillion, or about 16 times NY State’s annual budget. Some have been proposing using EV batteries to support the system. Having driven an EV for six years, I am almost never near a charger except when I am charging so there would be no way to feed energy back into the system. Further, how many people will willingly use their car to support the utility when they find out they will rescive 20% less revenue for discharging than they paid for charging and that the more frequent cycling will shorten the battery life. There are also capacitive batteries now being manufactured that will have a longer life span and a greatly reduced fire risk, however that are not ready for mass distribution. They also have a much lower energy density which makes them larger. That will work for utility scale storage but not EV’s. However, the price is roughly comparable to Lithium-Ion batteries so they will still be prohibitively expensive if used to support the utility system..
The Renewable Generation shown in column D was based upon 2019 projections that are no longer applicable as several Offshore Wind contracts have been canceled and several land based solar and wind projects have been canceled and others are meeting local resistance.
Additional Issues
Ellenbogen explains that these are not the only issues.
We are reaching a crossroads in New York State whereby the cost of the renewable generation and other mandates included in the CLCPA may make it impossible to live or work here.
The New Jersey nuclear plants announced this past week that they no longer need state subsidies because of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies that are now available to them. This raises the question, what does nuclear generation cost relative to the renewables that NY State is having enormous difficulty getting installed? Is there a viable carbon free Plan B?
This link is from a paper from September, 2022, published by the Cato Institute, regarding the costs of different generating options and the effect of the IRA on the cost of nuclear generation.
If you look at Table 2 below, from the paper, in the lower left hand column (Baseline), you will see that the UNSUBSIDIZED HIGH CONSTRUCTION cost for nuclear generation is 14.4 cents per KWh. The expected bids for Offshore wind are expected to come in substantially higher than that and the earlier bids were nearly that large. The recently canceled wind bids in NY State varied from $107 per MWh to $118 per MWh, despite Wind generation in the United States being heavily subsidized.
The next table shows the recently canceled wind bids and their costs. The requested increase had an average cost of $167/MWh. These are going to be rebid at a higher price and many will not be available for over 6 years, at a minimum, if they are ever built. Also note that the total capacity listed is 5 GW short of NY State’s ultimate goals. I referred to the High-Cost nuclear construction scenario because that is approximately what the recently built Vogtle reactors costs correlate with. This is a worst-case comparison of nuclear generation compared to the renewable generation.
Bids For Offshore Wind In NY State
According to information developed by David Stevenson (described here) ) the new projects were approved by NYSERDA with an average nominal cost MWh of $145.07 which compares to $167.07 in the table above. The table prices were requested in December 2023 while the new projects bids were likely made in early 2023 and may not reflect the tine cost needed to obtain financing today. The projects in the table most likely would have started construction in 2025 while the new projects are slated to start in 2030. It is highly likely that by 2030 the projects could not be built at these prices and the developers will come back for higher prices.
A recent blog post presented by Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives and highlighted in a recent post by Roger Caiazza of The Pragmatic Environmentalist, analyzed the costs of various generation types in Ontario, Canada. The results are shown in the table below. In Ontario, Nuclear Generation is approximately 30% less expensive than wind and 40% less than solar despite the claims that wind and solar are less expensive. Combined cycle gas generation is slightly less than nuclear in Canada.
That shows that unsubsidized nuclear is less expensive than OSW and doesn’t kill any birds or people, despite the claims of the fear mongers. OSW and solar could cost NY State ratepayers 30% more than nuclear generation, not including the costs of the required batteries and the more extensive transmission lines needed for those technologies due to their low capacity factor. If batteries are added in to support the intermittent renewables, the costs will be higher still. As shown in the earlier analysis of battery costs based upon the NYSERDA Energy Storage Report, the required batteries will cost more than the nuclear generation, independent of the costs of the renewable generation.
Again, I have developed an understanding of the shortcomings of renewables after over 20 years of living with them. In my experience, I believe that they are a great way to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels but expectations that they can completely replace fossil fuels are misplaced. A primary concern is cost and maintaining public support for the process. Public support will evaporate quickly with the current projected costs of the wind, solar, and batteries.
Regarding “Cap and Invest”, Table 3 below is also from the Cato Paper. It shows the carbon taxes required to achieve parity between nuclear and fossil fuel generation. With the High Cost nuclear, the carbon tax required to bring nuclear into parity with combined cycle gas generation is $196 per Metric Ton of CO2. According to the EIA, combined cycle gas generation will yield 2.25 MWh per metric ton of CO2 (976 pounds per MWh). With wind being more expensive than nuclear by between 20% and 30%, it will cost between $235 – $275 per metric ton to bring wind and Combined cycle gas generation into parity. Doing the math, $235 / 2.25 to make wind cost effective when compared to natural gas, even with the current subsidies, the taxes would be over $100/MWh. It would double the cost of the energy in the entire downstate region. If electric heat is forced upon the downstate residents, a current doubling of operating costs will morph to a tripling or quadrupling of heating bills for downstate residents.
Keep in mind that natural gas prices have dropped since 2022 so the actual tax would have to be higher in 2024.
These are the kinds of taxes that Cap and Invest will have to assess to make the plan work and they are ludicrous. Even without Cap and Invest, these are the additional costs that are going to be incurred by NY State ratepayers if the CLCPA keeps progressing. What makes this situation even worse is that the state can’t effectively install generation that won’t be taxed, building owners don’t have space or can’t afford upgrades to avoid penalties from the mandates, and the proponents of this plan can’t define who is going to pay the tax, acting as if the ratepayers and the taxpayers are mutually exclusive. A Venn Diagram of NY State ratepayers and NY State taxpayers will have an enormous amount of overlap.
A Viable Low Carbon / Carbon Free Solution That Will Not Bankrupt NY State Residents and Businesses
Ellenbogen offers a pragmatic alternative.
As nuclear generation takes years to get approved and sited, new combined cycle natural gas generation that feeds the CO2 emissions into greenhouses will provide low carbon energy at a low cost for NY State ratepayers in the near term. It is the least expensive generation to build and at present, it is also the least expensive generation to operate. It can provide baseload generation so it will eliminate the cost of battery storage. As it operates with a capacity factor two to seven times higher than renewables, the cost per MWh of transmission will be that much less expensive. As an initial step, siting a large combined cycle generating plant in Central New York, near the Western end of CleanPath, would provide easy access to natural gas from Pennsylvania while also allowing CleanPath to be fully utilized, reducing its costs to taxpayers. Additionally, there is available land in Central NY that is already used for farming that would be ideal to support large greenhouses. Routes 81, 86, and 88 provide easy access for shipping the agricultural products to population centers in NY State within four hours.
As can be seen in the following graph (Figure 2) a comparison of the emissions of Long Island Generating plants, the newer Caithness plant, shown on the right, operates far more cleanly than the E F Barret Plant shown on the left. E F Barret, which is a conventional steam generating plant that is operating well past its useful lifetime because of flawed NY State policy, was supposed to be replaced by a combined cycle plant six years ago. However, the expectation that Offshore Wind would replace it has fallen flat and Long Island residents are suffering with higher emissions and twice the energy cost of what could have been built six years ago. The Offshore Wind, if it is ever built, will reduce the emissions but based upon the current cost structure, it will not improve upon the operating costs of the old plant. This issue was addressed at length in the earlier filing.
By feeding the CO2 output of the combined cycle plants into large greenhouses, it can be used to increase crop yield by providing a twelve month growing season for NY State farms and increase food security in the state while using less land and water than existing farms. It will also use far less land than renewable generation. Additionally, it will harden farming in NY State to the effects of climate change.
Unlike the 25–37 Gigawatts of as yet unknown and non-existent Dispatchable Carbon Free Generation fantasized about in the CLCPA, this technology exists now and the greenhouses will cost far less than the batteries while also generating revenue and extremely high crop yields. The greenhouses will also last well beyond the 10 year lifespan of the batteries so they are a far more cost effective capital investment to make.
Additionally, operating EV’s from combined cycle gas generation is far more energy efficient than using internal combustion engines and will greatly reduce harmful pollutant emissions in the population centers.
Conclusion
Ellenbogen concludes that an alternative that does not go to zero provides a better solution.
Interim Combined Cycle Natural Gas Generation phasing to nuclear over time is a far more cost effective and secure way to power the state than what the CLCPA is mandating. Recovering the Combined Cycle emissions in greenhouses will mitigate the negative effect of the carbon emissions. That will also provide energy security that renewables can’t, while simultaneously providing food security as climate change makes food production more challenging.
Pragmatic Environmentalist Conclusion
The Hochul Administration has supported the ideological insistence that the schedule is necessary, and that zero-emissions in the electric sector by 2040 is mandatory. This is a political construct that does not stand up to any realistic evaluation. I have shown that New York’s GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and that global emissions are increasing by more than one half of one percent per year. That fact destroys any urgency arguments. We have time to do this right. This also implies that not reaching zero will not influence the alleged impacts to global warming. Ellenbogen’s alternative does not meet the ideological mandates but would be affordable, reliable, and have fewer environmental impacts. I endorse his comments.
Mark Sertoff, a science/technology educator, occasionally sends me information. This post describes his comments on the Long Island Power Authority’s (LIPA) Integrated Resource Plan “where they want to replace fossil generation with mythical wind, battery and solar power.”
Integrated Resource Plan Comments
I have lightly edited Mark’s comments and added some references.
LIPA’s plunge into wind and solar power replacing reliable, cost-effective, clean fossil generation is the path to energy disaster. Through decades of solid engineering and execution, Long Island has developed the most reliable and economical above ground power distribution system in New York State. The defective initiative to wind and solar generation will leave Long Island with seriously unreliable and costly power.
Wind and solar work about 20% of the nameplate capacity. They need battery backup, which is very expensive, requires rare earths mined in unfriendly countries with child labor that creates environmental pollution in refining. Existing storage technology only lasts a few hours when a week may be required. To top it off the batteries have safety issues because they can explode and burn in unquenchable fires emitting toxic fumes. Europe tried wind and solar with massive problems in reliability and cost so is reopening fossil generation plants. Germany, the former industrial powerhouse of Europe, is losing its industrial base due to high energy costs.
There are significant environmental impacts. Wind turbines in the marine environment have drastically shorter lives and kill land and sea birds. Solar panels are negligibly recyclable and require rare earths sourced from unfriendly foreign countries via child labor and create copious pollution in fabrication while being barely recyclable. There are mountains of scrap wind turbine blades now that can’t be recycled. Marine wind turbines in construction and operation have caused the deaths of many whales along the East Coast. Machine gun sonar, pile driving, and sub sonic rotor vibrations injure and disorient sea mammals leading to beaching and ship collisions. Solar panels have such low energy density that habitats are destroyed to install solar when conventional generation would make many times more reliable power in a fraction of the land area at lower per-watt cost.
