Allowing Politicians to Set Energy Policy Will Turn Out to Be An Unmitigated Disaster for New York (and Other States)

Guest Post by Roger Caiazza of Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.

As I age, I am becoming less willing to play along with the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) narrative that there is an existential threat to mankind from climate change and that an energy system that relies on wind, solar, and energy storage can solve that threat.

One aspect of playing along is to appease supporters by accepting that there is a reason to reduce GHG emissions and agreeing that solar and wind resources should be part of the future electric energy system. Ron Clutz’s recent article “Lacking data, climate models rely on guesses” included information that spurred this article.

I am convinced implementation of the New York Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The authors of the Climate Act believed that “our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro” and that “it that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago).”

We need a feasibility analysis to determine if this presumption is correct. This article addresses the questions: should we be trying to reduce GHG emissions in hopes of affecting the climate and, even if we accept that decarbonization is a worthy goal, should we try to rely on wind and solar.

Is There an Existential Threat?

Keep in mind that climate models provide all the evidence that there is an existential threat. Despite the constant refraining in the main stream media attributing extreme weather events to climate change is a claim no one without a vested interest in that answer is willing to make. Ron Clutz’s recent article “Lacking data, climate models rely on guesses” described the response to a question about climate model accuracy by Dr. Keith Minor. The following is parts of the summary from Ron’s post.

A recent question was posed on Quora: Say there are merely 15 variables involved in predicting global climate change. Assume climatologists have mastered each variable to a near perfect accuracy of 95%. How accurate would a climate model built on this simplified system be? Keith Minor has a PhD in organic chemistry, PhD in Geology, and PhD in Geology & Paleontology from The University of Texas at Austin.

Minor responded with bolds by Clutz:

I like the answers to this question, and Matthew stole my thunder on the climate models not being statistical models. If we take the question and it’s assumptions at face value, one unsolvable overriding problem, and a limit to developing an accurate climate model that is rarely ever addressed, is the sampling issue. Knowing 15 parameters to 99+% accuracy won’t solve this problem.

The modeling of the atmosphere is a boundary condition problem. No, I’m not talking about frontal boundaries. Thermodynamic systems are boundary condition problems, meaning that the evolution of a thermodynamic system is dependent not only on the conditions at t > 0 (is the system under adiabatic conditions, isothermal conditions, do these conditions change during the process, etc.?), but also on the initial conditions at t = 0 (sec, whatever). Knowing almost nothing about what even a fraction of a fraction of the molecules in the atmosphere are doing at t = 0 or at t > 0 is a huge problem to accurately predicting what the atmosphere will do in the near or far future.

These problems boil down to the challenge of measuring the meteorological parameters necessary to initiate weather and climate models. The reference to t = 0 relates to the start time of the model. Minor explains that there are many sources of variability within the models themselves too including:

• The inability of the models to handle water (the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, not CO2) and processes related to it; e.g., models still can’t handle the formation and non-formation of clouds;

• The non-linearity of thermodynamic properties of matter (which seem to be an afterthought, especially in popular discussions regarding the roles that CO2 plays in the atmosphere and biosphere), and

• The always-present sampling problem.

Minor goes on to describe how these issues affect weather forecasting and how more sampling could improve certain forecasts. He concludes:

So back to the Quora question, with regard to a cost-effective (cost-effect is the operational term) climate model or models (say an ensemble model) that would “verify” say 50 years from now, the sampling issue is ever present, and likely cost-prohibitive at the level needed to make the sampling statistically significant. And will the climatologist be around in 50 years to be “hoisted with their own petard” when the climate model is proven to be wrong? The absence of accountability is the other problem with these long-range models into which many put so much faith.

Clutz also references a quote by esteemed climate scientist Richard Lindzen that I think sums up whether we should rely on climate models to make the policy decision to transition away from fossil fuels. In a presentation (here) Lindzen states:

I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists of two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications.

The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and re-emission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common.

In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.

Can We Transition Away from Fossil Fuels

A recurrent theme at this blog is that the electric energy system absolutely needs new technology to achieve decarbonization. Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system work reliably. Because DEFR is needed and because we don’t know what should be used, I think that the Climate Act schedule needs to be reconsidered or at least paused.

I believe the only likely viable DEFR backup technology is nuclear generation because it is the only candidate resource that is technologically ready, can be expanded as needed, and does not suffer from limitations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I do conceded that there are financial issues that need to be addressed. The bigger issues is that DEFR is needed as a backup during extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability, but nuclear power is best used for baseload energy.

