Governor Cuomo has some very ambitious green energy goals for New York State. This includes getting our state “Coal Free by 2020”:

Governor Cuomo Announces New U.S. Climate Alliance Initiatives to Mark One-Year Anniversary of President Trump's Decision to Withdraw from the Global Paris Climate Accord U.S. Climate Alliance Initiatives Draw on New York State's Leadership in Combatting Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Reforming the Energy Vision Initiative, and Nation's Largest Green Bank New Commitments Include Reducing 'Super Pollutants,' Expanding Clean Energy Financing, Storing Carbon in Landscapes, and Softening the Negative Impact of Federal Solar Tariffs U.S. Climate Alliance States Remain on Track to Meet Their Share of U.S. Paris Agreement Target for at Least 25% Emissions Reductions by 2025 (June 1, 2018 GOVERNOR ANDREW M. CUOMO)

But this ambition is low on specifics.

Also, New York State’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) #REV4NY is high on ambition and low on mapping just exactly what and where renewable projects can be located so that the goals are achievable. We cannot realistically evaluate the costs/benefits of any one project without a larger perspective on how it impacts our path to 100% renewables. This does not mean that we ignore negative impacts to local biomes or communities, but that negative impacts may in some cases be outweighed by larger needs (addressing Climate Change), or we may recognize that saying “no” to a particular project necessitates finding an alternative that can serve our 100% renewable goal as well.

Even the Assembly Bill A5105A, which “Requires the establishment of a one hundred per cent clean energy system by two thousand thirty”, which calls for climate action planning, still doesn’t specify a statewide analysis of energy needs and sources. This might be inferred from the text of the bill, but it could be interpreted in lots of other ways too.

The problem with many of the efforts of getting to 100% renewable is that many current proposals will never reach fruition. Barriers such as local opposition, going off budget, a drop in the renewable energy market, or failing an environmental impact statement can stop projects we were depending on to get us to 100%. Many solar and wind projects have failed when the public says ‘No!” Not to mention, one of the biggest NYS Off-Shore wind projects, Great Lakes Offshore Wind (GLOW) program in 2009, which died before it got very far.

The overall lack of planning leaves a strong impression that even the champions of these efforts are not really taking them seriously.  We’re like a college freshman who embarks on a degree program, but one in which the course requirements have not been spelled out, and grades are withheld until some years in the future.  The student has no idea if a particular course will satisfy the requirements of the major, and no idea if the work performed in the course is good enough for a passing grade. They also don’t know if some other course(s) that fit into their schedule better might satisfy the program requirements just as well.  And we are far from the point where the degree program undergoes constant re-evaluation to make sure it still satisfies current and projected conditions in the world.

As we go further into the Climate Change Bottleneck, where our past environmental abuses get cooked on a warming planet, the economic and fairness advantages of renewable energy will be amplified and further compelled by the urgency of this energy transition. Which is to say, the consequences of heating our planet are going to compel us to focus on renewable energy-whether it’s convenient or not. And, Dr. Hansen warns us that although many people are thinking we can still use fossil fuels but be rescued  from the consequences through carbon capture, we haven’t really thought that through either.

As Bill McKibben reminded us in his now famous article in Rolling Stone Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, the figures must add up. Dirty energy must go down and renewable energy must go up. When a community says no to a renewable project they must see it in the context of Climate Change. If renewable energy doesn’t add up to 100%, then we’re either deluding ourselves that we’re solving this problem, or we’ve somehow decided we won’t use as much or more energy than we do. Which doesn’t seem likely.


Time passes.