New York’s Climate Virtue-Signaling Will Condemn Millions to Energy Poverty

T he Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is a long-overdue step to rein in an agency that has exerted hydra-like control over much of the U.S. economy through its regulations on virtually every activity that uses energy. The Court found that the EPA overstepped its authority, writing that “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority” to “[cap] carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity.”

Sadly, the decision will do little to stop New York policy-makers from bankrupting their own state. For them, the rise in fuel prices over the last year has provided the perfect excuse to double down on the state’s misguided and quixotic green-energy policies.

The state government has been hostile to hydrocarbon development and production and has long advocated green energy to address climate change. The state’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act includes “zero-emissions” electricity mandates and requires “electrifying” end-use energy — vehicles, furnaces, water heaters, and even cookstoves. In 2020, the state enacted the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act that overrules local community objections to siting large-scale wind and solar projects.

These efforts will fail. The 2019 Climate Act’s zero-emissions mandates are physically infeasible, and the resulting reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions would have no measurable impact on world climate. But the attempt to implement them will impose damaging hardships for consumers. Low-income New Yorkers, in particular, are already being hit hard by higher energy prices.

The most recently available U.S. census data show that about 1 million New York households faced energy poverty defined as spending at least 10 percent of household income on electricity and fossil fuels for home use (but excluding expenditures on gasoline and diesel fuel for vehicles), during 2015–19: the “golden years” of U.S. energy independence and cheap gasoline. Even if the recent run-up in fossil-fuel prices reverses, which is unlikely, the Climate Act’s mandates will plunge millions of New Yorkers into energy poverty.

The Climate Act requires that 100 percent of all electricity demand be met with emissions-free resources by 2040. Given the lack of support for constructing new nuclear power plants, this means that the additional electricity supplies needed will have to come from wind and solar power, whether produced in New York or imported. But because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, the state will need to increase reserve capacity — generation and storage resources available to ensure that the lights stay on — by at least fivefold.

Today, most reserve-generation capacity is gas-fired power plants, along with old oil burners that are run when demand really soars. But those aren’t “climate friendly,” so Climate Act proponents simply assume the state will build enough battery storage and what are called “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources” (DEFRs) — basically, turbines that can be turned on and off as needed — to keep the lights on.

But the costs of sufficient battery storage will be staggering, causing electricity prices to soar. A massive increase in demand for battery storage, including millions of battery-powered vehicles, will increase the prices of battery materials and the prices of the batteries themselves. Forecasts of dirt-cheap battery storage because of improved efficiencies and new technologies are just wishful thinking.

As for DEFRs, proponents envision that these will be traditional generating turbines that burn hydrogen, not natural gas or oil. But DEFRs have one crucial weakness: They don’t exist. Yet, by 2040, keeping the lights on will require thousands of megawatts of DEFRs to compensate for the inherent variability of wind and solar.

Moreover, burning hydrogen in a turbine first requires manufacturing it, and today, the only economic source of energy to manufacture hydrogen is . . . natural gas.  In small batches, hydrogen can be manufactured by electrolysis — basically, running a current through water — using the surplus wind and solar electricity that will supposedly be available.

Except producing hydrogen using electrolysis is three times more costly than using natural gas. And no commercial-scale electrolysis plants exist.

Even if New York policy-makers could wave their magic wands and create this new technology, it would have no measurable impact on world climate. But the Climate Act will have a huge impact on the state’s economy. It will impoverish New Yorkers and drive businesses and jobs out of the state.

The Supreme Court has taken a small step to ensure that the EPA “can no longer sidestep Congress to exercise broad regulatory power,” as the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. But in New York, they won’t have to. The state’s green dreams will prevail — and the rest of us will foot the bill.