Sometimes, it seems like the world is just flailing away in its concerted efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions. In the U.S. the President can’t get his grand “green” plans through a Congress controlled by his own party. In Europe, a countryside blanketed with wind turbines can’t counteract a wind drought in 2021, and emissions rise even while natural gas prices spike to nearly 10 times the U.S. level.
New York may be a late-comer to Net Zero plans, but by God, our politicians and bureaucrats are so much smarter than those clowns across the country or the pond. In 2019 the New York legislature enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), self-described on the State’s website as “the nation-leading [law] to empower every New Yorker to fight climate change at home, at work, and in their communities.” The Climate Act set a series of highly ambitious targets for emissions reductions (e.g., 70% renewable electricity by 2030, 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040, 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050). It also created a Climate Action Council to figure out how to achieve these targets. Task number one for the CAC has been to propound a so-called “Scoping Plan,” containing the details informing us how this will be accomplished.
Through 2020 and 2021 we waited on pins and needles as the CAC and some seven advisory sub-panels held dozens of meetings and beavered away on their big report. And then finally, on December 20, the curtain went up: the CAC finally released its Draft Scoping Plan to the public. Follow this link to download a copy of the full thing — 330 pages, not including appendices.
If you think that a document with this kind of build-up and heft would contain at least a little serious effort to grapple with the major engineering problems of decarbonizing everything from the electrical grid to home heating to private autos to aviation to ocean shipping, all at the same time, think again. The words “incompetent” and “amateurish” come to mind, but don’t really even begin to describe how bad this work product is. The 330 page length, filled with padding, fluff, and repetition, is mainly to assure that nobody whose time is valuable will ever be able to read it. The authors are like a parody version of King Canute, who actually believe that when they order the tide to stop rising, it will obey.
Consider the vision here for decarbonizing the electrical grid. Remember, under the law, we are required to achieve a zero emission grid by 2040. But other jurisdictions that got a much earlier start pushing toward the same goal can’t seem to get above 50% electricity from renewables for any substantial duration. The wind and sun just don’t work enough of the time to get past that level, no matter how many facilities you build. What will New York do differently? From the Scoping Plan, page 149:
Vision for 2030. The Climate Act requires that 70% of statewide electricity come from renewable energy sources by 2030. The Climate Act also requires 6,000 MW of distributed solar by 2025 and 3,000 MW of energy storage be installed by 2030. This can be accomplished by aggressive deployment of existing renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, and energy storage. With the primary procurement mechanisms already established to do just that, the recommendations included here for 2030 look to ensure that the procurement mechanisms lead to construction and operation of renewable energy and accelerate the pace and reduce the cost of decarbonizing the electric grid.
(Emphasis added.). Actually, anyone paying attention knows that 70% of electricity from renewables cannot be achieved by just building more wind and solar facilities, and existing types of batteries can provide only the most limited help, and even then at outrageous cost.
The vision for 2050 is even more pure fantasy. Again from Scoping Plan page 149:
Vision for 2050. By 2040, the Climate Act requires that the State achieve a zero-emissions electricity system as well as 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035. Achieving this will require all of the actions identified for 2030, further procurement of renewables, and a focus on developing new technology solutions.
The technology to do this does not currently exist, but if we just order it to come into being, it will happen. The authors who presume to order this to happen don’t even pretend to know what technologies may be sufficient to reach their goals, or how much this may cost.
Equally delusional are the plans for transportation, appearing at pages 93-117. The Scoping Plan reports approximately 9 million personal autos registered in New York as of November 2021. The first all-electric Tesla came out in 2008 — thirteen years ago. After those thirteen years, what percent of our personal autos in New York are all-electric? From page 93:
As of November 2021, one half of one percent of the over 9 million registered LDVs in New York were ZEVs.
One half of one percent would be about 45,000 of the 9 million after 13 years. But supposedly we are now going to go to 3 million all-electric cars in just the next 9 years, and then on to essentially all electric by 2050. How to get there? From page 94:
An aggressive and implementable mix of policies will be required to accelerate GHG emission reductions to the level needed by 2030. By 2030 nearly 100% of LDV sales and 40% or more of MHD vehicle sales must be ZEVs and a substantial portion of personal transportation in urbanized areas would be required to shift to public transportation and other low-carbon modes. New York can achieve these goals through ZEV sales requirements and accompanying incentives and investments to help achieve these mandates, historic investments in expanded public transportation and micro-mobility, enhanced bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, smart growth development, market-based policies that support lower-carbon transportation choices, and potentially a clean fuel standard that reduces the average carbon intensity of fuels as the transition to zero emissions vehicles proceeds.
