On December 30, 2021 New York State released for public comment its Draft Scoping Plan that defines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda”. Given the intrusive changes to lifestyles, risks to a reliable electric system, substantial cost increases, serious environmental impacts of the necessary wind, solar and storage technologies, and the lack of any direct global warming benefits it is imperative all New Yorkers get involved with the comment process. For everyone else it is worth taking a look to see what the “plan” is when your version of “net-zero” is proposed. Spoiler alert for anyone from Europe – no they did not learn anything from the current energy crisis unfolding there.
Background
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) was passed in 2019 and became effective on 1/1/2020. Climate Action Council has been working since then to develop plans to implement the Act. Starting in the fall of 2020 seven advisory panels developed recommended policies to meet the targets that were presented to the Climate Action Council in the spring of 2021. Over the summer of 2021 the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultant Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) prepared an Integration Analysis to “estimate the economy-wide benefits, costs, and GHG emissions reductions associated with pathways that achieve the Climate Act GHG emission limits and carbon neutrality goal”. The Integration Analysis implementation strategies were incorporated into the Scoping Plan over the past couple of months and at the December 20, 2021 Climate Action Council meeting they voted to release the Scoping Plan for public comment. The comment period will be at least 120 days long but there were suggestions that it should be extended. When finalized the Plan will be used to revise the New York Energy Plan and rulemaking to implement its provisions will begin.
New York Plan
In brief the plan to achieve net-zero by 2050 requires New Yorkers to electrify everything and rely on wind and solar to produce that electricity. Risky emission reduction strategies from all sectors will be required and personal choices limited. All residences will have to be completely electrified and be “grid-interactive” despite the risks to safety in the event of an ice storm. In the transportation sector electric vehicles will be required with vehicle miles traveled limits and zoning changes to discourage the use of personal vehicles.
The New York electric gird is a complex system that has evolved over many years. It is a highly reliable system using proven hardware and procedures. Reliance on unprecedented levels of wind and solar has not been proven on the scale necessary. The energy storage system technology to account for intermittent wind and solar has not been tested for the proposed use. The critical reliability resource for winter-time wind lulls does not exist. These make it an ill-conceived plan that will likely end in a reliability crisis.
The greenhouse gas emission target in the Climate Act were not determined or based on cost feasibility. The net direct societal costs range between $310 and $290 billion but no estimates of the costs to consumers have been announced. The Scoping Plan claims that societal benefits outweigh the costs; however, societal benefits do not lower the direct costs to consumers.
When the Climate Act eliminates New York’s greenhouse gas emissions the effect on global warming will not be measurable. The expected impact on global warming of eliminating New York emissions is only 0.01°C by the year 2100. More importantly, New York’s emissions will be negated in a matter of months by countries in the developing world building their energy systems with reliable and affordable fossil fuels. To deny those countries the benefits of plentiful electricity using those fuels is immoral.
The Climate Act only accounts for fossil fuel life-cycle costs and environmental impacts while ignoring the life-cycle impacts of wind, solar, and energy storage technologies. Those “zero-emissions” resources may not have emissions when generating electricity but the volume of materials needed to access dilute wind and solar energy and the rare earth elements necessary for those technologies certainly have environmental impacts when mined and processed. The large number of wind turbines and solar panels will also create massive amounts of waste when they are retired. Furthermore, the cumulative environmental impacts of thousands of wind turbines and square miles of solar panels has not been compared to the environmental impacts of current fossil fuel technology. Solar energy is being developed now without any limits on the loss of prime farmland. Finally, it is unreasonable to expect that there will be any changes to environmental impacts due to climate change because the New York effect on global warming is too small to measure.
Response
Most New Yorkers are unaware that the Climate Act exists. Given the constant biased coverage of imminent and catastrophic climate change impacts many may agree that something needs to be done. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that we don’t have the technology today to meet the ambitions and schedule of the Climate Act and maintain current reliability standards and affordability. Given the issues outlined above I think New Yorkers will agree with me that the State should reconsider the targets and schedule of the law.
