New York’s Climate Action Council met Wednesday to lay the groundwork for a scoping plan to help the state achieve its nation-leading clean energy goals despite the massive disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Early on, even as we were in the midst of the economic shutdown that we knew was going to be a challenge for our industry, the state was ready to lead on clean energy,” said CAC Co-chair Alicia Barton, serving her last week as New York State Energy Research and Development Authority chair before returning to private industry in Massachusetts.

Barton noted that the last time the CAC met on March 3, its 22 members talked “about the opportunities New York has to lead the nation and lead the world with the promise of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act [CLCPA], with the ambition of that law.”

“Since that time, the pandemic crisis has overtaken and changed so many things, but we still have the opportunity to lead,” Barton said. “We’re in the process of revising the models for an economic recovery that puts clean energy back in the center.”

The CAC’s work is part of a broad effort by regulators, state agencies and NYISO to transition the state’s power sector and entire economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy, with NYSERDA and the Public Service Commission on June 18 having released a white paper on the state’s Clean Energy Standard and how to achieve it.

The CLCPA mandates, among other targets, that 70% of the state’s electricity come from renewable resources by 2030 and that generation be 100% carbon-free by 2040. (See Cuomo Sets New York’s Green Goals for 2020.)

Specific Pathways

The CLCPA also requires the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to undertake a rulemaking to establish statewide emission limits for 2030 and 2050, and to work with NYSERDA to establish a value of carbon as an evaluation tool for agency decision-making, said DEC Commissioner and CAC Co-chair Basil Seggos, who heads the council’s advisory panel.

“We’re basically setting up the goalposts for the council’s planning,” Seggos said. “We anticipate holding a stakeholder conference in July, and to roll out a public comment position in August.”

Tory Clark, a director at Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), presented a report commissioned by the state on pathways to deep decarbonization, envisioning four main pillars that all require immediate action:

• Energy efficiency, conservation and end-use electrification.
• Switching to low-carbon fuels.
• Decarbonizing the electricity supply.
• Negative emissions measures and carbon-capture technologies.

“The most impactful [emission-reduction] measures that we’ve included are methane mitigation and climate-friendly refrigerants,” Clark said. “I’ll note that this is an area in particular where we think there is more room to refine our analysis, both in the detail that we have that reflected the existing emissions, and the measures and policies that can help bend that curve down.”

Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, noted that the study said the grid will need firm, dispatchable capacity such as bioenergy or hydropower and “wondered whether you assumed that dispatchable capacity, and if so, how much. And if you had that, you’d need less renewables.”

Upstate and downstate, the study projects 9.5 GW of storage installed by 2050, nearly 25 GW of offshore and onshore wind, and nearly 46 GW of solar.

“The firm, dispatchable capacity is the broad, umbrella term, and probably a mix of technologies will step in and serve that role,” Clark said.

“We now model batteries able to store energy for four, maybe eight, hours, but longer-duration storage has not been demonstrated at scale,” Clark said. “But there are many companies working on it, so I would put that in the innovation bucket, where hopefully there’s continued innovation and that would be able to step in and be part of the solution.” The study models today’s technology, but the mix could include using existing generators to combust bioenergy or hydrogen, hydroelectric power, nuclear, carbon capture and storage — all proven technologies that are included in the analysis, she said.

“Since we’re really just talking about these small winter periods [peaks] throughout the year, we have bioenergy capacity [nearly 17 GW in 2050] … just sitting around, but they only run a very small share of the year, just to serve that need,” Clark said. “So, it’s a niche role that in addition to the big players, the wind and solar that are generating throughout the year and providing the majority of the electricity generation for New York, we have this small role for firm dispatchable capacity.”

EVs, Biofuels and Data

Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York, asked whether the study saw electric vehicles playing a role in utility-scale storage.

The study concluded “that EVs have a pretty huge potential to shift load when they charge for up to 12 hours over the course of the day, based on driving patterns and grid technology, so that does play a similar role to some of our battery storage,” Clark said.

“I was really pleased to see the inclusion of and discussion around RNG [renewable natural gas] and things like hydrogen blending,” said Donna DeCarolis, president of National Fuel Gas Distribution. “How do we see that being studied as the work of this council progresses?”

“The issue of science matters,” said Gavin Donohue, CEO of the Independent Power Producers of New York. “This study is a true, objective study and one that is needed to achieve these herculean goals. Having a kitchen-sink approach to the new technologies is very important. What comes out of the stack is what’s important, not what goes into the stack, from an environmental compliance standpoint.”

On mitigating the growth of emissions, Department of Transportation Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez highlighted that “New York uses the least energy per capita for transportation purposes than any other state in the nation,” mainly because of the subway system in New York City and the annual $6 billion investment in mass transit statewide.

“The department has also committed more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements over the last several years to reduce single-vehicle occupancy use and to increase the movement of goods by means other than truck, including strategic investments in seaports and freight rail,” Dominguez said.

PSC Chair John B. Rhodes noted the initiatives to unlock transmission “that are called for by the Accelerated Renewables Growth and Community Benefit Act” enacted in April.

“We’re making progress where it needs to be made and are counting on the council and the [advisory] panel to shape the overall direction,” he said.