Weighing N.Y.'s Climate Statute
/The headline of this post is the same headline as appears in today’s New York Daily News as a big banner spanning pages 26 and 27 of the print edition, which are the main op-ed pages. Those two pages then contain two op-eds taking opposite positions on the future of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, which the Daily News refers to as the “Climate Statute.” The column on page 26 is by Emily Gallagher and Kim Fraczek, with the headline “Getting to affordable, clean energy solutions.” On page 27 the headline is “We have to rethink the state’s climate act”; the by-line is Jane Menton. Both pieces are behind the Daily News’s paywall, although it appears that you can get through it by paying them $1 for an introductory subscription. In my case, when I found out that Jane’s piece was running I went out and splurged $3.50 for the print version.
Comparison of the two pieces will provide a look into the quality of the debate going on in New York over the supposed energy transition.
Both op-eds start by noting the recent news in New York that State officials have publicly recognized that the upcoming 2030 deadlines set out in the Climate Act are not going to be met. The two articles then take opposite views as to what should happen next. As indicated by the headline, Jane’s piece argues that “we have to rethink” the Climate Act. The view of Gallagher and Fraczek is that we need to double down.
I’ll start by describing Jane’s piece. The arguments in the piece will be familiar to regular readers here. But first I should mention that although Jane had the by-line she also had a notable contributor, Roger Caiazza, the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, who had written the first draft of the piece. Roger and I (along with Richard Ellenbogen) have recently collaborated on a Report on the unworkability of the Climate Act, described in my post here, and we have also been working partly together and partly on our own, and partly with Jane, to get op-eds published discussing these ideas. Roger initially drafted and submitted a piece similar to this one as an op-ed to the Daily News, but at first they declined to run it on the ground that they had recently published another piece by Roger. Jane volunteered to revise and re-submit the piece, and Roger graciously agreed to forego any credit. (It’s a good thing that I did not volunteer. So far I have a 100% rejection rate for various op-eds that I have submitted to our local papers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Post.). So the piece ultimately ran as submitted by Jane.
The basic point of the Jane/Roger piece is that New York is not meeting the mandates of the Climate Act because providing the required electricity from renewable sources simply cannot be done. The piece cites three recent Reports from the Public Service Commission, from the New York Independent System Operator, and from the New York State Comptroller, all setting forth the insurmountable obstacles.
The Public Service Commission Report sets forth the quantity of electricity that would be needed to achieve the 2030 mandate, and finds that the rate of approval and construction of facilities is not nearly sufficient to supply the needed quantities of power. (The PSC Report does not even get to the question of whether, if somehow infinite amounts of wind and solar facilities could be built, the electricity would come at times where it could be matched to demand.)
The Comptroller’s Report points out that the whole Climate Act energy transition thing is going on without anyone ever having done a study of how much this is going to cost.
And finally, there is the NYISO Report, which does address the issue of whether intermittent wind and sun generation can match demand, and concludes that there is a need for a large amount of what they call the “DEFR” (Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource). The DEFR is a magical source of generation that does not exist in the real world.
From the Jane/Roger op-ed:
The glaring problem here? These [DEFR] technologies simply do not exist yet on a commercial scale, and certainly will not be available to fulfill the purpose of substituting for slow to implement renewable energy sources.
And the conclusion:
Taken as a whole, these reports, from three official and credible sources, suggest that there will be insurmountable reliability risks for the Climate Act transition. It is time for a reevaluation.
Now let’s look at the other side. The people writing for the other side are Emily Gallagher and Kim Fraczek. Ms. Gallagher is a State Assemblymember from the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn (a relatively affluent area just across the river from Manhattan), while Ms. Fraczek is Director of a climate/energy advocacy group called the Sane Energy Project.
If you think that these two might actually address the question of how the proposed energy transition is supposed to work from an engineering standpoint, don’t kid yourself. Instead, the gist is to accuse the existing utilities of “racism” in operation of their system and of spewing toxicity to poison the people. Excerpt:
The governor must act now to regain New York’s position as a climate leader. . . . Our climate law was passed to ensure inclusivity in a historically racist energy system. National Grid [the gas utility in Brooklyn], thus, has admittedly left disadvantaged communities out of its equation. . . . The governor must debunk National Grid’s explanation for outsized utility bill hikes and act to forestall the company’s proposed rate increases.
Where will the power come from for the energy transition? Here is the proposal of Gallagher and Fraczek:
[S]ince the private market is failing us, the governor . . . has an opportunity to direct the New York Power Authority, the largest state public power utility in America providing some of the lowest-cost electricity in the nation, to build 15 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 and shutting down the peaker power plants that run on toxic fracked gas.
But how about the problem that wind and solar only provide part-time power that does not match customer demand? How about the need for a DEFR? No mention of those things here. The conclusion:
[W]e should invest in cost-effective, energy-efficient upgrades. By transitioning away from expensive and potentially dangerous gas systems rooted in 19th-century technology, we can create healthier, more comfortable living spaces for all.
This is the quality of the thinking that we are dealing with.
I guess I give the Daily News — generally a left-wing paper — credit for publishing the Jane/Caiazza piece. But so far, the Gallagher/Fraczek argument is what gets you elected in Brooklyn. The question is whether those people can be awakened before the blackouts hit.
UPDATE, August 5: The post has been revised to make clear that Jane had significant input into the Daily News op-ed. If the prior version suggested otherwise, that was incorrect. Further, New Yorkers for Affordable Reliable Energy is a project that has been organized to promote the ideas put forth in the op-ed, and we prioritize those ideas having a wide audience and legitimate platform.