Order it up, and it will happen. How much extra will New Yorkers have to pay for all these electric vehicles? No mention of that here.
And what is the plan for, for example, air travel and freight rail? From page 95:
Some segments of hard-to-electrify subsectors, such as aviation, freight rail, and potentially some MHD vehicles are expected to rely on green hydrogen and renewable biofuels (e.g., renewable jet fuel) to fully replace fossil fuel combustion if zero emission applications are not feasible.
Airplanes will run on “green hydrogen.” Has there been as of today any demonstration of the feasibility of such a thing, let alone any company working to develop a commercial version?
The Scoping Plan does build on what is called an “Integration Analysis,” that supposedly weighs (wildly underestimated) costs against (almost entirely imaginary) benefits of this energy transition, and comes out with a supposedly positive answer. I don’t have nearly the space here to go into detail on this subject, but highly recommend a November 22 Report from the Empire Center called “The Green Scheme,” as well as the December 15 blog post at Roger Caiazza’s Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York site titled “Review of Costs in Green Scheme: The Climate Action Council’s Climate Transition Cost Analysis.” Here is one among many choice quotes from Caiazza:
The Integration Analysis is not a feasibility study. The Analysis does not include an engineering evaluation to determine how the grid has to be upgraded to maintain current reliability standards much less how much it will cost. One feasibility aspect that is included is a technology to cover the need for zero emissions, firm dispatchable resources. The analysis proposes using hydrogen resources for this aspect of the system but that technology has not been proven at the scale necessary for New York’s requirements. Any cost estimates of an unproven technology are wildly uncertain. In addition, I cannot find any reference to necessary transmission ancillary services support so I agree that the grid issues raised have been overlooked.
I suppose one possibility is that New York actually proceeds down the road laid out in this “Scoping Plan,” and rapidly hits the green energy wall that I discussed in my post a couple of weeks ago.
They will go broke long before 2050 and drag a lot with them if they proceed. Go broke because any wealth got will be worthless. And did they ask anyone such as the people.
Look the solution to NY going net zero is simple. They just need to get the solar panels to work at night as effectively as they do during the day. Now that can’t be too difficult can it? We all know working the night shift is not popular, but needs must.
The other option is simple too. They need to get the wind turbines to operate on those days when the wind isn’t blowing. Again it is just a simple engineering problem. I am sure someone like that nice Mr Bloomberg or AOC can help sort that out…..
“They just need to get the solar panels to work at night as effectively as they do during the day.”
Just install them under the street lamps.
They could use the battery backup to power the wind turbines when the wind isn’t blowing and then use the wind turbines to recharge the batteries and then, oh wait – forget it
Per my calculations, it will take finding sites, clearcutting, installing, testing, and commissioning 6.5 square miles (4,160 acres, 16 sq km) of solar farms every month starting tomorrow until 2030.
Or if you prefer wind, they’ll need to find sites, clearcut, excavate, install, test, and commission 450 1-MW wind turbines every month starting tomorrow until 2030.
Oh, plus install transmission lines to the new generating facilities, which are often FAR from where the power is needed.
w.
When you put it like that Willis you make it sound so simple, I am amazed the net zero advocates have not suggested 2025 for their target date. 🙂
Oh you are such an old sourpuss Willis raining on the green parade. Did you make allowance for a (generous)capacity factor of about 40% and laying by storage for the 60% of the time your wind turbines are idle, with a storage efficiency of 50%. If not multiply your answer by 4
That doesn’t even consider the upgrading of the secondary distribution plant to carry the additional load.
360 pages? It’s gotta be in that report somewhere, Jim. They wouldn’t forget that now, would they?
The photo above the article, showing a couple sitting on the grass in Central Park, shows an idea for some green energy. There are lots of geese on the ground in that picture, so why not collect all the goose poop and run it into an anaerobic digester and make methane?
Of course, you still have to feed the geese. There are not enough fish in Central Park Lake to keep that many geese alive year round.