There are questions about the renewable energy business model. No wind or solar generation would be viable without government taxpayer subsidies. That says it all. It’s a defective business and energy plan. If it were a real upgrade, the market would support it without subsidies.
Finally, there is no climate crisis. This “crisis” is based on defective UN climate computer models. Thousands of scientists around the world concur. The greenhouse gas effect is real, but it is only one of many different drivers of climate. We experience cyclical weather in decadal, century, and millennial cycles and we do not understand those natural cycles well. It is likely that those cycles are the primary drivers of the observed changes in global temperatures observed and that the greenhouse effect has a minor impact, Certainly nothing that warrants the proposed changes to our energy system.
Conclusion
I published this because it is a concise summary of the myriad issues associated with New York’s net-zero obsession. It cannot end well and won’t make a difference.
Dennis Higgins passes on his commentaries associated with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I asked his permission to present his status analysis of the transmission system components of the Climate Act net-zero transition that was published in AllOtsego. I also became aware of a puff piece claiming all is well by Basil Seggos, co-chair of the Climate Act’s Climate Action Council that provides the State’s story. Comparing the two pieces I don’t see how this will end well.
Dennis taught for just a few years at St Lawrence and Scranton University, but spent most of my career at SUNY Oneonta, teaching Mathematics and Computer Science. He retired early, several years ago, in order to devote more time to home-schooling his four daughters. (Three will be in college next year and the youngest opted to go to the local public school, so his home schooling is ending this June.) Dennis and his wife run a farm with large vegetable gardens. They keep horses and raise chickens, goats, and beef. He has been involved in environmental and energy issues for a decade or more. Although he did work extensively with the ‘Big Greens’ in efforts to stop gas infrastructure, his views on what needs to happen, and his opinions of Big Green advocacy, have served to separate them.
The game plan for the Climate Act public narrative is to point to a recent weather event and claim that is proof of climate change. The difference between weather and climate is never acknowledged and there has never been any estimate of how much Climate Act implementation will affect the alleged weather impacts. Seggos follows the script:
As made clear by the recent storms that ravaged many Long Island communities, time is running short to comprehensively address the flooding, erosion, and regional economic damage being wrought by increasingly common extreme weather events. We are witnessing the impacts of the climate crisis in real time, both here in New York and across the planet. It’s time for bold action at every level of society.
The next item in the usual script is to tout some new effort and its alleged benefits. That is the primary purpose of this article:
With the ongoing leadership of Governor Kathy Hochul, New York State is taking sweeping actions to reduce the many sources of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. And in her recent State of the State Address and 2024-25 Executive Budget, Governor Hochul proposed a suite of actions to address climate change’s effects – including $435 million for initiatives to support long-term resiliency projects and protect communities across the state.
The funding will help create a new ‘Resilient & Ready Program’ with resources for low- and moderate-income households experiencing flood damage to assist with necessary repairs in the aftermath of storms, as well as improvements to prevent future damage.
The Governor also proposes a ‘Blue Buffers’ Voluntary Buyout Program to compensate residents in communities most vulnerable to flooding so they can relocate to another area with lesser flood risk. This not only saves taxpayer dollars when inevitable flooding occurs, it spares households the tangible and emotional losses that come with each rising tide and record rainfall.
Supported with $250 million from the $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, Blue Buffers would first educate property owners on the benefits of relocating homes and businesses regularly affected by high water, sea-level rise, and storm surges, and then partner with willing sellers on projects that could be eligible for buyouts. Purchased properties then revert to becoming permanently protected as open space, serving as a buffer against future flooding and benefiting the resiliency of the surrounding community.
Building on past investments, Governor Hochul is bolstering New York’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change with new proposals to repair aging flood control projects and remove hazard dams. The Governor also directed an update of Coastal Erosion Hazard Area maps essential to the protection of beaches, dunes, and bluffs that maintain and enhance flood resilience, and to overhaul building codes design to create higher standards for resistance to wind, snow, and temperature extremes.
As many Long Islanders know, since Superstorm Sandy, New York aggressively stepped-up efforts to boost targeted investments for critical infrastructure, flood-proofing, shoreline restoration, and disaster response. The response included ongoing work with federal and local partners to use every tool at our disposal.
The recent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determination of eligibility for the process to assess, fund, and repair their damaged coastal projects on Fire Island, as requested by the Governor and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), is welcome news. It is one of many projects that DEC will continue to help implement to protect homes, critical infrastructure, and shorelines.
Climate change is here. With the ongoing cooperation and collaboration of Long Islanders, New York’s comprehensive approach to adaptation and resiliency will help ensure the Empire State is prepared for the gathering storm.
As far as I can tell the only way for the State to meet the Climate Act targets is magical game-changing technology. I do not see anything in these projects that makes me think that these programs are game changers. Another component of the narrative is to never discuss the status of the transition and the component programs. The question whether the existing programs are having any sort of an effect are not mentioned and no issues associated with recently proposed programs are ever addressed.
Flawed Energy Plan Moves Forward
On the other hand, Dennis Higgins’s article Flawed Energy Plan Moves Forward in AllOtsego takes a critical look at one new effort. This one is associated with transmission development.
Legislation proposed in Albany would create “RAPID,” a new department in the Office of Renewable Energy Siting to accelerate transmission buildout. Per megawatt-hour—amount of energy moved—those new lines will be very expensive. We must build full nameplate transmission for wind, which has a capacity factor under 25 percent. Solar has a capacity factor of under 14 percent: Although full capacity generation might occur mid-day in summer, much of the rest of the time solar yields little or no energy. Transmission for hundreds of solar and wind resources represents a lot of expensive wire to buy and install and maintain; wire which will need to be run across private land; wire that mostly will move nothing at all.
With each of New York’s staggering missteps in decarbonization efforts, we reflect on the mess we’re in. ORES itself has stalled out in efforts to site intermittent resources. Solar and wind builders cancelled contracts late last year when the state would not simply award them more money. They are rebidding, and the state will make new, more expensive, awards. Upstate communities are pushing back at the state’s efforts to locate solar and wind projects where local laws say “no” to industrial development.
New York gets about 20 percent of its baseload energy from hydroelectric on the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers. Solar and wind currently account for about 7 percent of total state electricity. The fast approaching 70-by-30 goal in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires that 70 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewables. In other words, 50 percent of the state’s capacity must come from solar and wind. The state must multiply all the installed solar and wind built over the last 20 or more years by seven- or eight-fold in the next six years. Hochul has no ruby slippers and no magic wand, so press releases can safely be ignored. The 70-by-30 CLCPA goal is not going to happen.
Still, the state has decided lack of transmission must be the culprit. Let’s take a closer look at some of the problems with the state plan.
In its 20-year “Outlook” report, the grid operator NYISO detailed transmission constraints across Long Island, the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes. These will prevent energy moving from intermittent resources to downstate through this decade, and maybe the next. Can we fix the state plan by building high-voltage lines over rural New Yorkers’ objections to support energy resources that may never exist?
In its 2023 Power Trends, NYISO indicated that most—70 percent, or about 17,000 megawatts—of the state’s fossil-fuel capacity will need to be available after 2030. NYISO has already determined that peakers, which CLCPA says must be shut down, will need to be kept online. The storage projected in state planning, a hundred times the largest lithium-ion battery on earth and costing many billions of dollars, if fully charged, would not power New York City for a day. Alberta Canada, like Texas, recently issued energy alerts to its citizens as it discovered that wind power does not work well when it is very cold. Of course, solar generates almost nothing in the winter. Assuming we could get anyone in Albany to listen, is there some sort of broader lesson in all this?
California—following the same wacky blueprint New York is using—has had 20 years to build out its solar and wind assets, including transmission lines to move generated energy. California gets twice the electricity from every panel that New York could hope to get. California has deserts to site intermittent resources and transmission, while New York must sacrifice its farmland and forest. California exports solar to Nevada at a loss to avoid curtailment, yet still dumped something like three terawatt-hours of energy in 2023, enough to keep the lights on in New York City for a week. California has struggled to reduce reliance on fossil fuels: It has built new gas plants and still needs to import coal-fired electricity to ensure reliability.
The 2015 Mark Jacobson publication—which was in part the model for New York’s energy plan—was soundly debunked by about two dozen climate scientists two years before the CLCPA was enacted. The Jacobson paper is nevertheless a sort of bible to the Big Greens. As noted in MIT’s technology review, that paper “contained modeling errors and implausible assumptions that could distort public policy and spending decisions.” Consequently, the CLCPA and the resulting scoping plan, following similar flawed analysis, have already led to “wildly unrealistic expectations” and “massive misallocation of resources.”
“Jacobson and his coauthors dramatically miscalculated the amount of hydroelectric power available and seriously underestimated the cost of installing and integrating large-scale underground thermal energy storage systems…They treat U.S. hydropower as an entirely fungible resource. Like the amount [of power] coming from a river in Washington state is available in Georgia,instantaneously… )“
Following this flawed plan, it always looks like there is a transmission problem, since the grid is not one big copper plate.
In fact, no new energy solution or gigantic storage mechanism is needed at all. New York only needs to look around the world at those places that have successfully decarbonized their grids. New York only needs to look in the mirror: the downstate grid is over 90 percent “dirty,” powered by gas and oil. Upstate is over 90 percent emission free, and like those large economies that have cut fossil-fuel use, it is powered by hydro and nuclear.
But don’t tell Albany: New York is intent on pursuing an expensive land-hungry plan which we already know will fail.
Discussion
The Hochul Administration is not addressing the implementation issues associated with their Climate Act net-zero transition. Instead, we get a barrage of slick announcements claiming that we have to do something and here’s a whole new pile of “something” that we think might work, will appeal to the constituencies that demand action, and likely provide political payola to some politically connected constituency.
Dennis Higgins provides the other side of the story. He describes numerous issues with the transition and relates them to the fundamentally flawed Jacobsen/Howarth transition plan. The fact is that if New York State is serious about de-carbonizing the electric grid nuclear power must be part of the solution. Dennis advocates for that position but to little avail. Without a commitment to nuclear this will never work.
Conclusion
Higgins noted that his piece was incomplete: “The mess is so big you can’t say it all — fiscally irresponsible/unsound engineering and, already failed where it’s been tried.” He noted that he did not have the space to make the point that RAPID will give developers authority to use eminent domain for transmission. He thinks that this is something we all need to push back on with local and state elected reps.
