Both California and New York Need Total Resets at This Point on Climate and Energy Policy: A Big Pause and Step Back

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

The Breakthrough Journal published an article by Jennifer Hernandez and Lauren Teixeira entitled Time to reset California’s climate leadership that I think is relevant to New York.

I have recently argued that because there are so many unanswered questions and unresolved issues that the logical next step for New York is to pause in Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) implementation until we understand how to decarbonize our electric system without adversely affecting affordability and current reliability standards.

Hernandez and Teixeira come to the same conclusion but with arguments that I have not made but are applicable to New York too.

Overview

The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes an interim 2030 reduction target of a 40% GHG reduction by 2030. Two targets address the electric sector: 70% of the electricity must come from renewable energy by 2030 and all electricity must be generated by “zero-emissions” resources by 2040.

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 during periods of extended periods of low wind and solar resource availability. Because DEFR is needed and because we don’t know what technology can be used, I think that the Climate Act schedule needs to be paused. In that light I was interested in this article calling for California to “go back to the drawing board.”

Jennifer Hernandez and Lauren Teixeira are both well versed in California energy policies. Hernandez has practiced land use and environmental law for more than 30 years and has received numerous civil rights awards for her work on overcoming environmentalist opposition to housing and other projects needed and supported by minority communities. Teixeira is a Climate and Energy Analyst with the Breakthrough Institute.

California Climate Leadership

California was the first in the nation legislate a “solution” to climate change with its AB32 Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. After fourteen years the inevitable effects of reality are getting the attention of the politicians that supported the law. The introductory paragraph explains:

Faced with the election of Donald Trump to a second term, soaring inequality, and a decline in support from the state’s non-white majority, California’s Democratic leaders have begun asking hard questions about the state’s vaunted climate policies. California’s Democratic Assembly leader Richard Rivas opened the new Legislative session signalling a strong focus on meeting voter concerns about housing and the state’s extraordinarily high cost of living, specifically calling out the state’s climate policies: “California has always led the way on climate. And we will continue to lead on climate,” he told his Assembly colleagues. “But not on the backs of poor and working people, not with taxes or fees for programs that don’t work, and not by blocking housing and critical infrastructure projects. It’s why we must be outcome driven. We can’t blindly defend the institutions contributing to these issues.”

Hernandez and Teixeira compared several metrics for California, Florida, Texas, and the United States to determine how successful California’s claim that they lead the way on climate has been. They explained that:

California’s claims to eco-superiority long predate the passage of AB32, the 2006 law that committed the state to ambitious climate targets and established a cap-and-trade system by which to achieve them. Even before this landmark bill, the state’s per capita carbon emissions were far lower than the national average.

Table 1 compares the data from CA, FL, TX, and the US along with New York and the original ten Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI} states. I included the RGGI states because they also claim to be climate mitigation leaders. The authors chose to compare current emissions to 2006 when California’s landmark climate law AB32 was passed. I analyzed Energy Information Administration data and added two other years. I included 1990 because that is the base year for most net-zero transition programs and 2000 because that has been used by New York State in recent analyses. The results show that New York is close to California for most years. Note that compared to the other jurisdictions New York is the worst performer almost every year.

Table 1: Per capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions

Hernandez and Teixeira explained the reason for the decreases was the same as what I have found in New York:

The reason why states like Texas and Florida were able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with practically no climate policy to speak of is quite simple: natural gas. Emissions reductions in Texas and Florida were driven by the electricity sector, which had transitioned from coal to natural gas for largely economic reasons. Indeed, by 2017, 41 out of 50 U.S. states had decoupled economic growth from emissions, a phenomenon widely attributed to this transition.

New York politicians were undoubtedly influenced by California’s AB32 because we have similar restrictions on the what technologies were acceptable for reducing GHG emissions:

Along with its climate commitments, California’s political leaders also decreed that further carbon emission reductions in the electricity sector would need to be achieved with a limited suite of renewable energy technologies: solar, wind and battery storage. (Both legacy technologies like hydropower and nuclear, and technologies considered renewable in other states and countries such as biomass, did not meet the state’s narrow definition of “renewable” energy.)

This decision had consequences. Costly renewable energy power purchase agreements, combined with the expense of integrating intermittent resources into the grid, helped to make California’s retail electricity prices the highest in the country (second only to Hawaii). Meanwhile, the state’s remarkable rate of rooftop solar adoption—due to the combination of costly retail electricity, generous state subsidies to often-wealthy homeowners, and rooftop solar mandates—ended up raising electricity prices still further, pushing costs disproportionately onto renters and low-income households who do not have their own rooftop solar.

