Battling the Net-Zero Transition in New York – Watts Up With That?

Roger Caiazza

A recent article from the Daily Caller News Foundation explained that even New York Governor Hochul has realized that the state’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) is too extreme.  This is an update on my related net-zero transition battle to force the state to pause implementation.  Hopefully it will inspire similar resistance in your jurisdictions.

Even the most zealous climate activist must admit that there is a limit to how much any jurisdiction can afford to spend to implement an energy transition program to eliminate fossil fuels.  Of course, as soon as costs come up, activists conjure cost estimates that claim that fossil-free nirvana will be cheaper and if negative externalities are considered then the cost of inaction is more than the cost of action.  That baloney is not the topic of this post.

The fact is that net-zero transition policies have always been about politics and money, not rational thought.  New York’s implementation progress has reached the point where the costs of the transition are too large to ignore. 

The Daily Caller article referenced a letter written by Donna DeCarolis and Dennis Elsenbeck, two members of the Climate Action Council that approved the implementation outline for the Climate Act.  They requested a hearing with the Public Service Commission (PSC) to consider delaying the state’s climate goals citing several circumstances that warrant a hearing based on Public Service Law (PSL) 66-P that implements the renewable energy program mandated by the Climate Act.

The article also included extensive quotes by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: “I was intent on becoming known as a strong environmental governor.”   She made the remarks in early August, according to local news outlet Spectrum News. “I also cannot ignore the fact that the disruptions in our economy that have occurred since the laws went into place, but also since we even supported this, that need to be examined in terms of what is happening to people’s pocketbooks right now. … I also have to moderate and make sure that I’m not doing something that’s going to drive up costs for consumers, and the data shows at this time it would.”  In my opinion, the political machine of the governor has realized they have a problem.

So far there has been no response from the Hochul Administration to the DeCarolis and Elsenbeck letter.

Personal War

My personal fight against the Climate Act consists primarily of articles on my blog and the occasional post here.  I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on Climate Act implementation plans, and have written over 550 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.  I have also submitted comments in various Public Service Commission proceedings.  The primary themes of my comments have been the affordability and reliability risks of a future electric system that relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage and the fact that there is a New York regulation that established boundary conditions for the transition. The PSL 66-P law and the circumstances that warrant consideration of a PSC hearing were referenced in the DeCarolis and Elsenbeck letter.

I have joined forces with Richard Ellenbogen, Constatine Kontogiannis, and Francis Menton to wage war on the Climate Act.  Ellenbogen is an electrical engineer who is President of Allied Converters where he has pioneered how “green” manufacturing can work.  Constantine Kontogiannis is an engineer who has decades of experience providing energy consulting services.  Menton is a retired lawyer and now writes articles at his Manhattan Contrarian blog that are frequently featured here.

We intervened in the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation (NMPC) dba National Grid and the Consolidated Edison Company of New York utility rate cases.  In both cases, we included testimony arguing that PSL 66-p should be considered in the context of the rate case programs included to meet requirements of the Climate Act.  The Department of Public Service (DPS) staff response to our arguments boils down to “rate cases are not the appropriate forum to consider limitations of the renewable energy program”. 

In response we submitted a filing in a generic proceeding.  My compatriots and I believe that when the net-zero transition claims are compared to reality they fail.  To prove that is an enormous effort that I described in a post at my blog.  In brief, our submittal includes the primary filing, two exhibits documenting the customers in arrears safety valve trigger, and five supporting exhibits.  The primary filing argues that Public Service Law Section 66-p(4) contains the aforementioned safety valve provisions.   Exhibit 1 – Trend in Company Customers in Arrears documents increasing trends in utility customer payment delinquencies, providing baseline data for the customers in arrears safety valve trigger.  I did a separate post providing details of those calculations.  Exhibit 2 – Customers in Arrears is a spreadsheet that contains the detailed analytical data on utility arrears across New York’s major distribution companies. 

The remainder of the exhibits support the need for the filing, additional circumstances that demonstrate that the broad mandate to ensure access to safe, reliable utility service at just and reasonable rates has not been addressed in the current implementation process, a demonstration that the current approach is actually increasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and a recommendation for an alternative approach.  Exhibit 3 – Affordability-Focused Recommendations outlines specific policy recommendations to address energy affordability concerns, including proposals for cost transparency, alternative funding mechanisms, and enhanced low-income programs.  Exhibit 4 – Resource Gap Characterization analyzes gaps between CLCPA mandates and available resources, addressing both financial and infrastructure capacity constraints.  Exhibit 5 – Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources explains that the need for a resource that is not currently commercially available risks investments in false solutions.  Exhibit 6 – Electrification Increases Emissions presents analysis demonstrating that certain electrification strategies may paradoxically increase emissions. Finally, Exhibit 7 – Alternative Approach proposes alternative implementation pathways that could achieve reasonable climate goals while maintaining affordability and reliability.

Conclusion

The Climate Act is and always will be political theater.  New York has never done a feasibility analysis because the politicians and the activists who wrote the law naively believed that the net-zero transition was only a matter of political will.  It has always been inevitable that New York’s net-zero transition would collapse because of physics and costs issues that would have been flagged in a proper feasibility analysis.  Now that the consequences of ignoring the fundamentals are becoming so evident that they cannot be ignored, the search is on for an excuse to pause implementation.  The filing we submitted argues that there are already provisions in place to reconsider the schedule that provides the excuse.  When a hearing is held, the ambition of the transition will be exposed to reality as well.

Not surprisingly, there has been no response to our filing.  My colleagues and I are plotting ways to get the PSC to respond and spreading the word is at the top of the list.  New Yorkers reading this should contact their elected officials and ask them to demand that the PSC respond to our filing and the letter from DeCarolis and Elsenbeck.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.

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