I agree with Dennis that “New York is intent on pursuing an expensive land-hungry plan which we already know will fail.” He speaks to reality and in the end reality always wins.
Last month I published several articles about the experiences of Washington State as they implement their cap-and-invest program because I think it is likely that New York’s experiences will be similar. In one I elevated a comment from Washington resident Paul Fundingsland into a post. He recently did “a bit of research with some comments, thoughts and a more or less rough idea of what seems to be going on in the Washington State cap-and-invest scheme” that I have converted into a guest post.
Paul describes himself as “An Obsessive Climate Change Generalist”. Although he is a retired professor, he say he has no scientific or other degrees specific to these kinds of issues that can be cited as offering personal official expertise or credibility. What he does have is a two decades old avid, enthusiastic, obsession with all things Climate Change related.
In this post Fundingsland provides an update after doing a bit of research. I provide his thoughts with my commentary below.
Initial Thoughts
The focus of my articles was the increase in gasoline prices. Not surprisingly that has become a hot topic in Washington. Paul explains:
Pushback on the rise in gas prices associated with the “Cap-and-Invest” scheme (hereafter referred to as “Tax-and-Reallocate” because that is essentially how it works) has caused our Governor to publicly blame the oil companies for price gouging apparently thinking they should absorb the loss of revenue and not pass their state mandated added costs for doing business on to their customers. Apparently he thought these companies should unrealistically absorb the loss of revenue and not pass their state mandated added costs for doing business on to their customers.
The idea that the costs of the program should not be passed on is also present in New York. When the prices necessarily go up it is a shock to many. Why I do not know. It is obvious that the tax-and-reallocate scheme is dealing with a lot of money and not working as planned.
One of our state legislators claims Washington State is now making more money from the sale of a gallon of gas or diesel than the oil companies. Our Department of Ecology (which is running this scheme) scrubbed the website original language indicating this scheme would have a minimal effect on gas prices. The Washington Policy Center claims the proposed climate funding budget is spending 56% of the initial $306 million on expanding government. No real surprise there.
I have concluded that the underlying motive of most of the proponents of these schemes is money. Legislator Reuven Carlyle was a sponsor of the cap-and-reallocate law and provides an example.
Carlyle who chaired the Washington State Senate Environment, Energy & Technology Committee and was a member of the Ways and Means Committee, lead the charge in the Senate for passage of the Climate Commitment Act, Clean Energy Transformation Act, Clean Fuel Standard, hydrofluorocarbon standards, building standards and much more. He left the legislature this year to cash in on his legislative work founding a startup called Earth Finance to “help businesses hit climate goals” based on his legislative accomplishments.
Program Evolution
Fundingsland’s experience with the researching the program is similar to mine:
A cursory review of how this “tax-and-reallocate” scheme is evolving in Washington and what kinds of claims and actual emissions reductions result going forward reveals a quagmire of incredibly convoluted intertwined moving parts. Trying to unravel the threads is proving to be very difficult and quite frustrating.
He notes that descriptive information is not available. That is a common trait in cap-and-invest programs in my experience:
For example under the Department of Ecology one can find a list of the companies who participated in the 2nd auction under “Washington Cap-and-Invest Program Auction #2 May 2023 Summary Report” but no data on how many allowances each company bought or what their total costs were. Interestingly, high profile Washington businesses missing from this list include Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks to name a few.
As to how the monies received from the program are going to be distributed, as of the moment one can find only broad generalized categories with aspirations as to how they will be applied subject to future legislative decision making. For example: “these proceeds will be used to increase climate resiliency, fund alternative-transportation grant programs, and help Washington transition to a low-carbon economy” (my bold).
“Cap-and-Invest Auction Proceeds, consists of these generalized categories with percentages and sub accounts filled with somewhat more specific wish lists of where and how the monies are supposed to be spent. Under “Auction Public Proceeds Report” there is only broad information as to how much money was received.
Nowhere is there documentation of how much CO2 has been or is projected to be reduced by this plan in comparison with past years or how much less warming this plan has resulted in or is projected to result in.
Paul notes that he is “somewhat new at sorting through government bureaucratic documents”. He caveats the following as what “might be better viewed as a rough approximation, subject to revision once more detailed and specific information is obtained.” He does think the following is approximately correct.
According to the Washington State Department of Ecology, the 2019 breakdown of Washington State greenhouse gas emissions is: Residential, Commercial, Industrial heating 25%, Transportation 39%, Electricity 21%, Other 14%.
Electrical power is 64.6% hydro supplied by eight hydro plants owned and operated by the Federal Government. Natural gas is currently at 14.4%, nuclear at 7.8%, wind 8.7%, coal at 2.9%, biomass at 1.3% and a small contribution of solar.
Washington’s natural gas utilities and electric utilities receive a determined (revisable) amount of their required emissions allowances for free. Washington’s only coal fired plant’s emissions are grandfathered in as it will be fully decommissioned in 2024.
So, unlike the lower emissions resulting from a coal to natural gas switch as fortuitously happened during the initial years of the east coast RGGI scheme, there is not a lot of low hanging CO2 emissions fruit to begin with to harvest or claim as a success from the electricity sector in Washington. And with the free emissions allowances the emissions reduction pool from this sector is even further diluted.
When I skimmed through the Washington regulations one of the things that jumped out to me was the following figure. The 2030 limit is a 45% reduction below 1990 levels. The chart indicates that 2020 emissions were equal to or slightly more than the 1990 emissions. A 45% reduction in ten years seems ambitious. Based on the information from Fundingsland, I cannot imagine this target will be achieved.
In addition, the “tax-and-reallocate scheme” contains all sorts of other emissions exemptions. One classification is termed “EITEs” consisting of over 40 facilities and businesses that qualify as Emissions-Intensive, Trade-Exposed industries even though they qualify for mandated participation in emission allowance auctions.
There are also ”tax-and-reallocate-offsets” being run thru what is designated as an Offset Project Registry that looks to be a California based company called Climate Action Reserve.
That leaves the bulk of the emissions reductions to be garnered from the other three sectors (transportation, residential-industrial-commercial heating, and “other”). At this time, it is difficult to determine how the actual 25% breakdown within the residential-industrial-commercial heating sector works. For instance, residential energy use has been reported as being 60% electric.
I have long argued that a basic flaw in the New York net-zero transition plan is that there was no feasibility analysis. Given this information about Washington I think New York is comparatively better off. Both states need to document how they plan to get where they want to go but the reduction trajectory for New York is lower than Washington.
New York is starting to come to grips with similar sector target issues. If the cap-and-reallocate scheme is supposed to provide significant funds for implementation but there are a limited number of affected sectors, then the price impacts on those sectors is going to be magnified. That is exactly what happened in Washington. It is not price gouging when that happens, it is simply supply and demand.
Assuming the industrial-commercial may be mostly gas, the amount of emissions by individual businesses will be affected by whether they are in the EITEs classification or not, whether they have “offsets” and how many tons of CO2 they emit (250,000 tons being the “trigger” amount for mandatory participation in the tax-and-reallocate emissions auctions). So the number of emissions reduction areas possible in this sector are rather “squishy” and difficult to determine. They most probably will land on the low side of 25%.
The political origins of these rules should not be overlooked. The Progressive backers of both plans cater to the labor union constituencies so both New York and Washington carve out EITE exemptions. Because the net-zero transition plans will necessarily increase the cost of energy I expect that the inevitable result is that the increase will make industries in both states uneconomic relative to other locations whatever the intent of these efforts.
The “other” classification of this sector consists of: agriculture (manure, fertilizer, livestock digestion), industrial processes (aluminum, cement), waste management (landfills, waste water treatment), and natural gas distribution. Of these, waste management and natural gas distribution are negligible.
Agriculture represents a very difficult to find pathway toward lowering emissions without adversely affecting the food supply. That leaves cement and aluminum production which are essential to modern society, are both part of the EITEs exemption legislation and have, as of yet, no known practical, workable, scaleable emission free alternatives.
So the residential-industrial-commercial-heat and “other” sectors also look not to bear much in the way of emissions reductions for various mitigating reasons.
Again, the political calculus affects the treatment of these sectors. I think the decisions are based more on what they think they can get away with than a pragmatic emission reduction plan.
At 39%, transportation is the largest emissions sector. It has been reported that in the latest emissions allowances auction held last May, energy and utilities purchased the bulk of the allowances. With utilities (probably the gas plants) garnering a certain amount of unspecified free allowances from the State, that leaves the energy companies supporting transportation to shoulder the bulk of the latest allowance purchases.
There are five refineries located in our state that serve Washington, Oregon and to a small degree California. Their products include on-road gasoline and diesel, marine fuel, jet fuel and aviation gasoline, railroad fuel, and natural gas used in transportation. However, there are some big allowance exemptions that cover fuels involving watercraft (shipping, cruise ships, navy etc.), agricultural, aviation and exported fuels.
Personal car and truck fuels in Washington have no exemptions and make up over half of the total fossil fuel emissions in this category. With the energy companies probably buying the bulk of emission auction allowances, and with all the exemptions in the other fuel use areas, it’s not a stretch to see why the costs of the allowances were passed along to the personal car and truck consumers causing the rather massive jump in gas prices at the pump.
Overall, a good guess is the Legislature will be more than satisfied for some time with the amount of monies coming in that can be used to fund the expansion of the State bureaucracy and all their manufactured future wondrous climate mitigating projects to help save the world from future computer modeled bad weather. So they will feel they are basically doing their job. It’s doubtful they will want to cause gas prices to accelerate much more in the near future for fear of garnering the wrath of the electorate.
Often the simplest answer is correct. Fundingsland makes a good argument that this is just the start of the cost impacts to transportation in Washington. The mix of sector reductions in New York is different but not enough that fuel prices won’t spike when the New York auctions begin. I agree that the revenue target is entirely a political decision.
If and when a transparent “project report” comes out, it will no doubt tout all the money received (the easy headline grabbing part), be filled with all the virtuous climate change related project accomplishments the monies were or are going to be used for (the hyped glossy political part), with the actual emissions reduction data either completely missing, obscured, massaged, tortured, or glossed over and probably relegated to some vague or indeterminant area of the document with accompanying convoluted language (the important forgotten and reason for the scheme in the first place part).
Based on current Ecology Department documents available and reports from various sources, this already seems to be the case.
New York’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) portends what will happen in Washington and his description is apt. I have been evaluating the RGGI reports for years and can confirm that the wording and information provided is designed to claim unqualified success. Digging into the numbers shows a much different story.
Questions
Fundingsland lists the following bottom-line questions.
*How much did each “qualified” company pay for the allowances?
*What were the financial consequences to the constituents of these added costs to the companies?
