My Testimony on New York’s “Scale Plan” To Achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions – Will It Increase?
Today, I went to Brooklyn to testify at a public hearing about New York’s plan to achieve “zero” electricity by 2030 or so and a “zero” economy by 2050. Actually, it wasn’t much of a ride – the hearing took place in an auditorium in Brooklyn Heights, near the first subway stop across the East River.
The hearing was hosted by the New York Climate Action Council. The agency was created under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act) and has a mission to figure out how to achieve the net goals that are not required by law. The first statutory goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, which in effect means that fossil fuels must be eliminated almost entirely from the power sector by that time. The Council has issued Draft scoping plan how to achieve the goals by December 30, 2021. The Draft Scope Plan is approximately 300 pages of text plus 500 pages of appendices; but the gist is, we’ll be ordering the private sector to phase out emissions on different dates, and then it’s up to the young people to figure out the details. Today’s hearing allows members of the public to comment on the Draft Scoping Plan, which is expected to allow any appropriate adjustments to be made before the Plan becomes final at the end of the day. this year.
The Climate Action Council has about 21 members. A complete list can be found here. Seven of the 21 people attended the hearing today. I will provide you with a list of these people and their titles, to show the extent to which the Council is dominated by environmentalists and political activists with no background or interest in how a huge grid can actually be converted to “net zero” as a matter of engineering. Members present included: Doreen Harris, President and CEO of the New York Energy Research and Development Authority; Basil Seggos, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Roberta Reardon, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor; Robert Rodriguez, Acting Secretary of State of New York; RuthAnne Visnauskas, Commissioner and CEO, New York State Home and Community Improvement; Peter Iwanowicz, Executive Director, Environmental Advocates NY; and Raya Salter, Chief Policy Officer, NY Renews. Of these, perhaps NYSERDA’s Miss Harris knows something about how the grid works. Then again, maybe she’s not.
Each speaker has two minutes to address the members of the Council. The hearing is scheduled for 4 hours, from 4 – 8 pm. More than 200 people have signed up, so it’s clear that many don’t get a chance to speak. It was my turn around two o’clock, just before 6 p.m., by which time about 50-60 people were speaking before me. After speaking, I hung around for another 20 minutes before leaving. So I heard a total of about 60 people comment.
My summary of about 60 previous comments should give you an idea of what we’re up against. Of the 60 people, exactly 4 people did not fully participate in the collapse program to replace all fossil fuels in New York with some combination of “renewable energy”, energy storage and/ or the yet-to-be-invented magic “DEFR” (Distributable Emissions Free Resource) is often mentioned in the Scenario Plan. Four people were not fully present on the plane including two nuclear power supporters (note that New York just closed its last nuclear plant downstairs last year, well before the end of its useful life – so the kernel is obviously going nowhere), plus a representative among two major utilities, Con Edison and the National Grid. In the case of utilities, announcements, of course we are on board, but we will have to work together, and maybe you may need to go a little slower and maybe allow a some so-called “green” hydrogen in the mix, or something.
Then there were more than 50 other speakers. Some were politicians or their representatives (Public campaigner Jumaane Williams was present in person; Editor Brad Lander submitted subtitles in person; many City Council members were in person and and many others submitted subtitles; the Mayor’s office submitted some, mainly from the “Mayor’s climate” office. Then there were many representatives of environmental activist organizations, including many representatives from each of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, along with more than a dozen others from various local groups, many pastors and others representing religious groups, the majority are Jewish (not surprising in Brooklyn) and there are a large number of private citizens who speak for themselves, although this is a clear minority.
The most important message is an emotional plea to the Climate Council, please save us from these evil fossil fuels before it is too late for ourselves and our children and our planet. we. Some used the opening line, “I’m here today because I’m scared.” Many presenters were choked with tears. Easily 20 speakers mentioned hurricanes Sandy (2012) and Ida (2021), as if reducing natural gas use could somehow end the risk of severe storms. An overlapping group of at least 20 people spoke of the increasing incidence of childhood asthma, as if atmospheric CO had something to do with it. Another overlapping group of at least 20 people assert that climate change is uniquely harmful to what they call the “community of justice” (when did that term prevail?); and therefore “justice requires” the phasing out of fossil fuels. One woman in particular focused on the growing teen suicide rate, which she insists is entirely due to climate change caused by fossil fuels.
