It might come as little surprise that New Yorkers hold a wide variety of strong opinions about their state’s efforts to decarbonize its energy system and broader economy.
That was evident from a set of advisory panels recently convened by the New York State Climate Action Council (CAC) to gather feedback from the general public about the monumental effort to reduce carbon emissions.
The panels revealed that some residents believe New York officials should focus their greening efforts on employment, creating new clean energy jobs and training people in time for the expected construction boom in solar and wind projects.
Others think it was shortsighted to start shutting down the Indian Point nuclear plant before building the renewable energy capacity to replace it. Still, others say the state is taking too long to chart its transition to a clean-energy economy, while some stakeholders want energy costs kept down for all, including industrial users.
The various advisory panels and working groups will submit their initial recommendations to the CAC in April. The CAC is working toward fall delivery of a scoping plan for achieving New York’s ambitious energy and climate goals, even as the state inches toward economic recovery from the pandemic.
New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) requires the state to consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030, switch to 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 85% below 1990 levels by mid-century.
New Jobs Not All New
On Wednesday, the Just Transition Working Group took public comments after reviewing the state’s newly released Clean Energy Industry Report, presented by Philip Jordan, vice president at BW Research Partnership.
Jordan’s firm examined industry hiring challenges before the COVID-19 outbreak, noting that the construction industry “has really roared back to life” in New York.
“Which means we think that we’re in a position very soon to come to pre-pandemic levels of hiring difficulty, which is going to create some challenges in making sure we have enough workforce,” Jordan said.
“We are constantly defining and refining what clean energy is,” said Eliot Cresswell, a policy analyst with the Workforce Development Institute (WDI). “In the olden days these were brand-new jobs with brand-new skills and brand-new titles … but so much of this work can be carried out by people in occupations with skillsets that already exist.”
Amanda Kogut-Rosenau of Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) said that women made up 2% of the construction workforce when NEW started in 1978 but now occupy 7% of new hard-hat and “green collar” jobs. Tonya Gayle, executive director of Green City Force (GCF Corps), described how her group trains youth and workers from the inner city to either help them develop new career paths or enhance existing skills.
James Barry of 32BJ SEIU, a labor union representing 125,000 workers across 12 states and D.C., said SEIU started working with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) in 2004 to train “green building supers.”
Marjaneh Issapour, director of the Renewable Energy and Sustainability Center at Farmingdale State College, one of two schools helping run the state’s $20 million offshore wind training program, said she sees many opportunities for policy regarding OSW, whose thousands of jobs are not all new jobs with new skills.
“Pre-apprenticeship models are fantastic to bring people from disadvantaged communities on board, but a study needs to be undertaken to understand how many of the new OSW jobs can go to more experienced workers,” Issapour said.
Compliance Costs
Couch White attorney Michael Mager, who represents Multiple Intervenors, a coalition of about 60 large industrial, commercial and institutional energy customers, said the group’s comment focuses on maintaining existing jobs in New York, including manufacturing jobs.
“Our members support the goals of the CLCPA, and many members have taken and continue to take aggressive actions to reduce greenhouse gases through increased energy efficiency efforts, the purchase of renewable power and attributes, and modified operations that incorporate renewable technologies,” Mager said. “Although fully supportive of CLCPA goals, many members of Multiple Intervenors are concerned about the unknown impacts of CLCPA compliance on the overall cost and reliability of energy supplies in New York state.”
Because of that uncertainty, the coalition would like to ensure that the definition of what is considered an energy-intensive and trade-exposed industry entity should be focused on preventing economic or emissions leakage to the greatest extent possible in order to protect manufacturing jobs, Mager said.
New York Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon, co-chair of the Just Transition Working Group, said public engagement is “focused on understanding workforce training and development in a new clean energy economy. This is a topic of particular relevance to me and to the work of the New York State Department of Labor.”
Reardon’s co-chair, NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris, said the working group “will be reserving time at a future meeting to debrief and discuss the feedback we hear today.”
The CLCPA charges the Just Transition Working Group with a number of workforce-related tasks, including to advise the CAC on issues and opportunities for workforce development and training, with a specific focus on disadvantaged communities and underrepresented people such as veterans, women and formerly incarcerated persons, Harris said.
Cool Hand Nuke
The Power Generation Advisory Panel held its public engagement session on Wednesday and will hold additional public comment meetings Feb. 12 and 22.
New York City resident Miles McManus urged the panel to “move a lot faster” with its mission, citing an article in Carbon Brief on the “budget” for how much CO2 human activity can emit and still allow society to stabilize global warming at 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“With that budget, we’d have to cut emissions globally almost as much as COVID did, but every year, until we hit zero by 2040,” McManus said. “The situation is urgent, and thus, it is irresponsible to take a year to chart the path forward as the [CAC] is doing.”
Richard Berkley, head of the Public Utility Law Project, said he was speaking as a private citizen.
“This transition is probably the hardest pivot in New York’s economy in our entire history,” Berkley said. “The only thing that comes close is the Erie Canal … and the birth of New York City. We’re doing something that we’ve never tried before but is vitally important. There is no Plan B.”
Leonard Rodberg, professor emeritus of urban studies at Queens College, said he wondered why the panel did not discuss the closure of Indian Point, whose last unit is scheduled to go offline April 30. Entergy has agreed to sell the 2,311-MW plant to Holtec International, which will oversee its decommissioning. (See Entergy Celebrates Sale of Final EWC Nuke.)
“Closing just one unit of Indian Point last April has cost us annually more clean electricity than is generated by all the solar and wind power in the state today,” Rodberg said. “At your last meeting, NYSERDA presented plans for expanding solar and wind for the next four years; even if those plans are successful, they will have replaced barely one-half of Indian Point’s steady output with intermittent electricity.”
Retired librarian Paul van Linden Tol from Brooklyn said he believes nuclear power will be necessary to fight climate change and ocean acidification in New York, the U.S. and the world.
“The composition of this CAC panel seems to be mainly people with preferences for either renewable or the fossil industry; there’s no nuclear energy representatives,” van Linden Tol said.
Gas Troubles
Pramilla Malick, chair of Protect Orange County, said the 300,000 residents of her county “are frontline victims of a failure of public policy to protect the public’s interest and health by allowing the development of the [678-MW] CPV Valley fracked gas power plant, that was specifically built to replace carbon-free Indian Point.” (See New Builds to Cover Indian Point Closure, NYISO Finds.)
Malick said she found it reassuring the nuclear plant has been operating since 1962 without a major incident, though the agricultural area around the CPV Valley plant has 14 environmental justice communities.
“The only metric that should really matter to your commission is carbon … and methane,” Malick said. “We have documented large amounts of fugitive methane emissions, both at the infrastructure to serve the power plant and at the plant itself.”
Sarah Wilkinson of Brooklyn asked panel chair John B. Rhodes, chairman of the state Public Service Commission, “How can we let National Grid liquefy natural gas and truck it through my community?”
Rhodes said, “It’s an important topic, but that North Brooklyn project is up for a decision before my commission and there are rules that say I can’t comment on it, but I do understand your concerns.”
Irene Weiser from Fossil Free Tompkins [County] in Ithaca said she had concerns about behind-the-meter generation using natural gas, which “becomes a situation of doing an end-run around the CLCPA greenhouse gas emissions goals.”
When state officials permitted the 106-MW Greenidge power plant on Seneca Lake to switch from being a gas and wood-burning power plant to running a data center behind the meter, “this allowed them to skirt a lot of the CLCPA’s greenhouse gas rules … and is a loophole that needs to be closed,” Weiser said.