*Which areas and projects did the monies actually go to and how much did each receive?
*What was the overall cost per ton of CO2 reductions (total allowance participant proceeds versus total reduction in CO2 tons).
And the four most important questions:
*How much reduction in emissions compared to recent years has resulted from this scheme?
*How much less global warming has been projected to occur by these emission reduction results?
*How much is this scheme going to cost the residents to completion or are the costs never ending?
*What metric has been identified that will be used to indicate this program is no longer needed because it has done it’s job?
I agree with his take on responses to the questions:
It will be surprising if any of these kinds of questions are going to be addressed. It is looking more and more like just another never ending, forever growing government bureaucratic convoluted way to extract more funds from their constituents for some worthwhile, some okay, and some questionable projects that may or may not have a quantifiable bearing on reducing CO2 emissions.
Summation
Fundingsland summarizes the likely results of the program:
It’s going to be extremely difficult and may not even be possible for Washington State to be able to claim any meaningful or significant emission reductions based on this tax-and-reallocate scheme given the state’s overall energy use configuration combined with all the various emission allowance exemptions.
In fact, there is a very high probability there will be next to zero emission reductions and perhaps even an increase.
The easiest and most efficient way for the 54 companies/businesses listed under the auction #2 May 2023 summery report that have been forced to participate (“qualify” in bureaucratic terminology) in the allowance auctions or face a $10,000 per day fine, is for them to just purchase the allowances, add it to their cost of doing business and pass the increase along to their customers. So in effect they won’t be reducing their emissions at all. And all will be adding their additional State forced costs for doing business on to their customers.
This the ultimate flaw in the cap-and-reallocate plan. The costs to implement emission reductions are greater than the costs of allowances. Moreover, emission reductions may only be possible by displacing fuels. The transportation fuel providers have limited means to reduce their emissions so the sector reductions will come primarily from the introduction of electric vehicles. In the meantime, the fuel providers will simply pass the costs along and if the allowance cap limits the availability of allowances too much then they will stop selling fuel or pass the $10,000 per day fine along to their customers.
Fundingsland concludes:
At the end of the day, the goal of any meaningful, measurable reduction of CO2 emissions or theoretical effective pathway to stop “climate change” looks to become a glazed over afterthought in this quagmire of a Washington State bureaucratic money-making machine.
With this scheme, Washington State Government now joins the lucrative profit side of the climate industrial complex at the expense of its constituents while giving a completely different connotation to the term “Net Zero”.
Fundingsland picked up on the affordability issues but did not address the compliance implications. Advocates for cap-and-invest tout the claim that as the allowance cap declines, compliance with the program targets is assured. Proponents have not acknowledged or figured out that the emission reduction ambition of the reduction targets is inconsistent with technology reality. Because GHG emissions are equivalent to energy use, limiting GHG emissions before there are technological solutions that provide zero-emissions energy means that compliance will only be possible by restricting energy use. I don’t think that New York can meet its emission reduction targets but compared to Washington’s emission inventory and targets New York has a much better chance. Washington plans to rely primarily on the transportation and building sectors for its reductions and needs to make sharper cuts. I see no scenario where that will end well.
In conclusion, I believe Fundingsland did a good job describing the issues associated with cap-and-invest in Washington. New York’s program will have the same issues. It will be interesting to see how these state programs work out and which one will be the bigger flop.
I have been meaning to write a post about the energy climate content in the recently enacted state budget bill. Keith Schue prepared summary and graciously consented to let me post his work.
Keith has a master’s degree in engineering and worked in the private sector for fourteen years in hardware design. Before moving to New York, he was employed with the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy on issues relating to the impacts of human development and infrastructure on ecosystems. He has been engaged in New York energy policy since 2010, and currently volunteers as a technical advisor for New York Energy & Climate Advocates. He has provided technical input on the federal Clean Power Plan, NYS Energy Plan, NYS Clean Energy Standard, NYS Scoping Plan for climate action, industry regulations, legislation, and various projects.
Unjust State-Mandated Appraising of Solar/Wind Projects
Part N within the Revenue budget bill mandates the use of an appraisal model that shortchanges communities by preventing local governments from receiving adequate tax revenue for the solar/wind projects forced upon them. It also explicitly interferes with active litigation filed by several towns which had argued that the model was developed in violation of the State Administrative Procedures Act (SAPA). Part N exempts the state model from SAPA with a back-dated effectivity, thereby rendering the litigation mute. This blatant disregard of home rule and due process was strongly opposed by numerous communities, contributing to growing unrest among upstate residents in both parties.
NYPA Authorization to Build Renewable Projects
Over the past few years, an ecosocialist far-left subset of climate activists have pushed for legislation requiring the government, through the New York Power Authority (NYPA), to build renewable energy projects. This has been based on a mistaken belief that the biggest problem facing the state is that solar/wind projects are simply not being built fast enough. However, those who understand energy realize that the biggest obstacles to solar/wind are system-related (transmission, storage, & reliable firm generation). Although there are ways that NYPA could help address these system-level issues, advocates of the Build Public Renewable Act (BPRA) have been myopically focused on the CLPA’s “renewable” quota. Various unintelligible versions of the BRPA were proposed. So eventually, succumbing to pressure, the Governor proposed her own version in this year’s budget. While still focused on the buildout of solar/wind, her bill was more sensibly written, granting NYPA authority without allowing it to be hijacked by ideological interests. Her proposal also established a Renewable Energy Access and Community Help (REACH) program to assist people within disadvantaged communities by providing bill credits tied to renewable energy generation.
The governor’s bill became the template for legislation adopted, but several changes were made to accommodate advocates of the BPRA. A requirement was added to prepare a biannual strategic plan tied to the state’s renewable energy targets, developed with input from various groups and subject to public comment. The benefits of REACH were targeted to low and middle-income people. Labor benefits were added, as well as a requirement to use mostly domestically made components–although this can be waived if doing so would cost more (which is likely). The legislation also requires that NYPA shut down the “small natural gas plants” (peakers) that it owns by 2030 (actually sooner than Hochul had proposed). But as pointed out in analysis by Fred Stafford, NYPA’s peakers are actually less polluting than many of those downstate which are privately owned. So, this could ironically benefit private power producers while increasing pollution. The legislation partially addresses this by allowing NYPA peakers to continue operating if more than “de minimis” emissions would otherwise occur in disadvantaged communities. But emission rates could still increase generally. New York will likely learn the hard way that a plan focused on intermittent solar/wind results in more use of peaker plants, not less. (Note: Stafford identifies himself as a socialist–which I am not–but I respect his technical prowess and understanding of energy.) The legislation also provides $25 Million in funding to the Dept of Labor for programs to help workers transition into renewable energy jobs.
Importantly, since NYPA is a state authority, it does not pay taxes. Therefore, any solar/wind projects that it builds will generate zero property tax revenue for local governments. The legislation vaguely says that NYPA’s strategic plan should consider ways of minimizing negative tax revenue impacts on municipalities and PILOT agreements, but nothing specific is actually required. Based on “willing seller” language, it appears that NYPA cannot use eminent domain to acquire property for renewable projects. But this is not so for transmission and a lot more will be needed to support a renewable buildout.
Electrification of Buildings
As covered by the media, there has been significant public uproar over building electrification mandates, heat pumps, and the possible banning of gas stoves. Apparently, the governor and legislature believe they have addressed this by limiting such mandates to NEW buildings. After 2025, new buildings 7 stories or less in height would be prohibited from installing fossil fuel equipment. After 2028, this prohibition would apply to new buildings generally. However, the legislation also includes a number of exceptions, such as for large commercial, restaurants, industry, manufactured homes, car washes, laundromats, hospitals, back-up generators, and critical infrastructure. Exceptions may also be granted by the PSC if adequate grid service is not reasonably available (which could be in a lot of places). For existing buildings, fossil fuel equipment can be used and replaced with new fossil fuel equipment indefinitely, for now.
In addition, the legislation requires that NYPA prepare decarbonization action plans for 15 of the highest-emitting state-owned facilities by January 2026, along with annual progress reports starting in 2025. Decarbonization would be required “to the extent practicable” and there does not appear to be a clear requirement for when such efforts must be complete. For this, decarbonization is defined as eliminating on-site combustion of fossil-fuels and co-pollutants except for back-up emergency generators and redundant systems, providing heating and cooling with thermal energy from non-combustion sources, and to the greatest extent feasible producing on-site electricity from renewables.
No Cap & Invest Program in Budget
The Climate Action Council recommended that the state create a Cap & Invest program (a version of Cap & Trade) to systematically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from sources statewide over time. Essentially, this involves setting a statewide cap on total emissions that gets reduced every year. Then emission allowances are auctioned off to emitters, with proceeds invested in various climate initiatives. The Governor and legislature included versions of Cap & Invest legislation within their respective budget proposals. However, no Cap & Invest legislation made it into the final budget. . DEC claims that it does not actually need legislative authority to create a Cap & Invest program, but this could depend on the extent of the program implemented. Cap & Invest was a major recommendation of the Climate Action Council, so it is unclear what will happen next. It may still be considered during the legislative session.
Creation of a Climate Action Fund
The budget creates a Climate Action Fund for the purpose of helping to compensate for the increased cost to New Yorkers of implementing climate action. The fund is divided into three different accounts: a Consumer Climate Action Account (at least 35%); an Industrial Small Business Climate Action Account (up to 3%); and a Climate Investment Account (at least 67%), with the last one having particular focus on disadvantaged communities. The legislation also requires that a Climate Affordability Study be prepared by January 2024 on the appropriate distribution and use of such funds. In the Governor’s proposal, money for the Climate Action Fund was to come from proceeds of a Cap & Invest program. But since no such program exists yet, it is unclear how the fund will be supported.
This is a guest post by Mark Stevens, a regular reader at this blog. Mark is a retired science and technology teacher from Long Island. He has put together a good overview of issues associated with Long Island wind power.
The stampede to build offshore wind turbines to replace fossil fuel generation is loaded with concerns that have not been thought through or been resolved.
1- There is no climate crisis: thousands of scientists and meteorologists around the world have published studies that LOCAL extreme events are caused by cyclical weather (decades, centuries, millennia): solar activity, ocean cycles, cosmic ray intensity, volcanic activity (surface and undersea), orbital cycles and planetary cycles to name some. CO2 is NOT causing global warming. In fact, its role is trivial and it is enabling record plant, forest, and crop production. Sea level rise is often due to land subsidence (sinking). There is record polar ice, polar bears are flourishing, and the earth has cooled over the last decade. Coral reefs are fine and Pacific Islands are increasing in area. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doom and gloom reports have been crying for decades that the end of the planet is here; the reports use faulty input data, have extreme projections divorced from reality, and are written by people with political and career agenda.