About 45 years ago, Canada geese were considered an endangered species, so people started feeding them to build up flocks around small lakes. The problem is, the geese tended to settle wherever they were fed, and there are no “leaders” left in the flock that know the way to Canada, so we have large flocks of well-fed geese year-round near lots of lakes in New England, some of them sitting on the ice all winter.
But if you’re on the shore, and want to take a swim or launch a boat, be careful where you step!
“This can be accomplished by aggressive deployment of existing renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, and energy storage..”
*************
Yea, right. And the Titanic was unsinkable. God help them.
The “irresistible aggressive deployment” will be met with the “immovable NIMBY.” Something may happen, but exactly when, what and the costs are all unknown. Bring money, lots of it.
“85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”
Am I wrong in reckoning that as you decarbonize the atmosphere (lower the partial pressure of CO²), you cause increased outgassing from the oceans? Isnt this the reason why no sign of change in CO² was observed under Covid lockdown?
You forgot these words should be bolded. You won’t own an automobile of ANY kind and you will like it because public transportation will take everywhere you are allowed to go and at any time in is convenient for the public transportation agency.
Peddle-power buses! Or even better, greenies yoked to pull carts.
I remember peddle-powered buses from my time in Auckland. Of course, they also served you lots of beer.
For the love of god – will one of these leftist loony areas actually do it! – ban fossil fuels for real. Let the world sit and watch the chaos. That will quickly put an end to this stupidity.
There are primarily two ways to go about achieving the stated objectives.
A. Aggressively upgrade or replace existing infrastructure – current technology does not make this feasible for the current demand in New York.
B. Determine what can actually be built realistically in the time and reduce the demand accordingly – means rapid population decline.
The third approach is a combination, and most likely, where the aggressive effort pushes up the cost of living and people leave voluntarily. I believe that is what is occurring in California. New York has already started the decline.
One advantage of getting in early is to burden nearby states with intermittency and grid instability. Essentially use the power grid in adjacent states as batteries. That has worked for South Australia, Germany and UK as well as California. It is easy to sell the idea of zero marginal cost electricity to neighbouring states. They will probably jointly fund the transmission line upgrades. New York could even fund the construction of wind and solar farms in adjacent states on the basis that they provide jobs.
The future is a wonderful thing, especially when you can predict it. Of course, you then rely on the unborn to agree with your assumptions, because they will eventually be born, grow up and decide how they wish to live their own lives.
Unfortunately, no one asked them before hand what they will decide to do with their lives after all that planning we did for them before they existed.
What is ‘renewable’ jet fuel? In my experience, if the petrol tank is empty, the car stops. It does not re-start when the sun rises.
“Everything looks easy to people with no knowledge”.
anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about
Will the last person to leave NY please turn off the lights? Oh wait, the lights will already be off.
Easy to resolve. Just cut all incoming power to NY by a minimum of 50% to 75% . 50% allows those lovely climate idiot NY residents to cut their power usage in half. The remaining 1/3 is to help with the NY residents usage of power for unimportant stuff like growing food, making clothes, providing the latest electronics etc. Also so that they can practice getting fit, halve the number of taxis and cut the subway by half as well.
Should work a treat and then they can tell the rest of us how to live our lives without their hypocrisy showing. Pity about the winter cold but heck, someone has to DO
SOMETHING !!!!!!!!!!!!
A second thought. Perhaps it is time to move Wall Street to someplace with a functioning brain.
Rules out London at present.
Besides the Blond, we have a midget Mayor ‘of London’ [Not my Mayor] who is also committed to the Green nonsense.
Auto
“empower every New Yorker to fight climate change at home, at work, and in their communities.”
The problem is, no one will know if they’re succeeded.
Let’s say they manage to reduce CO2 worldwide to less than 300ppm. Extreme weather will still be extreme, glaciers will always be either receding or advancing (those are the only two choices), sea level will always be rising or falling (again, no other choices). Villages near glaciers will be destroyed if they advance, those depending on shore fishing will starve if the ocean recedes, etc., ad infinitum.
Someone will be impacted no matter which way things go. It’s known as “life”.
In other words, “fighting climate change” and winning is impossible.
Now come on, let us be fair here.
It takes a lot of word skill to write 330 pages of nothing, then present it as a detailed explanation of how to do that nothing with additional appendix for good measure.
