From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

Dr. Benny Peiser and I have now begun our 2024 GWPF U.S. speaking tour. Yesterday we appeared for an event at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. Between in person and online, we understand that over 400 people attended the event. (I believe that video of this event will be posted at some point on the TPPF website, but I don’t find it there yet.). Tonight we will be speaking at the 3 West Club, 3 West 51st St. in New York City, at 6 PM.

As mentioned previously in my post two weeks ago announcing tonight’s event, the title is “Europe’s Net Zero rebellion, European elections, and the coming U.S. reckoning.” Benny will cover the European piece of the subject matter, while I am taking on the “coming U.S. reckoning.” I’ll give you here a brief preview to whet your appetite.

The reason I use the term “reckoning” is that people in positions of authority, who have no idea what they are doing, in their zeal to eliminate “carbon emissions,” have set up mandates and goals that are completely irreconcilable. As a matter of physics or economics or both, the things that have been mandated to occur cannot all be accomplished at the same time, let alone within the time frames specified, or at anything close to affordable cost. Some time soon, a reckoning is inevitable.

Many examples of the irreconcilability can be cited, both at the federal level and among blue states that have eagerly sought the mantle of “climate leader” without ever doing even a cursory investigation of feasibility. For this preview I’ll focus on one particular example: the mandates in New York that dispatchable natural gas power plants be closed at the same time that demand on the grid dramatically increases from simultaneous mandates for electric cars and electric building heat.

New York has multiple agencies involved in the supposed energy transition. A Climate Action Council, plus an agency called NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Agency) actively promote the development of wind and solar generators as the wave of the future, without knowing or caring how it will all work. Then there is the New York Independent System Operator, NYISO, that is responsible for making sure that the grid works. NYISO knows full well that the various mandates cannot be achieved simultaneously, but they also recognize that that view is not in favor politically at the moment. So NYISO puts out documents that seem on their face to be saying that everything is fine; but if you read between the lines, you realize that they are sounding the alarm.

Here is NYISO’s document called the “2023-2032 Comprehensive Reliability Plan,” issued November 28, 2023. Read it without a skeptical eye, and you might come away at first thinking that all is well, or at least close to it. Phrases like “meets all currently applicable reliability criteria . . .” are sprinkled around. Yes, there are references to things like “a variety of risk factors to the long-term plan,” and the possible need to keep some natural gas peaker plants around longer than might be hoped, but that is only “as a last resort,” and only until some “permanent solution” is in place.

We then come to the following chart, presented at page 6 with little comment. Oh wait, it shows a big drop in “existing supply” in 2025 — next year — due to the forced closure of some of these natural gas plants, and expected demand then being right in the middle of a part of the bar labeled “deficiency.” That’s rather soon. Oh, it seems that (after this document was issued) they have just delayed the closure of those natural gas plants. Crisis averted, for the moment. Then in 2026 there is an addition to supply, shown in blue, representing the opening of a new transmission line to import hydro power from Quebec. But that’s only about 1 GW of additional capacity, out of 11+ GW of so of peak demand. By 2031, we are back to projected deficiency, which becomes more serious every year — and could be much larger depending on how fast demand grows with all those new mandates.

But the killer is the supposed “long term solution.” You have to get all the way to page 52 to find out that they have no idea what that might be, and even then it is written in code:

With high penetration of renewable intermittent resources, DEFRs are needed to balance intermittent supply with demand. Resources with these characteristics must be significant in capacity. . . .”

“DEFRs”? What are those? They are the elusive “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources.” Just like fossil fuel plants, they can be turned on and off on command to meet demand, but they make no carbon emissions. Voilà — problem solved! Oh, wait — if such a thing existed, wouldn’t we be using it already?

Although they never say it in quite these words, the entire plan post-2030 relies on something that has not yet been invented or deployed at scale. What might it be? Nuclear? That is completely blocked in New York by a hostile political and regulatory environment, and would take at least 15 years to deploy if we started on a crash program today. “Green” hydrogen? That costs something like 20 to 50 times what natural gas costs, and would require an entire new infrastructure of production facilities, pipelines, and power plants, none of which exists or is under construction or even in a serious planning stage. Batteries? Batteries just to get through one calm night (16 hours) would cost about the same as the entire New York State annual budget. Batteries to be sufficient to provide full back-up to a grid without fossil fuels (500 – 1000 hours of average usage) would cost a multiple of New York’s entire GDP.

So in fact, there is no real plan. You can see New York hitting the wall in that chart. The mandates are in place. We march forward, until we can’t any more.