2- The call to close reliable, cost-effective fossil and nuclear power plants will lead to blackouts and higher costs. In 2021 New York onshore wind nameplate capacity output was 22% and utility-scale solar nameplate capacity was 18%. Although the Scoping Plan claims higher values in the future, the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. The wind turbines need 10 times more steel, concrete and rare earths (foreign sourced) than conventional power. Mining and refining the massive amounts of copper, aluminum, rare earths and steel disrupts the environment and emits many times more CO2 than the manufacture of conventional generation. They shut down in weather extremes (Texas and N. Carolina) and have a significantly shorter life in the harsh marine environment. End-of-life disposal of giant turbine blades is expensive and difficult.
3- Thousands of miles of redundant new transmission cables and towers must be built (increasing pollution emissions) and billions spent in backup battery power when the unreliables (renewable wind and solar) fail. Several battery storage facilities have ignited in unquenchable, toxic fires. Fossil plants must be constantly running anyway for spinning reserves when unreliable wind and solar fail. Starting and stopping loads increases emissions in the fossil-fueled generators.
4- The recent mass deaths of whales and dolphins from New England to Mid-Atlantic is directly correlated with offshore wind site surveys. Seismic surveys, machine gun sonar, pile driving, blasting and other construction sounds are greatly amplified and transmitted underwater to mammals like whales and dolphins. They become deaf, have nervous system infections, and get disoriented which facilitate beaching and ship collisions. Even if it turns out that the mapping activities are not the cause, construction activities are different and there are no plans to evaluate those concerns before construction begins.
5- The massive turbines create subsonic sounds which are vastly amplified via underwater transmission and injure whales’ and dolphins’ hearing.
6- The huge turbine blades kill thousands of sea and land birds, including Bald Eagles and bats each year.
7- The turbine blades weighing hundreds of tons, are not recyclable and pose a massive disposal problem.
8- Wind and solar require hundreds of times more seabed and land area than the equivalent fossil generation. This area is forever damaged for natural purposes.
9- Europe and the UK, especially Germany, have embraced wind and solar for years. The power delivery has been so poor that they are reopening many coal power plants. The price of electricity has increased 600% rendering Europe’s industry non-competitive and many factories have shuttered.
10- If unreliables (wind and solar power) were so good, they would not need hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidy dollars shoved into foreign and domestic companies.
11- With Russia, China, India and other countries opening hundreds of fossil fuel and nuclear plants, a zero-emission New York State will have NO measurable effect on global pollution.
12- The Governor’s plan to electrify heating, cooking and vehicles in New York will require quantities of electricity and backup storage that will be impossible to obtain and afford. Europe has tried it resulting in electricity costs so high and unreliable that businesses and manufacturing have closed and many must choose between heating and buying food. Before our leaders see the disaster, they caused, we can only work toward reversing this coming disaster.
13- Fossil and nuclear power plants must remain open and running (spinning reserves) to plug the frequent gaps in solar and wind generation. There is little or no emissions reduction and rates shoot up to pay for both systems of generation.
14- The Unreliables (wind and solar) industry, foreign and domestic, have spent millions lobbying for these projects. Gore, Kerry, Bloomberg and others have made billions trading carbon credits and investing in “green” companies. Foreign and domestic wind and solar companies are making a windfall in government taxpayer subsidies. They will get rich while we burn candles.
This is a guest post written by Gary R. Schoonmaker. Gary sent me four essays he wrote describing his concerns about the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s impacts on freedom of choice and the implementation of the Act. Because I think he raises some important issues I am publishing his essays in this post.
Gary R. Schoonmaker is a lifetime citizen of New York State; a licensed Landscape Architect with over 18 years experience at an electric and gas utility in New York State; and involvement in many environmental organizations in Central New York. He designed and built an energy efficient home in 1978 which had an air-to-air heat pump and now has solar panels; and has over 40 years experience in real estate development. I published a post describing his comments on the Climate Act last spring.
Where is Freedom Going? The threat to Freedom in the United States is serious, but here in New York State the situation is dire!!! What has happened to the desire for freedom here? Are we really so willing to submit to the tyranny of the Democrat legislature and governor; to be taken care of by the nanny state that we will leave our freedom in the rear view mirror?
We are being told that the government knows so much better than we do what is best for us! When did we get to the point that we are willing to accept that? There are many examples over the last few years, but my principal concern today is with the Climate action initiatives. The state is on a path to do away with any but electric cars and using electricity for everything. Why is it reasonable that the state can dictate such a policy? What happened to our free will/agency as citizens/human beings?
No natural gas or propane appliances – stoves, furnaces, dryers; no gasoline operated vehicles or equipment; no wood burning at all. When did we give them the authority to dictate those conditions where we have no choice?
Our ancestors who worked so hard to give us this country/State would kick our butts for letting this happen!! My ancestors have lived and worked in New York State since before 1650 and I shudder to think what Hendrick would say if he was to show up and see what we have allowed our representatives to do. Frederick helped finance the American side in the Revolutionary War; do you really think he would support us giving up our freedoms to choose for ourselves what kind of transportation, heating, or other appliances are best for us?
If we allow this situation to continue, we have ceased being citizens and become subjects.
Which is more stable: A one legged stool or one with three or more legs?
The Climate Action Council is moving quickly to implement a program to terminate the use of any energy in the State of New York except electricity. That would leave us with an energy stool sitting on one leg. Have you ever tried to sit on a one-legged stool?
Right now, we have a stool with multiple legs: we have electricity yes, but we also have natural gas, propane, gasoline, etc. Why, when so many people are clamoring for diversity, and financial advisors recommend that no one put all their money in a single investment; does the State legislature and Governor think it wise to get rid of all forms of energy except electricity? I won’t argue in this article about the efficacy of the climate change arguments, but just ask that you consider the wisdom of the proposed action.
If a fire had to be put out, would it be wise to only have water? Today, fire departments have a large number of options, depending on the type of fire they are asked to fight. Would it be advisable for the Legislature to dictate that the fire department only be able to use water? If the logical answer is no, then why is it wise to allow the legislature to dictate that we citizens only be able to use electricity to address our individual energy needs?
Beyond the logic is one significant threat that accompanies the sole use of electricity. There are two possible situations where this threat manifests itself: solar flares and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Either of these threats can destroy the electrical grid as well as each and every unprotected appliance/vehicle. That is a threat today, but the threat to our survival is magnified many times if the only energy we are allowed to have is electricity, because as opposed to today, we would have no backup for heat, cooking or transportation.
Can you say 1850?
Is there some kind of media blackout around the Climate Action Council’s Activities?
The New York State government (Legislature and governor), passed a law in 2019 called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). That act set a goal of “net-zero carbon emissions for the entire state economy by 2050”. In order to implement that goal the legislation commissioned a Climate Action Council to develop a draft Action Plan and then a Final Action Plan. In January 2022, the draft action plan was published and public hearings were subsequently held across New York State. If this is news to you, I expect you are in the majority of citizens of New York State.
When I heard about the public hearing in Syracuse, it was only a couple of days before they were to be held and I had seen nothing on the news or in newspapers about them. I heard about it on a local Saturday morning radio program discussing how to maintain your home. I got online and researched what they were talking about and couldn’t believe what I was reading.
I labored about what to do, if anything, and finally decided to go to the public hearing and express my deep concerns for what they were proposing. Imagine my surprise when I got to the only public hearing in Central New York to find there was not a single news crew covering the event. Maybe there was a reporter there (I didn’t see one), but no one was doing tv or interviewing any of the presenters as far as I could see. You know how these things usually are, reporters crowding around fighting to ask questions or get a quote for a story they are writing.
After waiting for over three hours, I got to make my two minute presentation. Many of the other people were from universities or environmental advocacy groups. There were a few people from business or unions there advising caution, but the vast majority of presenters were supportive of the State’s climate initiative.
When I got home, I watched the local news and saw not a word about the hearing that had just finished up regarding one of the most consequential plans to affect New York State since the Erie Canal. CRICKETS!! Over the following weeks, I saw no reports about any of the other hearings either. How is that possible? After the hearings, there was an opportunity to provide written comments so I sent in a six-page document elaborating on my two-minute presentation at the hearing. I still heard nothing in news programs about the Climate action plan. So, I decided to send my written comments to local and national news outlets and commentators. I received no response from any of them, nor was there any report about the plan, the council, or the comments. The closest I got was a brief acknowledgement on the Saturday morning radio program that had started me on my journey. To their credit, they have continued to talk about the plan off and on.
But beyond them….very little recognition of the building tyranny!
Is there really a legitimate Constitutional basis for New York State’s Climate Action Plan?
There are many ways to address this question: first, is climate change really an existential threat to New York State; and even if it is, does the State have the constitutional authority to take such draconian measure as are being proposed? While I personally do not believe that climate change is anything more than the natural order of the earth (Remember your elementary school studies where we were told that New York State was covered by thousands of feet of ice just 10,000 years ago?), I will leave that subject to others to debate. I don’t believe that it is in the governments’ authority to dictate the proposals being promoted in the Climate Action Plan (CAP).
It is part of our national fabric that freedom is a primary right of citizens. Everybody claims it personally and collectively, and yet the CAP is a direct assault on our personal freedom to choose and make our own decisions. Can anyone disagree with that? The Preamble to New York State’s Constitution states: “We the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.” The CAP unilaterally prohibits people from choosing what cars to drive, what heat to have in their homes, and how to cook their food, for a start. How is that securing the blessings of freedom for the people of the State of New York?
They are effectively destroying businesses that now sell natural gas, propane, gas appliances, firewood, and all associated businesses like auto repair, the list is endless! When we transitioned in the past, (think horses to autos, or kerosene to electricity etc…) people chose the change themselves. If you thought the change would be good for you, you invested your resources to make the change. If you had to buy a car, or wire your house you paid for it because you chose to do so. If you wanted to forgo the “modernization” you could do so also. Even today, we are still free to choose to light our houses with candles or kerosene, or ride horses instead of driving a car. Under the State’s CAP, we lose the ability to make those choices for ourselves (although perhaps we could still ride a horse, but who knows for sure?). So, who pays for the businesses that go out of business? In the past changes, businesses either adjusted or went out of business because their customers made personal decisions to not buy their products. But under CAP, businesses are being put out of business by an action of the State. Both the New York State and United States Constitutions prohibit the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Can anyone really argue that closing down businesses (private property) for the CAP (a public use) doesn’t qualify for just compensation? The CAP does not plan for that, but it should!
