New York City Zero Emission Vehicle Fleet Legislation

Roger Caiazza

A recent post, New York City Goes Pedal to the Metal on Electric Vehicles, at Watts Up with That described new legislation that will require vehicles procured by the City to be zero emissions.  The author of the article, Charles Rotter, included a note at the top: “I can’t wait for Francis Menton or Roger Caiazza to weigh in on this.”  It is a rainy Saturday and I don’t have anything else to do so I will take a shot at it.

Benefits

I try to look at environmental policy pragmatically balancing benefits and costs.  The benefits used to rationalize the law are weak.  Rotter quoted the Statements made by two of the politicians responsible for the legislation that make benefits claims:

“New York City continues to set the standard for sustainability by becoming the largest city in the nation to require its fleet to be entirely made up of zero emission vehicles,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams. “The Council is proud to champion legislative efforts to address the environmental and health impacts of vehicle pollution, reduce our carbon footprint, and prepare our workforce for the repair and maintenance of electric vehicles. I thank Majority Leader Keith Powers for his leadership on this critical legislation, my Council colleagues for supporting policies that transition us to a more sustainable future, and Mayor Adams for signing the bill into law.”

“New York City continues to lead the country in creating a greener, more sustainable world,” said Majority Leader Keith Powers. “Today’s signing of Intro. 279 enacts a historic piece of legislation that will drive down our city’s carbon footprint and advance environmental justice. Starting in just two years, our city’s fleet of over 30,000 vehicles will lead the way towards a zero-emissions future. I am proud to have worked with numerous partners to have made today a reality.”

The majority of New York City and State politicians cater to the climate advocate constituency and these statements reflect that.  Adams ticks all the boxes in the narrative that reducing GHG emissions also reduces pollutants that will have environmental and health benefits, the existential threat of climate change will be reduced, and the transition will create jobs.  Even a cursory review shows how shallow those claims are.  The shift to “zero-emissions” ignores the reality that all energy production creates emissions somewhere.  In this case there may not be emissions in New York City, but the mining, processing, and manufacturing of the needed batteries necessary certainly creates emissions.  Jobs created by the “green” technologies are always mentioned but the jobs lost are rarely mentioned. 

Another characteristic of these politicians is innumeracy.  The city fleet has 30,000 vehicles.  I calculate that those vehicles are responsible for about 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.  Driving down the “city’s carbon footprint” needs to be considered in the context of global emissions.  The Global Energy Monitor mission is “to develop and share information in support of the worldwide movement for clean energy”.  As part of their mission, they have prepared a spreadsheet with data on all coal-fired power plants in the world.  Table 1 is based on that data.  It lists capacity and projected annual CO2 emissions for three categories of power plants: operating, permitted but not yet under construction, and under construction.  Every hour the operating coal-fired power plants emit 1,245,158 tons of CO2.  That means that the CO2 reductions due converting the New York City owned fleet of vehicles will be subsumed by coal fired emissions elsewhere on the globe in 0.3 hours or 19 minutes.  This law will not have any discernable effect on global warming.

Costs

My concerns with New York State and New York City (NYC) “zero-emission” transition costs are related to reliability and affordability.  Noodling around on the NYC fleet management site I found this description:

New York City operates over 30,000 owned and leased vehicles, the largest municipal fleet in the United States. NYC maintains fleet units at 37 main repair locations and has over 400 in-house fueling and 400 separate electric charging locations. More than 2,000 staff work full-time in fleet repair and garage operations across over 50 fleet operating agencies and offices. In total, nearly $1 billion is spent annually on fleet repair, fueling, and procurement.

I found a page that includes a table that describes the fleet daily service report which lists the number of vehicles for each agency and what they are used for to give an idea of the importance of reliability.  The NYC fleet includes the police department and fire department vehicles which must provide reliable service.  I suspect that relying on electric-only fire equipment will be very risky because of the high energy demands needed to operate those trucks.  The last thing in the world you want to have happen is for a pumper truck to lose power when fighting a fire.  The vehicle fleet includes sanitation trucks which are also used to plow snow.  However, there is an issue: “city officials have declared they have yet to find an electric garbage truck powerful enough to plow snow. The sanitation department already tested electric trucks, and they couldn’t plow snow for more than four hours, as they ran out of battery. “

Digging deeper into the fleet management site, there is a sustainability page that claims that “New York City’s fleet is the greenest in the nation”. They already have some electric vehicles:

The City of New York operates over 2,260 on-road electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids. Full EVs include over 250 Nissan Leafs and over 300 Chevy Bolts, among others. The City has over 600 additional off-road EV and solar units. Please see our presentation Let’s Talk about EVs to learn how to charge an EV and the differences between an EV and the conventional fuel vehicles you may be used to driving.

The sustainability page also notes:

DCAS is rapidly expanding its base of electric chargers to support its electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. We have installed over 1,600 charging ports across over 1,025 charging stations, including over 180 fast-charging stations, at City garages and parking locations around the city. We have deployed over 80 solar carports that allow EVs to be completely independent from the electrical grid and fossil fuel energy. We have partnered with City schools to provide both solar chargers and EVs to support education programs and adopted other solar powered city equipment.

It appears to me that the vehicle fleet service has been given the charge to look at a transition to lower emission vehicles and are proceeding on that path.

I have been following the transition to electric vehicles and have been struck by the higher cost of electric vehicles so I wondered about the costs of this law.  I checked the law itself and supporting documents to see if costs had been addressed.  The law is titled A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to the purchase of zero emission vehicles by the city.  The description states:

This bill would require that all light- and medium-duty vehicles procured by the City after July 1, 2025 be zero emission vehicles such that all light- and medium-duty vehicles in the City’s fleet are zero emission vehicles by July 1, 2035. This bill would also require that all heavy-duty vehicles procured by the City after July 1, 2028 be zero emission vehicles, such that all heavy-duty vehicles in the City’s fleet are zero emission vehicles by July 1, 2038. Further, this bill would require that all motorcycles in the City’s fleet are zero emission vehicles by July 1, 2035. The requirements to procure zero emission vehicles are subject to certain exceptions, such as cost, availability, and lack of charging infrastructure.

The last sentence is a welcome reality slap – the procurement requirements are conditional upon costs among other things.  I thought the Fiscal Impact Statement would provide information about costs relative to this condition.  The following excerpt from that statement is a head scratcher:

I guess the current fiscal impact statement is a placeholder.  Presumably sometime before Fiscal Year 2029 the expenditures and source of funds will be determined.  Then the cost exception requirements to procure zero emission vehicles will be considered.

Conclusion

The New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services fleet management department has a sustainability program in place that tests options for lower emissions and zero emissions vehicles.  Some of their tests are working and others are not.  The key point is that these are the folks responsible for keeping the vehicles necessary to protect the city and provide services and they are working on it.  Mind you I think trying to convert the NYC vehicle fleet to zero-emissions is a waste of time and effort that will likely do more harm than good.

Enter the politicians.  The legislation does include conditions upon deployment but it appears that the issue is already being addressed.  I would bet a lot of money that the fleet staff reacted to the bragging by the politicians who supported this legislation with exasperated sighs and eye-rolling.  As far as I can tell this legislation only provides street cred for politician target constituencies and does nothing but get in the way of the people who are trying to get things done. 

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.