11.29.21- Can New York Really Get to 100% Clean Energy by 2040?
'Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced two massive transmission-line projects that environmental advocates hope is a sign that she is accelerating the state’s efforts to address climate change. Stephanie Keith for The New York Times
Two years ago New York committed to the nation’s most ambitious climate goals to shift away from the fossil fuels heating the planet and create a new, electrified economy that stops adding to climate change by 2050. State agencies and private companies went to work building hundreds of wind and solar farms to power businesses, vehicles and homes.
But there is a problem.
New York effectively has two separate electrical grids: upstate, where most of the state’s growing clean-power supply is generated, and in and around New York City, the area that consumes the most energy and relies most heavily on power from fossil fuels. The power lines that connect the two, already clogged with a traffic jam of electrons, cannot carry more.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced two massive transmission-line projects to help bridge that divide, a step that environmental advocates hope is a sign that she is accelerating the state’s efforts to address climate change and environmental inequities.
By law, New York has just nine years to more than double the share of the electricity it uses that is generated from wind, sun and water to 70 percent, from less than 30 percent today.
That requires unifying and expanding the state’s divided electrical grid and reshaping it to work less like a one-way transmitter and more like an ecosystem. The grid must grow to supply 75 percent more power by 2040, and be flexible: On blustery days it should send surplus wind power north from turbines off Long Island to consumers upstate, and in summer send plentiful energy south from rural solar farms to the city.
The governor unveiled the transmission-line projects amid a series of steps to cut emissions and redress environmental inequalities, including doubling the state’s solar energy expansion goal and creating a program to improve air quality in low-income, long-polluted areas.
Last month, Ms. Hochul’s administration blocked upgrades to two gas-fueled power plants, weighing in on a critical debate over whether the state should immediately stop permitting new fossil-fuel infrastructure.
“Goals are goals,” Ms. Hochul, who attended the global climate conference in Glasgow, said earlier of the state’s climate law. “I want results.”
The new transmission lines promise to bring renewable energy directly to New York City, aimed at making the state’s “tale of two grids” — cleaner upstate and heavily reliant on fossil fuel downstate — “a thing of the past,” said Doreen Harris, who heads the state’s energy development agency. At last analysis, just 21 percent of the city’s power came from sources that do not emit planet-warming gases — a fraction that soon fell to 3 percent with the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant.'