![]() No such guarantees exist for technologies like hydrogen, making them a riskier bet to develop. The cost of underwriting those contracts trickles down to New Yorkers through their utility bills. The state currently has such markets for wind, solar, and other renewables: Through a mechanism known as the Clean Energy Standard, the state signs contracts for qualifying renewable energy projects, guaranteeing a buyer for the power they generate. It stops short of creating a state-backed market for the technologies that ultimately meet the criteria, as IPPNY has sought. The PSC’s order, which responds explicitly to IPPNY’s petition, meets the group halfway. Still, he called it “incremental progress,” coming nearly two years after IPPNY petitioned the state to take the issue on. ![]() “The fact that the commission has finally said, ‘We need these technologies,’ and the fact that they did not limit technologies in this order, is a positive thing,” Donohue said. It kicks off a two-month public comment period, which will be followed by a technical conference - likely in the fall - to decide what kinds of technologies qualify as “zero emissions” under state law.ĭonohue, the head of the power plant lobby, said the move was a long time coming. Like many regulatory decisions, the order published on Thursday is only the start of a lengthy process. The state’s climate plan asks the PSC, along with NYSERDA, to draw up the final criteria for those “firm” or “dispatchable” resources, and that’s what it started doing on Thursday. New York will also need to build new clean energy systems that don’t rely on the weather, and can be turned on at a moment’s notice. Yet even that explosion of renewables won’t be enough to ensure reliable energy while phasing out fossil fuels, studies by the state energy authority NYSERDA and the New York Independent System Operator have found. ![]() New York is already planning a massive buildout of wind, solar, and transmission lines: To meet the climate law’s requirements, it will need to build 100 times as much large-scale solar in the next five years as it did in the last ten, for example. State officials have stressed that the effort is intended to complement, not supplant, the central role of renewables. “If we’re successful, this will give us the tools to address many of the emerging issues that we’re seeing, and help us hit our various reliability needs and long-term goals,” Christian said. On Thursday, the Public Service Commission ordered the state to begin studying which new technologies - beyond renewables - it will need to meet its climate targets.Īnnouncing the decision at a Public Service Commission meeting on Thursday, chair Rory Christian called it an important step. ![]() Now, state regulators are signaling that the issue deserves a fresh look. For much of the last two years, they’ve maintained the upper hand: the IPPNY-backed bill died in committee last session, and the state’s climate plan de-emphasized the kinds of alternative fuels the power industry says will be needed. Along the way he won support from the AFL-CIO, the leading voice of organized labor in the state.īut environmentalists pushed back, arguing that the effort was a ploy to keep polluting plants open with the help of expensive technologies that have yet to be proven commercially. Those could include hydrogen nuclear alternative fuels like waste products from agriculture or carbon capture and storage, which could allow plants to keep burning fossil fuels as long as they keep emissions out of the air.ĭonohue wasn’t alone in this effort. ![]() The group’s president, Gavin Donohue, pressed the legislature, the Public Service Commission, and the Climate Action Council to back a new subsidy for technologies that will close the gap in New York’s energy supply when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Power plant operators’ lead trade group, the Independent Power Producers of New York ( IPPNY), have spent years pushing the state to focus on that more distant goal. New York’s climate law requires the state to produce 100 percent of its energy from “zero emissions” sources by 2040, but what exactly that means is still up for debate. There was still an opening for them to make their case. That riled power companies, who have long argued that picking technologies in advance will stifle innovation needed for the energy transition. The law not only required the state to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030, but set precise benchmarks for technologies like offshore wind. When New York passed its climate law four years ago, it declared wind, solar, and battery storage to be the energy sources of the future. ![]()
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