The New York State Climate Action Council on Thursday approved creation of an advisory panel on waste emissions to be established by Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) staff.

The panel joins six others set up in August, along with a Just Transition Working Group to ensure social equity in the council’s proceedings.

“We’re going to evaluate emissions and mitigation strategies for a wide range of these waste generating sectors, including the traditional municipal and commercial solid waste generation infrastructure; facilities like transfer stations, landfills and waste-to-energy; and municipal combustors and co-gen facilities,” DEC Deputy Commissioner Martin Brand said. (See NY Seeks Comment on Proposed Emissions Limits.)

The DEC also plans to look at all the handling, transportation and disposal aspects for that infrastructure, including some of the large-scale construction and demolition debris and materials processing activities around the state, Brand said.

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) directs the DEC to measure greenhouse gas emissions on a common scale using the carbon dioxide equivalence metric (CO2e) and the 20-year global warming potential (GWP20) of each gas, as derived from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In addition, the CLCPA mandates that 70% of electricity consumed in the state should come from renewable resources by 2030 and that electricity generation should be 100% carbon-free by 2040.

“The waste stream overall for the greenhouse gas emissions for the state is smaller than fossil fuel use, but it’s not trivial — about 20% of statewide emissions are coming from this industry and these sources,” said CAC member Robert Howarth, Cornell University professor of ecology and environmental biology.

If looked at in detail, 95% of the total emissions from waste in New York is methane, not carbon dioxide, said Howarth, who recently published a study that shows methane emissions have grown as carbon dioxide emissions have declined, leaving New York’s total GHG emissions in 2015 virtually unchanged from 1990. (See NY Study Highlights Rising Methane Emissions.)

“When we think about the panel, I suggest that the membership be focused not on who the economic players are in the waste industry, but rather on where the GHG emissions are actually coming from,” Howarth said. “Our goal, of course, is to reduce those, so I would suggest a big focus on landfills, certainly on water treatment plants.”

Gavin Donohue, CEO of the Independent Power Producers of New York (IPPNY), said it is “really appropriate” how DEC has decided to reach out to local government authorities and waste management experts to help inform the panel’s deliberations.

Flexible Generation

Of all the topics being covered by the panel on power generation, resource mix is especially important, said Public Service Commission Chair John Rhodes, who leads the advisory panel.

“Which resources need to come up, which resources need to come down, and how do we get resources into the mix that can provide flexibility, which is going to be a big theme of our panel,” Rhodes said.

There also are a series of topics surrounding equity in terms of access to clean energy solutions, access to new jobs in the burgeoning industry and affordability for the many low-income New Yorkers who face a heavy energy burden, he said.

The panel intends to finalize its work plan in October before briefing the CAC on priority policies and strategies in December, ahead of making final recommendations in March, Rhodes said, noting it would evaluate the costs and benefits of recommended strategies, informed by the value of carbon established in accordance with the CLCPA.

“In New York we’ve seen a number of studies that look at decarbonization, that try to inform the discussion and create greater awareness of the issues, such as how to manage electrification, how to create flexibility and, importantly, how to avoid overbuilt scenarios of extreme new peaks, which are the bane of every system,” Rhodes said.

“I was glad to see carbon pricing on the agenda, but you didn’t list interaction with other panels,” Howarth said. “I’d like to see carbon pricing done in a context of all fossil fuel use, including transportation and housing and all, and not simply in the electricity sector.”

“That was a deliberate punt,” Rhodes said. “You’re right, carbon pricing certainly should be discussed economywide. It’s a little above my pay grade to think about who should take that on, which I could see being a Climate Action Council-level issue.”

Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY), brought up biofuels and renewable natural gas and asked Rhodes if the panel considered defining the term “emission-free.”

“There’s a requirement for 70% renewables by 2030 and 100% emissions-free by 2040, and the statute’s pretty clear on what counts as renewable but a little more vague on what counts as emission-free after that,” Reynolds said.

The topic did not come up on the panel but should be dealt with, Rhodes said.

CAC member Paul Shepson, dean of Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), asked what panel or panels would consider methane emissions, particularly if in big cities they prove to be coming from natural gas infrastructure.

“Many of the panels are going to be dealing with the issue of methane emissions,” said CAC Co-chair and DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. “We may want to charge every panel with considering that, and then find a way to bring all the panels together in a joint session to cross-fertilize recommendations, rather than creating a new panel.”

Administrative Law Judge Molly T. McBride will conduct two public comment hearing webinars for the proposed emissions rule on Oct. 20, and the DEC will accept public comments until Oct. 27.

Grid in Transition

NYISO CEO Rich Dewey presented on the grid operator’s Grid in Transition initiative, which is taking place in conjunction with a state-mandated grid study underway by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and Department of Public Service to identify distribution upgrades, local transmission upgrades and bulk transmission investments needed to meet the state’s clean energy goals (Case No. 20-E-0197).

“Upstate New York is pretty carbon-free already, in terms of the supply, and downstate there’s a high intensity of carbon producing power plants,” Dewey said. The challenge will be to move that power into New York City to displace the generation that’s coming from those resources, and that will be instrumental to how we achieve those goals.”

Tammy Mitchell, chief of bulk electric systems for the DPS, presented an overview of the grid in New York and how her office and the PSC regulate utilities, renewable energy programs and electric rates.

“Notably, the commission-approved energy affordability program provides $237 million in bill assistance to about 937,000 low-income utility customers to offset electric utility costs,” Mitchell said.

Donohue said that “renewables and what we have today, wind, solar and storage, are not going to get us to where we need to go all alone. We need new technologies … what do we need to do marketwise to attract those new technologies?”

The goal that electricity be 100% carbon-free by 2040 is the real challenge, especially getting rid of that last small percentage of nonrenewable resources, Dewey said.

“We feel pretty comfortable that 70% by 2030 can be achieved by wind, solar and storage — you just have to make the right kind of investment, and they have to be located in the right spot,” Dewey said. “But we do not believe we can get to 100% carbon-free electricity without some sort of development of these newer technologies that can be dispatchable, that can be available and still be carbon free.”

The ISO is a big proponent of markets as the way to achieve the state’s environmental goals, he said.

“You take that risk off the ratepayers and you put it on the investors,” Dewey said. “Our approach is carbon pricing, but it’s not just carbon pricing. … The types of resources we need are a little bit different when you start thinking about backstopping the intermittency of the renewables, so you’re going to need units that can respond quickly, ramp quickly.”