And no event like this would be possible without a large number of scoffers looking to capitalize on the opportunity to make a quick buck. At least four presenters call themselves “consultants” who will advise owners on how to upgrade their buildings to comply with the new regulations. Needless to say, all of these people argued for specific rules in favor of what they were selling, and also demanded state funding to help building owners pay for the sale. there. Meanwhile, the self-appointed representatives of the “justice community” are not surprised when they apply for subsidies and taxpayer funding in a variety of ways, often with little relationship. easiest with carbon emissions or climate change.
So that basically leaves me and the two nuclear staffers as the only ones out of about 60 advocates for whatever comes close to sobriety. The following is an approximation of my presentation (I had to leave a few lines here and there while speaking to meet the two-minute truncation):
My name is Francis Menton. I live in Manhattan. I am testifying as a private citizen.
I felt like I was in the crowd that had come to observe the great procession where the Emperor announced his new clothes. The emperor wears no clothes. He’s completely naked. Am I the only one who can see this?
100% carbon-free energy or electricity for New York, at least unless it relies heavily on nuclear, is no different from the Emperor’s new clothes. It is an absurd and dangerous fantasy. It won’t and can’t happen. It will soon go into the wall beyond physical reality.
I will briefly address three aspects:
- Energy storage
- Hydrogen
- Global context
Energy storage.
Let’s say we are replacing fossil fuel generation (mostly natural gas) with wind and solar. The sun does not work at night, and there is very little in winter. The wind doesn’t work when it’s calm. Doesn’t work on a quiet night.
How do you backup this when we run out of coal or natural gas? The treatment of this object in the Scoping Plan is spectacular. What is the calculation of how much storage space you will need to use in a year? The scoping plan doesn’t even do that calculation in exact units, which are gigawatt hours.
You would need at least 10,000 GWH of storage to back up your current usage if you were to replace fossil fuel generation with wind and solar. At the price of a Tesla battery, you would have about $1.5 trillion, which is equivalent to the entire GDP of New York State. If you tripled your electricity consumption by electrifying vehicles and homes, you would have to triple the amount of stored electricity, and it would cost at least 3 times GDP. And by the way, you need a battery that can store electricity from summer to winter without draining it all and then discharge it over the course of many months. No existing battery can do that.
This cannot be done. How can you commit us to this without any feasibility studies, detailed calculations, let alone a demonstration project showing it can be done? presently?
Hydrogen.
Hydrogen is not the answer to this. To make hydrogen from water is very expensive. And then you quickly lose about 3/4 of the energy that you expended, because 1/4 is all you get back when you burn hydrogen. And then, H2 is inferior in every way to natural gas:
- H2 has only one-fourth the energy density by volume of natural gas. Do you plan to quadruple all pipeline capacity?
- H2 is a much more explosive dangerous substance than natural gas.
- H2 is a very small molecule that is difficult to leak. And very corrosive to metal pipes. Do all homeowners have to replace their internal pipes?
- How much more valuable is H2 than natural gas? 5 times? 10 times? Where is the cost of detailed research? Where is the demonstration project?
No one has yet produced hydrogen on a large scale and there are very good reasons for that.
Global context
New York’s average electricity usage is around 20 GW. You are talking about building a new “huge” 9 GW offshore wind turbine in an effort to remove carbon.
Meanwhile, do you know what China is doing? This year alone, they are building 47 GW of new coal plants. Those are going to be producing all the time, compared to just a third of the time spent on our wind turbines, so China is just building coal plants this year, 15 times the wind turbine development plan. our scale.
And then they have over 100 GW of other coal plants operating in just a few years.
And then there’s India. They have the same population as China (1.4 billion people, 70 times our population). India is lagging behind China in electrification. They clearly said they would do it with coal. That will be more than 1000 GW of coal capacity by the time they are completed.
And then there’s Africa. They have about 1 billion people – and 2 billion are expected by 2100. And most of those people are completely without electricity. They will also do it with coal.
Who are we kidding here? To the extent that New York is able to reduce emissions somewhat, it will be completely insignificant in the global context.
The whole project for New York is completely unworkable, extremely expensive, and completely pointless in a global context. People, this emperor has no clothes.
Thank you.
I’m not fooling myself into thinking this will have an immediate impact. I will say that out of all the other speakers, not a single person mentioned or tried to refute any of my views.
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