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The claims in the op-ed “Rochester needs climate funding in 2025” sound good until you look behind the curtain. Close examination of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) cap and invest policy and NY HEAT Act reveals wishful thinking and magical solutions.
The cap and invest policy is a universal remedy. The authors claim that “If done right, it would include guardrails to ensure corporate polluters pay their fair share for polluting our climate and communities, require the steady phase out of toxic pollution and fossil fuels across our state, and generate ongoing investments in communities across the state.” In reality, carbon pricing schemes like NYCI are nothing more than a regressive tax that will not live up to the hype.
The claims for benefits are weak. The “guardrails” are an example of legislative naïveté messing around with energy and environmental policy. In this case guardrails remove the economic incentives inherent in market-based pollution control programs. The arbitrary phase-out schedule does not consider reduction feasibility or the fact that if reductions cannot be made that energy shortages will result. Phase out of toxic pollution is cited as a benefit and the claim that Rochester is ranked as the second worst “Asthma Capital” in the country is mentioned. The authors do not explain that ambient air quality is one of many asthma triggers, that ambient levels of all air pollutants in Rochester have gone down, and that Rochester is in compliance with all National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Over the last couple of decades, ambient air quality has improved markedly. The fact that asthma and other health impacts have not improved similarly suggests that other factors are driving those outcomes. There should be a commitment to determining the more likely causes rather than wasting money on reducing already low levels that are not causing the problem.
The biggest problem is cost. Cap and Invest proponents tout the fact that corporate polluters will pay without conceding that the costs will just be passed on to their customers. A DEC and NYSERDA analysis estimated revenue to be between $3 and $5.1 billion in 2025. That would have increased gasoline between $0.13 and $0.22 a gallon, natural gas between $0.12 and $0.19 per thousand cubic feet, home heating oil between $0.62 and $1.02, and propane between $1.10 and $1.81. This disguised tax includes built-in increases that will more than double the tax by 2030 for all fuels. The claims that these costs will provide cost savings, the rebates promised by Governor Hochul will reduce impacts, and the investments will be spent wisely all fly in the face of common sense. The modeling projections are equivalent to statistics in the adage lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Regarding NY HEAT, Climate Justice, and Heat Pumps reducing heating bills, in Upstate New York, this simply isn’t reality. NY HEAT is a crime against thermodynamics because the proposed use of air-source heat pumps are much less efficient when heat is needed most. Furthermore, the logistical implementation issues are insurmountable. Numerous analyses have shown that air source heat pumps in cold weather climates will double a seasonal heating bill when compared to gas heat with an efficient furnace. An analysis for an air-source heat pump in Albany for this winter shows costs were more than double if a heat pump were used. While the math for this is too elaborate for an Op-Ed, it can be found here.
Further, the NYISO has indicated that widespread building electrification will add over 50% to the state’s peak electric load by 2033, over twenty additional Gigawatts, while not having any plans on how to build that amount of generation so anyone that installs heat pumps will be at a high risk of not having the electricity needed to operate them. That raises the question, “How is promoting a plan like NY HEAT that will have the residents of Rochester freezing to death in their homes within seven years Climate Justice or good for the city and residents of Rochester?”
As readers will see if they click on the links enclosed with this op-ed, this is not a simple topic. We both have advanced degrees in our field, and each have spent over 45 years acquiring our knowledge base that has formed our measured observations of the negative consequences of these policies. Why is it that politicians and advocates who support the CLCPA with no background in utility system design and operations are making blanket statements about fictitious savings that defy physics, math, and economics? Why do they believe that they can make these unsupported statements without there being major negative consequences. Their hubris is beyond bounds.
Richard Ellenbogen, BE-EE MEng-EE
Roger Caiazza, B.S. and M.S,. in meteorology
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York
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Speaking for myself and not Richard Ellenbogen I will describe my recommendations for a future electric system.
First up, we must pause the schedule for the Climate Act and evaluate what would markedly reduce emissions, maintain current standards of reliability, and still be affordable.
The politicians who authored the Climate Act believed that no new technology would be needed to go to a zero-emissions electric system and that wind, solar, and energy storage would reduce costs and be reliable. The New York organizations responsible for the electric system all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system viable during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. One major problem is that there are no commercially available DEFR resources. I think the most promising DEFR backup technology is nuclear generation because it is the only candidate resource that is technologically ready, can be expanded as needed and does not suffer from limitations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Unfortunately, nuclear power is not ready yet for our needs. Ted Nordhaus describes the issues that the nuclear industry has to overcome before we can deploy it in New York effectively: “Rebooting the US nuclear sector for the 21st century is a hard problem in the face of an ossified industry, an overbearing and underprepared regulator, liberalized electricity markets that are ill-suited to investing in large public works projects, and competition from both cheap gas and a mature, subsidized renewables industry.”
There are other reasons for re-evaluation of the technology for our futured electric system. If the only viable DEFR solution is nuclear, then renewables cannot be implemented without it. But nuclear can replace renewables, eliminating the need for a massive DEFR backup resource. Nuclear is a great baseload electric resource but using nuclear to track load is inefficient and deploying enough nuclear to address peak seasonal loads is not cost-effective. The pragmatic solution is to deploy modern natural gas-fired combined cycle combustion turbines for peaking in the future and to support expected load growth while the nuclear issues are resolved. A modern gas turbine burning natural gas will meet all the ambient air quality standards, will meet limits on incremental air quality to prevent significant deterioration, and will have the lowest achievable emission rates. That is good enough.
Given that New York emissions are less than a half of a percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing by more than half a percent for years anything New York does to try avert global warming will be supplanted by global increases in less than a year. Trying to reduce emissions to zero will be ruinously expensive so this approach helps and does not destroy the economy.
This topic is very complicated, so I have only touched the surface of the issues. For more information, please check out my blog (https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog/) because I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act, and have written over 500 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. I will publish a post about this article and these comments with links in the near future.
I respect your knowledge of this field and recognize the inherent costs and difficulties you point out. What I dint see is any feasible alternative solution being elaborated on. While we can certainly debate the merits of the current initiatives we cannot debate that climate change is happening and if we don’t do something about it there will be serious repercussions – some of which we are already experiencing in the form of more violent weather and the overall warming of oceans and inland climate affecting crop production and fish populations.
Naysayers that are not outlining a feasible alternative garner less ability to convince otherS that doing SOMETHING rather than NOTHING is the correct long term path. No one expects climate change action to be cost free – but if we do nothing the costs are much more.