I estimate that 24 GW of nuclear could replace 178 GW of wind, water, battery storage. Developing nuclear eliminates the need for a huge DEFR backup resource and massive buildout of wind turbines and solar panels sprawling over the state’s lands and water. Until the New York Energy Plan settles on a DEFR solution the only rational thing to do is to pause the implementation process.

Lest you think that I am the only skeptical voice about the viability of an electrical energy transition relying on wind and solar resources I list some recent articles below.

Tom Shepstone describes a fact sheet from the Empowerment Alliance that outlines why the electric grid is headed to a crisis:

America’s Electrical Grid Crisis is on the brink of a crisis that no one is talking about. Government mandates and pledges from utilities to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 or sooner have led to the closure of traditional power plants fueled by coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.

However, the wind and solar energy that is supposed to replace these sources is intermittent, unreliable and artificially supported by government subsidies. “Net zero” policies may sound nice on paper but they are not ready for practice in the real world.

In fact, the crisis may have already begun. A recent capacity auction by the largest U.S. electrical grid operator resulted in an over 800% price increase for these very reasons. And, everyday Americans are going to pay the price through higher bills for less reliable electricity.

• One study of electricity plans in the Midwest found that, “Of the 38 major investor-owned utilities spanning the Great Lakes region, 32 are pledged to net zero by 2050 or sooner. Of the seven states analyzed in this report, three have net zero mandates by law, one has net zero mandates through regulation and the other three have no net zero mandates at the state level.”

• “The Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator, the grid operator for much of the Midwest, projects that by 2032, none of the five Great Lakes states in its territory will have enough electricity capacity to meet even the most conservative projection of demand load.”

• “Wind and solar cannot be relied on as a one-for-one replacement of existing generation sources, like coal, natural gas and nuclear. If the grid relies on forms of generation that are uncontrollable and unreliable, it must also maintain backup sources that are controllable and reliable. Because wind and solar production can fall to near zero at times, utilities may need to maintain up to another grid’s worth of generation capacity.”

Source:

Joshua Antonini and Jason Hayes, “Shorting The Shorting The Great Lakes Grid: Great Lakes Grid: How Net Zero Plans Risk Energy Reliability,” Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2024

Tom also describes a report by the Fraser Institute regarding the real costs of electricity produced from solar and wind facilities, compared to other energy sources. Tom highlights the money paragraphs with his emphasis added:

Often, when proponents claim that wind and solar sources are cheaper than fossil fuels, they ignore [backup energy] costs. A recent study published in Energy, a peer-reviewed energy and engineering journal, found that—after accounting for backup, energy storage and associated indirect costs—solar power costs skyrocket from US$36 per megawatt hour (MWh) to as high as US$1,548 and wind generation costs increase from US$40 to up to US$504 per MWh.

Which is why when governments phase out fossil fuels to expand the role of renewable sources in the electricity grid, electricity become more expensive. In fact, a study by University of Chicago economists showed that between 1990 and 2015, U.S. states that mandated minimum renewable power sources experienced significant electricity price increases after accounting for backup infrastructure and other costs. Specifically, in those states electricity prices increased by an average of 11 per cent, costing consumers an additional $30 billion annually. The study also found that electricity prices grew more expensive over time, and by the twelfth year, electricity prices were 17 per cent higher (on average).

Finally, Chris Martz compares the impacts of wind and solar vs. nuclear power. I should note that he is not including DEFR support in his estimates. He concludes:

In order to power the same number of homes that a 1,000 MW nuclear power plant can, it would require either:

• For 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐏𝐕: Approximately 4,000 MW of installed power (equivalent to four nuclear facilities) and 24,000 acres of land (some 37.5 × as much land area than a nuclear plant).

• For 𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝: Approximately 2,800 MW of installed power (equivalent to 2.8 nuclear facilities) and 89,600 acres of land (some 140 × as much land area than a nuclear power generation station).

But, I should caution you that these estimates are in fact conservative. Why? Because they do 𝒏𝒐𝒕 take into consideration land area required for battery storage due to their intermittency in overcast sky conditions, low wind speed and/or overnight.

Conclusion

It is terrifying that the rationale and proposed solution in a New York policy that could cost hundreds of billions is based on fantasy.

Richard Lindzen describes the made-up rationale: “In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic.”

Keith Minor explains that, even if this perturbation was the climate change driver, we can never provide enough data to to ensure that a model could accurately project the impacts. The myth that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels on the schedule mandated by the Climate Act is dependent upon the fantastical notion that a resource that does not exist can be developed, tested, permitted, and deployed by 2040.

I can only conclude that allowing politicians to set energy policy will turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.

#Caiazza #Climate #DEFR #GlobalWarming #ClimateAct #Wind #Solar

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This post represents his opinion alone and not the opinion of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated. Roger has followed the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and has written over 480 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.