According to the press release:
“The release of the Draft Scoping Plan, available at the New York State Climate Act website (leaves DEC website), kicks off a 120-day public comment period beginning Jan. 1, 2022. New Yorkers are encouraged to submit comments via the online public comment form, via email at scopingplan@nyserda.ny.gov, and via U.S. mail to Attention: Draft Scoping Plan Comments, NYSERDA, 17 Columbia Circle, Albany, NY 12203-6399. The public comment period will also include at least six public hearings across the State. Details and information about how to participate in the public hearings will be announced in early 2022.”
In order to raise awareness please alert any New Yorkers you know that the public comment process has started. The other side of the story is available at my Citizens Guide to the Climate Act. For example, an annotated version of the summary New York Plan material above is included that provides backup for that material.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
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.
So they can cut you off when unreliables reliably fail, perhaps?
And any remaining personal vehicles can be tracked and monitored.
Welcome to your new Socialist Utopia. You will own nothing, have electricity when we decide you are worthy, be monitored and tracked, and you will be happy!
Zig Zag: “[…] and you will be happy!”
–
…or else.
–
–
Your choice… the ‘happiness bit… but all too late.
Yeah for most of us that is a line in the sand at which point we put these greentards up against the wall.
Something I already posted, but: Make EVERYONE use NON-PERSONAL vehicles on a first come first served basis, including billionaires, and politicians, all required to share the rides with whoever happens to be in the vehicle. Minimum vehicle occupancy, 6 people. Ride charge based on the individuals net worth or gross annual income, whichever is higher.at .1% per occurrence up to 10% of whichever is applicable each calendar year.
Let the dip$hits making these decisions mingle with the riff raff they command.
Federal funds for MASS TRANSIT to require this for any city with over X residents or with some population density to be determined to effect the most Democrat cities possible without effecting many Republican controlled cities.
As a kicker, anyone who can afford to live within walking distance to their work in properties over some to be determined multiple of the “median” home value within 100 miles of the city shall be triple taxed on the property, such taxes to pay for all the “public” transportation. No dodging the commuting charges.
You will be happy, after taking your mandated daily happy pill.
ht/ Brave New World
I wonder what has made this sort of political madness psychologically possible in what used to be an eminently sane country? Is it caused by the phenomenon of instant mass communication?
This is happening at the same time – but correlation is not necessarily the same as causation.
The answer is here, https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-lockdown-and-climate-policies-are-doomed-to-fail/
Thank you, Kevin McNeill, for this thought-provoking article. And, as it happens, an article first published right now. These are burning, present problems. Reality will force a solution upon us very soon.
Although social media manipulation helps, I’m sure that it is caused by the increased wealth created by fossil fuels. Now that people have enough wealth and means of production that many, many people can be employed in utterly useless occupations, they come up with utterly useless ideas for more utterly useless occupations. Unfortunately, some are utterly destructive too.
Basically, success contains the seeds of its own destruction. I cannot help but wonder if the Roman Empire looked similar towards its end.
hmmmm…. and a new religion was on the rise as the Roman Empire declined which some would argue enhanced the decline….. hmmmmm
Nothing but bullshit and virtue signaling proposed by people that don’t have a clue what it would take, how much it would cost, and the impact on the city and its’ people. When will these politicians get over this notion that you can demand or legislate total renewable energy generation?
To hell with NYC. Good luck trying to stay warm with electric heat in the winter in Upstate areas like the Adirondacks when it regularly gets 20 below. Electric bills will be pushing &1,000 per month if you don’t have a wood stove but NYC residents could give a crap about those poor hicks who won’t be able to afford to heat their houses. And NYSERDA is one of the most useless and parasitic bureaucracies ever created.
Another document that references the IPCC as a primary source of proof of climate change then lists weather events, primarily hurricanes and “Super Storms” (they must be worst than a hurricane, right?) that contradicts the IPCC on extreme weather events.
Scientific garbage.
Poke any Green New Yorker and Super Storm Sandy is just below the surface.
Sandy wasn’t even a superstorm when it hit New York, it was a tropical depression.
What put the super in this storm was a separate storm system, a nor’easter that was just as powerful as a tropical storm and both storms combined over New York.
Of course everyone conveniently overlooked that particular aspect of it … an event with little likelihood of repeating itself. If I remember correctly there was also an unusually high tide coinciding precisely with the storm surge … the perfect trifecta. However, the consensus at the time determined Sandy was within natural variation.
er… Ida? Another severe event hitting NY ??
