New York State’s Climate Act: A Bureaucratic Disaster Verging On Collapse

It was in July 2019 that New York State adopted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Our Legislature and Governor (it was Andrew Cuomo at the time) had officially designated us as the climate “leader,” here to show the unsophisticated rubes and provincials in the rest of the country how a small application of political will could transform our electricity system from majority fossil fuels in 2019 to 70% “renewables” by 2030 and 100% “zero-carbon” by 2040. [emphasis, links added]

Now, six years into the eleven available to meet the 2030 mandate, we instead get less of our electricity from zero-carbon sources than we did in 2019.

The reason is that the large (2 GW) Indian Point nuclear plant was forced to close under pressure from environmentalists, to be replaced by two natural gas plants of approximately the same total capacity.

Meanwhile, the vision of massive amounts of power from the wind and sun has barely gotten off the ground; in particular, the vision of vast offshore wind capacity has essentially died with the withdrawal of federal support by the Trump administration.

So, what is the plan from here forward? The short answer is that there is no plan, or at least nothing remotely close to a credible plan.

But while we lack any semblance of a credible plan, we do not lack big reports purporting to be a plan. The last couple of months have seen the issuance of two such documents.

On July 25, something called the New York State Energy Planning Board issued a document titled the Draft 2025 Energy Plan for the State. Separately, back on June 2, an agency called the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) issued a document called 2025 Power Trends. So, how can I say that there is no plan?

Well, start with that document from the Energy Planning Board. The EPB is some kind of consortium of the infinitely confusing morass of bureaucracies with their fingers in the New York energy planning pie.

Here is a list of members, with some 14 hangers-on ranging from the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation to the Chancellor of the State University to the Commissioner of the Department of Health to the Chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

You would think that by this time, with only five years to go to the 2030 deadline, this highfalutin group of muckety-mucks would have, at the minimum, a detailed list of exactly what was going to be built where to meet the mandate, accompanied by an engineering-level feasibility study and detailed cost projections.

Well, no, no, and no. Instead, we get hundreds upon hundreds of pages of fluff.

The Summary for Policy Makers alone is 75 pages long. The whole thing is way too voluminous for me to give you anything more than a tiny sampling here. But an excerpt from the introductory paragraphs will give you some of the flavor:

Energy is central to New Yorkers’ lives. It powers the economy, keeps homes and workplaces comfortable, moves people and goods, and runs critical infrastructure. New York is one of the most energy-efficient states in the nation based on energy use per person and state economic output. 1. Additionally, our power grid is becoming cleaner. Roughly half of New York’s in-state electricity generation comes from zero-emission sources, 2 and renewable generation projects that are in the pipeline today would double the state’s renewable generation by 2030. 3 Yet, like the rest of the country, New Yorkers face volatile energy prices, intensifying extreme weather, and environmental and health impacts associated with reliance on fossil fuels and aging fossil fuel infrastructure. These shared concerns do not affect all communities equally. Low-income households and otherwise disadvantaged communities are disproportionately impacted by energy cost burdens and by community and environmental health concerns like water and air pollution. 4 Disadvantaged communities also face significant barriers to accessing clean energy choices. 5

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then this from a little further down in the introduction:

The Energy Planning Board acknowledges that at the time of developing the Draft Plan, the energy sector faces significant uncertainty, stemming from economic pressures and, more recently, a shift in political priorities and policies at the federal level. These uncertainties impact long-term planning, investment decisions, and possibly the pace of transition to clean energy.

Translation: all of their fantasies about massive amounts of solar and wind power driven by federal subsidies have been wiped out, and they have no idea what is next.

So they’re going to bury you in hundreds of pages of bafflegab about things like “delivering abundant, reliable and resilient clean energy,” or “continuing progress toward decarbonization and a clean energy economy,” or “delivering abundant energy services for economic competitiveness.” (These are examples of headings from the table of contents.)

Note that this is just the “draft” plan. A multi-month process of public comments and revisions is contemplated. The chance that that process will contribute an actual feasibility study or detailed cost projection is exactly zero.

And then there is the NYISO Power Trends report. This one is a comparatively terse 50 pages. Most is written in the same type of bureaucratese designed to conceal the lack of substance and to keep you from reading further.

Example from the President’s introductory letter:

The electric system is the backbone of our economy. It is essential to the health and safety of all New Yorkers. Since the NYISO’s inception in 1999, protecting electric system reliability and evolving competitive markets has been our top priority in the face of great change, whether it be societal, public policy, or extreme weather.

But then, NYISO is the one agency here that has the responsibility to keep the system up and running. Deeply buried on page 14 as the last paragraph of a section headed “A diverse resource mix supports grid reliability,” we find these two sentences:

Simply put, as New York seeks to retire more fossil fuel units in the coming years, it will be essential to deploy new energy resources with the same reliability attributes to maintain grid reliability. Until new, non-emitting alternatives like hydrogen or advanced nuclear generation are developed and commercialized, fossil resources are needed to fill an essential role in preserving reliable grid operations.

Well, as of today, grid-scale hydrogen and advanced nuclear generation have not been “commercialized.” So the only answer is to keep the fossil fuel generation going.

Perhaps they should tell some of their co-bureaucrats, like NYSERDA, or the Energy Planning Board, or maybe even the legislature or the New York City Council.

But as of now, NYISO’s strategy seems to be to put a warning somewhere deep in their reports just so they can say “I told you so” when the whole thing falls apart. They owe the New York citizenry much better.

Top image: Indian Point nuclear plant via Bloomberg News/YouTube screencap

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