Given California’s fourteen-year head start I am not surprised that New York’s rates have not shown comparable increases, but double-digit rate case settlements and all the other costs required for the transition will inevitably show similar impacts at some point. The important point made here is that California’s policies have disproportionately increased costs for those least able to afford it. I have always thought that was a likely outcome but here is proof.

Decarbonization at the expense of growth and civil rights?

In the introduction, Hernandez and Teixeira quoted Speaker of the Assembly Richard Rivas who said “California has always led the way on climate. And we will continue to lead on climate, but not on the backs of poor and working people, not with taxes or fees for programs that don’t work, and not by blocking housing and critical infrastructure projects.” The authors also addressed his concerns about effects of AB32 on the economy.

At first glance, California’s impressive economy—the world’s fifth largest, as state officials are fond of reminding the press and populace—would seem to vindicate its climate policy, demonstrating by virtue of its enormity that economic prosperity and deep decarbonization can coexist.

But the state’s wealth masks some troubling trends. While growth in California has significantly outstripped the rest of the country, it has been highly concentrated in just a few high-income places. Since 2001, California’s real GDP has grown by 82%–23 percentage points higher than the U.S. average of 55%. This difference disappears, however, when you take out the three Bay area counties that house Silicon Valley. Bolstered by four of the world’s seven companies with trillion dollar valuations, real GDP in these counties rose at four times the rate of the U.S. average. This remarkable and hyperlocal rise accounted almost entirely for California’s above-average growth:

New York proponents of the Climate Act also trot out New York’s economy relative to the world but don’t mention recent growth. New York does not have the benefit of four massively successful companies so growth is much worse than California. Hernandez and Teixeira note that even with those companies, recent growth is problematic:

But even with massively outsized contributions from Silicon Valley, California’s growth in recent years is not very impressive. Between 2017 and 2023, real GDP in California grew by only 18.5%, slightly above the national average (15.6%), and well behind real GDP in red state competitors Texas (25.7%) and Florida (27.3%).

I dug up some comparable gross state product numbers for New York. Between 2017 and 2023 the gross state product only grew by 10%, well behind all three states and the nation. Hernandez and Teixeira broke down growth by county and showed that the growth was unevenly distributed. They also showed there was a racial disparity to growth. I could not find similar data for New York, but I don’t think it is a stretch to imagine similar patterns are present in New York.

Hernandez and Teixeira also noted that growth is affected by environmental regulations:

California’s strict environmental regulatory regime has not helped to improve this unbalanced state of affairs; in fact, it has likely exacerbated it. Despite abundant natural reserves, the state’s once-mighty oil production industry—a source of well-paying jobs for non-college educated workers—is threatened with terminal decline due to a hostile regulatory environment. After 145 years in California, Chevron is moving its headquarters to Texas.

New York’s ban on hydraulic fracking has certainly limited growth in the same way. The authors addressed other issues raised by Speaker of the Assembly Richard Rivas. In both examples, the situation in New York is identical:

• The high cost of living and scarcity of well-paying jobs for the non-college educated have made California an increasingly unlivable place for ordinary people.

• People are now voting with their feet: between 2020 and 2023, population fell in 47 of 58 counties, an unprecedented trend that may significantly cut state tax revenues. And according to the Public Policy Institute of California, low income people are now twice as likely to leave as high income people.

Conclusion

Hernandez and Teixeira summed up by making several points:

• Considering California’s environmental and economic record since 2006, one can reasonably conclude one of two things: either it is not possible to achieve deep emissions reductions without slowing growth and making economic inequality worse, or California is doing something wrong.

• California’s climate policies have contributed to slow economic growth for most of the state and have disproportionately punished the poor and non-college educated workers.

• Until the state demonstrates that it can cut its emissions equitably, such that working people once more see the Golden State as a land of opportunity rather than fleeing it, California should not be held up as a model of climate governance.

• Expensive policies, supported by high end keyboard economy tax revenue, are simply not exportable to the rest of the country, much less the rest of the world.

Buried somewhere in the Climate Act language is a mandate for New York to consider what is happening at other jurisdictions who are developing their own net-zero transition plans. Typically, California is considered an example of what we should be doing.

In this instance I agree with the conclusion of Hernandez and Teixeira that: “While some state leaders may still be tempted to double down on current climate policies, the state, its political leaders, its economy, and the climate will be far better served by going back to the drawing board—as Speaker Rivas has urged.”

I also think that New York would be well served by their recommendation: “California’s claims to climate leadership now depend not upon proving that the state is willing to cut its emissions at any cost but rather demonstrating that it can cut its emissions while assuring that home ownership, an affordable cost of living, and good jobs are available to all.”

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

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 490 articles about New York’s net-zero transition.