Gosh … a “severe even”!
RUN AWAY …
What a buffoon.
Ida was a tropical storm by the time it hit New York.
The point is that calling Sandy a Superstorm is misleading.
Lots of storms hit the northeast, it’s right in their path much of the time.
and Ida
Like super typhoon Rai which recently hit the Philippines perhaps… or the 3 ‘1 in 1,000 year’ flood events we have seen in 2021 – or a long list of other recent climate related extreme weather events (Denver!)
3 in one thousand year events? Next year they will still be one thousand year events. 😛
Depends on the gender of arithmetics that you use…
… and as significant as the baseless hyper-griff’s comment, or griff’s hyper-comments, or whatever…
References, please! Do substantiate your claims!
griff, the most devastating typhoon to hit the Philippines was and is Typhoon Haiphong which killed 20,000 people in the islands and also devastated a large part of Vietnam eventually resulting in some 300,000 deaths. It hit the Philippines in late September 1881. Presumably you would call that a ‘really super duper typhoon’.
Griff needs a big dose of weather history.
ALL weather events, mild or extreme, are “climate related”, you buffoon. The death toll from extreme weather events has diminished by over 90% since the i9th century.
Have you never heard of natural variation? That’s what weather does … it’s variable.
How come after over 30 years of searching, even the IPCC can’t support these claims. Didn’t even come up with a convenient time period like they did to support their increase in heatwaves (conveniently eliminating the Dust Bowl era by only going back to 1950)
I like it when horrible Progressive experiments take place a long way away from where I live.
The intermittent energy is frightful. But here it’s so reliable. So, spread the Green blight, spread the Green blight, …
I don’t like it, but prefer it to it happening near me, yes. We must hope that the lesson is learned, however. In Texas they managed to hide it with obfuscation and lies (I’m looking at griff and his fellow CAGW cultists). This must not be allowed to happen again.
Beware the interconnector.
The small state of South Australia has managed to transfer its generator intermittency to the larger States via interconnectors. Other states are seduced by the apparent low cost of zero marginal cost electricity without working out how it is going to impact on dispatchable generators located in their states.
UK and Germany are doing the same thing in Europe. Other countries are sharing the hidden costs of grid instability resulting from intermittent power generation.
I live in a state that makes food and energy. Our local utility just bought a coal plant that was about to be decommissioned. Our neighboring “green” neighbors have been decommissioning their base-load capacity for years. We’ll be happy to sell them our surplus at top dollar.
^^^ this ^^^
So what if they have still air? And clouds?
Simpels! Surprise!
We have already had it in the UK last year and a fortnight ago.
We had the natural gas and nuclear plants working flat out and bought a lot of electricity from Europe.
Meanwhile the government decided not to store natural gas, stopped fracking, and exploring for oil and gas in the North Sea.
“bought a lot of electricity from Europe”
How long can that continue? Germany is currently shutting down half of it’s nuclear power, and decommissioning the other half next year. As more and more of the EU power surplus is shut down, and more and more demand for electricity there is mandated (EVs, electrical heaters, etc) there will be less and less available for the UK to purchase, even as the purchase price skyrockets.
Unfortunately, the bottom line is that we don’t have the technology today to meet the ambitions and schedule of the Climate Act and maintain current reliability standards and affordability.
Well Oz taxpayers are throwing their hat into the ARENA incentivizing and derisking some advanced inverter capabilities required for large scale battery grid firming-
Australia pours funding into advanced inverter capability batteries – FocusTechnica
so would that help? Or has NY got the incentivizing and derisking covered?
All batteries need inverter systems to convert dc to AC for use
Does zero to change the intermittency of wind and solar or the exponentially insane cost of storage
Here is the flowchart that New York used to design their new “bold clean energy” system:
What is so interesting is that many neighbors in affluent Westchester County have natural gas generation and con Edison has upgraded our gas supply from 4” to 12” under the road out back. Why would they do this if no one can use gas? Why did Cuomo shut down Indian Point and replace with 1.6GW gas generation? Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?
.
Well the left hand does the incentivizing and derisking and the right hand gets right on with the details. Little did the youthful observa know in his exuberance to understand the dismal science that whole new fields of flowers with griffternomics and gretanomics would open up to him in his dotage.
