By David Wojick
New York Governor Hochul has told the Court her administration cannot write the regulations required to enforce the Climate Act’s 2030 emission reduction targets because they would be infeasible and ruinously expensive to New Yorkers. For all practical purposes, they are actually impossible, so the law must be changed.
The legal situation is explained in my article “New York’s climate law hits the wall” here:
Below is a brief analysis of the impossibility.
The law calls for a 40% reduction in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990 levels by 2030. According to state data, the emissions have already been reduced by 10% leaving a whopping 30% to go in just four years.
Most of the reductions occurred in just two ways that are similar to America as a whole. Foremost, is a switch from coal to natural gas in electric power generation. Second, is the loss of manufacturing, helping to make China the industrial center of the world. Neither of these reduction measures is available or feasible to help hit the remaining 30%.
According to EIA, roughly 50% of New York’s energy consumption is from petroleum. About 80% of this is transportation fuel, especially gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. It is clearly impossible to reduce transportation by 30%. In some cases, electrification is technologically feasible, but it cannot possible be done at the needed scale in just four years.
This is especially true given much of the transportation is from out of state vehicles. New York stands between New England and the rest of America, so it gets a huge amount of through traffic.
In addition, an estimated 20% of New York households heat with fuel oil. Winters are very cold, so we are not about to cut that by 30%.
The next biggest source is natural gas, which accounts for about 30% of energy consumption, not counting electricity generation. Roughly 60% of households are heated with natural gas as are most larger buildings, such as apartments, co-ops, offices and stores. Here again, while electrification is theoretically possible, it cannot possibly be done in just four years.
A big extra complication is that the emissions to be reduced 30% include those out of state emissions created by producing imported electricity and fossil fuels. This might include emissions from things like Texas refineries and Pennsylvania coal fired power plants. New York obviously has no control over these sources.
Here is the Climate Law’s incredible definition of the emissions that need to be reduced: “”Statewide greenhouse gas emissions” means the total annual emissions of greenhouse gases produced within the state from anthropogenic sources and greenhouse gases produced outside of the state that are associated with the generation of electricity imported into the state and the extraction and transmission of fossil fuels imported into the state.”
New York imports almost all of the huge amounts of petroleum and natural gas that it uses. These out of state emissions are likely to be a significant fraction of those that are required to be reduced 30% in just four years.
Plus of course, there are the emissions from electric power generation. Roughly 40% of the natural gas consumed in New York is used to generate electricity. About 54% of the generated electricity is powered by natural gas versus just 15% from renewables, mostly hydro. These numbers can be little changed in just four years.
New York State cannot cut emissions by the required 30% in just four years, so the 2030 target of the Climate Act is impossible. The legislature must change the law, and the Court has given them until February 6 to do so. After that, the Court says it will impose the Climate Law, which would be incredibly harmful.
Stay tuned to CFACT to see how this perilous drama proceeds.
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