I am not a constitutional attorney, but it seems pretty clear that the State constitution does not grant the government the right to unilaterally void the freedoms of our citizens. On the contrary, the constitution explicitly states that it was created to secure the blessings of freedom for the people of the State of New York.
The Climate Action Plan does exactly the opposite!
Concluding Remarks from the Pragmatic Environmentalist
In my opinion, the Climate Action Council did not do a good job justifying its actions. They have not provided adequate documentation documenting the costs of the control strategies that they have recommended and only now appear to be willing to acknowledge that it will be expensive. From what I have seen lately the real costs will be far in excess of what they are acknowledging now because the devil is in the details, More importantly, the Scoping Plan has not addressed reliability in enough detail to determine if the conglomeration of control strategies that they have cobbled together will actually work. Finally, the Hochul Administration has not updated its cumulative environmental impact statement to consider their latest estimates of the solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, energy storage, and whatever resource has to be deployed to provide zero-emissions dispatchable electricity. Combine that with the fact that the life-cycle of those resources have not been considered the Scoping Plan is an insult to environmental protections. Ultimately, the ideological insistence on zero emissions has taken alternative strategies off the table that would likely be less costly, maintain current standards of reliability, and have fewer environmental impacts. Against that backdrop there is absolutely no justification to implement the draconian policies described by Schoonmaker.
Richard Ellenbogen frequently copies me on emails that address various issues associated with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). I asked his permission to present his analysis explaining why New York’s building decarbonization push it is going to fail, just as Germany’s has, and will drive up state GHG emissions and raise utility costs for decades. He has consolidated all of his material on this topic in one document and has included recommendations for an alternative approach.
I have published other articles by Ellenbogen because he truly cares about the environment and the environmental performance record of his business shows that he is walking the walk. Ellenbogen is the President of Allied Converters that manufactures food packaging. His facility is about 55,000 square feet and does a lot of manufacturing with heat to seal the bags, all electrically driven. The facility has solar panels and uses co-generation. He explains:
In 2008, the average energy cost per square foot for a commercial facility in Westchester was $1.80. We were at 16% of that 12 years later and even with the increases, we are at 62% of that 14 years later. That has been done while having a carbon footprint 30% – 40% lower than the utility system. The $1.80 per foot also included commercial office space and our operation is far more energy intensive than an office. We use energy extremely efficiently and as a result, our bills are much lower than everyone else.
Ellenbogen on Building Decarbonization
While it is being proposed with good intentions, NY State’s building decarbonization push is going to fail, just as Germany’s has, and will drive up state GHG emissions and raise utility costs for decades. The analysis to justify that conclusion follows. While there is new material included, a portion is a synopsis of prior emails but as NY State gets closer to committing energy suicide, I felt obligated to put it all in one document. As it is written, the state’s energy plan is going to be the fossil fuel company’s best friend. NY State is adopting a “Chicken Little” approach to energy policy. It is so focused on the acorn of fossil fuels and a belief that the sky is falling that it is ignoring science in the process. As a result, the state will fall victim to the fox of energy failures, high GHG emissions, and incredibly high utility rates that are going to eat NY State citizens and businesses. For those who declare that NY State must exhibit “Climate Leadership”, this policy isn’t that. It is copying a failed policy from Germany. For those not interested in the minutiae of the reasoning, the figure headlines and the final recommendations will give an accurate picture of the problems.
There is a way to get about a 44% GHG reduction in NY State while also having enough generation to support the system without imposing extremely high costs on the state’s residents and businesses. It can be implemented in one-quarter the time of the state’s current plan using a combination of improved fossil fuel plants and renewables, while replacing old gas equipment with newer gas equipment that won’t require an entire rewiring of NY State.
In lieu of doing something that will actually work, the state’s plan will face the following issues:
1 – Cost – Trillions of Dollars
First of all, the cost of the project will not be anywhere near as inexpensive as the $200 billion figure that is being thrown around. Going through all of the figures, it will be at least $600 billion for the electrification portion, before adding storage and renewable generation to the totals. For anyone that doubts that, the cost of a single 400 mile cable from Quebec to NY City has now risen to $6 billion and try to name a single infrastructure project in NY State that has come in on budget. The Champlain Hudson Power Express Cable was projected to cost $2 billion in 2013. That cost is now up to $6 billion, a 232% increase in inflation adjusted dollars. Does anyone seriously believe that the entire state can be rewired for less than 100 times that cost? If you add in storage costs at the present cost of Lithium Ion Batteries, the cost rises to approximately $4 trillion plus the cost of the renewable generation. Even if you could get a 75% reduction in storage costs using a different technology, the total cost will be well over $1.5 trillion and much of that will depend on the usable life of the new storage. At present, battery storage only lasts 10 years. Pumped Storage would likely be much more cost effective but where in NY State can a utility site a large reservoir. Also, based upon Con Ed’s experience with Storm King Mountain between 1960 and 1980, no utility will even try to build a pumped storage facility.
2 – Logistics – Size of Project and Lack of Labor will result in it requiring Over 60 Years – Policy is going to create situations where the mandates cannot be fulfilled
There are 112,000 miles of roads in NY State. Of those, about 22,000 miles are major highways and likely don’t have electric distribution lines on them, leaving about 90,000 miles of distribution lines that were designed and sized for an era where onsite heating was delivered from fossil fuels or wood. The vast majority of the transformers and conductors will not handle a tripling of the electric load during the during the winter. If you eliminate 18,000 miles (20%) for areas upstate that are already using electric heat, that leaves 72,000 miles of distribution network to be rewired. 8,000 of those miles are in NY City where a substantial portion of the infrastructure is buried and the costs will be higher still.
When I did the utility project with Con Ed back in 2010 where we demonstrated that we could reduce transmission loads and line losses using reactive power correction on the local distribution system, I added power monitoring devices to four transformers. On hot days during the summer, three of the four transformers where the project was executed were operating at or near their capacity on a hot summer day. If heat pumps are added to the system, the winter time load on a cold day will be substantially higher than the summer time load on a hot day. That is not my speculation. The NYISO has determined that NY State will need an additional 25 Gigawatts of generation to support heat pumps in NY State. during the winter. Winter peaks are expected to exceed summer peaks starting in the early 2030’s.
As a result, a substantial portion of that 90,000 miles will need to be rewired to support onsite electrification. Using an existing project in California as a reference, PG&E has been required to bury 10,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines in the fire prone areas. In 2022, they replaced 71 miles of cable. By 2025, they expect to increase that to a rate of 1200 miles per year. That doesn’t include replacing transformers or services to people’s homes which would be required to electrify onsite heating. Even larger conductors will have to be added in rural areas of NY State where they expect to interconnect large solar arrays so that the projects don’t keep getting canceled because of interconnection costs. While replacing overhead lines would take less time than burying them, replacing old equipment with higher capacity equipment for the larger heating loads and the additional time needed to increase the service sizes into people’s homes would about offset the time difference.
At 1200 miles per year, rewiring 72,000 miles of distribution lines in NY state will take 60 years to upgrade. They have been burying larger electric and gas services in New Rochelle to support the extra 9,000 units of housing that they are building here and the roads have been like a slalom course for about 4 years to fix about 10 miles of services so the 60 years is not an unrealistic estimate. NY City may take even longer to rewire and that is 40% of the state’s population. What is going to happen to the people that cannot replace their gas equipment in areas where the service has not been upgraded to support the higher electric loads imposed on the system by NY State policy ?
3 – Bad Science Is Driving Initiatives – Results Will be Far worse than Estimated and It will add Enormous Costs On the Backs of the State’s Citizens
I have read extensively about the PAF (Population Attributable Fraction) technique that was used as the analytical tool to do the analysis for the recent paper about gas stoves and childhood asthma. A slide from an upcoming PowerPoint that I will be presenting is below. The caption at the bottom of the slide was copied from the introduction of a paper discussing PAF by people that developed an improvement to PAF. However, the improved version needs very specific data directed at the variables involved, and not 30 – 40 year old data that was not asking the necessary questions from a time when the focus on health issues was very different. Every PAF study with multiple variables warns of bias in the study and questionable results, whether it is from sugar intake and type 2 diabetes to comorbidities and Covid. Asthma falls into the multiple variable category. Risk factors can include tree pollen, second hand smoke, proximity to large emission sources such as factories or power plants, pet dander, vehicle exhaust, nutrition, and yes, even gas stoves, among others. But unless all of the data on the other variables was collected in the survey, PAF will return garbage, even in the updated format proposed by the authors of the PAF improvement. Thus, the conclusions of the gas stove report have no validity.
Another issue never explained by the authors of the gas stove study is why the top ten states for cases of asthma in the US are all 80% electric stoves and the top eight states for childhood asthma are 80% electric stoves. If gas stoves were that large of a factor, at least one of the five states that is primarily gas stoves would appear higher on those lists. The conclusions of the study could possibly be correct, but no one could be sure because the study was so poorly conceived, conducted, and analyzed. It certainly should not be used as the basis for a public policy affecting 19.5 million people that is going to add an additional $72 billion in costs onto the backs of the state’s utility customers. Results that will be at least 95% – 98% as effective can be obtained at a fraction of that cost using other techniques.
4 – Existing Transmission and Distribution System Will Not Support Installation of Large scale Renewable Generation – Too Many Resources are Being Wasted on Projects that will Yield No Environmental Benefits. Not Enough is being spent On Grid Infrastructure to support renewables and vehicle electrification.
Another major issue, and one that is severely impacting the installation of renewables is the fact that the state’s utility system is wired backwards for what policy makers are trying to do with it. The utility system was wired to have large sources of generation distributing energy outward from a few locations. Now, the state is trying to site large generation sources in remote locations where the infrastructure won’t support it. As a result, renewable generation installers are faced with long transmission line runs to interconnect into the system, making the projects non-cost effective. The projects are being cancelled and as a result, NY State is falling well behind in their installation schedule that was already insufficient to fulfill the state’s requirements.
This is also apparent with regard to the 9 GW of offshore wind. There is a major concern about the availability of space to run the cables to interconnect the energy to where it is needed. One possibility is running the cables across Long Island in an environment where every infrastructure project is faced with lawsuits. As a result, even if they can build the 9 GW of Atlantic Wind, they may only be able to interconnect about 6 GW to where it is needed. That is clearly shown in another slide from the upcoming PowerPoint documenting a critical page in a NY State Power Grid report, below. Transferring renewable generation installation projects to NYPA may increase the rate of installation slightly but the node analyses will still have to be done that takes five years at present and the transmission lines will still have to be installed so the price will not be reduced.
