Andrew Cuomo’s Wind Farm Won’t Fly Without Fracking

Andrew Cuomo’s Wind Farm Won’t Fly Without Fracking

New York’s governor touts turbines while closing a nuclear plant. To fill the gap? Natural gas.

Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., Feb. 28, 2017. PHOTO: SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo led the cheer squad last month when the Interior Department announced it would begin allowing offshore wind turbines to be built in the shallow waters between New Jersey and Long Island. Mr. Cuomo had recently announced a $6 billion plan to build 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, with the costs passed on to bill payers. But though Mr. Cuomo portrays himself as a champion of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, his simultaneous opposition to a New York City-area nuclear plant exposes his wind plan as a mere play for progressive prestige.

Mr. Cuomo isn’t the only Northeastern governor with windy ambitions. Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker signed a bill in 2016 committing his state to develop 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2027, and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy decreed in January that the Garden State would aim for 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.

But Mr. Cuomo is working the hardest of all to maximize his climate-change credentials. Sitting next to former Vice President Al Gore in 2015, he signed a document committing New York to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions 80% before 2050.

For all his bluster, however, Mr. Cuomo made it clear in January 2017 that his true priority is pleasing environmentalists, not cutting emissions. That was when he gleefully announced that the nuclear-powered Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., which provides abundant low-cost electricity while producing zero carbon-dioxide emissions, would close by 2021.

Activists like to urge climate-change skeptics to “do the math” on emissions and temperatures—so let’s start by looking at Indian Point’s output. The twin-reactor 2,069-megawatt plant, which sits on the banks of the Hudson River a few dozen miles north of Times Square, produces about 16,600 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s about a quarter of New York City’s consumption.

Given the troubled history of offshore wind projects like Massachusetts’ ill-fated Cape Wind, it is far from certain that Mr. Cuomo will succeed in building the full 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind capacity proposed in his outline. But even if he does, New York’s emissions are still likely to rise, because the proposed offshore capacity won’t come close to replacing the energy generated by Indian Point.

Comparing Mr. Cuomo’s wind proposal with a pending offshore project allows us to estimate the amount of power it will generate. The proposed South Fork wind project is a 90-megawatt facility scheduled to be built near the eastern end of Long Island. That project—which is opposed by local fisherman—is expected to produce 370 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. In other words, each megawatt of capacity at South Fork will annually produce about 4.1 gigawatt-hours. If the same ratio holds for Mr. Cuomo’s plan, its 2,400 megawatts of capacity will produce about 9,840 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s only about 60% of the juice New Yorkers now get from Indian Point.

This simple arithmetic shows that while Mr. Cuomo and his green allies are touting offshore wind, the premature closure of Indian Point will leave New York with a big gap in its electricity sources. What will fill the hole? The short answer, as was revealed by the New York Independent System Operator last December, is natural gas.

If Indian Point closes as scheduled, the NYISO expects its output will be replaced by electricity from three gas-fired plants now under construction, including the 678-megawatt CPV Valley Energy Center in Wawayanda, N.Y., the 1,020-megawatt Cricket Valley Energy Center in Dover, N.Y., and a 120-megawatt addition to the Bayonne Energy Center in New Jersey.

The irony here is colossal. Mr. Cuomo, who banned hydraulic fracturing despite the economic boon it has created in neighboring Pennsylvania, and who has repeatedly blocked construction of pipelines, is making New York even more dependent on natural gas, which will increase its carbon emissions. At the same time, he has mandated offshore wind projects that will force New Yorkers to pay more for their electricity, even though the state already has some of the nation’s highest electricity prices.

That’s the kind of green record a high-profile Democrat might use to run for the White House—which appears to be Mr. Cuomo’s only real priority.

Mr. Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the producer of the forthcoming documentary “Juice: How Electricity Explains the World.”

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Comment by arthur qwenk on May 19, 2018 at 8:29am

Sounds familiar huh?

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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