By Michael Kuser
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — New York state’s ambitious renewable procurement, New York City’s carbon reduction plan and the costs of offshore wind were among the topics Thursday at the 32nd Fall Conference of the Independent Power Producers of New York. Here’s some of the highlights:
New York Officials Excited by Response to Renewable RFP
New York officials are happy about the competitiveness of the responses to their June solicitation for up to 2.5 million MWh of large-scale renewable energy, which they say is the most ambitious in the country.
More than 4,000 MW of renewable energy capacity — the equivalent of more than 9.5 million MWh per year — qualified to submit proposals, said Alicia Barton, CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
That is six times the generation that was previously secured under the prior renewable portfolio standard and almost four times the amount that the state sought to procure, Barton said. “We hope that that level of competition will drive really terrific proposals and terrific prices,” she said.
A total of 88 facilities — including utility-scale solar, landfill gas, hydroelectric and wind projects — qualified for the request for proposals, which was issued by NYSERDA and the New York Power Authority.
“We were also very pleased to see that some project developers took us up on our invitation to propose projects that would also provide grid value and included storage in the proposals,” she said.
Bid proposals are due Sept. 28, and the state expects to make the selection awards in November.
NYSERDA Working with Commercial Fishermen, Feds on Offshore Wind Siting
IPPNY Board Chairman John Reese, senior vice president of Eastern Generation, moderated a panel that included Doreen Harris, director of large-scale renewables at NYSERDA. Harris manages the master plan for offshore wind that is due out by the end of the year.
The state hopes to get 2,400 MW of generation from offshore wind by 2030. Harris’ team has been working closely with residents of Long Island and other coastal areas, and particularly with commercial fishermen.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time actually on the fishing dock, understanding how they work,” Harris said. “We’ve also undertaken over 20 different studies and surveys, which are now underway. These are desktop analyses as well as ‘boats in the water,’ so to speak.”
Siting is an important element of the master plan, and that brings in the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is responsible for offshore wind leasing in federal waters.
BOEM, which has identified more than 100 GW of offshore wind potential off the Atlantic coast, has issued or is preparing to issue leases off New York and seven other states. The first offshore wind lease for New York, a nearly 80,000-acre site off the Rockaways in Queens, went to Norway-based Statoil for $42.5 million last December. (See New York Seeks to Lead US in Offshore Wind.)
“New York can make our recommendations to the federal government, but it is ultimately a federal process,” Barton said. “We are also looking at what this means for New York; specifically, what are the rules of the road to operate in New York if you’re a project developer? We intend to develop those guidelines using the information and the outreach we’ve conducted … which would set the stage for longer-term processes and considerations around transmission.”
NYC Seeks 80% GHG Cut by 2050
New York City has its own clean energy goals, including an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, starting from a 2005 baseline.
“In the more near term, we have a goal of 35% reduction in emissions from the building sector by 2025, and that’s truly important and aggressive,” said Anthony Fiore, deputy commissioner of energy management for the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services. “The city consumes about 30% of the electricity that’s generated in the state and is responsible for about 40% of GHG emissions in the state.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that he wants to require owners of buildings with more than 25,000 square feet of space to retrofit them for energy efficiency. The plan, which de Blasio announced in Brooklyn, could affect as many as 23,000 properties.
Electricity is responsible for about 30% of citywide emissions, and 50% of the energy consumed by the city is produced by generation within it.
“That fleet of generation, 70% of it is more than 45 years old,” he said. “That is less efficient on average than the rest of the state generation, so that presents some unique risks to the city as that generation fleet continues to age. We all know the difficulty in repowering, and the city has had a strong voice and advocated strongly with [FERC] on changing some of the repowering rules, buyer-side mitigation, to help make that easier. These things are difficult, so there’s a real risk there.”
Though some may debate the effect of GHG emissions on climate change, “what is not deniable is the air quality impacts and public health outcomes from emissions,” Fiore said. “This is really important for New York City. We have large corridors of above-average asthma rates that really affect the most vulnerable populations.”
Any improvement in airborne pollutants means fewer lost workdays, fewer lost schooldays, better educational opportunities for our children, better opportunities for career development and an overall better economy, he said. “Health care dollars are real, and avoided deaths and morbidity need to be calculated and factored into the choices we make.”
Offshore Wind Overhyped?
Michael Ferguson, director of U.S. energy infrastructure at Standard & Poor’s, said his company’s focus is on risk.
“Any time you’re going from an industry that is small right now, with only 30 MW of installed capacity [Block Island], to one in which there are very grand ambitions over time … there’s going to be risk involved,” Ferguson said.
The declining levelized cost of energy for offshore wind in Europe means “that stakeholders in the financial sector are willing to take a lower return on these,” Ferguson said. “That’s indicative of the fact that the market believes there’s less risk in these projects now than there was before.”
Talk of lower risk profiles might be fine for a banker, but for Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, “offshore wind has been hyped nearly as much as a Kardashian wedding.”
He cited some large projects that were announced but never built — such as the Atlantic Wind Connection by Google — and big plans by the Obama administration that never materialized, such as 10 GW by 2020 and 54 GW by 2030.
“In January, the Long Island Power Authority agreed to a $1.6 billion, 20-year power purchase deal to buy power from the South Fork Wind project from Deepwater Wind,” Bryce said. “For that project, Deepwater Wind will also collect $70 million in tax credits … the South Fork project is 90 MW. I could today build 180 MW of natural gas-fired capacity for about the same amount of money that Deepwater Wind is collecting just in tax credits.”
LIPA has agreed to pay $220/MWh for the power from South Fork, Bryce said. “How many of you in this room are getting $220/MW? None. The prevailing price last year in New York was about $34/MW. Therefore, so far what we’re seeing is that offshore wind is at least six times as expensive as conventional electricity.”
Clint Plummer, vice president of development for Deepwater Wind, responded that LIPA had determined that South Fork was the most cost-effective way of serving eastern Long Island. “Yes, you may be able to build a natural gas-fired plant in the middle of Texas for less, but if you want to build something to supply East Hampton, N.Y., you can’t,” he said.
“Three dollars per dekatherm may be the cost of natural gas delivered to Henry Hub in Louisiana, but it does not reflect the cost of natural gas delivered over a bulk transmission system and then through a distribution system to a local power plant, and it doesn’t reflect the heat rate when you run through an existing or even a new natural gas-fired power plant. So, it’s a false comparison.”