5 – Air Source Heat Pumps On a System Not Fully Supported By Renewable Generation Will Not Reduce GHG. There are not Enough Drillers to install Ground Source Heat Pumps, which actually work, in any time frame that will yield significant results.
As is clearly documented in the slide below, putting electric onsite heating into buildings that are not fully supported by renewables just shifts the load to existing generating plants. In Germany, heat pump installation, primarily air source, exceeds gas combustion installation. However, despite installing massive amounts of renewable generation, while their household carbon emissions have declined by 28% since 1999, their utility system carbon emissions only declined by 3.4%. While they closed nuclear plants, they actually installed more Gigawatt hours of renewables. They should have seen a large GHG decrease, but heat pumps running on a system that uses fossil fuel generation add marginal additional load to the fossil fuel plants with higher emissions than an efficient gas boiler/furnace.
Germany is playing “Whack-A-Mole” with its building emissions and NY State is about to do the same thing. They beat down the emissions in one place and they pop up somewhere else. That chart was copied from a Yale publication “Can Germany revive its stalled energy transition?” published in about 2018. Based upon events 4 years later, the answer has been a resounding “NO” Even prior to the war in Ukraine, Germany was reopening coal plants. After the war started and they lost their gas supply, they opened even more coal plants and there were news articles about people across Europe stealing firewood, cutting down trees, and burning anything that they could find to stay warm. That will be the future of NY State with the proposed policies. Germany has been exceedingly lucky this year with a relatively warm winter, however they recently signed an agreement with Qatar to import 20 million metric tons of Liquid Natural Gas over the next ten years.
As the chart shown below from a Cornell Geothermal report clearly show, all additional load added to the system is supported by fossil fuel generation. Blue and Brown lines were added after to explain the difference between the upstate and downstate generation sources which in 2019 were within 5% of each other. However, in terms of zero emissions sources, they were worlds apart. The downstate system is almost entirely supplied by fossil fuels.
6 – Battery Storage is being added to the System Prematurely. The batteries will wear out at least 50 years before the state has enough renewable generation to charge them. As a result, they will be charged with fossil fuel generation with a 15% – 20% higher carbon footprint than the actual generation.
As all marginal generation in NY State is provided by fossil fuel generation, all new battery systems that are added will increase fossil fuel generation by a minimum of 15% related to that stored energy as 15% of the battery’s energy is lost in the Charge/Discharge cycle. The batteries will need to be replaced after about 10 years, well before the system will be supported by renewable generation. This is great news for Elon Musk, but not that good for the taxpayers and utility customers in NY State. The following slide was also borrowed from the same report.
7 – An Energy “Shell Game” is Being Used to Make the New Micron Technology Facility Appear Greener than it Actually Will Be under CLCPA rules. However, it could be made far “Greener” in reality by siting a combined cycle generating plant next to the Micron Facility. Nuclear generation would be better still, but that would take far longer to build and would have much higher upfront costs.
The New Micron Technology Facility in Clay, NY will eventually use more energy than the state of Vermont. NY State and NYPA have said that they will provide 140 Megawatts of NY Hydro to the plant. For lack of a better word, that policy is a farce. All of the NY State Hydro has been allocated for years. If they allocate it to the Micron Facility, those customers that are currently using it will then effectively be using fossil fuels. They want Micron to use all renewable energy. From Where? A solar array that could generate enough energy to support that facility would occupy 100 square miles. They want Micron the buy Carbon Credits. From whom? NY State’s two largest neighbors to the south and west, Pennsylvania and Ohio, average 1.5% renewable energy. If NY State has to import energy from either of those states to support the Micron facility, it will all be from fossil fuel generation, gas or coal fired, at a lower efficiency than a combined cycle generator. The import of energy from long distances to the Micron Site will increase transmission line losses by approximately 350 Gigawatts compared with a generator on-site. The new rules are going to make the Micron facility less energy efficient, more polluting, and also increase Micron’s operational costs while imposing environmental costs on the state. Forcing Micron to buy Carbon Credits does nothing to help the environment. It literally papers over the problem while raising Micron’s costs and doing nothing tangible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
8 – Renewable Generation Installation Rates are Insufficient to Support NY State’s Plan
Even prior to many of the recent cancellations of renewable generation projects, NY State was not going to have enough renewable generation installed for about 60 years. Prior to the cancellations, NY State was going to be at least 120,000 Gigawatt hours short of what it would need to support the system on all renewables by 2035 as is shown in the slide below. With onsite fossil fuel combustion about to be banned in new building and replacement equipment banned after 2035, while EV’s are mandated for all sales after 2035, the system load is going to grow far more rapidly than the expansion of renewable generation resulting in an energy shortfall. Beyond the transmission issues facing the Atlantic Wind projects mentioned earlier, the Jones Act is going to slow the rate of installation for offshore wind by limiting the number of jack ships that will be available. While NY State is short on land, money, and grid capacity, the one thing that NY State has in abundance is lawyers so that any renewable project will be faced with years of NIMBY lawsuits and the resulting delays.
Just because California tried it that doesn’t mean that NY State should. California has a Mediterranean climate and is 20 degrees warmer in the winter so the orange and gray “energy blocks” in the fossil fuel column A on the chart below are much smaller. If NY State had the same climate as California, it would eliminate a need for about 150,000 Gigawatt hours of renewable generation on the future system. Keep in mind that California is having difficulty keeping the lights on without the albatross of onsite heating around their neck.
Four columns on the chart above are labeled A,B,C,D and are referred to in the conclusion.
“A” is the Existing Fossil Fuel Consumption in NY State. “B” is the Electric Load if all of that was converted to electric technologies on a fully GHG free generation system. “C” is 6 GW of 1000 hour storage as mentioned in the NY State Energy Storage report. Current cost using Lithium-Ion batteries, $3.4 Trillion. NY State is betting on technologies that don’t exist commercially yet and at present, have shorter lifespans than the 10 years of Lithium-Ion. “D” was the projected renewable installation for 2035 estimated in 2019 using figures provided by NY State. With solar projects being canceled, in 2023 that is an overly optimistic estimate.
Even if all of the existing fossil fuel generation remained static and no fossil fuel plants are closed, the additional load being mandated is going to outstrip the rate of renewable installation. As NY State is not allowed to build any new fossil fuel generation, one of two things will happen as a result of the energy shortfalls shown in the slide above. NY State citizens will be without lights and heat, or NY State will have to import large amounts of fossil fuel generation from out of state, just as California has had to do. When the neighboring states don’t have it available, NY State will have to impose rolling blackouts just as California now does, only the blackouts will occur on the coldest days of winter which will be far more deadly than the hot days during the California summer.
If Climate Change is truly the existential crisis that the authors of the CLCPA claim it to be, and if the recent UN report about the need to halve atmospheric carbon within 10 years is true, then NY State’s 60 – 70 year plan that is going to increase carbon emissions for at least the first 30 years needs some rethinking.
Keep in mind that NY States total GHG emissions are 350 million metric tons annually. Worldwide GHG emissions increased in 2021 by 2 billion metric tons, 40% of that from increased coal combustion in China, India, Germany, Japan, and other countries. So, the increase in worldwide GHG emissions in 2021 was six times NY State’s total annual emissions.
Because of the above fact, it is apparent that the rate of Climate Change is not in the purview of NY State policy makers. As resources are limited, instead of wasting money on building electrification that will yield no holistic improvements in GHG emissions, resources should be used to harden infrastructure against the inevitable negative effects of Climate Change, whether that is on grid infrastructure or flood mitigation. The most expensive and severe impacts of Sandy were on the underground infrastructure of NY City and along the Hudson River. Venice type barriers might be considered for under the Verrazano and the Triborough Bridges, however that will never happen if the state wastes $600 billion on an electrification plan with no positive upside.
A Better Plan –
The following, if executed properly could result in the energy chart, below, where the right hand column actually can supply NY State’s energy needs at a fraction of the cost of the current plan while also reducing fossil fuel energy use and the associated GHG emissions by 44%. However, people will have to allow techniques that don’t meet the current standard of ideological purity in NY State.
By eliminating the push to electrify buildings, the energy savings and carbon reductions will actually be greater than what the CLCPA will yield in practice. This alternative plan will need far less labor and storage resources. Existing resources can be allocated to grid infrastructure to support renewable installation and vehicle electrification. Vehicle electrification is the fastest way to improve GHG emissions. Eliminating storage requirements will reduce battery demand and costs, making EV’s cheaper.
All is not Doom and Gloom
What can be done to reduce GHG emissions considering the state’s lack of financial resources and the lack of sufficient renewable generation for at least seven decades? The following is a list of ten ideas that can be implemented relatively quickly that will help to rapidly lower GHG without breaking the piggy bank while also slowing or reversing the increase in utility bills
Do not electrify buildings that run on natural gas – while it will reduce GHG at the building, it will increase it as much at the generating plants while forcing residents and the utilities to incur enormous rewiring costs. There will be no reduction in current fossil fuel energy, Column A in the New York Fossil Fuel Energy Load figure. Also, the gas stove analysis that was done recently was mathematically flawed and should not be used to set public policy.
Focus heat pump efforts on locations that use oil heat or that use radiant electric heat. Those locations will see a significant reduction of GHG and heat pumps will reduce grid load when compared to radiant electric heat.
Focus resources on expanding grid infrastructure. This will reduce the cost of installing solar in Upstate locations and reduce the number of system cancellations allowing the state to increase the proposed renewable generating resources, Column D in the New York Fossil Fuel Energy Load figure.
Increasing grid infrastructure will also help with the installation of chargers for the electric vehicle wave that is about to arrive, with or without the state mandate.
Do not install large amounts of battery storage until there is sufficient renewable generation to support the storage. It will increase current fossil fuel energy (Column A in the New York Fossil Fuel Energy Load figure) while incurring an enormous capital outlay and starving other projects of funding. They will also decay well before sufficient renewable generation is installed.
Replace older generating plants with higher efficiency combined cycle natural gas generating plants. The state will need the energy to support the EV’s and the newer plants are far more efficient. It will lower Column A, reduce gas usage and put downward pressure on the commodity price.
Place an emphasis on hydrogen injection into natural gas combustion plants. It will decrease gas usage and increase combustion temperatures which reduces NOx emissions and lowers current fossil fuel energy, Column A. It will greatly lower GHG emissions related to those generating plants
Focus available natural gas resources on combined heat and power systems. It will reduce the utility bills for the system owners while also reducing requirements for grid infrastructure. Allow multiple building to form micro-grids to utilize the thermal output and increase the generation capacity. It will greatly reduce Column A
Allow Micron Technolgies to build a combined cycle plant the size of Cricket Valley Energy Center on their property. The Micron facility will use more energy than the state of Vermont. Instead of letting them be “green” on paper by buying carbon credits, let them be green in reality with high efficiency generation and have lower energy costs to make them more competitive and able to recoup the $5 billion rebate without faking it. That will eliminate the increase in column a related to the facility.