Correction, it’s the Daft Scoping Plan.
NY city is dead if this is implemented enjoy your serfdom
Sometimes going on vacation is an eye opener.
This makes me smile! Whet deluded fool came up with this uninformed range!
That amount might achieve something if it was all invested in nuclear power and New Yorkers got very efficient at installing nuclear plants.
Investing that amount in intermittent sources will achieve very little.
It will be a chilly start to January in the US and Canada.
North Dakota. Current temperature in degrees Celsius.
I’m in SW Sask right now, just north of there
-32 c and heading down
Duck Creek in southern Utah, 8600 ft elevation, UNDER 0 degrees f this morning at 8:00 mountain time US. My reading of a liquid thermometer with 2 degree increments was -1.
Clear, no clouds but is “snowing” powder from condensation off and on.
New York has experienced some notable power blackouts. The 1977 blackout was significant for the time it took to restart something that grew over decades but never completely stopped.
Adding intermittent generators to a power grid is risky business with regard system stability and outages. Relying solely on that power grid to stay alive is serious business.
Looking at the requirements New York must reduce GHG by40% from 1990 levels by 2030.
Current reductions is only about 6%, which is most likely attributable to gas replacing coal.
So green marxists have a few more years to go to still spin their sh*t that it’s achievable.
Strict building requirements come into action in 2024 with penalties for not complying.
The normal operating procedure will be Government officials go hard for about 12-18 months before builders crack the sh*ts. – so maybe this BS won’t fall apart before 2026.
With NY losing population, there might not be ANY new buildings required. Those who chose to build would have the money to meet all the insane requirements, so as to virtue signal their greenness.
A serious question has been plaguing me. After factoring in all related costs, has there been any net benefit from wind turbines … from solar panels? Does anyone know?
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year. May the Left begin losing ground.
Simple answer, without the need to calculate anything, is NO. The money wasted on electrical generation that required 100% backup with conventional generating capacity is a net reduction in the overall wealth of society.
That money COULD HAVE BEEN used for roads, or houses, or hospitals, or etc. that WOULD HAVE added to the overall WEALTH of the world.
Thank you, That was what I thought … but sometimes what seems obvious ‘ain’t necessarily so’. In other words, those in charge have been criminally wasteful.
How much power does NY state get from Niagara Falls?
Honest question. I don’t know.
But I vaguely recall that Canada controls the power generating turbines but NY gets a big chunk of it.
Nice hydro “backup”. (If I recall correctly.)
I wonder if NY’s CO2 emissions wane as snowbirds fly south for the winter?
Given the intrusive changes to lifestyles, risks to a reliable electric system, substantial cost increases, serious environmental impacts of the necessary wind, solar and storage technologies, and the lack of any direct global warming benefits
absolutely none of those things is based on fact.
“absolutely none of those things is based on fact”
You should add those words to the end of everything you post
griffter here’s how organizations like Alinta Energy come up with 20 squ metres of land cover per kW of solar power output in the Pilbara in the NW of Western Australia-
chichester solar farm pictures – Bing
They haven’t cleared quite enough of Gaia with the purported 120 hectares for 60MW maximum output in an optimal collection climate as you can see from some tree shading around that perimeter-
chichester solar farm pictures – Bing images
Perhaps that’s why they initially had Planning Approval for 160 hectares of scorched earth policy. This is your modern flower power generation at work on drugs like Fantasy apparently. Don’t you think it would be a good idea if before embarking on this sort of cultural revolution to get rid of coal and gas that they actually had grid scale batteries with ‘grid-forming inverters that can enable utility-scale batteries to provide system stability services traditionally provided by synchronous generation, such as coal or gas’?
Australia pours funding into advanced inverter capability batteries – FocusTechnica
Nup they’ll blow up the coal fired power stations first as well as ban fracking and drilling for gas and then incentivize and derisk anyone with some technical credentials to see if they can come up with the answers for the power we need. Personally I think this generation need to get off the Fantasy and back on the hooch as LSD wasn’t much good the last time either when we were all gunna grow our own food throw clay pots and weave our own prickly hessian bag clothes.
You’re wrong, as usual … in every way possible.
Next will be the “Refined Energy Plan” and then the “New Refined Energy Plan”.