Germany will close three nuclear power plants today and the last three nuclear plants will close by the end of 2022.
Any developed intelligent political authority that can do that, at the start of winter this far North, tells us there is no limit to what these climate alarm zealots will do.
Soylent Green may not be as unlikely as we once thought….
Well, they will have to do something with all the dead bodies.
“Germany will close three nuclear power plants today and the last three nuclear plants will close by the end of 2022.
Any developed intelligent political authority that can do that, at the start of winter this far North, tells us there is no limit to what these climate alarm zealots will do.”
It’s hard to imagine that any rational person thinks it is a good idea to shut down perfectly good nuclear reactors, in an environment where “renewables” are failing and winter is coming on strong.
There’s no room for letting these nuclear plants continue to run until at least next spring? It can’t get much more stupid than this.
In short, it’s pure bolleaux
It can only be nuclear. At some point the false promise of unreliables will strike home. But how long, oh Lord, how long?
“But how long, oh Lord, how long?”
It’s going to be too long for some unfortunate people. They will be the crash-test dummies for the rest of us.
“85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”
Heck, Massachusett’s more sophisticated politicians passed a net zero bill whereby the state will be 100% free of any “carbon pollution”. In fact, no CO2 molecules will be allowed to cross the state lines into MA. It’s forbidden.
Look at all the crap the Climategate Charlatans have stirred up.
All of this based on a Big Lie. The Lie that the Earth is currently experiencing unprecedented warming caused by CO2, when the only unprecedented warming that exists is in the computers of the Climategate Charlatans, not in the Real World.
Now, politicians are doing all sorts of stupid things based on believing, or are cynically taking advantage of, this CO2 climate change delusion.
Texas has hit the Windmill Wall, and Germany and the UK may be close to doing the same. Maybe these trainwrecks will be sufficient for others to change their course and reject windmills and solar as the basis for a power grid.
‘Airplanes will run on “green hydrogen.” Has there been as of today any demonstration of the feasibility of such a thing, let alone any company working to develop a commercial version?’
This reminded me of the fact that the Saturn V rocket (the one that propelled the Apollo missions into space, although I suspect most people reading this blog would know that) was fuelled by liquid oxygen/kerosine for the first stage and liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen for the second and third stages, but I had never considered why, so I looked it up. It turns out that liquid hydrogen has the greater energy density by mass but kerosine (essentially what modern jet aircraft use) has the greater energy density by volume. The first stage has to propel the vehicle through the relatively dense trophosphere where aerodynamic drag is much more significant, liquid hydrogen would have occupied three times the volume and therefore contributed significantly to drag. The second and third stages (which had shed the weight of the first stage) did not have this issue and so could exploit the higher energy density by mass of liquid hydrogen. This is why aircraft – atmospheric vehicles – use kerosine not liquid hydrogen. In addition of course liquid hydrogen does not exist at normal terrestrial pressures and must be stored in pressure vessels which adds extra weight penalty as well as hazard.
Thanks for wading through the usual dross to pick out the key fantasmagoracles and the money quote-
a substantial portion of personal transportation in urbanized areas would be required to shift to public transportation and other low-carbon modes. New York can achieve these goals through ZEV sales requirements and accompanying incentives and investments to help achieve these mandates, historic investments in expanded public transportation and micro-mobility, enhanced bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure,
We get the picture. The chosen ones drive the Teslas with plenty of refuel stations while the deplorables take a hike-
New York City to invest $420M in electric vehicles and infrastructure; all-electric fleet by 2035 – Green Car Congress
I’m giving you a +1 for “fantasmagoracles”.
So called “carbon neutral” is very easy to achieve. Everything became “carbon neutral” after carbon taxes were paid.
The average yearly human contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere from 1960 through 2020 was less than one-tenth of one PPM. If the US is credited with contributing half of that amount, then the US annual contribution of CO2 was one-twentieth of one PPM per year. Thats so close to net zero it would appear no further efforts at reduction are needed.
The arrogance of world politicians who think THEY can CONTROL how much sun, wind or any other “energy” you care to mention obviously think they are GODS who can control our weather !!! The sooner these MORONS come down off their clouds and join us mortals in the REAL WORLD the better. WE NEED RELIABLE, CHEAP ENERGY and they are promising UNRELIABLE, HUGELY EXPENSIVE help but NOT ENERGY !!!!!