Figure out how the utilities can interconnect the 9 GW of offshore wind because at the moment, no one is certain how to do it. There is limited space for underwater cables. Without that, energy curtailments will occur and impede the increase of column d, unless they use the alternative idea which is to run transmission lines across Long Island.
Ellenbogen Conclusion
Ellenbogen Follow Up
The next day Ellenbogen followed up with another email with this warning.
In a speech to the British Parliament in 1948, Winston Churchill said, ‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”.
As a conclusion to my email of yesterday, March 28, the following should serve as a warning to those proposing the current NY State Energy plan and expensive projects that are going to raise utility rates but do little for the environment.
The statement above by Churchill not only applies to NY State following Germany’s failed energy program. It also applies to something that happened just across Lake Ontario, much closer to home.
In 2009, Ontario, Canada passed the Green Energy Act. Ontario has a similar population distribution to NY State with large population centers to the south and more rural areas to the north. Hardships were incurred by the more rural areas in the building of renewable generation and sending the energy to the wealthier, more densely populated southern areas. In reading some articles on the subject, it was portrayed as a class war. The act might have survived that issue, except energy costs skyrocketed along with the perceived injustices and the combination led to the repeal of the Act after only 10 years. The Green Energy Act from 2009 is available here and an article documenting the repeal is here.
As I documented above, the state’s energy policies are going to cost trillions of dollars with far fewer carbon emission reductions than could otherwise be obtained at a far lower cost. Hundreds of square miles of solar arrays and wind farms are going to have to be built in rural areas that are already exhibiting a substantial resistance to the projects. The 2019 repeal of the act gave municipalities the right to control what energy projects could be built within their borders, just the opposite of NY State’s proposed legislation.
The quest for the perfect will be anything but and the inevitable voter rebellion that is going to occur in the not-too-distant future is going to leave the state with massive debt, extremely high utility costs, and little to no GHG reduction to show for it. In the interim, a decade will have passed where functional, inexpensive programs could be implemented that will actually reduce GHG in the real world, as opposed to the current program that only might work in Mark Zuckerberg’s fantasy Metaverse. It certainly hasn’t worked in any cold climate on Earth where it has been tried.
Utility customers are already feeling enormous amounts of pain. I have been receiving emails of late from politicians excoriating Con Ed for raising rates, however most of the increase is needed to comply with the mandates of the CLCPA. The increases are due to terrible policy and not utility rate gouging. As a clear example of how upside down this policy is, it actually has me defending Con Ed after they said some rather nasty things about me in a tariff hearing 12 years ago. I have a long memory and no love for Con Ed but this energy policy is going to end up turning the state’s utilities into piñatas through no fault of their own.
The utility rate increases are going to be far worse going forward as the costs documented in my email of yesterday are not figments of my imagination. The plan will not be sustainable. The state can’t borrow its way out of trillions of dollars of costs in an effort to subsidize utility rate payers to ease the pain that will be caused by this.
Beyond the actual costs, there is going to be a huge opportunity cost in terms of lost time imposed by the CLCPA that prevents working solutions from being executed, along with a souring of popular attitudes towards any future programs to reduce GHG.
In their overreach for an unrealistic fantasy, they are going to achieve nothing. Unfortunately, as bad as that is, that situation will be the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario will be that they continue to push forward, ignoring utility customers pain, still achieving no GHG reductions, while creating energy shortages that result in loss of life.
The current energy policy has no long-term positive outcomes.
Caiazza Concluded Remarks
I could quibble with a few numbers and my take is slightly different for a few aspects but I am in complete agreement that this cannot possibly work. The biggest flaw in the Hochul Administration’s net-zero transition plan is the lack of a feasibility analysis. In 2018 I wrote the following.
We’re choosing between as yet undefined but surely expensive options trying to understand which one (or what mix) will be the least expensive. Unfortunately we don’t know but we need to start now because we’ve been told that we have to make reductions by 2030. If we make a good pick then we’ll spend the least amount of a lot of money and will be left with the fewest negative outcomes, but if we get it wrong, we will be left with many more negative outcomes and even higher costs for a long time.
Since then, the only thing I would change is that it is not just about the money, the possibility of catastrophic reliability outcomes must be considered because present wind, solar, and energy storage technology must be coupled with other ill-defined and speculative resources in order to work reliably. Clearly the first step and priority should be a feasibility analysis before anymore time and money is spent on this.
Roger Pielke, Jr. has been analyzing climate change risks since 1994. This post highlights his article published today that explains “explosive testimony this week argues that climate research has a serious conflict of interest problem.” At a recent meeting I heard several people who have caught on that this is a problem based on their gut instincts. Here’s documentation proving that they are correct.
Pielke’s climate research has strayed from the orthodoxy so he has been decried as a heretic. As he puts it:
I have argued that climate change poses risks and deserves significant action in response. I’ve also argued that our response efforts to date have been woefully inadequate. My views, which I have not been shy about sharing, have led some to try to exclude or remove me from the discussion, with some considerable success.
Blowback to his work is so bad now that when I did an internet search for his credentials the popup list of search suggestions included “Roger Pielke Jr climate denier”. He must have struck a nerve when he documented the fact that the continuing litany of so-called proof of climate apocalypse is not supported by the data because he was attacked by many. Based on the flak he receives he must be over the target because powerful people have tried all sorts of things to shut him up.
Here is his article in its entirety
Recently I was surprised to see a Tweet from a climate researcher who I’ve known for a while that looked like an advertisement for a particular renewable energy company. The researcher was promoting the company to his many followers. Reading on, I saw that the researcher disclosed that he was being paid by the company and had an equity interest. So it was an advertisement. Academics can also be investors, right? So no problem?
Well, here is the problem. This researcher was one of the central analysts whose work was used to design and then promote the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The company he is promoting is a direct beneficiary of that legislation. At the same time, the researcher claims that his analyses offer an “independent environmental and economic evaluation of federal energy and climate policies.” BS. There’s a sucker born every minute.
I called out the researcher on Twitter for taking money not just from one but from many companies that are direct beneficiaries of the legislation he helped to design and sell to policymakers and the public. He responded to me in a huff — proclaiming his noble intent and track record of advocacy for renewable energy for many years (almost as bad as the climate researcher who told me she could not have a conflict of interest because her husband was a preacher). All that may well be true, but goodness, this absolutely stinks.
I’m not naming the researcher (you can find him easily enough), because his case is far from unique in climate research these days, and this post is about a far bigger more important issue.
There is a gold rush going on in climate research right now, as researchers scramble to cash in on their new-found access to politicians and philanthropists. As Professor Jessica Weinkle of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington stated in her opening remarks in testimony before the U.S. Senate last week, “Today, it is not easy to separate the going-ons in climate change research from the special interests of financial institutions.”
She continues:
The landscape of climate change research is made complicated by an outcropping of non-profit advocacy organizations that double as analytic consultants, hold contracts with private companies and government entities, and engage in official government expert advisory roles- all while publishing in the peer reviewed literature and creating media storms.
This is not really an issue of any one entity. It is pervasive.
Experts monetizing their expertise is one important reason why people become experts, and there is no problem with people seeking to make a buck. But where expertise and financial interests intersect, things can get complicated. That is why there are robust mechanisms in place for the disclosure and mitigation of financial conflicts of interest, a subject I’ve focused on for decades.
All of this is just common sense. Your doctor can’t prescribe you drugs from a company that pays him fees. You wouldn’t think much of a report on smoking and health from a researcher supported by the tobacco industry. Should climate researchers play by a different set of rules, because the cause is so important?
Call me a stickler, but in my view, the more important the cause, the more important it is to enforce standards of research integrity.
Following her testimony, Weinkle addressed a few questions that were raised at the Senate hearing. Here is her response to the first one:
Well… I don’t know if it was really a question. It was a set up to imply that the only conflicts of interest that should matter are those coming from the fossil fuel industry.
I don’t agree. At. All.
Frankly, that’s absurd.
In fact, when people argue that the only conflicts of interest that matter are those held by their opponents they are saying that the rules of the game don’t apply to themselves or those that support them.
Conflicts of interest are a concern for scientific integrity no matter where the money is coming from.
Further, it was implied in the hearing that only the fossil fuel industry hides what they are doing by donating to non profit groups that then do research. No.
I encourage you to read Professor Weinkle’s testimony in full. She cites three examples of many that raise serious questions of financial conflicts of interest in climate research (see the testimony for all the footnotes, which I removed here):
Central bank stress testing scenarios are developed by researchers who are also lead authors on IPCC reports and have important roles in organizing the international modeling community in the development of IPCC scenarios. Funding for central bank scenario development and the most recent meeting of the scenario modeling community comes from influential organizations including, Bloomberg Philanthropies, ClimateWorks, and the Bezos Earth Fund.
McKinsey & Company used a climate consultancy to produce a series of widely influential reports on climate change financial risks. In defense of their use of RCP 8.5 the report cited a peer-reviewed publication written by its own consultants. The researchers did not declare their COI as consultants for McKinsey or their association with the asset management firm, Wellington. Shortly after publication of the article one of its authors landed a political position while the authors’ home institution announced coordinated efforts with Wellington to influence SEC regulatory decisions.
The Risky Business Project, an academic-industry research collaboration was organized by three wealthy politicians with the goal to “mak[e] the climate threat feel real.” Research products are important components to national climate and sea level rise assessments, and a policy advocacy tool used to evaluate real estate flood risk. Core members of the research collaboration move seamlessly between private consulting, policymaker science advisory positions, and academic research.
Again, this stinks.
Nothing could be more delegitimizing to climate science and policy than a toxic combination of unmitigated financial conflicts of interest and claims that climate researchers, by virtue of the noble cause, are exempt from the rules that govern every other setting where expertise and money intersect.
I’ll let Professor Weinkle have the last word today:
Climate change science demonstrates an underappreciated dynamic system of conflicts of interest among climate change researchers, advocacy organizations, and the financial industry.
If you haven’t subscribed to Professor Weinkle’s Substack, called Conflicted — run, don’t walk, and sign up — link below.
Early this year I described the outsized influence of a few individuals on the Climate Act and the Climate Action Council. When the Council deigned to address any dissenting comments regarding the implementation analyses, most of the members dismissed those considerations as misinformation funded by the fossil fuel industry. I believe they ignored a more serious instance of a conflict of interest.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 